I like how explanation was done in the Chagas disease article. Use the academic terms so people learn them for later use, but explain difficult stuff the first time it's mentioned. You get the best from both worlds. The scientists have the academic talk and the "normal" readers still understand it.
--Mgm
On 7/9/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 09/07/05, Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
It would be useful (if we don't already have it somewhere that I've missed) to have a firm statement that says articles should be written to be as intelligible to as many of our readers as possible, with our readers being anyone potentially searching for English-language information on the internet.
Jon (jguk)
I guess you can't force people to write in a certain style.
But it's daft to write an encyclopaedia in an academic style. No academic in his right mind would refer to Wikipedia - I don't mean any offense, but that's just not it's place. They go to journals and texts.
What it is useful - what it should be aiming for - is to make subjects understandable to the 99.99% of the world that *isn't* expert in that field.
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