Following somewhat from Jimbo's discussion earlier, a trio of scenarios:
A young student - perhaps in high school - by happenstance hears a
lecture on physics. He grasps only a little of it, but what he
understands seems exciting. One thing mentioned as very interesting
by the lecturer is the "Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle." In a fit
of exitement, he goes home and checks Wikipedia to understand this
concept.
A freshman is considering majors. He has heard of an English
professor who is interesting and hip, and arranges to meet him in his
office hours to hear about his class next semester. The professor is
doing an intro class on something called "literary theory," and
mentions one person in particular - Derrida - as someone who will
"blow the student's mind." The student, intrigued, goes to look up
Derrida.
A man is finding himself more worried about the current political
situation. He is reading the paper more. He happens upon a mention
that Bush is not an "End of history" person, a phrase associated in
some way with someone named Fukuyama. He goes to Wikipedia, and types
in "End of History" to try to understand more about this theory that
apparently informs the political discussion.
All three of these people are going to be very, very disappointed.
Not because [[Uncertainty principle]], [[Jacques Derrida]], and [[The
End of History and the Last Man]] aren't there, or are excessively
short, but rather because they are completely incomprehensible to
people who are not already familiar with the topics. (And I say this
about [[Jacques Derrida]] after spending two hours rewriting the thing)
The problem with all of these articles is that they are not written
for generalists. They are written for specialists and semi-
specialists. Terms are regularly introduced without definition - in
the End of History article, the main definition of the term is a
quote from Fukuyama that refers to "the end point of mankind's
ideological evolution," and then immediately goes into a bit on
Marxism, particularly "historical materialism" and the "historical
dialectic," as well as some references to Hegel, none of which are
explained.
Obviously these things cannot be explained fully in the article, but
they need to be dealt with - a sentence or two, just enough to get
the reader through to the next concept without totally losing it.
The Derrida article, in its previous form, lacked sections explaining
deconstruction and the Paul de Man controversy. These exist in other
articles, to be sure, but they're also major concepts to anyone
interested in Derrida, and their exclusion is a shocking omission -
anyone looking for general information on Derrida would be
misinformed if they did not know these two things. I've fixed that,
but still - the article has an overwhelming focus on Derrida's
interpretations of Heidegger - a fascinating topic on which books can
be written, but not the most important information, nor the most
understandable to someone who doesn't know a lot about Heidegger -
something I will hazard a guess our Heidegger article isn't that
helpful about either.
And then there's the Uncertainty Principle, which is a sea of
equations of tremendous use to someone versed in physics and
mathematics, but of no use to someone who hears the phrase and wants
to know what it's all about. Nowhere in the lead paragraphs is the
common formulation that "You can never know, with absolute precision,
the position and movement of an electron, and in fact the more you
know about one, the less you can possibly know about the other."
Nowhere. Yes, I know the UP is more complicated than that. And I'm
not saying some, maybe even all of those equations shouldn't stay.
But I am saying, that needs to be out there, first and foremost.
Too much of the technical and academic writing in the encyclopedia
reads like it was written for an MA paper, with the nuance, depth,
and qualification that a professor expects from a student. These
articles are not written for professors, nor for grad students - they
are written for the uninformed. We cannot write for the uninformed in
the language we use for experts.
I don't know what can be done about this - particularly because the
bloat Jimbo has identified as going on in articles like [[Bill
Gates]] and [[Jane Fonda]] goes on in these articles as a sea of
academics adds a paragraph or two about their pet interest in the
subject, until the article has become unmanagable. But we have to do
something - simply put, we're a crappy resource on a number of topics
that, in order to maintain a wide level of respect, we need to be a
good resource on.
A quick approach, I think, is to remember the importance of phrases
like "Simply put," "in the popular conception," "at its
core," "in
layman's terms," and the like - phrases that come before a
distillation of ideas. You can qualify these distillations later -
"Although this is a simplification of Derrida's thought," or
"Although this reading is popular, it is also limited" both spring to
mind as the sorts of things that can be said.
But the fact remains, we have apparently completely forgotten the
concept of the summary in our writing on Wikipedia.
(And I blame the rush for sources for some of this - I frequently
find myself sifting through articles and getting lost in a sea of
block quotes from Derrida or Fukuyama. In most cases, if the reader
could find Derrida or Fukuyama easy to read and comprehend on their
own, they would not be looking them up in an encyclopedia. Citing
sources is a tool for referencing and verifying - it cannot interfere
with the readability and usability of an article. A meticulously
referenced but utterly unreadable article helps nobody.)
-Snowspinner