Wikipedia talk:Make technical articles accessible

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Contents 1 Article tagging 2 Propose change of guideline 2.1 Trampolines 3 Are you guys quite crazy?? 3.1 Scientific American Quality 3.1.1 Three things about the Math. Intelligencer 4 Complaints about proposal 4.1 More complaints about the proposal 5 comment on subst: 6 Differing Needs 7 Improvements benefit everyone 8 Template placement 9 Endorsing the proposal 10 Prerequisites 11 Keep or Not 12 Merge 13 Changes made 14 How Scientific American does it

[edit] Article tagging

Would this tag also be appropriate for articles such as Jacoby transfer, where obscure card game lingo is being used? Just want to be sure, thanks. func(talk) 30 June 2005 01:06 (UTC)

Oh, interesting. Yes, I suppose it would. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 12:15, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

hm, I would argue that this sort of tag goes on talkpages, since it is directed at editors, not at readers; obviously, as a reader, you don't need to be warned that you may not understand what is being said. this is not like a NPOV sign where gullible readers should be warned against bias, it is a request to improve the aritcle stylistically, and can very well be put to the talk page. At least for me it feels silly to be warned "you may not be able to understand this formula". Hell, let me be the judge of that. 13:50, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Propose change of guideline

Following the attachment of the technical template to the analytic continuation article, now removed, I propose a change of the content of this guideline, which now states that Articles in Wikipedia should be accessible to a general audience, to Articles in Wikipedia should be as accessible as the topic permits. As it stands, the policy is incompatible with proper coverage of many advanced mathematical concepts. For example there have been several heroic efforts to explain the significance of Lie algebras in broad terms, but there is no getting around the need for a level of training in algebra beyond that possessed by even an educated nonspecialist audience in order to really grasp what is going on.

I'd also like to note that since this guideline specifically talks about mathematical articles, it should have been discussed on the talk page for Wikipedia: WikiProject Mathematics, in accordance with Wikipedia: How to create policy. Possibly it would be better to demote this guideline to a proposal, to reflect the fact that the kind of reflection needed to generate consensus simply has not yet happened. Note also that there is redundancy between this guideline and Wikipedia: Audience --- Charles Stewart 02:14, 8 October 2005 (UTC) (typo removed 10 Oct)

---

What Charles said --Trovatore 02:32, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Charles. Paul August ☎ 02:38, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Strong agreement with Charles. My specific objections to this guideline are:

1. It has been created by a small group, and there is no evidence that it represents "the concensus of many editors", which is an essential qualification for a gudeline.
2. I have seen the technical tag placed on articles without any discussion or explanation, simply because one particular reader does not understand the article. Any guideline on the use of this tag should, as a minimum, say the tagger must explain their issues on the article's talk page.
3. The Math2English tag is fundamentally misguided. For example, how can you "translate" Maxwell's equations into English ? A literal translation (of one of them) might be The divergence of the magnetic flux density is everywhere zero - but anyone who does not understand the equation will not understand the translation either. The article should (and does) explain the implications of the equations - but there is no point in translating them.

Gandalf61 12:10, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Strongly agree with Charles. In Einstein's words (well, approximately): "Everything should be made as simple as possible — but no simpler." (BTW I anticipate a lot of opposition to this guideline change, on the basis that "Wikipedia should make information freely available to all". Get ready to fight back :-)) Dmharvey Talk 14:20, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Charles in part: if the subject of an article cannot be understood without access to prerequisite knowledge in fields too large (or too far removed from the subject) to permit sensible coverage of them in the article itself, then sense should prevail over coverage. But I hope that such articles will provide a clear explanation of the prerequisites, with links. And I hope that it is the intent (of the community rather than of any individual author) to ensure that the prerequisites include sufficient information for the reader to raise their understanding to the level necessary.

I fear that the proposed change will end up being used as a copout clause; I'd rather see the original wording retained, but amplified to say that describing and linking to prerequisites is an acceptable alternative to incorporating them. Hv 03:08, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

That's somewhat more reasonable than the current guideline. The current guideline, taken literally, is effectively a ban on advanced discussion of specialized topics. The guideline's claim that

Assisting the end reader in accessing dependencies and prerequisites should make even the most complex article interesting to new students and philes.

is simply factually incorrect.

