[WikiEN-l] Re: Taking your eyes off the ball

[Worldtraveller]

I appreciate your help on peer review!  I think there are plenty of fields
in which layman assistance is essential to keep Wikipedia's audience as
broad as possible, and I find thorough reviews by non-astronomers of my
astronomy articles very helpful in that respect.  Just remember that
astronomy is the father of all science, and only bad writing can make an
astronomy article less than utterly fascinating :)

Cheers,
WT

-----Original Message-----
From: Ryan Norton [mailto:wxprojects at comcast.net]
Sent: 05 October 2005 4:11 PM
To: English Wikipedia
Subject: Re: [WikiEN-l] Re: Taking your eyes off the ball


Hi there :),

> Ouch!  Do you mean astronomy is boring, or my writing about astronomy?
>  I
> do try to write articles that are interesting for people who might only
> have a passing interest in astronomy but it's easy for a scientist to
> forget what's interesting to people not in the field.  That's partly
> why I
> sought peer review for Herbig-Haro object, because I was half afraid I
> was
> going to spend lots of time on something no-one would be interested in.
> Astrocruft, if you like.  Please tell me if I'm heading that way!
>
> The general point is that for many featured articles, only one person
> might be interested in writing about a subject, but its appeal should
> be
> broad based if it really represents the best of Wikipedia.  I'm not
> particularly fussed about architects in colonial New Zealand, for
> example,
> but Giano's articles on Benjamin Mountfort etc are interesting enough
> to
> keep me reading right through.
>
> WT

Don't get discouraged! You're articles are some of the best around
here! I think often though with technical subjects like this it can be
tough to write for the layman :). Anyway, I'm still offering responses
on your peer reviews :).

Thanks,
Ryan