[Wikipedia-l] A Three Way Split

[Stephen Gilbert]

While I understand the motivation, I think a better
plan would be to put some effort into the Basic
English Wikipedia. One person started it, but it
hasn't caught on yet.

Stephen Gilbert

--- Fred Bauder <fredbaud at ctelco.net> wrote:
> I was watching ABC news and saw a believable
> statistic, that 40% of the
> adult population can't read at the 5th grade level. 
> Not much we can do for
> them.
> 
> But it got me thinking and then I read a short
> article in a book of exerpts
> from ETC about tailoring your writing to the
> semantic capacity of your
> audience and came up with this proposed convention.
> 
> A wikipedia article should begin with a section
> written for the huge number
> of people who read at a basic level (5th grade level
> to high school level).
> I suspect that middle school level kids are one of
> our better customers in
> any event. It should be both written in simple
> English and contain a basic
> explanation of the topic, accurate and clear, but
> without technical
> language and niceties, and unless easily stated
> without whatever
> complicating factors exist with respect to that
> topic. It should have a
> section title, "[[Simply put]]" or "In [[Simple
> Terms]], or "In [[Simple
> Terminology]]" (the link would explain what we are
> doing with this section). 
> 
> This should be followed by the section "In [[General
> Terminology]]" which
> would contain material tailored to the high school
> or college graduate,
> basically the top 20% of the population which is
> literate. A attempt would
> be made to edit this so that a coherent NPOV article
> results which reads
> easily, including basic technical language and
> definitions.
> 
> The third section of advanced or specialized
> material (for you, who
> regularly tested in the 99th percentile +) would
> give a full technical
> treatment, would not try to create an integrated
> viewpoint (that is the
> ambiguities of the topic would be exposed), go into
> detail about
> controversies in the area etc.
> 
> There would be an external links and further reading
> after each section
> with appropriate material.
> 
> I have noted in my own writing style that I tend to
> mix up material of all
> three types in the opening paragraph. A conscious
> choice to write for our
> likely audiences would, IMO, result in a more useful
> (and authoritative)
> enclyclopedia.
> 
> Fred Bauder  
> 
> [Wikipedia-l]
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