However I think your proposal is also a bit unrealistic. We can and ought to do a better job of this, but providing a full path to learning the required background material from WP alone is probably not going to happen anytime soon. --Trovatore 05:24, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not even sure we should try to provide "a full path to learning the required background material from WP alone". Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a text book, and I think it's not possible (or, at least, very hard) to learn advanced maths and physics from an encyclopaedia; for instance, there are no exercises. Take the AdS/CFT correspondence: this article links to a 261-page introductory text, which starts at such a high level that only a handful of Wikipedians can understand it.

That being said, I do agree with the guideline "Articles in Wikipedia should be accessible to a general audience", provided the word accessible is interpreted sufficiently broadly, along the lines that Hv proposes. If the reader does not understand an article, it should be clear to him what the prerequisites are and how he can study them. So, I disagree with the second sentence (that the guideline "requires the inclusion of explanations that can be understood by most readers").

I demoted the guideline to a proposed guideline, {{proposed}}, as this discussion shows that there is clearly no consensus. I am not sure that's the correct template, but I expect to be corrected if not. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 12:15, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Let me try to rephrase Trovatore's concern about Hv's suggestion in a different way. It's not really so much about having a "complete learning path" as it is about the potential to confuse/mislead readers. The difficulty is this: suppose we have an article X, which says at the top "this article assumes some familiarity with Y", provides a link to Y, and proceeds as if the reader knew all about Y. Unfortunately it is entirely possible (even likely) that the WP article on Y doesn't really tell the reader enough about Y for them to make sense of the article on X. What we need is a concise way to say something like "This article is aimed at people who know about Y, and we really can't explain it to people who don't know about Y, and you could try looking at the WP article on Y, but you'd be better off reading a book or two or three". Dmharvey Talk 15:25, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, more or less. The thing is, I think we've really got that now. If an article starts out "In set theory,...", and you don't understand it, it seems like a pretty good clue that you need to learn some set theory if you want to understand it. I'm not in favor of cluttering up articles with templates of prerequisites. --Trovatore 15:37, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think we should think that explaining all topics to the general audience is even a desirable goal. To go back to the original article that made me aware of this guideline/proposal, analytic continuation, it is a technical concept that arose when investigating the Riemann hypothesis, and that acquired a second piece of interest through sheaf theory which excites some people for bringing geometry and logic together. The Riemann hypothesis article contains a lot of technicality, but it also contains a fair amount of material to reward the general reader. We don't really have anything for the general reader on the second point, and I think it would be good if we did have. But for an article on a technical construction lying behind these concepts of more general interest? The general reader does not often have reason to look up these concepts, and on the rare occasion they do, it is enough for them to find that it is a technical term of art in mathematics, while the mathematically literate reader is not likely to find vague handwaving talking around the concept to be what they are after. The audience for this article is not the general reader (something the much briefer Wikipedia:Audience page deals better with). --- Charles Stewart 15:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Audience is a joke that doesn't deal with anything. If anything it seems even worse than this page. --MarSch 13:14, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Trampolines

Charles: one slightly off-topic comment: I would very very much like to see the creation of a special class of math articles, which allow the naive reader to "trampoline" between basic (grade-school/high-school level) and advanced (post-doc) concepts. I nominate torus for this class, and possibly Riemann hypothesis as well (although clearly that doesn't extend down to grade school). The "trampoline articles" would be kind-of-like featured articles, in that extra special care would be taken to make them accessible, and make them into springboards into complex topics. Just as featured articles, the trampolines might get extra love an attention with regards to edits. (And, for any articles that are not trampolines, the too technical tag may be shot on sight.) linas 00:37, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Repeating this sentiment I have expressed elsewhere: articles should not be subclassed. Education-level material should go to Wikibooks, which is perfect for this sort of thing. "Entry-level" information should go in the main article along with the "technical" information. Wikipedia should endeavour to remain solely a reference work, not an educational work. Dysprosia 09:20, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

(missed this comment first-time around) Two things:

• linas' suggestion is not at all the same as subclassing, if that is what Dysprosia meant.
• I think some standardised way of indicating how much knowledge the reader needs to get something out of the article would be very good for accessibility, perhaps with pointers to where to learn. I don't think that a series of WP articles is going to suffice to enable the reader to internalise the knowledge they need to understand truly advanced topics: more like a series of wikibooks, and there doesn't seem to be much appetite to write those.

