Articles in regular Wikipedia on more advanced topics—especially in mathematics—could do with some work in that direction, too.
Certainly the articles don't need to be dumbed down overall, but it would be nice if at least the introductory paragraph were comprehensible to someone who hasn't spent years studying the topic, or hours following an ever-growing tree of other articles the summary links to (and others that those summaries link to, and so on) just to try to understand a majority of the nouns and verbs therein. It's often difficult to even guess at what kind of thing the article concerns without opening at least a half-dozen other tabs.
I agree. The first page of any math article should be easily accessible to someone with a BS in a STEM field
After an encyclopedia reaches 100,000 articles, the pool of good material shrinks. By the time one million articles are written, it must tax ingenuity to think of something new.
It isn't that hard. There are plenty of local landmarks around. And there are always new things being built, and new major historical events occurring. And then there is foreign stuff. People write about what they know. Most Anglophones write about things that exist or occur in the English speaking world. There are plenty of famous people, places and historical events in foreign countries that either don't have articles or have very weak articles.
And one of Wikipedia's sock puppets/cheerleaders chimes in as expected with his "it's all sweetness and light if you follow the bureaucracy and play Wikipedia the Role Playing Game" posts...
You just don't get it do you? It's exactly that all that bullcrap, favoring those who play Wikipedia The Role Playing Game over those who want to do the work, that has driven the latter away. The lunatics are now running the asylum.
What you say reminds me of American politics and our legal system.
And it is probably caused by exactly the same thing - an attempt to make a system both reasonably easy for reasonable people to use while at the same time guarding against abuses while at the same time trying to give people equal treatment.
But there is a real difference. Police shouldn't randomly frisk everyone on the street at anytime. Once you have a reputation for good behavior you normally don't expect the kind of scrutiny you get when you're new. Texas has been operating as a democracy for a very long time and doesn't have the reputation for corruption that many cities in America have.
Texas apparently does have a law to keep elections peaceful by restricting access to the election location to only people there on election business - primarily voters and poll workers. Why should they be expected to make an exception - to violate the principle of rule-of-law - for observers from the corrupt UN?
Riiiiight... because if Romney wins the delegates in Texas, it'll be because the "powers that be" rigged the election. I'd be more suspicious of an Obama win in Texas. Back in the days of LBJ and the dead voting... the UN might've had a case for "observing" the elections. These days it's pretty damned hard to fix elections (and don't pull the "Gore won the election in 2000" crap..., because that was a load of shit and sticks to start with, Gore simply gambled a bunch of idiots in one county really meant to vote for him...)
On fair elections... Texas isn't some backwater province of Mexico rife with fraud and corruption.
You make a good point but it would be nice if you used more family friendly language.
The guy is simply saying he'll enforce the law and won't be making exceptions for people from corrupt organizations like the UN or any other for people from largely partisan organizations like the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU.
.
I was responding to the parent post which said nothing about context you're talking about. In fact he distanced his comments from the context before tying the censorship directly and only to the incitement to hatred.
A lot of things should be hated and a lot of things should be loved. One of the purposes of free speech is to determine which is which. If "incitement to hatred" is the problem, would I be prosecuted for inciting hatred of the death camps?
Incitement to hatred of people.
So you're saying it's ok to incite hate for actions but not for the people who perform those actions? So hate the homosexuality, not the homosexual?
What does it have to do with abortions?
A phoetus is not necessarely considered a living human being.
What does it have to do with the death penalty? Other rights like freedom of speech, freedom from involuntary servitude and confinement, and freedom of assembly are denied when a person is convicted of a crime. Having a right to life doesn't have anything to do with the death penalty.
Interesting signature. Did you know fetuses feel pain?
"Right to life" is often used by 'Pro lifers' in North America, and maybe elsewhere, however it does not automatically mean anti-abortion.
Nor does it automatically mean the right of a murderer to live. We have freedom of speech, but if you commit a crime that freedom can be restricted. We have the right to freedom from involuntary servitude and confinement but again, if you commit a crime, you lose that right.
This is both really good and really bad at the same time. Although I want these guys to be shut up, I do not agree that Google should censor opinions even if most of us find those opinions abhorrent.
