Slashdot Mirror
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?"
In a well-written Wikipedia article, the big words are wikilinked. When one doesn't understand something, one clicks the links for further understanding.
This has always been the promise of hypertext, but it is only fully realized in Wikipedia. I couldn't agree less with the premise that Wikipedia is unaccessible.
Additionally, as the article notes, there is also Simple English Wikipedia.
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/
It doesn't have 1.7 million articles, but... of course not. There aren't that many concepts in "simple English."
You have to use the "big words" [re: ideas, terms, vocabulary beyond a 6th grade level] to be practical. I mean try explaining something like the makeup of the ATP cycle using words an 11 year old would know. Try explaining calculus with rudimentary algebra [e.g. basic linear systems], etc.
I don't think it would be useful to severely dumb down all of the articles. Maybe they just need more "see also" or reading guides?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
When I was about 8 my family bought a complete set of World Book encyclopedias. And sure it didn't cover everything, and nothing after 1978, it did offer good basic information that an 8-year old could read and a 50-year old could appreciate.
Fast forward a few decades. The other day I went to wikipedia looking for some basic information on my new dental crown. While I did (eventually) find the information I was looking for, it's full of sentiences like:
"The alloy used for PFMs is of a different variety for those used for FGCs. "
"Because the sprue former stuck out a little bit from the investment material, there is a communication between the outside and the investment pattern."
"When using a shoulder preparation, the dentist is urged to add a bevel; the shoulder-bevel margin serves to effectively decrease the tooth-to-restoration distance upon final cementation of the restoration."
I'm not a moron, I can do the additional research and figure out what all of the words mean in this context, but damn, I wish I had my old World Book encyclopedias.
But if I want to edit Residue class-wise affine groups, I have no fucking clue where to begin in order to explain the concept in layman's terms.
That doesn't make sense. Some math subjects are esoteric. There is no way one can explain it simply without first explaining five years' worth of math theory. No way. If you want a simplistic article on an esoteric subject, you are asking the article to be 500 pages long. That would simply be redundant.
Just think how utterly absurd that is: engaging in a research project simply to understand an encyclopedia article? It defeats the entire purpose of having an encyclopedia in the first place.
Again, I completely disagree. I find this exact process to be the best learning experience I have had. I have edited hundreds of Wikipedia articles about things I did not know much about. I start reading the article, and as I come across things that don't make sense to my level of understanding, I change them. Sometimes this requires that I do a good deal of research to be able to make that edit. So it may take me a whole hour to edit a 2-page article. This is an awesome way to learn. By the time I am done, I have a tremendous understanding of the subject... and I have helped the next person get a good understanding much more quickly. Everybody wins.
Try it sometime. It may take you an hour or two (hint: most Wikipedia articles have an "External links" section that is tremendously helpful), but you will find that you have expanded your understanding enormously. Isn't that the highest goal of an encyclopedia?