3 ms·

These "elitists" give their own spare time to write Wiki articles for no compensation, calling them like this is simply rude imho. Yes, I agree that there are m

by kbart 9y ago

These "elitists" give their own spare time to write Wiki articles for no compensation, calling them like this is simply rude imho. Yes, I agree that there are many articles that lack proper introduction or are low quality overall, but that's the whole point of Wikipedia -- if you see something is missing, you can make it better. It's a voluntary activity, you can't demand anything here, or even more so, blame somebody, who actually did something, for not putting enough effort to make it more accessible.

nils-m-holm 9y ago
(1) I did not call them elitists, I said they err on the side of being elitist. (2) Of course I can criticize their work, even if their effort is voluntary, and no obligation to help arises from that. (3) I'm not demanding anything, I simply turn toward other sources. If the intention of Wikipedia volunteers is to make knowledge accessible, they are doing an increasingly bad job. Letting them know that is a service, IMO.
- rwnspace 9y ago
  >If the intention of Wikipedia volunteers is to make knowledge accessible, they are doing an increasingly bad job. Letting them know that is a service, IMO. I think 'make knowledge accessible' has too many interpretations to say that article complexity leads to a bad job of it. I'm sure a Korean-Sengalese dictionary is very accessible, but not to me. A single page that gets every reader from A to B regarding the same knowledge/concept is rarely possible. It's a little reminiscent of Feynman's famous answer to 'How do magnets work?'. I wonder if the author of the article had found https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page before sitting down to write. If they're not simply engaging in wishful thinking, perhaps they actually want a fork of Wikipedia's STEM articles, with train tracks and mouse-over 'ELI16' definitions.
  - nils-m-holm 9y ago
    Ok, so let's be more precise. What I expect an accessible work to do is to explain things using terms that are as simple as possible. This does not mean to explain it like the reader was a child but, most of all, to avoid one simple pitfall: Imagine you learn A, then learn B (which builds on A), and finally learn C (which builds on A and B). Now you have the knowledge to explain A more correctly and elegantly in terms of C, and you do so. However, your beautiful and correct definition of A depends on C, which depends on B, which depends on A. So your reader has to understand C in order to grasp A and A in order to grasp C. This pitfall has nothing to do with necessary complexity -- not avoiding it is simply bad didactics.

by kbart 9y ago

nils-m-holm 9y ago

(1) I did not call them elitists, I said they err on the side of being elitist. (2) Of course I can criticize their work, even if their effort is voluntary, and no obligation to help arises from that. (3) I'm not demanding anything, I simply turn toward other sources. If the intention of Wikipedia volunteers is to make knowledge accessible, they are doing an increasingly bad job. Letting them know that is a service, IMO.

rwnspace 9y ago
>If the intention of Wikipedia volunteers is to make knowledge accessible, they are doing an increasingly bad job. Letting them know that is a service, IMO. I think 'make knowledge accessible' has too many interpretations to say that article complexity leads to a bad job of it. I'm sure a Korean-Sengalese dictionary is very accessible, but not to me. A single page that gets every reader from A to B regarding the same knowledge/concept is rarely possible. It's a little reminiscent of Feynman's famous answer to 'How do magnets work?'. I wonder if the author of the article had found https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page before sitting down to write. If they're not simply engaging in wishful thinking, perhaps they actually want a fork of Wikipedia's STEM articles, with train tracks and mouse-over 'ELI16' definitions.
- nils-m-holm 9y ago
  Ok, so let's be more precise. What I expect an accessible work to do is to explain things using terms that are as simple as possible. This does not mean to explain it like the reader was a child but, most of all, to avoid one simple pitfall: Imagine you learn A, then learn B (which builds on A), and finally learn C (which builds on A and B). Now you have the knowledge to explain A more correctly and elegantly in terms of C, and you do so. However, your beautiful and correct definition of A depends on C, which depends on B, which depends on A. So your reader has to understand C in order to grasp A and A in order to grasp C. This pitfall has nothing to do with necessary complexity -- not avoiding it is simply bad didactics.