[WikiEN-l] Accessibility of technical articles

[Carcharoth]

There has been some interesting debate on the site about technical
articles. There has been some (fairly heated) discussion here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:FAC#Some_thoughts_from_an_FA-newbie

(That discussion is mostly over, so best not to stir it up again).

And more here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Make_technical_articles_understandable#Guideline_status_restored

And the section immediately below it.

I found it ironic that when I discussed a particular article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:CBM#Mathematics_article_I_found_difficult

The edit that was made to make the article more accessible (to me, at
least), was reverted:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Poincar%C3%A9_conjecture&diff=prev&oldid=414368190

With the edit summary:

"It's a boundary not a surface--but no need to put in the lede, people
can follow the link)".

Unfortunately, following the link didn't really help me.

"In mathematics, a 3-manifold is a 3-dimensional manifold. The
topological, piecewise-linear, and smooth categories are all
equivalent in three dimensions, so little distinction is made in
whether we are dealing with say, topological 3-manifolds, or smooth
3-manifolds."

I found the edit made to the original article much clearer, in that it
said that the 3-sphere is the "the surface of the [[unit ball]] in
four-dimensional space." I suppose adding the word "informally" might
soothe mathematicians who insist on precise language.

Carcharoth