[Wikimedia-l] Academics and accessible writing

[David Gerard]

On 29 May 2012 05:41, Ms. Anne Frazer <frazera at bigpond.com> wrote:

> However, when I read your words, the essence of your comments is clear in
> that part of your message is couched in attacking good prose because it is
> too difficult to read and understand. I remind myself that you don't mean to
> engage in a call for the dumbing down of articles in the 'Wikipedia
> Encyclopedia' when you suggest that they are too difficult to comprehend by
> 'the man in the street', (my phrase, and a commonly used one) by which I
> mean the 'ordinary citizen', the 'ordinary person'; it is a much used phrase
> I sardonically use in tandem with an apology to women. But here I have
> strayed from the clear and concise message I would like to be able to convey
> to you; so back on track...


No, I think it's incorrect to assume "readable" is a euphemism for
"dumbed down". Frankly, many academics are terrible writers. Because
most people are terrible writers. Being in the Internet era helps
(because everyone writes all the time), but a lot of academics are in
fact much less comprehensible than they think they are. Popular
science writing is *hard*.

Steven - one idea that occurs to me is to give them a target audience:
e.g. an extremely smart twelve-year-old. "A kid who is very smart and
who is really interested, but knows *nothing*. Can you inform them?
Use all the wikilink cross-references they would need." This will be
easy to visualise because smart adults tend to previously have been
smart kids.


- d.