'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.

Comments

Silly

[avandesande]

So punish the 90% who can use the information for the 10% who are 'just curious'. Frankly I don't care if the general public understands what electroweak interaction is. If they really want to know they have to do the heavy lifting needed to understand something. BTW I don't think electroweak interaction or graphene are 'basic topics' whether they are in the news or not.

Wikipedia for Dummies

[turkeyfish]

I totally agree. The more detailed information, the better.

In reality the crux of the complaint here is that "Hey, we need to dumb down Wikipedia because I am too lazy to study and learn on my own." Perhaps what is really being argued for is a Wikipedia for Dummies". The reality is that there is nothing stopping anyone from "solving this problem", except, of course, their own innate laziness.

I love having detailed information, particular with respect to concepts and topics in mathematics. Yes, many ideas are very hard to learn and to understand no matter how often I read them. Nonetheless, having information out there that I can strive to understand, perhaps by additional reading or additional resources is critical to learning.

If you are too lazy to study and learn, then you shouldn't be surprised that you don't understand much. The universe and everything in it is complicated. Sadly, simply proclaiming "God Did It", isn't of any use, since that can always be said about everything and any convenient moment, without providing any explanation whatsoever. Sure, its easier, but essentially uninformative. Nonetheless, we now have people in the US arguing that topics such as Physics and Biology shouldn't be taught in schools because they are simply based on "theory" and are just too hard thus creating embarrassment to parents and students. Should we get to this point, then we might as well hand the future over to foreigners and others, as surely they will own it.