Do we have anywhere a statement that editors should think of their readers when writing? For me, that's commonsense: whether at work, speaking or writing to different clients, or chatting with friends, I always bear in mind who I am communicating with and trying to use words, language and style that suits them.
However, increasingly I see other editors deciding they prefer an "academic" style. What this means is that, if you are an academic in the field being discussed, you can understand what they are saying. However, if you are not, the articles remain impenetrable - and attempts to tweak them so they are more intelligible to the vast majority of readers get rebuffed.
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)
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Jon wrote:
Do we have anywhere a statement that editors should think of their readers when writing? For me, that's commonsense: whether at work, speaking or writing to different clients, or chatting with friends, I always bear in mind who I am communicating with and trying to use words, language and style that suits them.
However, increasingly I see other editors deciding they prefer an "academic" style. What this means is that, if you are an academic in the field being discussed, you can understand what they are saying. However, if you are not, the articles remain impenetrable - and attempts to tweak them so they are more intelligible to the vast majority of readers get rebuffed.
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.
Could you provide some examples?
I personally would quite like to see a "layman's introduction" to some articles, with more technical details later. This got discussed a bit on the philosophy wikiproject: --> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Philosophy#The_Philo...
Chris
- -- Chris Jenkinson chris@starglade.org
This is quite obvious and most egregious in any topic which can be related to as concerning philosophy. We have no decent articles for [[truth]] [[knowledge]] or [[reality]] thanks to academic efforts.
Fred
On Jul 9, 2005, at 11:44 AM, Jon wrote:
Do we have anywhere a statement that editors should think of their readers when writing? For me, that's commonsense: whether at work, speaking or writing to different clients, or chatting with friends, I always bear in mind who I am communicating with and trying to use words, language and style that suits them.
However, increasingly I see other editors deciding they prefer an "academic" style. What this means is that, if you are an academic in the field being discussed, you can understand what they are saying. However, if you are not, the articles remain impenetrable - and attempts to tweak them so they are more intelligible to the vast majority of readers get rebuffed.
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)
Yahoo! Messenger NEW - crystal clear PC to PCcalling worldwide with voicemail _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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.
Dan
I like how explanation was done in the Chagas disease article. Use the academic terms so people learn them for later use, but explain difficult stuff the first time it's mentioned. You get the best from both worlds. The scientists have the academic talk and the "normal" readers still understand it.
--Mgm
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.
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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.
Dan _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
From: Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk
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.
If you imagine that your attempt to further your campaign against the use of BCE/CE using this backdoor method went unnoticed, rest assured that it did not.
Jay.
On 7/10/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
If you imagine that your attempt to further your campaign against the use of BCE/CE using this backdoor method went unnoticed, rest assured that it did not.
Jay.
Thank you for pointing out what should've been obvious - it was easy to overlook. I agree entirely with what Jguk said about making things intelligible in a broader context. I did not, however, read between the lines, and *very strongly* condemn this attempt at continuing the BC-BCE war by the back door.
-- ambi
There's an old discussion at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Reading_level as well.
Tim (BaronLarf)
On Sun, 10 Jul 2005, Rebecca wrote:
On 7/10/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
If you imagine that your attempt to further your campaign against the use of BCE/CE using this backdoor method went unnoticed, rest assured that it did not.
Jay.
Thank you for pointing out what should've been obvious - it was easy to overlook. I agree entirely with what Jguk said about making things intelligible in a broader context. I did not, however, read between the lines, and *very strongly* condemn this attempt at continuing the BC-BCE war by the back door.
Well, I for one don't see how Jon's suggestion is continuing this dispute, even if it is his intent.
Asking editors to avoid an academic style & try to write in layman's terms does not logically lead to eschewing BCE/CE -- unless by the single act of taking a paper & replacing every instance of AD/BC with CE/BCE instantly makes it worthy of publication in an academic journal.
