Ronald Chmara wrote:
My older brother despises some wikipedia sections that are written in his field (cultural anthropology, with specific emphasis on the paiute people), as he is an expert in that specific area, and finds the articles "shallow", "without depth and nuance", and "lacking in a deeper explanation". They are written by "non-experts", and thus make "factual and comprehension errors".
The articles are also written for *use* by non-experts.... So, I asked my brother how many pages it would take to correct the errors, and he pointed me towards his latest body of work, over 500 pages, and that's just the historical *sites* of the paiute.
O.k., but I would *love* to talk to your brother. :-)
I think he would agree that there's a place in the world for an encyclopedia article -- a general introduction to the non-specialist, a nice overview that provides context for further learning, which will involve perhaps digging into a 500 page tome.
Such an article can be "shallow" and "without depth and nuance" in two different ways: one is that the article sucks, the other is that this is inherent to the nature of an encyclopedia article, i.e. space is limited, assumed background of the reader has to be limited, etc.
Could he fix the article? Especially when there are factual and comprehension errors, this seems easy enough to fix. Fixing the "lacking in deeper explanation" and so on, i don't know, but I don't worry about it much, either.
--Jimbo