--- Charles Stewart 14:43, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Indicating required knowledge is not our responsibility. Let me repeat again, Wikipedia is/should be a reference work.

Your statement that "there doesn't seem to be much appetite to write those" hasn't much to back it up. I'd be happy to write more wikibooks (I have started some there), but they require a lot of time and effort which I don't have these days. At least a Wikibook would be written with the intent to instruct, and thus would be better suited for those wanting to learn. Dysprosia 22:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Maybe I should call them portals instead; I still want the article to be short. Look at the example of a torus. The article could give formulas for the surface area and volume, without explaining what these are, but it should use wording accessible to a grade-school or high-school student (which is when students find out about area and volume). The article should indicate that the torus can be made geometrically flat, and is of genus 1, without much explaining what these are, but still written in a jargon-free way. Thus, the interested college student may become motivative to find out what "genus" means, or to try to find out how something "obviously curved" like a torus can also be flat. Explain that the torus is an example of a topological group, and work out the group action at a level accessible to a college student, so that someone unware of topolgoical groups may be encouraged to look up and find out "what the heck is a topological group". Explain that its universal cover is R^2, that is flat space modulo a lattice, and so has a covering group of Z x Z. Note that this is analogous to how symmetric spaces and homogenous spaces are constructed in general. Next, the article might mention periodic and aperiodic orbits/geodesics and use the word "ergodic" in their description. Again, with only a light amount of explanation, but written so that the curious student may get a clue of what "ergodic" means, and might then be motivated to dig deeper. Finally, present torus as a Riemann surface, using a simple-enough language to engourage the reader to sudy Riemann surfaces and complex manifolds. The goal is to get a high-school student to realize that there's more to this torus thing than one might first guess: the torus article becomes a portal to many different branches of math. linas 23:15, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a good idea; there should be more of these articles! Do you know of others besides special relativity for beginners? ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:15, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Are you guys quite crazy??

Surely out of all the things to mentioned as "should be more accessible" science is the craziest to be chosen, and then to specifically mention maths out of all of the science seems another double dose of madness! All I can guess is that some average joes looked at a bunch of science articles and went I don't have a f**king clue as to what the heck they are going on about!! Well well, no surprises there. Because the average persons knowledge of science is quite shocking, and for maths it only gets worst with so many people being down right terrified of maths (of course I'm not implying that everybody reading this is like this, just that a sizable proportion of the population is like that). Then combine this fact with maths being an extremely heavily "layered" subject, and to get to each layer you are required to understand all the layer below it. After all it is perfectly normal to have been at Uni for a couple of years and be learning about stuff that is well of a hundred years old. Almost depressing at times (if I was a person who gets depressed that is) to think that after all those many years at school learning about maths and being at Uni for while you are still so many many many many many years behind what is currently being done (although I've at least now reached the level of current research). Oh, and lets not forget that maths is also an extremely broad subject. Quite impossible to learn everything in it to a high level (although most professional mathematicians should at least have a nodding knowledge of all of the main fields of maths). So to expect a person who may have struggle to grasp something as simple and elementary as single variable calculus to have any hope in hell of understanding well a page at random on mathematics is sheer madness! So I urge you all to not all wikipedia to be corrupted by bringing down many fine pages to the level of baby talk, as wikipedia stands now it is one of the best (maybe simple *the* best) sources for mathematics for the university level maths major, and even for the practising professional mathematician. Yet I greatly fear this will all be destroyed and swept away for good if what is said on this page is widely put into practise (and all of what I've said about maths applies to all the other sciences as well, although perhaps in same cases to a lesser extent). Mathmo 08:45, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Well after that length rant of why I think this is such an extremely bad idea to try and drag down every page to the common denominator, I ought to say also why the current system is working just fine (or could be improved a little when you see it). If a person does want to understand a topic, and is capable of doing so. Then if they can't already understand it as it stands then they can follow the links to the other pages which provide the "base material". And hopefully they shouldn't have to dig too deep before they start to understand what they are seeking, however if that isn't enough and they just have to keep on digging deeper and deeper down then they probably ought to be going back to basics anyway. To include this easier material inside the higher difficulty articles is just madness, because that is not where they belong. They belong at the lower level in their own article, and to have it in the "more technical" article would simply clog it up and make it even harder to follow and understand. As well as adding unwanted duplication to wikipedia. Mathmo 08:55, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Sooo... you could take as my main point from this, that if you don't like how an article is. Then get some words in it to be link up to some easier stuff that builds up to that article. Then if anybody struggles with a part of it they can easily follow it along and hopefully get that explained to them. Although hopefully every article is already like this, but of course that is idealistic. However that is the path for improvement, and NOT this crazy proposal. Mathmo 09:02, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Mathmo, it sounds like you're actually agreeing with Charles's proposal. Can I just check that you are aware of the history of this proposal? It is not a new proposal; in fact, until about a day ago, it was actually marked as a guideline, and has been that way since about April. Charles' suggestion was to modify it to say that articles should be made as accessible as the topic permits rather than the more inclusive as accessible as possible. Jitse changed it from guideline to proposal to reflect the lack of consensus. My apologies if I'm misunderstanding where you're coming from. Dmharvey Talk 17:27, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I think "accessible as the subject permits" is the right phrasing; and the operational test should be: is this article understandible by someone who does not yet know the subject, but has the standard background expected of someone who is about to learn it? (This may or may not be expressible as a set of prerequisites.)