In fact, about the only person who keeps reintroducing this BCE/CE matter is Jay himself -- & I've invited him in the past to take it off list. I do so again; he seems to be causing trouble to make a point.
Geoff
From: Geoff Burling llywrch@agora.rdrop.com
On Sun, 10 Jul 2005, Rebecca wrote:
On 7/10/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
If you imagine that your attempt to further your campaign against the
use of
BCE/CE using this backdoor method went unnoticed, rest assured that it
did
not.
Jay.
Thank you for pointing out what should've been obvious - it was easy to overlook. I agree entirely with what Jguk said about making things intelligible in a broader context. I did not, however, read between the lines, and *very strongly* condemn this attempt at continuing the BC-BCE war by the back door.
Well, I for one don't see how Jon's suggestion is continuing this dispute, even if it is his intent.
Asking editors to avoid an academic style & try to write in layman's terms does not logically lead to eschewing BCE/CE -- unless by the single act of taking a paper & replacing every instance of AD/BC with CE/BCE instantly makes it worthy of publication in an academic journal.
He has used that argument many times to justify removal of BCE/CE; now that it has been exposed, it will be more difficult to do so.
In fact, about the only person who keeps reintroducing this BCE/CE matter is Jay himself -- & I've invited him in the past to take it off list. I do so again; he seems to be causing trouble to make a point.
Interesting opinion. Thanks for sharing.
Jay.
Do you really have no understanding of the concept of assuming good faith? You have provided a good example of an argumentum ad hominem, attacking the argument by attacking the man.
Whether or not he was intending to bring the whole BCE mess into this or not, he had a valid point.
Is it really necessary to be quite so incivil?
Sam
On 7/10/05, JAY JG jayjg@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk
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.
If you imagine that your attempt to further your campaign against the use of BCE/CE using this backdoor method went unnoticed, rest assured that it did not.
Jay.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
From: Sam Korn smoddy@gmail.com
Do you really have no understanding of the concept of assuming good faith?
Considering he campaigned vociferously against BCE/CE, modified the Manual of Style to forbid its use, edited over 700 articles to remove it, "resigned" from Wikipedia and proceeded to remove it from 300 more articles as a IP editor, and has now returned to Wikipedia and continues to remove it, think the "Good faith" well in this particular case has run dry. "Good faith" has reasonable limits.
Whether or not he was intending to bring the whole BCE mess into this or not, he had a valid point.
He's used this exact argument to remove BCE/CE from articles before; it's hardly a stretch.
Jay.
This is a much broader issue than that. Our articles can be quite incomprehensible to likely readers.
Fred
On Jul 9, 2005, at 10:12 PM, JAY JG wrote:
From: Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk
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.
If you imagine that your attempt to further your campaign against the use of BCE/CE using this backdoor method went unnoticed, rest assured that it did not.
Jay.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 10/07/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
This is a much broader issue than that. Our articles can be quite incomprehensible to likely readers.
Fred
Some of the drug articles are quite inpenetrable. I would not be suprised, however, if most of the people who read the drugs articles are people who've just been prescribed them. Pharmacologists are never going to come looking to WP to read up on drugs. So why write at their level, rather than a laymans?
Take, for example, paracetamol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity
What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage. Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill them so easily.
What to do? I have no idea.
Info like that can't be binned, of course. Maybe we could have sub-sections for it - "In depth" or something.
But we need human-readable explanations too. Unfortunetly, I can't even begin to convert that into something that's actually understandable to, say, my mum, because I barely understand it myself :-).
Dan
Dan Grey (dangrey@gmail.com) [050711 01:13]:
Take, for example, paracetamol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage. Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill them so easily. What to do? I have no idea.
The article validation topics include "clarity" for this reason. This can be used to flag articles for rewriting better.
(now all we need is the feature ;-)
Info like that can't be binned, of course. Maybe we could have sub-sections for it - "In depth" or something.
That can work very well indeed. All this is, after all, an editorial decision.
