Chris Lüer wrote:
Agreed, the article is in sore need of an
introduction. It starts out
with a technical definition, that's never a good idea. Too many
writers still buy into the mathematical textbook way of structuring
things based on their formal logical structure. But that doesn't work
for an encyclopedia where people jump around between articles.
Yeah, I think this could solve many of the problems---have an
introduction that's more in layman's terms, rather than insisting that
the first sentence be a lengthy and precise technical definition. (The
technical definition should still be there, of course.)
I've most often run into this in biology-related articles on plants and
animals. If I want to know what a certain flower is, I'm usually not
looking for technical information on its method of reproduction as the
first bit of information, even if that's how it's classified. I'm more
often looking for basic stuff like where it grows, how big it is, what
color(s) it is, whether it has any uses (e.g. food or medicinal), and so
on. Then if I keep reading it'd be nice to find the detailed
information on its taxonomy.
But really I don't think these are *huge* problems. Good introductions
are hard to write, so it's not a surprise that many of our articles
don't yet have good introductions. A pretty good percentage do, though.
-Mark