> we should not dumb down articles Exactly!
On Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Henning Schlottmann<[email protected]> wrote: > Dennis During wrote: > >> It might be possible to rely on a population of academics as contributors >> but there needs to be a mechanism to make sure that the needs of our actual >> users have appropriate weight in decision making > > Who are our actual users? Students are of course well known to use > Wikipedia excessively. > > But do we know how many professionals and other people from the general > public use Wikipedia every day? One of the most active contributors to > de-WP once told the story that he was at a pediatric with his sick child > and the doctor used Wikipedia to confirm his diagnosis - of course > without knowing that the father of his patient had expert knowledge on > how this "second opinion" was written. > > I met teachers, university docents, authors, journalists, lawyers, > social workers, telcom technicians and members of pretty much any other > profession, who rely on Wikipedia for a quick lookup of something. > > My point is: We don't write for students. Our articles should be on a > level where everyone, including kids understands the introduction and > can find further information in the main text, but we should not dumb > down articles to the needs of school curriculums. > > Ciao Henning > > > _______________________________________________ > foundation-l mailing list > [email protected] > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l > _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
