5 ms·

Really? I find many math topics to be covered extremely poorly, and presume a lot of prior knowledge without linking to that knowledge. Plenty of philosophy ar

Really? I find many math topics to be covered extremely poorly, and presume a lot of prior knowledge without linking to that knowledge. Plenty of philosophy articles are also very poor. For example the page on Deconstruction, though its better than it was ~4 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

noobermin 10y ago
>Really? I find many math topics to be covered extremely poorly, and presume a lot of prior knowledge without linking to that knowledge. At what level, an ELI5 level or the level of people who are actually going to look that stuff up?
- Larrikin 10y ago
  I think all articles should be at formers level since people with a deeper knowledge will be using sites, books, etc where that deeper knowledge is assumed. If they aren't already they can get started by reading reading the sources in the article
  - noobermin 10y ago
    It is an encyclopedia, not a collection of tutorials. That seems more appropriate for something like wikibooks. Otherwise, every single article would be in inordinately long with a lot of redundancy. I like it better in which pre-requisites are often linked to other pages, so you can brush up on the pre-req's if you don't understand them.
  - throwaway2048 10y ago
    wikipedia is a reference, reference material isnt teaching material.
- ghaff 10y ago
  Many of them seem to be written/edited by people who are more interested in using an equation editor than in trying to explain the topic. I don't necessarily expect ELI5 level but I wonder how many people who don't already understand the topic in depth can decode most of those math pages. They dive into a lot of jargon and rarely attempt to provide any real context that a non-specialist can understand. I understand that it's hard to do and it also reflects the fact that Wikipedia pages are wildly variable in the audience they're written for.
  - milesrout 10y ago
    It's an encyclopaedia. A reference. It's not intended that anyone can open any random page and understand all of it.
hackuser 10y ago
> Plenty of philosophy articles are also very poor Try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; it's amazing and authoritative, written by the experts. And free (but takes donations!). You'll never look up a philosophy topic in Wikipedia again. https://plato.stanford.edu/ https://plato.stanford.edu/

noobermin 10y ago

>Really? I find many math topics to be covered extremely poorly, and presume a lot of prior knowledge without linking to that knowledge. At what level, an ELI5 level or the level of people who are actually going to look that stuff up?

Larrikin 10y ago
I think all articles should be at formers level since people with a deeper knowledge will be using sites, books, etc where that deeper knowledge is assumed. If they aren't already they can get started by reading reading the sources in the article
- noobermin 10y ago
  It is an encyclopedia, not a collection of tutorials. That seems more appropriate for something like wikibooks. Otherwise, every single article would be in inordinately long with a lot of redundancy. I like it better in which pre-requisites are often linked to other pages, so you can brush up on the pre-req's if you don't understand them.
- throwaway2048 10y ago
  wikipedia is a reference, reference material isnt teaching material.
ghaff 10y ago
Many of them seem to be written/edited by people who are more interested in using an equation editor than in trying to explain the topic. I don't necessarily expect ELI5 level but I wonder how many people who don't already understand the topic in depth can decode most of those math pages. They dive into a lot of jargon and rarely attempt to provide any real context that a non-specialist can understand. I understand that it's hard to do and it also reflects the fact that Wikipedia pages are wildly variable in the audience they're written for.
- milesrout 10y ago
  It's an encyclopaedia. A reference. It's not intended that anyone can open any random page and understand all of it.

hackuser 10y ago

> Plenty of philosophy articles are also very poor Try the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; it's amazing and authoritative, written by the experts. And free (but takes donations!). You'll never look up a philosophy topic in Wikipedia again. https://plato.stanford.edu/ https://plato.stanford.edu/