But we need human-readable explanations too. Unfortunetly, I can't even begin to convert that into something that's actually understandable to, say, my mum, because I barely understand it myself :-).
This is a very real and wide-ranging issue Jguk raises - and it would IMO be as ridiculous to assert that BC/AD is required for "clarity" as to assert that BCE/CE is required for "NPOV". But that's not at all what I read in the original statement.
- d.
19 hours ago, according to GMail, I sent identical emails to several different regulars here, asking them to keep "a careful pair of eyes" on the situation in [[Government of Australia]] where an editor with no connection to me whatsoever had highlighted the same error that I had six months previously. I must stress this point. Zero connection. Zero communication. Not a sockpuppet, not a friend, not anything at all.
Can I ask that those people take a look at the ongoing situation, summarised below. If they have access to "sockpuppet-detection" tools, I ask that they use them. I would like to know what is going on, because it looks to me like an editor in good faith has been treated very poorly indeed, and that both he and I deserve apologies, especially from the admin who blocked him.
I make the point that my last edit to the GofA article was 17:08, 24 May 2005, when I corrected a typo, and to the discussion page on 31 May 2005, shortly before the ArbCom case began at which time I voluntarily ceased making edits to either page.
Peter
==Summary==
23:39, 9 July 2005 User:Pwqn edits [[Government of Australia]] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Government_of_Australia&diff=1...
23:50, 9 July 2005 User:cyberjunkie reverts User:Pwqn and makes a note on the talk page to this effect, mentioning "the same ridiculousness" and stating that the editor "has a long edit history so I don't think s/he is a sockpuppet" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3AGovernment_of_Australia&...
00:08, 10 July 2005 User:cyberjunkie says: "I don't want to see a return to the frustrations and viciousness that this issue has caused". I can heartily echo this, having been on the receiving end of most of it. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
04:17, 10 July 2005 User:Pwqn makes a statement, concisely summarising his case and presenting a list of sources. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
20:49, 10 July 2005 Adam Carr states (inter alia): "I will assume for the moment that Pwqn is a good-faith editor" but "there is '''absolutely no way''' this question can be re-opened and re-debated because a new editor has come along and wants to reopen the whole process". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
20:53, 10 July 2005 Adam Carr moves a lot of the discussion (including ongoing material) to archives. http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
08:07, 11 July 2005 User:Kangaroopedia (who looks very much like a sockpuppet of someone's) makes an edit entitled "Showcasing Adam Carr's Doublethink". http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
09:08, 11 July 2005 User:Lacrimosus makes a comment entitled: "showcasing the Skyringers' stupidity" http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
Current revision (as at 10:08 11 July 2005) User:jtdirl states: "You can usually tell Skyring's clones by their ignorance of constitutional law and legal principles" and "He really must think we are a shower of fools not to spot his little games." http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
04:52, 10 July 2005, Jtdirl blocked Pwqn (expires 04:52, 10 August 2005) (contribs) (sockpuppet of suspended Skyring, or one of the 'people' he threatened to unlease to continue doctoring articles if he was banned.) 08:20, 11 July 2005, Jtdirl blocked Kangaroopedia (expires 08:20, 11 August 2005) (contribs) (sockpuppet of Skyring or one of those he promised to unleash to push his agenda when banned from certain pages) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist
User:jtdirl is an admin whose contributions to the article and discussion page are many and lengthy, extending to many thousands of words. He is directly involved in this discussion, and at the very least, I see his intemperate and abusive blocking of a good faith editor as something warranting discussion.
Can I ask that those people take a look at the ongoing situation, summarised below.
I'm sorry but my eyes just glaze over when I try to approach this. In order to give an impartial judgment I'd have to at least:
1. Educate myself on this relatively obscure Australian technical question, preferably from good sources outside of Wikipedia.
2. Carefully study the editing history of the article.
3. Wade through a talk page which is currently archived in 8 volumes.
4. Chase down any relevant comments made on talk pages of users involved.
This is just more effort than I'm willing to spend on this matter.
