I just want to say -- what we are talking about here is not "academic style" but more accurately "technical style" -- something accessible only to experts of certain types of information (which can be philosophy or electronics or what have you). Plenty of academic writing is nothing of the sort and should not be lumped in as such! (the academic squeals)
The goal is to write well and comprehensibly for people with non-technical backgrounds. Of course, there are times when our Wiki technology allows us not to re-invent the wheel each time something comes up, but of course this must be an issue of judgment rather than strict policy.
FF
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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