[Wikipedia-l] A Three Way Split

[Fred Bauder]

At 06:05 PM 9/18/02 +0100, you wrote:
>On Wed, Sep 18, 2002 at 06:45:02PM +0200, Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz wrote:
>> Should Wikipedia articles be made understandable, without
>> any preparation, to secondary education students and
>> links to more specialist resources be provided ?
>> Or should we strive for the best, most up-to-date and
>> accurate content ?
>
>I don't really understand why we might want to or have to choose between
>the two. Why not both?

>Khendon  (Jason Williams)
>khendon at khendon.org.uk    http://www.jasonandali.org.uk/jason/

That is the point of the original proposal. To have all 3.

I sat next to a middle school student (we share our library computers with
the charter school next door). He was working on a paper (he happened to be
not that good in English, in fact, a child of an Mexican worker). He was
struggling a bit, for example he thought kangaroos lived in the Sahara
desert, where he got that from...  Anyway he tried out Wikipedia, the
Sahara desert article at that time could have used some work. But I kind of
take him for a model of one class of typical customers. They need
relatively comprehensive basic information. I remember using encyclopedia
articles a whole lot more in elementary school than I ever have later in
life. Another class is retired professionals. I like us to have an article
on international relations that Henry Kissenger would find interesting.

Fred