[WikiEN-l] Writing with our readers in mind

[Dan Grey]

On 10/07/05, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at 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