Wikipedia:De-bloat-athon

De-bloat-a-thon is a Wikipedia development concept coined by User:Encyclopædius in 2016. It refers to a contest/editathon which targets existing developed articles which may over the years have collected a lot of material but be largely or partly unsourced and contain a lot of big paragraphs which are difficult to read. Editors reading this will know exactly what I mean, they're typically articles on core or important topics, often found in traditional book encyclopedias which really should be fully sourced, structured articles by now but are not even close to being what we'd expect. Such articles typically remain bloated and poorly sourced because unless the articles are nuked and restarted it can be a very daunting task to try to fully rewrite and verify it. Editors typically leave them as they are, which if they were more aggressive and intolerant of unsourced material could quite easily "debloat" them by nuking material and restarting.

Goals
Goals:


 * Target core or important articles you'd typically find in a traditional book encyclopedia for a given area or topic
 * To improve the readability and believability of our core or important articles
 * To exhibit a zero tolerance attitude towards bloated and unsourced material and to quickly disinfect the articles with verifiable, easy to read structured prose.
 * The editors who make the biggest effort to target core/traditional encyclopedia articles and who are the most aggressive and bold at dealing with existing poor quality material across a range of articles, so each article is clean and fully sourced, will be rewarded the most. Length is not important, the focus is on consistent readability and verification of material.

Contests

 * The Great Britain and Ireland Debloatathon similar to the Destubathon, but targeting important articles on cities and towns, major geographical features, Grade I buildings and landmarks, nature, history and biographies etc.
 * The World Debloatathon - a big contest aimed at "debloating" and sourcing as many Vital/core or traditional encyclopedia type articles from around the world as possible.