Positive correlation with number of editors

I think the most crucial thing to avoid burning out editors is to develop stronger policies against just throwing away their work. We should have a policy that if you think sentence three has an unreliable source, you do not throw away the whole paragraph. Which is what people seem to do in the more contentious articles - in fact, they revert, and say nothing to the person whose work was deleted. Only if he happens to go back and look do they suggest a discussion, i.e. a discussion based on "this is too big a change to make without discussion" in the edit summary. The person trying to do good work in the article is the one who is supposed to beg and plead for the High King Reversionist to say that alright, his edit finally is up to whatever standard.

We also need better tools to answer basic questions like who the ---- deleted my edit? There's nothing more frustrating than going back over your work from two or three years ago and finding it gone, gone, gone, and you don't even really have a chance to bawl out the person responsible (who will only do it again in a month or two anyway, when you're not looking)

Perhaps I exaggerate a little, but the policy and the tools would be very welcome.

P.S. Remember that some of the drop-off is simply that the wiki was swarming with politically motivated editors leading up to the 2008 presidential election.

Wnt07:07, 6 February 2010