Does Wikipedia Suck on Science Stories?

An anonymous reader writes "An editor from Wired writes on his blog that Wikipedia sucks for science stories — not because they are inaccurate, but because of what he calls the 'tragedy of the uncommon': Too many experts writing about subjects in ways that no non-expert can understand. Would this be the dumbing-down of Wikipedia — or would it be a better resource for everyone?"

Comments

Not just wikipedia problem

[Hypharse]

This is a problem across all academics, not just wikipedia. I write research papers and I get criticized by those above me if they don't "sound" sufficiently intelligent. They won't say it publicly, but privately they will readily admit that the more confusion you add to the paper by using big words and clumping them together in obtuse ways will make the paper seem more professional. Also adding mathematical equations that a purposely very abstract and hard to understand are good, rather than bad. It drives me nuts personally, as I agree with the author of this article that the simpler something is to understand the better it is, especially when you are trying to TEACH someone that thing.

It is not just a science problem either. Look at literature where some of the literary works are written in such an obtuse way that people just consider them genius works because they can't understand them.

I have often thought of making it a lifelong goal to change this and simplify the way they teach many "difficult" subjects. However, the current way is way too ingrained into every part of academics that it would take a miracle to accomplish it.

It's a Wired problem, not a Wikipedia problem

[Animats]

Dumb Wired writers, expecting instant gratification. Wired used to have reporters who actually went out and covered real stuff. Then they laid off most of the reporters and kept the "editors". Now they're just wannabe pundits. Saves on travel expenses.

That Tired writer isn't coming across as someone who spent long days digging something out of library stacks or public records. Or travelling around asking people questions to find out what really happened, like a real reporter. This is a lightweight. If you want a children's encyclopedia, you can still get World Book.

Wikipedia has many problems, of course. Most of the good articles were in the first 500,000 created. What's coming in now is mostly junk - "State Route 92", "Star Wars Furry Adventure #6659", and similar crap. Wikia offers some hope for an amusing reason. Wikia took over Wookiepedia, the repository of Star Wars fancruft, which generates most of Wikia's traffic. They're monetizing the fan base. Over time, maybe all the popular culture stuff can be moved to Wikia. That would be a win.

Re:The term encyclopaedia

[Toe, The]

Once again, Wikipedia comes through.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclopedia

The word encyclopedia comes from the Classical Greek "(munged)" (pronounced "enkyklia paideia"), literally, a "[well-]rounded education," meaning "a general knowledge." Though the notion of a compendium of knowledge dates back thousands of years, the term was first used in 1541 in the title of a book by Joachimus Fortius Ringelbergius, Lucubrationes vel potius absolutissima kyklopaideia (Basel, 1541).

It is debatable if well-rounded means comprehensive or just general as opposed to specific.

Re:Dumb it down?!?!?

[iabervon]

The general idea of a metric space is totally intuitive to practically anybody. It's a set with a way of measuring distance that has the basic properties you'd expect of a distance (the distance between something and itself is 0, the distances there and back are the same, and going through some third spot isn't shorter total than going directly). People are familiar with Euclidian distance in 2 and 3 dimensions, and non-directed non-weighted graph edge distance (Kevin Bacon).

The thing that makes metric spaces tricky to most people is that any text that bothers to mention that something is a metric space is using either an unexpected set or an unusual distance, generally with only a brief description ("2D Euclidian figures, with the Hausdorff distance"). It's mathematical articles that use the term "metric space" and expect this to mean something to novices (without a distracting side track) that are confusing, not an article actually on the topic of metric spaces.

Re:The more accurate the better

[Dominic_Mazzoni]

In it, they refer to the need for the seed to be "irreducible." Checking further in the article, this is just a $64 word that means "prime." If the number needs to be prime, just say so, don't use a word that nobody will understand, followed eventually by an oblique definition that's hard to understand.

Except that they're not talking about a prime number, they're talking about irreducible polynomials, and that is in fact the proper term. The definition is similar to the definition of a prime number, but they're not the same and they don't have exactly the same properties. Also, the term "prime polynomial" is perhaps avoided because it is too easily confused with polynomials that generate a lot of prime numbers. So irreducible polynomial is definitely the proper term.

I would rather a Wikipedia article be correct first, and easy to understand second.

Re:The more accurate the better

[masterzora]

If you do a google search for "prime polynomial" (quotes included), the first result is from Wolfam MathWorld leading to Prime-Generating Polynomial, which is certainly different! I could very well be wrong, but in my mathematical education thusfar (freshman at Harvey Mudd College) I don't remember hearing the term "prime polynomial" to describe irreducible polynomials and, quite frankly, as MathWorld shows us, that could be quite confusing.