  == Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice ==  As my contribution for today, take a look at this [User:Dbuckner/Obviouslyincompetent | example of obviously incompetent writing]].  Let me stress straight away that the problem is not the fact that the writing is absolutely, absolutely, horrible.  That is easily corrected.  The problem is (a) that it is obvious to anyone who is a reasonably competent user of English that it is very bad, and (b) it is not at all obvious to the writer that it is bad.  This creates the problem that even with the utmost good faith on the part of the writer, he or she will get upset by this apparently unfair treatment – why is this brilliant and deathless prose being treated in this way?  Obviously there is a cabal, a conspiracy.  So, the author (in a sense justifiably, given their belief) gets angry.  In turn, the competent writers get angry because the incompetent author seems to be acting unreasonably or in bad faith.  Result, anarchy and chaos.  Then the Wikipedia police turn up.  They have been taught that all this sort of stuff is a kind of playground fight.  Come on guys, stand apart, have a cup of tea, just talk it over like mature adults.  So the competent writers naturally leave.  The incompetent ones, sensing in some way that this process is biased in their favour, naturally stay on.  The result, a natural tendency for articles to get worse.   A few years ago, when Wikipedia was in its infancy, there was the theory that by a process of continuous evolution, articles would monotonically improve over time.  Ladies and gentleman, I put it to you that this article is a living refutation of that hypothesis.  It started life as a not-so-bad article by Larry Sanger, five years ago.  It has steadily and continuously and monotonically deteriorated.  Si monumentum requiris, circumspice.    Many articles are quite good.  That is because they are on technical subjects whose nature does not arouse the interest and passion of the stylistically challenged.  The difficult ones are the big, grand subjects (philosophy, truth, and apparently physics).  Banno asked why I hang around here if it is so bad.  Well, it wasn't so bad even a year ago.  The popularity of Wikipedia ensures it will be a magnet for all and sundry, and this problem will get worse, and I think if people like me keep banging on long and loud enough, things will change.  That is my belief.  How should they change?  I'm not saying we should ask for credentials, but there should be a way of showing the door pretty rapidly to obviously incompetent editors.   For a real expert's view on it, see .    