I would be ok with it if Google/Twitter were simply saying "It's our service and we don't want to be a conduit for this kind of stuff." As a private business it is their service and if you don't like it you can use some other service. The problem is if they're doing it in response to the government. Deciding to use a different government is much harder and too often requires violence.
Uh, censorship wasn't exactly the worst thing the Nazis did, and they don't get censored because of the bad things they did, but because their "speach" consists of incitement to hatred.
A lot of things should be hated and a lot of things should be loved. One of the purposes of free speech is to determine which is which. If "incitement to hatred" is the problem, would I be prosecuted for inciting hatred of the death camps? How about inciting hatred of terrorism? What if I incite hatred of the mindsets that caused the death camps and that cause terrorism? What if I incited hatred of the use of torture in combating terrorism? What if I incite hatred of Israeli settlements in the West Bank? Or how about if I incite hatred of illegal foreign settlements in Germany?
Should we be forbidden to talk about any of these because someone doesn't like the incitements to hatred?
Well, different countries - different priorities. In the EU, for example, there exists a right to life, in the USA there is no such thing (otherwise death penalty would not be possible).
Are you serious?? The EU has outlawed abortion? When did this happen?
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive given how much bashing of certain religions occurs on Slashdot.
However, you did single out the Koran and the Bible. Isn't it also likely that if you don't understand how the world works you might embrace communism or some other utopian myth? Or you might embrace an atheism (not the agnosticism of saying you don't know, but the illogical form of atheism that says there is no god)? Why choose the Bible and the Koran?
As for medieval Europe - it did have its problems, but wasn't medieval Europe home to the birth of science? The Renaissance didn't come out of nowhere.
Yes, that's what I mean by "being able to communicate" and "basic competency". It is good for everyone in society to be able to stand up and talk in front of other people when the situation calls for it. However there is little use in training people to be experts at it or to specialize in it.
Before jumping to some assumption that he is a bible thumping moron (I made the same assumption at first)...
Why would you jump to that assumption? The headline and the commentary say nothing about the Bible. The guy having a preference for public speaking over chemistry seem completely orthogonal to Bible "thumping" as you call it. One thing a good chemistry class should help a person understand is the danger of assumptions because chemical reactions can be so counter-intuitive.
Awww. So close to insightful but you just had to turn troll on your last sentence. Maybe a public speaking course would teach you not to make groundless gratuitous attacks on large numbers of people who agree with you.
If you go to school on the public's dime, the public has every right to tell you what classes you have to take. If the guy were arguing against government regulations on private schools I would be willing to entertain arguments about whether parents and educators should be choosing the curriculum without government interference. But he's talking about a public school.
Americans have two interests in forcing the child to study chemistry. The first is that we have a huge need for chemists and other people in STEM fields. Arts are nice, but long term strength and viability of country lie more in the ability to produce new technology.
The second is that people vote and serve on juries. Voters and jurists need to have a well-rounded education.
As for public speaking - who does that benefit other than the speaker? Sure its important to for people to be able to communicate, but once you get past basic competence public speaking become used more for persuasion than for information dissemination. How does it help society for advertisers and politicians to become even better liars? If the kid specializes in public speaking, how does it help society that he knows nothing but can talk about it extremely well?
One potential negative outcome of the system as structured is that the most talented and brilliant astronomers choose not to enter the field because of the poor job prospects, leaving nothing but a bunch of mediocre astronomers who, admittedly, are committed, but still aren't going to have the same sorts of breakthroughs.
Given that we don't have a huge pressing need for breakthroughs in astronomy, having the most talented and brilliant people go elsewhere is an example of the market working. Let those brilliant people go make breakthroughs in medicine, fuel efficiency, car safety, energy production or some other field that the human race finds more useful. If Astronomy is as important as those fields and the market doesn't recognize it, then let the people's representatives in Congress decide that and increase funding for the field.
