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From what I understand, WikiHow is not like Wikipedia in having single entries on a question or topic, but that there can be several approaches to the same ‘activity’. After all, this is an anthology about how to do things, and there is an obvious plurality about this. Nevertheless, the possibility to collaborate on these things is built in and helps to maintain quality. 

My article on deconstructing a text was written a few years ago and was well researched. I work at a research institute as a publishing editor and many of my clients have used deconstruction in peer reviewed materials, so I have a pretty good idea of how it is used in practice. 

So, several years later, after some good contributions to improve the language and over 20,000 views, suddenly a group of two contributors are trying to completely delete my article and replace it with their own version. They are not trying to integrate the two articles into one, they are just deleting my work.

I’m not entirely against some of the additional material, but on its own, it reads too much like an undergraduate paper on the topic. To reinforce this, they are linking to work at the online Purdue Writing Lab, which is a forum run mainly by students at Purdue University. 

I feel very aggrieved that someone is looking to completely hijack my article with no discussion and no attempt to integrate the two perspectives on what is already a complex philosophical position and form of narrative analysis. 

My own thought is that if they seriously want to write their own version, geared specifically towards undergraduates, then fine, write another article with the title, “how to write an essay on deconstruction”. My article is specifically entitled ‘how to deconstruct a text’, and does not seek to make this a specific task for university or school studies. Derrida didn’t write his philosophy purely for the purpose of giving university students something to write about in their essays. 

So, what is the etiquette here? I already wrote on the discussion page that if they want to discuss integrating the changes, I am willing to do that. But I’m not willing to accept a complete rewrite of my article. What can I do? What should I do?

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Hi @Mark-Phillips , could you provide a link to the article? I’m not seeing any article in your profile page. As far as keeping the article in its current form, we can protect it so only members (or if necessary only admins) can edit it. However this is a last resort. Right now I believe the best thing to do would to communicate with the other editors and ask them politely to stop deleting parts of the article. Moved discussion to “Help Using wikiHow”.

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^ I’m guessing he wrote it under a different account? This is it: http://www.wikihow.com/Deconstruct-a-Text As for the OP, the second edit was actually a rollback of your revert, but anyways, I left notes for both users on their talk pages with a link to this discussion in both of them.

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Mark, The edits were done under the Seymour Edits account which is used by multiple individuals who are overseen by the wikihaus. Thus, communicating via the Seymour Edits talk page or on the article discussion page is not likely to get quick action. Instead, contact @Krystle . She will explain the situation in more detail and will integrate feedback from your experience into the “editing for pay” program. The good news is that you performed the correct action by posting here and that you will soon have satisfaction. The bad news is that many do not check on the authoritative articles they graciously donated and which have been supplanted by “research based” overwrites. One can always hope that a mechanism will be put in place to notify the lead author of an article when such an overwrite is pending. Some things come into play here:

  • It is often the case that the lead author does not stay closely linked to wikiHow.
  • The prevailing perception seems to be that the lead author might feel “put off” by such communiques.
    Perhaps because of these factors, such notice is not given. However, I, personally, feel that such notice is only fair and right. I feel that the integrity indicated by such communications will further the wikiHow project and serve to spread good will.
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Hi. I am the user that reverted your edit back to Seymor’s edit. I apologize, as I didn’t know about this situation. when seeing an edit like this in recent changes, I assumed it was malicious as the edit was done by seymour, and it’s not common that I find their edits deconstructive. The article is back to the way you wrote it now.

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I looked at both versions and to me, a neophyte in deconstructive analysis, both seem to have great content that could be folded into an article that would best benefit the most likely readers. It does seem, though, that the Seymour Edits version has a bit of encyclopedic character that is not true to the original spirit of the wikiHow format. Also, a good edit summary such as “restoring the content of lead author” when undoing an edit often prompts good patrollers (such as @Grahamster ) to more closely examine the content of each version and to consider merging the content or to seek community input.

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Hi @Mark-Phillips ,

I would be happy to mediate and edit the article to incorporate elements from both versions. Since merging the text of two content-dense articles is a time-consuming project, and I don’t know much about deconstructing a text, please be patient with me while I figure it out. Thank you for bringing it to my attention:slight_smile:

One thing to keep in mind is that since the title you started is broad, the audience is also likely to be broad, and include many college/university students seeking help on the topic. High readership is a good sign that it’s a high-demand topic that a lot of people need help with. We also collect helpfulness feedback from our readers. For this particular article, it’s at 58% over the past year and half, indicating that there is room for us to better serve and help the people who are finding this page. Hopefully by integrating some new content, including some that would appeal more to students, we can see if that helps more people!

I will be in touch on your talk page soon!

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Hi folks

Thanks for the constructive feedback and direction on handling this. I agree that some of the points made in the suggested rewrite would be useful to students looking for specific resources to write an essay on the topic.

But something is likewise lost and even becomes contradictory of deconstruction if it becomes itself a kind of ‘method’. It’s not a method, but a way to challenge our sense of truth and the meanings we attach to words. I say this emphatically because Derrida himself denied it was a method.

http://www.philosophybasics.com/philosophers_derrida.html

I’ll follow up on this Seymour Edits facility and see if we can try to combine the insights of both articles into a single article. I’m happy to try to do that. Give me a couple of days to think it through. 

Thanks for the communication.