I believe that the English language term you are looking for is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plain_English and the problem is that en.wiki policies already require plain english. The core of the issue is that writing in plain english is hard and currently there are few tools to support editors produce it.
A decent reading level test applied by section and calculated using a javascript tool that fitted into the standard wiki framework for tools would be a very useful addition. The tool could annotate the article and for new articles notify the article creator. Of course, we'd need supporting materials to aid editors learn plain english and so forth, but we have to start somewhere.
cheers stuart
-- ...let us be heard from red core to black sky
On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 at 11:22, Ziko van Dijk zvandijk@gmail.com wrote:
Allow me to propose something different: Wikipedia needs better writing, not technical solutions. And for different target groups, we need different encyclopedias:
- for children
- for people with disabilities, such as
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leichte_Sprache
- for scholars, e.g. "Wikipedia scholar".
A different wiki for every target group can be arranged in the best possible way for the target group.
Kind regards Ziko
Am Sa., 9. Feb. 2019 um 21:55 Uhr schrieb Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com>:
I am thinking maybe we could use subdomains for layperson, and for schools, and maybe universities to have specialized [approved] content also ? Just an idea given this possible mechanism.
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 20:15, Aaron Gray aaronngray.lists@gmail.com wrote:
Thank you please keep suggestions and pragmatics coming in !
I looked at this problem some time ago and the extra programming for what I am proposing is quite minimal utilizing existing MediaWiki libraries
and
adding extra code to support the tag structure with defaulting to make it seamless to existing articles.
I really think this would increase the usability and audience of Wikipedia and also might possibly allow us to integrate content from
other
Wikipedia projects.
Regards,
Aaron
On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 at 07:57, Amir E. Aharoni <
amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il>
wrote:
The suggestions that bring up the Simple English Wikipedia miss the fact that it only covers the English language, which most people don't know, and doesn't do almost anything for the many other languages of the world.
(I'm
saying "almost anything" because I know that there are people who prefer to translate articles from the Simple English Wikipedia, and this
indirectly
benefits other languages.)
One thing about how Wikipedia works that practically no-one ever challenges is that every page title is associated with a page, and the page is
always
a single big blob of sections, section headings, templates and magic words.
What if it was not a single blob?
What if all the magic words, such as NOTOC, DISPLAYTITLE, and
DEFAULTSORT
moved to a separate metadata storage?
More closely to this thread's topic, what if at least some sections that all or most pages have were stored separately, so that it would be possible to parse and render them semantically? The References section, for example, is something that many pages have. What if it could be separated from
the
prose blob and stored separately, so that it would be parsed
semantically
for different screens and contexts, such as Wikicite? Currently its rendering and storage is heavily biased for desktop and wiki syntax editing, and suboptimal for mobile display and editing, as well as for translation.
And most closely to the thread's original topic, what if one page could have several lead sections? Sure, this can be done now with hacks such
as
templates and namespaces, but these are still hacks: they are not semantic, not portable across languages, and not easily machine-readable.
Of course, doing all these things would require major, major changes in how Wikipedia's software works. Developers would have to write a lot of code and editors would have to get used to new things. But sometimes it's
worth
thinking our of the box instead of saying "that's not how Wikipedia works".
בתאריך שבת, 9 בפבר׳ 2019, 02:16, מאת Aaron Gray < aaronngray.lists@gmail.com
:
I am suggesting WikiPedia has context-sensitive articles so if you
are a
kid or a layperson or an expert in a field you get a different introduction.
Often the reason people don't read or use WikiPedia is articles are
too
complex at the start.
Having an adaptive setting that can be chosen but users as default
needs
facilitating by WikiMedia technology.
Thoughts and ideas and possible implementation ideas on this idea are welcomed.
Regards,
Aaron
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language
Researcher,
Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist.
-- Aaron Gray
Independent Open Source Software Engineer, Computer Language Researcher, Information Theorist, and amateur computer scientist. _______________________________________________ Wiki-research-l mailing list Wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wiki-research-l
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