3 ms·

Physics is complex man, what did you expect. If you know nothing, you need to learn a lot in order to even understand their starting point. And regarding wikip

by oneloop 10y ago

Physics is complex man, what did you expect. If you know nothing, you need to learn a lot in order to even understand their starting point. And regarding wikipedia articles, there's two big design alternatives: for each article you either write into it all the necessary background, or instead link to the necessary background in different articles. I suspect that the modus operandi that wikipedia has chosen is that you should do the former for mainstream topics and the latter for niche topics.

flashman 10y ago
Here's a complex biology article that contains a lot of technical terms and links, yet still manages to be readable to a general audience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf I get the feeling that most math-involving Wikipedia pages are simply compound regurgitations of various textbooks. > you need to learn a lot in order to even understand their starting point This is kind of a cop-out. In the coming days there will be reams written on these laureates in the scientific press, much of which will be more enlightening, informative and contextually relevant than the dedicated encyclopaedia article.
- oneloop 10y ago
  > I get the feeling that most math-involving Wikipedia pages are simply compound regurgitations of various textbooks. You are absolutely right, because writing quality original work takes effort, and writing quality original maths work takes 100x more effort. > This is kind of a cop-out Call it whatever you want, but the fact remains that some subjects are more complex than others. Complex matters take more effort to write about, and there's fewer people qualified to write about them. When these two factors come together, you see regurgitated stuff. If you think that everything is equally simple if you explain it the right way, you're sorely mistaken about the nature of reality. All this reminds me that I shouldn't be spending my own effort on HN :D
  - euyyn 10y ago
    He didn't really say nor imply it'd take an equal amount of effort.
- nonbel 10y ago
  I 100% agree about wikipedia and math/physics topics. They give the distinct impression that either 1) The person writing them does not understand the topic or 2) The people working on the topic are not doing anything connected to reality. However, I must disagree with your claim that the scientific press will do better. As part of their coverage of the physiology prize they made up a new term "cell recycling" that will waste the readers time when they try to look up what it is about. As long as they are technically correct, the math wikipedia pages are at most useless.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Although even that Leaf article highlights some unfortunate Wikipedia tendencies such as the tendency to unnecessarily insert pseudo-academic jargon. Take the third sentence: "Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves collectively." With two footnotes even. This could easily have been worded as something along the lines of "Leaves are collectively referred to as foliage, as in "autumn foliage."
  - wahern 10y ago
    Except the former shows that "mass noun" is a thing. And indeed the phrase was a hyperlink to a fascinating page discussing the concept. Unfortunately, somebody took your criticism to heart and changed the page to your formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leaf&type=revision&diff=742673936&oldid=741796479 excising the hyperlink in the process. Your phrasing would be better were Wikipedia not a hyperlinked encyclopedia. Because Wikipedia is a hyperlinked encyclopedia, it's perfectly acceptable and even preferable to use stilted phrasing when it benefits the concise exposition of related concepts.
    - wahern 10y ago
      In law school we were taught that it's preferable to use simple English phrasing--so-called plain language--in legal writing, and to avoid terms of art. But look at what that has wrought in reality--legal instruments that are dozens of page longer than necessary, more often than not with dictionaries prepended. They're more inscrutable than ever, and arguably more difficult to approach for both layman and jurist. Archaic legal writing relied heavily on terms of art. Terms of art, IMHO, provided many benefits, including 1) concision, 2) consistency, and 3) signaling. Concision because terms of art are a way to reference more complex concepts that you don't need to spell out. Consistency because widespread use of terms of art meant that there was only one way to say something; if you used other phrasing it was presumed you meant something different than what was meant by a related term of art. And signaling because using a term of art made it clear and obvious you were referring to some concrete legal concept, even if the reader wasn't familiar with it. Notably the shift to "plain language" legal writing did not in the least change expectations in the legal community regarding the consistency and signaling aspects of legal language. Today, instead of using terms of art, lawyers literally copy+paste whole blocks of long-winded clauses. IMO, all three of those aspects--concision, consistency, and signaling--should likewise be emphasized in an encyclopedic text, _especially_ in the context of hyperlinked text. Different contexts require using language differently. You wouldn't criticize a musician for using a different style of prose, right? It's not just the medium that dictates how we phrase things, but the context and function of the communication.
- Rylinks 10y ago
  >In the coming days there will be reams written on these laureates in the scientific press, much of which will be more enlightening, informative and contextually relevant than the dedicated encyclopaedia article. In my experience, the scientific press usually does not know what they are talking about, and relying on them for enlightenment or information is dangerous.
davidivadavid 10y ago
I think the main issue here is not so much in choosing between including every prerequisite in every page or not, but in adding a meta-level of information that allows people to consume the prerequisites more easily. When you open a Wikipedia article about a complex subject, it's expected that you're going to do a lot of background reading. The problem is that you start surfing Wikipedia with a BFS/DFS approach, when it would be a lot more efficient if the articles were organized more systematically to lead to a gradual understanding of the subject.

