That is what takes up 75% of my time and effort.

A million times this. The goal here should definitely be to get people engaged, not produce a worse version of wikipedia. Unless I have avery good reason, you'll never see me write a clause like 'is a gram-negative, peritrichous motile rod, in the order ...' One of the drafts I've had laying around forever shows how to change a 'stale, correct' example into something more engaging, yet still accurate.