I'm sorry and I'm writing this to explain since I'm sure your request is made in good faith.
Regards, Haukur
On 11/07/05, Skyring skyring@gmail.com wrote:
Current revision (as at 10:08 11 July 2005) User:jtdirl states: "You can usually tell Skyring's clones by their ignorance of constitutional law and legal principles" and "He really must think we are a shower of fools not to spot his little games." http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Government_of_Australia&d...
04:52, 10 July 2005, Jtdirl blocked Pwqn (expires 04:52, 10 August 2005) (contribs) (sockpuppet of suspended Skyring, or one of the 'people' he threatened to unlease to continue doctoring articles if he was banned.)
Peter in Canberra
As Peter provided links, the least I could do was go through them, and yes, this does appear to be a case where an admin got it wrong. Jtdirl should have asked an admin who is unconnected with the article to investigate, rather than act himself.
Shouldn't be too difficult for another admin to unblock Pwqn.
Dan
On 7/10/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/07/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote: Take, for example, paracetamol:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity
What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage. Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill them so easily.
Now that's a good example of overusing scientific terms. If someone had described the role of the pathways and what they actually were in the article (did they?) a simply explaining what oversaturation is would do the trick.
"MacGyverMagic/Mgm" macgyvermagic@gmail.com wrote in message news:fb7fdd9c05071105545dabd943@mail.gmail.com... On 7/10/05, Dan Grey dangrey@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/07/05, Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net wrote:
Take, for example, paracetamol: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage. Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill them so easily.
Now that's a good example of overusing scientific terms. If someone had described the role of the pathways and what they actually were in the article (did they?) a simply explaining what oversaturation is would do the trick.
That section has, at time of reading, one single wikilink.
This presents a very good case for raising the bar on frequency of linking to allow the first instance in any given section to be linked, rather than in the whole article: I don't want to have to scroll up an unknown distance to find where [[conjugation]] might be linked just so that I can find out WTF it means, for example.
I wonder if there is also a problem wherein people are afraid to make short, simple articles defining technical terms, which would cut down drastically on duplication and allow wider linking, because of the perceived mania for "getting rid of stubs" and "moving definitions to wiktionary".
HTH HAND
I wonder if there is also a problem wherein people are afraid to make short, simple articles defining technical terms, which would cut downdrastically on duplication and allow wider linking, because of the perceived mania for "getting rid of stubs" and "moving definitions to wiktionary".
One solution might be to use links to Wiktionary more than we currently do.
Regards, Haukur
On 7/12/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
I wonder if there is also a problem wherein people are afraid to make short, simple articles defining technical terms, which would cut downdrastically on duplication and allow wider linking, because of the perceived mania for "getting rid of stubs" and "moving definitions to wiktionary".
One solution might be to use links to Wiktionary more than we currently do.
Regards, Haukur
Starting from when I was a small child reading them on the living room floor, I've never fully grasped the reasons why an encyclopedia was not just a superset of the dictionary.
I understand why dictionaries don't have encyclopedic articles in it; they're more narrowly focused, and don't have the space. But why encyclopedias don't also contain a full dictionary is still a mystery to me. Each good article starts with a general definition of the term already.
That said, interwiki links to Wiktionary are a very good thing to have. In the absence of a merged project, I would like to see them used much more. I think a section at the bottom of some articles, with links to definitions of uncommon words used in the article would also be nice.
Starting from when I was a small child reading them on the living room floor, I've never fully grasped the reasons why an encyclopedia was not just a superset of the dictionary.
Me too :) But I think I have a better idea now.
An encyclopedia shouldn't be too language-specific. An ideal English encyclopedia and an ideal Icelandic encyclopedia could have approximately a one-to-one correspondance between articles. This would not at all be the case with an ideal pair of dictionaries.