This can happen in reverse too, where one profession becomes so attractive (due to salary, e.g.) it sucks people away from fields they'd otherwise prefer and be great at. This happened in investment banking. We need some non-zero number of them, but certainly not as many as we did. I think we can agree that sending all of the best and brightest minds to investment banking is not the most productive or beneficial outcome for the rest of society.
We cannot bring about utopian outcomes by sheer force of law and regulation. But we can tilt the incentives away from unwanted metastable states and undesired positive feedback loops.
Although investment banking is already heavily regulated so not all of its problems can be blamed on markets, I tend to agree with you that some of the practices in investment banking, particularly microsecond trades handled by computer, represent failures of the market. However I really don't know much about the field or the problems and benefits it brings to society.
It's not a completely free market in that Congress sets the demand. If you ignore for the moment that Congress is government, you see that Congress is acting as the customer creating the demand. The supply can then be met by market forces. They're not completely free market forces for various reasons including the government underwriting student loans. Regardless of such government interference, the law of supply and demand is still working. There is low demand and high supply so either the supply has to decrease (talent leaving the field) or the customer gets to be very picky in selecting only the highest quality (the guys who are most committed), or both.
The difference is that the concern about doctor shifts wasn't concern for the doctor's work-life balance, it was concern for the safety of patients being treated by doctors who hadn't slept recently.
An important difference is that the reason for wanting to reduce the medical resident workload wasn't concern for the residents, it was concern for the patients. Who wants to be treated by a resident who hasn't slept in 48 hours?
"It also seems that such a culture, coupled with the poor job prospects for academics, is continuing to drive talent away from the field."
Good. That's what is supposed to happen. The truth is we don't have a need for a large number of astronomers. If we did then there would be more job prospects. Since we don't have the need, it's good that talent is being driven to other fields where there is greater need. Those who love astronomy so much that they can't work anywhere else and are willing to put in the long hours - those people can still work in astronomy. Those less committed can go make themselves more useful elsewhere. Supply and demand is not just a good idea, it's the law.
Slashdot Mirror
Articles in regular Wikipedia on more advanced topics—especially in mathematics—could do with some work in that direction, too.
Certainly the articles don't need to be dumbed down overall, but it would be nice if at least the introductory paragraph were comprehensible to someone who hasn't spent years studying the topic, or hours following an ever-growing tree of other articles the summary links to (and others that those summaries link to, and so on) just to try to understand a majority of the nouns and verbs therein. It's often difficult to even guess at what kind of thing the article concerns without opening at least a half-dozen other tabs.
I agree. The first page of any math article should be easily accessible to someone with a BS in a STEM field
After an encyclopedia reaches 100,000 articles, the pool of good material shrinks. By the time one million articles are written, it must tax ingenuity to think of something new.
It isn't that hard. There are plenty of local landmarks around. And there are always new things being built, and new major historical events occurring. And then there is foreign stuff. People write about what they know. Most Anglophones write about things that exist or occur in the English speaking world. There are plenty of famous people, places and historical events in foreign countries that either don't have articles or have very weak articles.
And one of Wikipedia's sock puppets/cheerleaders chimes in as expected with his "it's all sweetness and light if you follow the bureaucracy and play Wikipedia the Role Playing Game" posts...
You just don't get it do you? It's exactly that all that bullcrap, favoring those who play Wikipedia The Role Playing Game over those who want to do the work, that has driven the latter away. The lunatics are now running the asylum.
What you say reminds me of American politics and our legal system.
And it is probably caused by exactly the same thing - an attempt to make a system both reasonably easy for reasonable people to use while at the same time guarding against abuses while at the same time trying to give people equal treatment.
It's a hard thing to do.
The sole act of excluding an observer should never be sufficient cause for suspicion.
They're excluding observers from the UN. If anything excluding corrupt UN personnel is more likely to protect the system from corruption.
But there is a real difference. Police shouldn't randomly frisk everyone on the street at anytime. Once you have a reputation for good behavior you normally don't expect the kind of scrutiny you get when you're new. Texas has been operating as a democracy for a very long time and doesn't have the reputation for corruption that many cities in America have. Texas apparently does have a law to keep elections peaceful by restricting access to the election location to only people there on election business - primarily voters and poll workers. Why should they be expected to make an exception - to violate the principle of rule-of-law - for observers from the corrupt UN?
