[Foundation-l] Analysis of statistics

[Pavlo Shevelo]

> we should not dumb down articles

Exactly!


On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Henning
Schlottmann<h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
> Dennis During wrote:
>
>> It might be possible to rely on a population of academics as contributors
>> but there needs to be a mechanism to make sure that the needs of our actual
>> users have appropriate weight in decision making
>
> Who are our actual users? Students are of course well known to use
> Wikipedia excessively.
>
> But do we know how many professionals and other people from the general
> public use Wikipedia every day? One of the most active contributors to
> de-WP once told the story that he was at a pediatric with his sick child
> and the doctor used Wikipedia to confirm his diagnosis - of course
> without knowing that the father of his patient had expert knowledge on
> how this "second opinion" was written.
>
> I met teachers, university docents, authors, journalists, lawyers,
> social workers, telcom technicians and members of pretty much any other
> profession, who rely on Wikipedia for a quick lookup of something.
>
> My point is: We don't write for students. Our articles should be on a
> level where everyone, including kids understands the introduction and
> can find further information in the main text, but we should not dumb
> down articles to the needs of school curriculums.
>
> Ciao Henning
>
>
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