Each language has its own arbitrary way of splitting the world up into words. For example Icelandic has a lot of more precise words for what English calls "tail".
dindill - sheep tail hali - cow tail tagl - horse tail rófa - dog tail stýri - cat tail skott - mouse tail stél - bird tail sporður - fish tail
When new things with tails come along they get one of these applied to them. Thus, an airplane has a "stél", a car has a "skott" and a smurf has a "dindill". There is no generic word in Icelandic for "tail".
But an encyclopedia tries to be somewhat independent of all this. It tries to split the world up into concepts that make sense from the point of view of our current state of knowledge. Those tails that have enough in common to be usefully described together should form one article, both in an English encyclopedia and an Icelandic one.
In practice I'm sure that the language an encyclopedia is written in will significantly impact its choice of entries.
Hmm... In this case [[tail]] is actually a dictionary entry masquerading as a disambiguation page.
Regards, Haukur
This post made me very happy :-) Thank you for sharing, Haukur. It's hard for me to imagine a car with a mouse tail...
SJ
On 7/12/05, Haukur Þorgeirsson haukurth@hi.is wrote:
Starting from when I was a small child reading them on the living room floor, I've never fully grasped the reasons why an encyclopedia was not just a superset of the dictionary.
Me too :) But I think I have a better idea now.
An encyclopedia shouldn't be too language-specific. An ideal English encyclopedia and an ideal Icelandic encyclopedia could have approximately a one-to-one correspondance between articles. This would not at all be the case with an ideal pair of dictionaries.
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:15:42PM -0000, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
Starting from when I was a small child reading them on the living room floor, I've never fully grasped the reasons why an encyclopedia was not just a superset of the dictionary.
[snip]
But an encyclopedia tries to be somewhat independent of all this. It tries to split the world up into concepts that make sense from the point of view of our current state of knowledge. Those tails that have enough in common to be usefully described together should form one article, both in an English encyclopedia and an Icelandic one.
Maybe. But while the structure of our language might not overwhelmingly determine the thoughts that we can have in it (the infamous Sapir-Whorf conjecture) it certainly determines which thoughts are easier to communicate to readers of the same language.
It seems to me that the central difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia is that a dictionary is about the language, whereas an encyclopedia is about the world. A dictionary sets out not to describe the world in which language-users live, but rather the language that they use to describe that world. So a dictionary entry on the words "God" or "justice" does not need to discuss the issue of whether God exists, or whether justice can be accomplished -- only with what people _mean_ when they say or write "God" or "justice".
A dictionary uses language as meta-language: that is, to describe the language itself. An encyclopedia uses language in the ordinary fashion: to describe the world.
A dictionary, in defining the word "frog", must say that it is usually used to mean a small amphibian, but also can mean a clothes fastener or (as derogatory slang) a Frenchman. An encyclopedia, however, is not in the business of defining "frog", but in discussing the biology and ecology of frogs. The dictionary entry is about "frog", the word; the encyclopedia article is about frogs, the animals. Whenever definition of the word is allowed to overshadow elucidation of the animal, the encyclopedia starts to fail as an encyclopedia.
It seems to me that the central difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia is that a dictionary is about the language, whereas an encyclopedia is about the world.
Indeed. We have an article on [[fuck]], though :) Do we have a criterion for determining when a word is notable enough in itself and independently of the phenomena it describes to deserve an article?
Regards, Haukur
Haukur Þorgeirsson (haukurth@hi.is) [050713 05:36]:
It seems to me that the central difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia is that a dictionary is about the language, whereas an encyclopedia is about the world.
Indeed. We have an article on [[fuck]], though :) Do we have a criterion for determining when a word is notable enough in itself and independently of the phenomena it describes to deserve an article?
The word must survive trial by ordeal on VFD, apparently!
- d.
On 7/12/05, Karl A. Krueger kkrueger@whoi.edu wrote:
On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:15:42PM -0000, Haukur ?orgeirsson wrote:
Starting from when I was a small child reading them on the living room floor, I've never fully grasped the reasons why an encyclopedia was not just a superset of the dictionary.
