tapir, I don't think what SL requires does in fact require a huge amount of work. As regards the special case of programming a new structure, Arno has already offered to do that, as I understand it. He simply wants to know what structure is required. Comments since then have largely been in response to his request, and a certainly not a list of "demands" by rebels. The discussion on SL petered out, and that very fact may be symptomatic of SL's major underlying problems.
But while that programming may involve substantial work, normally the work involved in effecting improvements is trivial.
First,
less work would be a good idea. If certain people were less inclined to interfere with already well written pages, such as the cases Bill mentioned, the "interferer" would save himself some work he could usefully divert to still important tasks he could do satisfactorily. The lack of interference would also mean
much less work for a later master editor.
Second, a very small improvement in standards could eliminate inaccuracies, clutter, garbling, etc - and also make later editing a cinch. It just so happens that a few moments ago I came across a very typical example. As it happens to involve me I can speak on it with authority.
Someone (I looked but couldn't see who - not even a handle) added the following to the Go Seigen page.
Go Seigen played black. John Fairbairn presents a thorough analysis of this game and the surrounding situation in "The New Fuseki Game", soon to be published by Slate & Shell.
I am grateful for the mention, of course, and I do, really do, understand that the poster is trying to be helpful. But an accretion of this sort of thing is what makes pages messy and hard to edit. A little more care here - a tiny, tiny effort - would make life easier for editors and pages more useful for readers.
First, unless the editor here knows something I don't, the title of the book is not "The New Fuseki Game". The title on the manuscript I sent to Slate & Shell was "The Old versus New Fuseki Game: Honinbo Shusai versus Go Seigen". Apart from being quite different and creating the likelihood of future searches failing (I largely agree with Robert's points about SL searches, incidentally), in the context of the full paragraph on SL, this creates a totally wrong impression. It was not
the New Fuseki game, and it obscures the point about it being a clash of old and new. Again laying down a quagmire for a future editor to fall into.
The second problem with the post is the word "soon". When I was working as a journalist, we naturally had to employ new recruits from time to time. This involved a test - writing a 50-words imaginary news story as a reporter. We could always tell at once who was fitted to be a journo and who wasn't. Those who omitted the date and place were ruled out at once. The date is just so basic. This applies on SL, too. On page after page you find words like "soon" or "future" or "next". This implies huge extra work for a future editor and gives the reader no clue as to how up-to-date the page is. It really is a trivial, no-work change to write instead "as of February 2011" (as is done for another paragraph lower down, so the model was already there). Proper dating also has the spin-off of helping with structure.
A combination of editorial restraint and adding clarity and structure with names and dates is the very opposite of expecting volunteers to do extra work. And even if a little extra effort were needed to, say, check a date, the total work saved at the future master editing stage far outweighs that.
