My three cents worth (inflation, you know):
Any article in Wikipedia should present information in such a way that a person of average intelligence who's motivated to learn can interpret it and use it. In the process, some education is absolutely necessary. A number of articles start with arcane, technical language that even a polymath genius would have trouble deciphering if that isn't one of his/her knowledge areas. Presenting knowledge is a process of education. I assume that Rotem Dan meant that entries should not be pedantic in nature, with which I agree, but they must be educational by way of being accessible. For instance, if an article states something like "The geological history of sedimentary rock is stratigraphic in nature," (not a real example in W.), then it should be rephrased to say something like "The geologic history of sedimentary rock is stratigraphic in nature; that is, the history is shown by the succession of strata, or layers." Then stratigraphic may be re-used without explanation, because it's been adequately explained. Simply putting in a link for stratigraphy is not sufficient (though it should be there) and invites the user to get lost in a maze of multiple open windows and computer stress.
-- John Knouse jaknouse@frognet.net
I agree. I do that sometimes (that is, writing definitions within articles) in math articles, but sometimes I feel I write too much and get slightly off-topic. Also with math, there should be links on the tops of math pages to some glossary of math notation, because you can't just put a link in every (actually, any) mathematical symbol. Although it's probably impossible to have a *complete* set of math notation, I think having the basics down would help. I'm not sure if this would work, though, so please tell me if it is feasible for me to work on.
My three cents worth (inflation, you know):
Any article in Wikipedia should present information in such a way that a person of average intelligence who's motivated to learn can interpret it and use it. In the process, some education is absolutely necessary. A number of articles start with arcane, technical language that even a polymath genius would have trouble deciphering if that isn't one of his/her knowledge areas. Presenting knowledge is a process of education. I assume that Rotem Dan meant that entries should not be pedantic in nature, with which I agree, but they must be educational by way of being accessible. For instance, if an article states something like "The geological history of sedimentary rock is stratigraphic in nature," (not a real example in W.), then it should be rephrased to say something like "The geologic history of sedimentary rock is stratigraphic in nature; that is, the history is shown by the succession of strata, or layers." Then stratigraphic may be re-used without explanation, because it's been adequately explained. Simply putting in a link for stratigraphy is not sufficient (though it should be there) and invites the user to get lost in a maze of multiple open windows and computer stress.
-- John Knouse jaknouse@frognet.net
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--- Daniel Ehrenberg littledanehren@yahoo.com wrote:
Also with math, there should be links on the tops of math pages to some glossary of math notation, because you can't just put a link in every (actually, any) mathematical symbol. Although it's probably impossible to have a *complete* set of math notation, I think having the basics down would help.
See http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_symbols
Axel
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Axel Boldt wrote:
--- Daniel Ehrenberg littledanehren@yahoo.com wrote:
Also with math, there should be links on the tops of math pages to some glossary of math notation, because you can't just put a link in every (actually, any) mathematical symbol. Although it's probably impossible to have a *complete* set of math notation, I think having the basics down would help.
That such a question should come up at all suggests that we have a long way to go on idiot-proofing Wikipedia. And I would not consider LittleDan to be an idiot.
There is no reason why you can't link to the table from the symbols. This would be useful the first time the symbol appears in an article. You can use the format [[Table of mathematical symbols|∯]].
Ec
On Sat, Apr 19, 2003 at 06:03:51PM -0700, John Knouse wrote:
My three cents worth (inflation, you know):
Any article in Wikipedia should present information in such a way that a person of average intelligence who's motivated to learn can interpret it and use it. education is absolutely necessary.
Strongly disagree. *Wikipedia* should present information in such a way that a person of average intelligence [etc]. *Articles* should present information understandable to the layman where possible *without making the article less clear and concise for somebody reasonably educated in the general field*.
Anything else leads to clutter in articles, and redundancy in the wikipedia as a whole.
I disagree. I think "clutter and redundancy" could really help wikipedia out. For example (this is not what the article really is), let's say we have a pythagorean theorem article that doesn't define a right triangle. Then, someone reading the article might click on right triangle article and find a bunch of trigonometry there, getting them completely confused. Instead, there could be a simple definition in the pythagorean theorem of what a right triangle is (for example: A right triangle contains exactly one right angle, meaning an angle measuring 90°). This isn't just a hypothetical situation, it happens often. A potential way to solve this while avoiding redundancy would be to put little markers that denote beginning, intermediate, and advanced, like there are in many math and programming tutorials, as well as text books, but that might be too intrusive. The redundancy already in Wikipedia is helping. All of those year and day pages are a great refrence resource, but most of the information in those is already reported in other articles. In many biography articles, there is a summary of the person's work. This is also redundant, but helpful. I can't think of any more examples, but there are more ways that it helps.
Jason Williams jason@jasonandali.org.uk wrote:Strongly disagree. *Wikipedia* should present information in such a way that a person of average intelligence [etc]. *Articles* should present information understandable to the layman where possible *without making the article less clear and concise for somebody reasonably educated in the general field*.
Anything else leads to clutter in articles, and redundancy in the wikipedia as a whole.