[snip]But an encyclopedia tries to be somewhat independent of all this. It tries to split the world up into concepts that make sense from the point of view of our current state of knowledge. Those tails that have enough in common to be usefully described together should form one article, both in an English encyclopedia and an Icelandic one.
Maybe. But while the structure of our language might not overwhelmingly determine the thoughts that we can have in it (the infamous Sapir-Whorf conjecture) it certainly determines which thoughts are easier to communicate to readers of the same language.
It seems to me that the central difference between a dictionary and an encyclopedia is that a dictionary is about the language, whereas an encyclopedia is about the world. A dictionary sets out not to describe the world in which language-users live, but rather the language that they use to describe that world. So a dictionary entry on the words "God" or "justice" does not need to discuss the issue of whether God exists, or whether justice can be accomplished -- only with what people _mean_ when they say or write "God" or "justice".
A dictionary uses language as meta-language: that is, to describe the language itself. An encyclopedia uses language in the ordinary fashion: to describe the world.
Since languages are part of the greater world around them, and words are parts of that world, I still think encyclopedias that do not incorporate dictionaries are falling a little short of what they could be.
In your example of a "frog", the dicdef could be the disambiguation page that leads to the encyclopedic discussion of the amphibian, the slang term for a French person, and even the use as a clothes fastener. Every word would be defined, and those with further specific use would be simply have a larger article, or have several child articles linked under them.
We already start many (perhaps even most) articles with a definition of the term being discussed. The primary difference I see is that some of these "header definitions" could better serve the readers as less specific disambiguation pages.
Although "frog" isn't the best example (and I can't think of a better one on the spot right now), why *wouldn't* we present someone looking up "frog" with the pronunciation and etymology of the word, along with three branches to follow for a fuller explanation? Isn't this much better than having articles "Frog", "Frog (slang)" and "Frog (fastener)" whose title only offers the barest description of what to expect from the link?
The word is part and parcel of the overall value of the named concept in the world, and therefore is also encyclopedic. Encyclopedic phrases that define a concept don't belong in a dictionary, but I don't see a valid opposite corollary.
I still see a dictionary as a subset of a "true" encyclopedia. I suspect that this hasn't been considered for adoption as part of the larger goal of Wikipedia in part because it is far more difficult (and usually less interesting) to accomplish than producing encyclopedia articles.
I don't know for sure where the "not a dictionary" part of [[WP:NOT]] came from, but suspect it came from Mr. Wales. I'd be interested to know *why* being a superset of a dictionary is so taboo.
On 7/12/05, Michael Turley michael.turley@gmail.com wrote:
Although "frog" isn't the best example (and I can't think of a better one on the spot right now), why *wouldn't* we present someone looking up "frog" with the pronunciation and etymology of the word, along with three branches to follow for a fuller explanation? Isn't this much better than having articles "Frog", "Frog (slang)" and "Frog (fastener)" whose title only offers the barest description of what to expect from the link? Michael Turley User:Unfocused _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
That's why there's disambiguation notices for the top of articles and the {{otheruses template}}.
''This is the article about the small amphibian. Frog is also derigatory slang for a Frenchman and a fastener.''
In some occasions, when a complete article on a subject can't be written, linking to wiktionary wouldn't hurt either.
-- Mgm
From: Fred Bauder fredbaud@ctelco.net
This is a much broader issue than that. Our articles can be quite incomprehensible to likely readers.
On the broader issue I quite agree, but this particular e-mail wasn't about that.
Jay.
On 7/10/05, Jon thagudearbh@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
Do we have anywhere a statement that editors should think of their readers when writing? For me, that's commonsense: whether at work, speaking or writing to different clients, or chatting with friends, I always bear in mind who I am communicating with and trying to use words, language and style that suits them.
Yes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Guide_to_writing_better_articles#Thin...