[WikiEN-l] Academic study: Wikipedia cancer information accurate but hard to read

[Fred Bauder]

> Nice to know we are as accurate and more up-to-date than the competition.
> I'd love to see further work done on the 2% of information where we
> currently differ from the textbooks, hopefully most of that will just be
> that the textbooks are out of date. But it would be good to have that
> confirmed and any errors fixed.
>
> As for "The study authors recommend that patients use the PDQ site first
> so
> they are not inundated by complex information and hyperlinks". I'm not
> sure
> how dumbed down things have to be for ninth graders - but if I'm right in
> assuming that ninth graders is American English for early teens
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninth_grade then I'm surprised they think
> hyperlinks might be beyond them. Is it just possible that someone in the
> medical profession is being patronising to the public here?
>
> WSC

It is difficult to balance the needs of the general public, which reads
more at a 5th grade level than a 9th grade level, with the need to
present comprehensive information that would be of use to an oncologist.

If we addressed this problem in a systemic way we would present alternate
articles at differing levels of comprehensiveness and readability.

Perhaps in the future.

Fred