Not a statement of Why Clublet Editorial Policy, just a terminological quibble.

Of special interest to visitors from c2. See Jesus And Programmers Refactoring Discussion for the kind of trouble this talk of refactoring pages gets one into.

Refactoring is a technical term borrowed from the vocabulary of Extreme Programming. It means to alter a body of computer code so that its design is better while leaving its functionality unchanged. For example, one might modify a program that displays a graphic in order to make the source code simpler and cleaner, while still displaying the same graphic.

On Wiki, people often use the term "refactoring" to refer to the action of editing a page to make it better written while leaving its meaning unchanged. We believe that this nomenclature is at the very least unhelpful.

Refactoring presupposes a clear-cut distinction between the causal parts to be modified and the effects to be preserved. In programming, this distinction is plain. The properties of the source code are defined in a separate domain from the properties of the graphic that it draws. From the end user's perspective, the internal beauty of the source code is irrelevant and perhaps even incomprehensible. All that matters is viewing the desired graphic.

Applying the term "refactoring" to text implies a similar separation--between wording and meaning. We believe that in clublet text there is no such clear-cut distinction, nor even a single well-defined meaning that could be preserved while changing the wording. Each of us reading a page draws from it something that is as much from us as from it. Style conveys substance. The wording itself may be part of the essential beauty and purpose of a page.

Therefore, we do not speak of "refactoring" pages. We speak of editing them

See also Why Reword