[Wikimedia-l] Academics and accessible writing

[Steven Walling]

Hey folks,

Today I was browsing the many fine articles that have been edited on EN as
part of the Wikipedia initiative by the Association for Psychological
Science.[1] There is no doubt that the articles which these professors and
students have worked are better by any measure of quality.

But I was left with a nagging annoyance: these articles are almost all
incomprehensible to someone without a advanced college education and a high
degree of proficiency in English. Topics as basic as [[job satisfaction]]
or [[social network game]] are written like a literature review or a paper
for a journal. When an article about gaming on Facebook is that academic, I
think we might have a problem. ;-)

That's not to say the articles written by regular volunteers are always so
concise and clear. But I think it's pretty obvious that professors and grad
students in particular have trouble adapting to a more general interest
audience. This is an issue that could seriously impact how useful Wikipedia
is to most of our potential readership around the world.

I think the addition of uncovered topics and much-needed citations balances
out the inherent tendency of academics to write unnecessarily complex
prose. But maybe there are ways that folks in the General Education Program
at the WMF and in volunteer projects can start to be bolder about letting
academics know that they direly need to conform to the Wikipedia style of
"Writing should be clear and concise. Plain English works best: avoid
ambiguity, jargon, and vague or unnecessarily complex wording."

Thoughts? Do people from non-English outreach programs to academics have
any similar experiences?

Steven

1.
http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/members/aps-wikipedia-initiative