by oneloop 10y ago

flashman 10y ago

Here's a complex biology article that contains a lot of technical terms and links, yet still manages to be readable to a general audience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaf I get the feeling that most math-involving Wikipedia pages are simply compound regurgitations of various textbooks. > you need to learn a lot in order to even understand their starting point This is kind of a cop-out. In the coming days there will be reams written on these laureates in the scientific press, much of which will be more enlightening, informative and contextually relevant than the dedicated encyclopaedia article.

oneloop 10y ago
> I get the feeling that most math-involving Wikipedia pages are simply compound regurgitations of various textbooks. You are absolutely right, because writing quality original work takes effort, and writing quality original maths work takes 100x more effort. > This is kind of a cop-out Call it whatever you want, but the fact remains that some subjects are more complex than others. Complex matters take more effort to write about, and there's fewer people qualified to write about them. When these two factors come together, you see regurgitated stuff. If you think that everything is equally simple if you explain it the right way, you're sorely mistaken about the nature of reality. All this reminds me that I shouldn't be spending my own effort on HN :D
- euyyn 10y ago
  He didn't really say nor imply it'd take an equal amount of effort.
nonbel 10y ago
I 100% agree about wikipedia and math/physics topics. They give the distinct impression that either 1) The person writing them does not understand the topic or 2) The people working on the topic are not doing anything connected to reality. However, I must disagree with your claim that the scientific press will do better. As part of their coverage of the physiology prize they made up a new term "cell recycling" that will waste the readers time when they try to look up what it is about. As long as they are technically correct, the math wikipedia pages are at most useless.
ghaff 10y ago
Although even that Leaf article highlights some unfortunate Wikipedia tendencies such as the tendency to unnecessarily insert pseudo-academic jargon. Take the third sentence: "Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves collectively." With two footnotes even. This could easily have been worded as something along the lines of "Leaves are collectively referred to as foliage, as in "autumn foliage."
- wahern 10y ago
  Except the former shows that "mass noun" is a thing. And indeed the phrase was a hyperlink to a fascinating page discussing the concept. Unfortunately, somebody took your criticism to heart and changed the page to your formulation https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leaf&type=revision&diff=742673936&oldid=741796479 excising the hyperlink in the process. Your phrasing would be better were Wikipedia not a hyperlinked encyclopedia. Because Wikipedia is a hyperlinked encyclopedia, it's perfectly acceptable and even preferable to use stilted phrasing when it benefits the concise exposition of related concepts.
  - wahern 10y ago
    In law school we were taught that it's preferable to use simple English phrasing--so-called plain language--in legal writing, and to avoid terms of art. But look at what that has wrought in reality--legal instruments that are dozens of page longer than necessary, more often than not with dictionaries prepended. They're more inscrutable than ever, and arguably more difficult to approach for both layman and jurist. Archaic legal writing relied heavily on terms of art. Terms of art, IMHO, provided many benefits, including 1) concision, 2) consistency, and 3) signaling. Concision because terms of art are a way to reference more complex concepts that you don't need to spell out. Consistency because widespread use of terms of art meant that there was only one way to say something; if you used other phrasing it was presumed you meant something different than what was meant by a related term of art. And signaling because using a term of art made it clear and obvious you were referring to some concrete legal concept, even if the reader wasn't familiar with it. Notably the shift to "plain language" legal writing did not in the least change expectations in the legal community regarding the consistency and signaling aspects of legal language. Today, instead of using terms of art, lawyers literally copy+paste whole blocks of long-winded clauses. IMO, all three of those aspects--concision, consistency, and signaling--should likewise be emphasized in an encyclopedic text, _especially_ in the context of hyperlinked text. Different contexts require using language differently. You wouldn't criticize a musician for using a different style of prose, right? It's not just the medium that dictates how we phrase things, but the context and function of the communication.
Rylinks 10y ago
>In the coming days there will be reams written on these laureates in the scientific press, much of which will be more enlightening, informative and contextually relevant than the dedicated encyclopaedia article. In my experience, the scientific press usually does not know what they are talking about, and relying on them for enlightenment or information is dangerous.

davidivadavid 10y ago

I think the main issue here is not so much in choosing between including every prerequisite in every page or not, but in adding a meta-level of information that allows people to consume the prerequisites more easily. When you open a Wikipedia article about a complex subject, it's expected that you're going to do a lot of background reading. The problem is that you start surfing Wikipedia with a BFS/DFS approach, when it would be a lot more efficient if the articles were organized more systematically to lead to a gradual understanding of the subject.