[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Tony Sidaway]

The single best way to improve usability of Wikipedia would be to
scale back the use of jargon.

if you look at early discussions in those days they were usually held
in plain English, with very little jargon.  I've tried to keep up that
style, but it is now quite rare.

I don't see why this should be. Our policies have perfectly good
English language names, "Neutral point of view", "What Wikipedia is
Not", "Verifiability", and so on.  There's absolutely no need to
replace these English phrases with gobbledygook.

We have no strictures against this exclusive practice, mainly because
it was seen as obviously undesirable in the early days.  But
communities inevitably acquire exclusive practices as they
develop--it's seen as one way to identify yourself to other people as
a member of the "in" group. And so now when I discuss matters on
Wikipedia talk pages even I, an editor since 2004, find myself
shuddering inwardly at the impact of all the alphabet soup. If the
damage this practice does to the openness of the community were more
widely recognised it would be possible for us to agree to scale it
back, but it just isn't on the map.

in all conscience I cannot see anything wrong with our user interface.
 It's exemplary, and its having changed so little in all this time is
good evidence of that. If we were to try to emulate monstrosities like
the ever-changing Facebook it would be a step backwards from our
unflinching commitment to a good, clean, simple interface.