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

[Ray Saintonge]

On 09/16/11 10:35 AM, Fred Bauder wrote:
>> 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 that the textbooks are out of date.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?
> 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.
>
>
That could be a project for simple-wp to undertake.

Ray