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'Maybe Wikipedia Readers Shouldn't Need Science Degrees To Digest Articles About Basic Topics' (vice.com)
Wikipedia articles about "hard science" (physics, biology, chemistry) topics are really mostly written for other scientists, writes Michael Byrne, a reporter on Science beat at Vice's Motherboard news outlet. From the article: This particular class of Wikipedia article tends to take the high-level form of a scientific paper. There's a brief intro (an abstract) that is kinda-sorta comprehensible, but then the article immediately degenerates into jargon and equations. Take, for example, the page for the electroweak interaction in particle physics. This is a topic of potentially broad interest; its formulation won a trio of physicists the Nobel Prize in 1979. Generally, it has to do with a fundamental linkage between two of the four fundamental forces of the universe, electromagnetism and the weak force. The Wikipedia article for the electroweak force consists of a two-paragraph introduction that basically just says what I said above plus some fairly intimidating technical context. The rest of the article is almost entirely gnarly math equations. I have no idea who the article exists for because I'm not sure that person actually exists: someone with enough knowledge to comprehend dense physics formulations that doesn't also already understand the electroweak interaction or that doesn't already have, like, access to a textbook about it. For another, somewhat different example, look at the article for graphene. Graphene is, of course, an endlessly hyped superstrong supermaterial. It's in the news constantly. The article isn't just a bunch of math equations, but it's also not much more penetrable for a reader without at least some chemistry/materials science background.
Then feel free to "translate" it for Simple Wikipedia
Maybe not everything needs to be dumbed down to Popular Mechanics levels. I for one enjoy reading difficult articles on Wikipedia: even if I don't understand a quarter of a half of a them, I always learn something new one way or another.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I have a Ph.D. in physics, and I find the average science article on a subject that I don't already know to be way too technical. They usually lack any sort of overview for non-experts.
I do like technical detail in the article-- but not instead of the article.
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I don't know how many times i have used wikipedia to find out some arcane information to help my kids with high school chemistry or physics, which is kind of the level that I find for those subjects on wikipedia. I think the 'just for researchers' is hyperbole on the part of the OP.
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I never agreed to or was consulted about
Why do you think the Wikipedia community needs your personal blessing?
The abstract should be enough for the laymen. Real scientists and those whom are experts in their field or are studying it have much to gain from those equations and 'mathematical jargon' as the summary dictates.
Don't expect Wikipedia to teach you, it is a reference and nothing more. It is however free to edit so if you have the time and patience to simplify these complex topics, then by all means go ahead. But do not expect everything to be served to you on a silver platter.
I don't read AC
Jargon has a definite place in the world.
1) It allows to you discuss things with the immense level of accuracy needed for discussing complex topics. Business talk about 'enterprises' so as to include both corporations and non-profit organizations.
2) When talking to other experts, it demonstrates familiarity and knowledge, proving expertise. When talking to other computer experts, if you mention SaaS (Software as a Service) they know you are technical, while if you say Cloud, you are more likely corporate.
3) When talking to non-experts it makes them think you are an expert - irregardless of whether you are one or not. Con men and smarmy types love to abuse it in this way. But if they run into a real expert they get laughed at.
Wikipedia is supposed to be for the general population, not an expert. As such, using jargon (and math) is excessive. It should be limited, or at least placed after a full non-technical explanation.
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"If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself." - Albert Einstein
I have found this to be true in my life. Sometimes I think I understand something, but when I try to explain it in a way a child (or even teenager) can understand it I find that I really don't understand it as well as I thought I did. If I then go back and study it further and really try to understand it myself I find that eventually I understand it well enough that I am able to explain it in terms that are comprehensible at most age levels. This often means using analogies and simplifying to the level of the listener, but it is doable if I understand the topic well enough. I suspect the problem with wikipedia is that authors of the articles understand the material just enough to write an article, but not well enough to write it so it is accessible by a lay person (say an 8th grade reading level).
so then, if it's a tree of knowledge, maybe its structure could be clearer - it's often the case that there are circles in the graph where you keep clicking for explanations and get back to the page you started with, which, if you understood, would let you recurse and understand it.
I took a look at the article on the Electroweak Interaction. As a layman, I could more-or-less follow the overview, but I didn't even try to follow the math, because I know it's too deep for me. There was one thing missing that would have made it a much more satisfactory experience for me: a brief explanation of just what the significance of this is, and why physicists find it important. And, that's not uncommon in technical articles; the people writing them tend to forget that laymen who don't already understand the subject are coming to Wikipedia to get a better idea of what it's all about, in words they can understand.
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Why would 90% of people in this world need to know what electroweak interaction is beyond the introductory paragraph? Why would 99.999%? I mean really, what isn't covered by the introductory paragraph for those who are "just curious" and don't want to put a lot of effort into understanding that concept, which at a deep level relies on understanding 12 other concepts, each with 12 of their own on down the line...
Sorry, but those 90% of people can just STOP READING after the summary. If an article is missing a summary, there's a wikipedia "?" tag which will flag the article as needing one.
It's not like I was walking down the street one day and some facet of the electroweak interaction made me suddenly respect some group I was biased against prior. There's no piece of code that I'm going to write more efficiently because someone converted all the calculus into averaged-algebra.
This is just people complaining for complaining's sake, and thinking they should be able to pick up everything like they do the remote control and master it in one second, and if they couldn't do that IT WAS SOMEONE ELSES FAULT! Those folks should read some articles on mental issues and see if they can self-identify better there.
Keep in mind there are concepts that cannot necessarily be reduced to levels that can be expressed in a Simple English article.
If you can't explain a subject in simple terms to a layman you do not understand the subject yet.
Writing for someone not a specialist in the field is not at all the same thing as dumbing down. It's also not an exclusive relationship. Writing a section for the layman does not preclude writing another for the domain specialist.
I'll just leave this here:
“If you can't explain it to a six year old, you don't understand it yourself.” Albert Einstein