I am not sure, but perhaps the way I do things is unusual. The benefits from my editing may not always be immediately apparent. I usually work slowly, chewing every little bit like a dog gnawing a bone. I often completely rewrite entire sections for clarity and coherence. I make many, many, many edits, driving my edit count way up and bothering those few souls who like to complain about "clogging up the article history" (whatever in the world that means). Since people have complained about this in the dim past, I very often work in my user space instead of on the article itself. In fact, on at least three occasions that I can think of, I copy/pasted whole sections of an article that was at WP:FAC (mmmm, and once at WP:GAC or WP:GAN as well, if I remember correctly..) into my user space, completely rewrote them, asked the nominator if the results were OK, and the nominator immediately copy/pasted my version into the article!
I check sources (assuming I have access to them, which very often is not the case). Slowly. Carefully.
I have a history of ranting and raving, especially when I thought people were harming the encyclopedia through selfishness or laziness. Hopefully the swells of discord of the past were prologue to a present restraint.
OTOH, I also have an equally long history of friendly, cooperative and quite productive editing (Five featured articles, etc.) The difference is in my perception of the people I encounter (see above).
