[Wikipedia-l] A Three Way Split

[Krzysztof P. Jasiutowicz]

On 18-09-2002, Fred Bauder wrote thusly :
> 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.

This 3-tier approach would require a special kind of discipline from
Wikipedia authors that I think would be hard to achieve with the current
'no rules' rule.

Besides it would mean major rewrite of almost (all ?) articles.

Regards,
kpjas.