User:JzG/Eating elephants

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This page is an essay. This is an essay. It is not a policy or guideline. Please update the page as needed, or discuss it on the talk page.
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WP:ELEPHANT
Too big for one bite.
Too big for one bite.
Q
How do you eat an elephant?
A
One slice at a time!
Olde joak.

Many Wikipedia content disputes happen in very large articles. Often, people will make substantial changes, or remove or rewrite great swathes of text. That can be great, bringing a much-needed narrative flow to a disjointed article, but often it leads to friction and edit warring.

Often, the only form of dialogue between editors is in the edit summaries. "Rewrite in proper English." "Revert idiot who obviously has no knowledge of subject." "Revert editor who can't write for toffee." We try to steer the elephant with shouts and sharp sticks - but the number of elephants has tripled in recent years and we haven't the energy to devote to doing the job as fully as we'd like. Finally the article gets protected or the three revert rule is invoked and the abuse moves form the edit summaries to the Talk page. Angry mastodons were the forerunner of modern-day elephants. Same on Wikipedia.

Consider this. An editor refactors a page to provide narrative thread. In the process, a priceless gem of information is lost. Do you (a) revert or (b) re-insert the priceless gem? How about (c), which is go to Talk, suggest how the priceless gem can be re-introduced and see what others think?

Hey, wait - maybe the priceless gem will be polished before it goes back in! The Koh-i-Noor diamond looked pretty mundane before it was cut and polished. The finished product is fabulous, and without the raw material it would be nothing, but the craftsmen who cut and polished it also carry a great part of the credit for the final product.

So instead of the diamond cutters and the rock rats throwing coproliths at each other, why not combine forces, focus on the detail and eat that elephant, slice by slice?