While I understand the motivation, I think a better plan would be to put some effort into the Basic English Wikipedia. One person started it, but it hasn't caught on yet.
I couldn't disagree more--I think that separate wiki is a complete waste of time and effort. After all, it's based on a premise that has itself been thoroughly discredited ("Basic English" is based on the idea that limited vocabulary is what makes a language simple-- linguists know better), and it can only serve to distract and divide the labor of good contributors. Far better we should work to make all articles on the main site more lucid.
lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote:
Far better we should work to make all articles on the main site more lucid.
I tend to agree. But I did like the original proposal -- to a limited extent, at least. I don't think we need to hyperlink all the introductions to an explanation that might well seem offensive to some poor readers, no matter how delicately we put it.
But it does make sense to me that we should make an extra effort to ensure that the introductory paragraphs in each article are easily accessible to people of a variety of background contexts.
On 18-09-2002, lcrocker@nupedia.com wrote thusly :
While I understand the motivation, I think a better plan would be to put some effort into the Basic English Wikipedia. One person started it, but it hasn't caught on yet.
I couldn't disagree more--I think that separate wiki is a complete waste of time and effort. After all, it's based on a premise that has itself been thoroughly discredited ("Basic English" is based on the idea that limited vocabulary is what makes a language simple-- linguists know better), and it can only serve to distract and divide the labor of good contributors. Far better we should work to make all articles on the main site more lucid.
Hi all,
I think this is an important subject that needs some more debate.
Looking from my field most encyclopedic articles (not only Wikipedia's) look oversimplified. In some cases they are aimed at general public and designed to be so. Sometimes there are size constraints in paper encyclopedias.
Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without any preparation, to secondary education students and links to more specialist resources be provided ? Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and accurate content ?
Regards, kpjas.
On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 06:45:02PM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without any preparation, to secondary education students and links to more specialist resources be provided ? Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and accurate content ?
I don't really understand why we might want to or have to choose between the two. Why not both?
At 06:05 PM 9/18/02 +0100, you wrote:
On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 06:45:02PM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without any preparation, to secondary education students and links to more specialist resources be provided ? Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and accurate content ?
I don't really understand why we might want to or have to choose between the two. Why not both?
Khendon (Jason Williams) khendon@khendon.org.uk http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/
That is the point of the original proposal. To have all 3.
I sat next to a middle school student (we share our library computers with the charter school next door). He was working on a paper (he happened to be not that good in English, in fact, a child of an Mexican worker). He was struggling a bit, for example he thought kangaroos lived in the Sahara desert, where he got that from... Anyway he tried out Wikipedia, the Sahara desert article at that time could have used some work. But I kind of take him for a model of one class of typical customers. They need relatively comprehensive basic information. I remember using encyclopedia articles a whole lot more in elementary school than I ever have later in life. Another class is retired professionals. I like us to have an article on international relations that Henry Kissenger would find interesting.
Fred
"... a child of an Mexican worker). He was struggling a bit, for example he thought kangaroos lived in the Sahara desert, where he got that from..."
He probably thought that because kangaroo rats live in the desert in Mexico and the western US.
No Wikipedia article on them apparently.
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
On 18-09-2002, Khendon wrote thusly :
On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 06:45:02PM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without any preparation, to secondary education students and links to more specialist resources be provided ? Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and accurate content ?
I don't really understand why we might want to or have to choose between the two. Why not both?
I mean we either take 'general reference attitude' or 'reflection of the current human knowledge attitude'. Has this been decided ? Discussed ?
Regards, kpjas.
|From: Khendon jason@jasonandali.org.uk |Date: Wed, 18 Sep 2002 18:05:57 +0100 | |On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 06:45:02PM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote: |> Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without |> any preparation, to secondary education students and |> links to more specialist resources be provided ? |> Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and |> accurate content ? | |I don't really understand why we might want to or have to choose between |the two. Why not both? | |-- |Khendon (Jason Williams) |khendon@khendon.org.uk http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/ |
Indeed, with a non-paper encyclopedia, we can write it up for the general inquirer and put "click here for a more detailed and accurate treatment".
You know, my granddaughter is in the sixth grade. You can read plenty at that level. I can read at the "got part of a master's degree" level, but I don't do it every day or all the time. You can also write plenty at that level if you make the effort. It's all in the attitude. Are you writing to teach? Or not?
Tom Parmenter Ortolan88
On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 05:13:06PM -0400, Tom Parmenter wrote:
You know, my granddaughter is in the sixth grade. You can read plenty at that level. I can read at the "got part of a master's degree" level, but I don't do it every day or all the time. You can also write plenty at that level if you make the effort. It's all in the attitude. Are you writing to teach? Or not?
For what it's worth, what *I* think the aspiration of wikipedia should be is to be a self-contained body of information such that somebody could take themselves from basic literacy and numeracy, through school- and university-level education right up to the state of the art in any field of human endeavour.
An impossible aspiration, almost certainly, but a good thing to *aim* at in my opinion.
--- "Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz" kpj@kki.net.pl wrote:
Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without any preparation, to secondary education students and links to more specialist resources be provided ? Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and accurate content ?
Both. I think that articles (and collections of articles on related topics) will evolve in this direction naturally. General articles will serve as broad introductions to a given topic and also provide a jumping-off point to more detailed and specific treatments.
Stephen Gilbert
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