On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:50 AM, David Lindsey <dvdlndsy(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I hope that the following will help to provide a
littler more clarity. I
have listed those articles that clearly failed and those that were
borderline along with a brief summation of some of the most significant
points raised by the reviewers.
Thanks for the expansion, it's helpful.
Clear failure:
3) California Gold Rush: The reviewer criticized the
quality of writing,
comparing it to that of a high school junior. He also noted several
omissions, but mentioned that if the intended audience for the article was
high school students (this of course is not the case) most of these could be
forgiven. He wrote that due to poor-quality sourcing and many omissions the
article would not be worthwhile for serious readers.
Wait: high school students aren't our audience? I think one thing that
causes a lot of confusion about Wikipedia is we have no clear audience
-- the general assumption has been that we're writing for the educated
layperson; I'd take that as a smart person with a general high school
education, with deviations from this where the technical nature of the
subject warrants it. By and large I think our articles tend to end up
on the overly technical side (see: all of the medical, math &
engineering articles). But what does the reviewer mean by a "serious
reader" in this case, I wonder? A college freshman? A historian? A
layperson who is really, really interested in the gold rush?
This of course doesn't excuse poor sourcing or omissions, or bad
writing, but I wonder who the reviewer imagines the audience of a
general encyclopedia to be.
-- Phoebe
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