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There are alternative wikis for math and they’re way harsher.¹² Wikipedia is the middle ground between math wikis written by current students and professionals

There are alternative wikis for math and they’re way harsher.¹² Wikipedia is the middle ground between math wikis written by current students and professionals vs pedagogues.³ But I’d argue that if you want pedagogy or step by step proofs, then why not simply buy a well vetted textbook, of which math has many? Also, Wikipedia tried a wiki textbook project and no doubt people were very unsatisfied because they couldn’t compete with textbooks, which often have a singular pedagogical vision behind it. It’s hard to compete with famous well discussed texts. I’m happy with Wikipedia as a reference which supplements those students who are already studying the material; in other words, those students looking up topics in Linear Algebra are taking or have taken the course already. [1]: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/linear+algebra https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/linear+algebra [2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/algebra/#Lin https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/algebra/#Lin [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_algebra https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_algebra

xg15 4y ago
That's certainly true, buy I think it also makes it quite unsuited as a reference (except for people who are already familiar with the concepts and just need a quick reminder). Wikipedia math articles are not useful to get a shallow understanding of a topic. On the contrary, it pulls you into a rabbit hole of dependent concepts just for you just to be able to understand the words in the article's summary. From an actual reference, I'd expect that it gives a brief, self-contained description of the basic idea of a concept, without going too deep into specifics, possibly with a "see also". That's not what Wikipedia does.