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@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