Concerning the complicated paragraph in [[Paracetamol]], I can name many areas of Wikipedia where the science becomes so dense that the layman will admit it sounds really good but fails to come any closer to understanding the exact issues. Many mathematical articles stop making sense at some point, and I admit that not every medical article is an exemplar of lay-oriented clarity.
When initially starting WikiProject Clinical Medicine, we struggled with this question. The decision was to escalate the level of difficulty, so all relevant information would be covered. The lay reader would have to drop it at some point, and none of the participants saw a great deal wrong with this.
This is not to say the paragraph in question cannot be improved upon.
JFW
On 10/07/05, J.F. de Wolff jfdwolff@doctors.org.uk wrote:
When initially starting WikiProject Clinical Medicine, we struggled with this question. The decision was to escalate the level of difficulty, so all relevant information would be covered. The lay reader would have to drop it at some point, and none of the participants saw a great deal wrong with this.
JFW
That's a shame, because you basically made the whole thing useless to average folk (I count myself in that group).
Dan
Dan Grey wrote
When initially starting WikiProject Clinical Medicine, we struggled with this question. The decision was to escalate the level of difficulty, so all relevant information would be covered. The lay reader would have to drop it at some point, and none of the participants saw a great deal wrong with this.
JFW
That's a shame, because you basically made the whole thing useless to
average folk (I count myself in that group).
I think that's a misconception, in encyclopedia terms. For one thing, those studying an article with a technical gradient will always get different amounts out of it, depending on what they arrive with. For another, the modern trend is to assume anything can be read like a light novel - but that hasn't been historically the way with written material, and is a relatively new development (about a century, I think, coming with popular journalism). And a major point is that WP aims for completeness; if you have to trade off between lack of completeness and technical density, you generally choose the latter (which can always be improved later).
These points all apply in spades to mathematics, for example. I think in areas like medecine and mathematics and a few others, lay people really have no idea quite how much could be said. So, WP can actually tackle such issues, but everyone should see that the time scale is measured in years, not days or weeks.
Charles