[WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

[David Lindsey]

I think the study does an excellent, if only implicit, job of picking up a
growing thread about Wikipedia quality, and one that I have often observed
in my own research of Wikipedia.  Professionally-written articles (in this
case on cancer) are very clearly and explicitly written with the education
of the general reader in mind.  Terms are carefully explained and care is
taken to ensure that the material is easy to understand.  Such articles are,
generally, self-contained as Charles Matthews points out: you don't have to
click through to find out what unfamiliar words mean.  Citations are not
included, as they are irrelevant to the main purpose, though further reading
is often given.

Wikipedia, on the other hand, has evolved from being geared at the general
reader to being a form of, if you'll pardon by somewhat rude phrase, a
bastardized journal article.  While professional health information (by
which I mean professional general-interest health information) doesn't give
citations, Wikipedia articles (for reasons that are perfectly logical) are
full of them.  While professional health information avoids the use of
technical terms for readability, Wikipedia tends to use them in favor of
comprehensiveness.  An excellent piece of professional health information
provides the reader with everything he wants to know, but would offer little
to the professional.  Wikipedia, on the other hand, tries to offer something
that would interest the professional.

The problem is that experts just aren't interested in reading Wikipedia
articles (within their area of expertise).  If a researcher of physician
wants up to date cancer information, he will look at the relevant books and
journal articles.  Recent, interesting research on Australian medical
students found that while early in their school careers, the students often
use Wikipedia, its use declines precipitously as they gain more experience
(and I think we can all agree that's a good thing).  To put it simply,
Wikipedia will NEVER be able to compete with what is published in technical
books and journals in any field of academic inquiry.

So, then, why are we trying?  Why do the "best" Wikipedia articles look more
and more like (poorly done) journal literature reviews full of technical
terms and requiring substantial background knowledge to understand?  I, for
one, despite several years of college mathematics find nearly all math
articles largely incomprehensible because they are clearly not aimed at the
general reader.  But, the general reader IS Wikipedia's audience, and we
should write the articles that best serve him.

David Lindsey

On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Charles Matthews <
charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> Bod Notbod wrote:
> > On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:03 AM, Ian Woollard <ian.woollard at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> >> All that's happened is that the professionally produced material had
> >> some specific attention towards making it readable.
> >>
> >> The Wikipedia AFAIK doesn't have any formal processes to check that,
> >> so far as I know.
> >>
> >
> > Is it not a criterion used when judging articles C/B/A/GA/FA?
> >
> Our processes are unlikely to pick up the most obvious difference (as I
> judge from an example), namely that where we would wikilink a technical
> word, the NCI would give a phrase of definition in parentheses beside
> it. We think people who need to know what the [[colon]] is will click
> and find out, they don't use indirection in that way.
>
> Charles
>
>
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