Riiiiight... because if Romney wins the delegates in Texas, it'll be because the "powers that be" rigged the election. I'd be more suspicious of an Obama win in Texas. Back in the days of LBJ and the dead voting... the UN might've had a case for "observing" the elections. These days it's pretty damned hard to fix elections (and don't pull the "Gore won the election in 2000" crap..., because that was a load of shit and sticks to start with, Gore simply gambled a bunch of idiots in one county really meant to vote for him...)
On fair elections... Texas isn't some backwater province of Mexico rife with fraud and corruption.
You make a good point but it would be nice if you used more family friendly language.
The guy is simply saying he'll enforce the law and won't be making exceptions for people from corrupt organizations like the UN or any other for people from largely partisan organizations like the NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and the ACLU. .
I always wondered what would happen if someone on Slashdot got a girlfriend. I guess we know now.
I was responding to the parent post which said nothing about context you're talking about. In fact he distanced his comments from the context before tying the censorship directly and only to the incitement to hatred.
A lot of things should be hated and a lot of things should be loved. One of the purposes of free speech is to determine which is which. If "incitement to hatred" is the problem, would I be prosecuted for inciting hatred of the death camps?
Incitement to hatred of people.
So you're saying it's ok to incite hate for actions but not for the people who perform those actions? So hate the homosexuality, not the homosexual?
What does it have to do with abortions? A phoetus is not necessarely considered a living human being.
What does it have to do with the death penalty? Other rights like freedom of speech, freedom from involuntary servitude and confinement, and freedom of assembly are denied when a person is convicted of a crime. Having a right to life doesn't have anything to do with the death penalty.
Interesting signature. Did you know fetuses feel pain?
"Right to life" is often used by 'Pro lifers' in North America, and maybe elsewhere, however it does not automatically mean anti-abortion.
Nor does it automatically mean the right of a murderer to live. We have freedom of speech, but if you commit a crime that freedom can be restricted. We have the right to freedom from involuntary servitude and confinement but again, if you commit a crime, you lose that right.
This is both really good and really bad at the same time. Although I want these guys to be shut up, I do not agree that Google should censor opinions even if most of us find those opinions abhorrent.
I would be ok with it if Google/Twitter were simply saying "It's our service and we don't want to be a conduit for this kind of stuff." As a private business it is their service and if you don't like it you can use some other service. The problem is if they're doing it in response to the government. Deciding to use a different government is much harder and too often requires violence.
Uh, censorship wasn't exactly the worst thing the Nazis did, and they don't get censored because of the bad things they did, but because their "speach" consists of incitement to hatred.
A lot of things should be hated and a lot of things should be loved. One of the purposes of free speech is to determine which is which. If "incitement to hatred" is the problem, would I be prosecuted for inciting hatred of the death camps? How about inciting hatred of terrorism? What if I incite hatred of the mindsets that caused the death camps and that cause terrorism? What if I incited hatred of the use of torture in combating terrorism? What if I incite hatred of Israeli settlements in the West Bank? Or how about if I incite hatred of illegal foreign settlements in Germany?
Should we be forbidden to talk about any of these because someone doesn't like the incitements to hatred?
Well, different countries - different priorities. In the EU, for example, there exists a right to life, in the USA there is no such thing (otherwise death penalty would not be possible).
Are you serious?? The EU has outlawed abortion? When did this happen?
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive given how much bashing of certain religions occurs on Slashdot.
However, you did single out the Koran and the Bible. Isn't it also likely that if you don't understand how the world works you might embrace communism or some other utopian myth? Or you might embrace an atheism (not the agnosticism of saying you don't know, but the illogical form of atheism that says there is no god)? Why choose the Bible and the Koran?
As for medieval Europe - it did have its problems, but wasn't medieval Europe home to the birth of science? The Renaissance didn't come out of nowhere.
Yes, that's what I mean by "being able to communicate" and "basic competency". It is good for everyone in society to be able to stand up and talk in front of other people when the situation calls for it. However there is little use in training people to be experts at it or to specialize in it.
