User:Thomas H. Larsen/read before you write

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Read — before you write.

I believe that there is a common but energy-sucking problem on Wikipedia — many well-meaning contributors to Wikipedia write too much and read too little.

Don't contribute to a discussion or article unless you have something constructive to write. Most often, you can only write something constructive if you read first.

"Wikipedia: where readers start writing and where writers stop reading" should be false — what we really want and need is "Wikipedia: where readers start writing and where writers start reading even more".

My request is simple: read — before you write. You'll save someone — maybe more than one person — a lot of energy; you will give them more time to develop, build, improve, and maintain an open informational resource for the free use of all people.