On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:50 AM, David Lindsey <[email protected]> wrote: > I hope that the following will help to provide a littler more clarity. I > have listed those articles that clearly failed and those that were > borderline along with a brief summation of some of the most significant > points raised by the reviewers.
Thanks for the expansion, it's helpful. > Clear failure: > 3) California Gold Rush: The reviewer criticized the quality of writing, > comparing it to that of a high school junior. He also noted several > omissions, but mentioned that if the intended audience for the article was > high school students (this of course is not the case) most of these could be > forgiven. He wrote that due to poor-quality sourcing and many omissions the > article would not be worthwhile for serious readers. Wait: high school students aren't our audience? I think one thing that causes a lot of confusion about Wikipedia is we have no clear audience -- the general assumption has been that we're writing for the educated layperson; I'd take that as a smart person with a general high school education, with deviations from this where the technical nature of the subject warrants it. By and large I think our articles tend to end up on the overly technical side (see: all of the medical, math & engineering articles). But what does the reviewer mean by a "serious reader" in this case, I wonder? A college freshman? A historian? A layperson who is really, really interested in the gold rush? This of course doesn't excuse poor sourcing or omissions, or bad writing, but I wonder who the reviewer imagines the audience of a general encyclopedia to be. -- Phoebe -- * I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers <at> gmail.com * _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
