I don't think it's reasonable to expect every edit to be polished. If someone makes a rough contribution with promise, it should stay in the article in its broken form, so other passerbyers can see it and help improve it. Something ugly but of value should stay instead of being relegated to talk pages 99% of viewers never bother to check. I lean towards inclusion because visible mistakes are more likely to be fixed by random surfers.
There is one faction of people that treat pages like a final draft, and others who prefer it as working space (with extremely high visibility.)
Github isnt a fair comparison, because it has a much better workflow for proposing changes.
If an edit to Wikipedia has new, cited information, but the citation is in the wrong format, someone will probably fix it. If it's uncited writing, and not well written, it's probably going to be reverted.
There are sandbox pages, user pages, and talk pages for working drafts. But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts. Realistically, if you can't write English without grammatical errors, trying to edit Wikipedia will be a frustrating experience.
>But the main space pages are seen by millions of people, and are not an appropriate place to write drafts.
The visibility is entirely why it should be where contributions are made and not in behind the scenes obscure spots.
It's ok for pages to be flawed.
If you fix a grammatical error instead of reverting a contribution, you might teach the person who made it something. If it's uncited, you should cite it, tag it, or leave it, you shouldnt be reverting it.
>Fix problems if you can, flag or remove them IF YOU CAN'T. Likewise, as long as any of the facts or ideas added to an article would belong in the "finished" article, they SHOULD BE RETAINED if they meet the three article content retention policies: Neutral point of view (which does not mean no point of view), Verifiability and No original research.
I dont have some radical position here. It's written right into editing policy. Removal should be saved for when contributions cant be fixed, not because you think they are ugly blemishes, and dont want to take the time to improve them. An "incomplete" contribution should stay IN the article, waiting for someone else to come along and mend it. Preference for an article to look "finished" should take a back seat.
Facts and Ideas first, spit polish next. Always prioritize the former.
There is one faction of people that treat pages like a final draft, and others who prefer it as working space (with extremely high visibility.)
Github isnt a fair comparison, because it has a much better workflow for proposing changes.