[WikiEN-l] Accessibility of technical articles

[Carcharoth]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 4:58 PM, Charles Matthews
<charles.r.matthews at ntlworld.com> wrote:
> On 17/02/2011 13:19, Carcharoth wrote:
>> To take the Poincare conjecture example, compare the Wikipedia article
>> to this accessible explanation. Should the Wikipedia article
>> incorporate explanatory aspects similar to those used in the SEED
>> magazine article?
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poincar%C3%A9_conjecture
>>
>> http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/what_is_the_poincare_conjecture/
>>
>> I can say without a shadow of a doubt that I found the SEED magazine
>> article more accessible and I learnt more from it.
> Unfortunately the magazine article completely ducks the issue of what
> the conjecture is. Even on a charitable view, it confuses a necessary
> with a sufficient condition, which would be the *whole point*. This kind
> of this is actually why this one has not been solved yet on WP: we
> (rightly) don't allow people to waffle around the facts in order to
> claim they are explaining. (If you think we do badly, have a look at a
> standard mathematical encyclopedia: http://eom.springer.de/p/p073000.htm.)

Hmm. Tricky one. Would you put a link to that magazine article in the
external links? It might be missing the point, but it does give a
different perspective and a less dry one.

Carcharoth