Before jumping to some assumption that he is a bible thumping moron (I made the same assumption at first)...
Why would you jump to that assumption? The headline and the commentary say nothing about the Bible. The guy having a preference for public speaking over chemistry seem completely orthogonal to Bible "thumping" as you call it. One thing a good chemistry class should help a person understand is the danger of assumptions because chemical reactions can be so counter-intuitive.
Awww. So close to insightful but you just had to turn troll on your last sentence. Maybe a public speaking course would teach you not to make groundless gratuitous attacks on large numbers of people who agree with you.
...mandated curriculum in public schools...
If you go to school on the public's dime, the public has every right to tell you what classes you have to take. If the guy were arguing against government regulations on private schools I would be willing to entertain arguments about whether parents and educators should be choosing the curriculum without government interference. But he's talking about a public school.
Americans have two interests in forcing the child to study chemistry. The first is that we have a huge need for chemists and other people in STEM fields. Arts are nice, but long term strength and viability of country lie more in the ability to produce new technology.
The second is that people vote and serve on juries. Voters and jurists need to have a well-rounded education.
As for public speaking - who does that benefit other than the speaker? Sure its important to for people to be able to communicate, but once you get past basic competence public speaking become used more for persuasion than for information dissemination. How does it help society for advertisers and politicians to become even better liars? If the kid specializes in public speaking, how does it help society that he knows nothing but can talk about it extremely well?
Markets are not fully efficient.
One potential negative outcome of the system as structured is that the most talented and brilliant astronomers choose not to enter the field because of the poor job prospects, leaving nothing but a bunch of mediocre astronomers who, admittedly, are committed, but still aren't going to have the same sorts of breakthroughs.
Given that we don't have a huge pressing need for breakthroughs in astronomy, having the most talented and brilliant people go elsewhere is an example of the market working. Let those brilliant people go make breakthroughs in medicine, fuel efficiency, car safety, energy production or some other field that the human race finds more useful. If Astronomy is as important as those fields and the market doesn't recognize it, then let the people's representatives in Congress decide that and increase funding for the field.
This can happen in reverse too, where one profession becomes so attractive (due to salary, e.g.) it sucks people away from fields they'd otherwise prefer and be great at. This happened in investment banking. We need some non-zero number of them, but certainly not as many as we did. I think we can agree that sending all of the best and brightest minds to investment banking is not the most productive or beneficial outcome for the rest of society.
We cannot bring about utopian outcomes by sheer force of law and regulation. But we can tilt the incentives away from unwanted metastable states and undesired positive feedback loops.
Although investment banking is already heavily regulated so not all of its problems can be blamed on markets, I tend to agree with you that some of the practices in investment banking, particularly microsecond trades handled by computer, represent failures of the market. However I really don't know much about the field or the problems and benefits it brings to society.
It's not a completely free market in that Congress sets the demand. If you ignore for the moment that Congress is government, you see that Congress is acting as the customer creating the demand. The supply can then be met by market forces. They're not completely free market forces for various reasons including the government underwriting student loans. Regardless of such government interference, the law of supply and demand is still working. There is low demand and high supply so either the supply has to decrease (talent leaving the field) or the customer gets to be very picky in selecting only the highest quality (the guys who are most committed), or both.
The difference is that the concern about doctor shifts wasn't concern for the doctor's work-life balance, it was concern for the safety of patients being treated by doctors who hadn't slept recently.
An important difference is that the reason for wanting to reduce the medical resident workload wasn't concern for the residents, it was concern for the patients. Who wants to be treated by a resident who hasn't slept in 48 hours?
"It also seems that such a culture, coupled with the poor job prospects for academics, is continuing to drive talent away from the field."
Good. That's what is supposed to happen. The truth is we don't have a need for a large number of astronomers. If we did then there would be more job prospects. Since we don't have the need, it's good that talent is being driven to other fields where there is greater need. Those who love astronomy so much that they can't work anywhere else and are willing to put in the long hours - those people can still work in astronomy. Those less committed can go make themselves more useful elsewhere. Supply and demand is not just a good idea, it's the law.