For example, Dynkin diagram will be used by two classes of readers:

• People who already know what one is, and are checking some point of detail (the exact construction of E₈, for example)
• People who don't know what one is, and want to find out.

Articles should be written for the second reader; the first reader just wants to find what it says about E₈; and don't care about how the whole article is phrased as long as the ToC is clear enough to get him what he wants. Septentrionalis 01:24, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

There's an important subclass of the second group: people who have very little relevant background knowledge. The complex details will be beyond them (and quite uninteresting), but these readers will likely be interested in the origins of the subject, its practical applications, and its importance to other topics. Articles can be written to satisfy all these classes of readers, and should be.

See, I think you're just wrong about that in many cases. Many topics that well deserve articles simply do not have any simplifications that would be accessible to a person without a fair amount of specialized knowledge. --Trovatore 06:16, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Without going back to read what I said again (waaay too early in the morning for that, haven't slept), I'd presume what he just said probably was what I was going for. Because I belive that certain areas simply can not be reduced down far enough for the average user to unstand. Or even an above average user for that matter. Rather if you wish to cater for them you should have some kind of "back link", which explains the simpler stuff needed to understand the page they came to (and of course if they don't understand that page, there would be yet another back link...). I think this could be very hady, even though I'm a post graduate student in mathematics I'll from time to time come across stuff which I'm not so sure about, and even when I look it up I realise I'm still missing some more stuff which I need to know beforehand. Of course I can generally work out what it is I need to read up on myself, but a "back link" would be make it much easier and helps those who couldn't work out what background they need to get first because they might be many layers below (as opposed t myself typically only being one or two "layers" back). Mathmo 19:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

I must agree. That is a third group, for which it is often impossible for Wikipedia to provide - except, in principle, by providing all the specialized background. We do not yet do that, and may never do so. Septentrionalis 01:14, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

By the way, I encourage y'all to join WikiProject:General Audience, which has the task of implementing these ideas. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:46, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific American Quality

I am not entirely sure what is said to be crazy. What this guideline would do is to set a very high standard for the quality of technical articles that will be difficult to achieve, but is still worth trying to achieve. The ideal technical article should be at the level of understandability and technical content of a typical article in Scientific American. Most articles will not meet that standard, but it is a worthy objective. Most experts cannot write for Scientific American, but it is still a standard that they can try to meet. Robert McClenon 01:24, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

When did the Scientific American last have an article on analytic continuations? I don't mean to be fatuous, but the SA only writes articles on topics of rather broad interest. Plenty of maths topics have been having technical notices slapped on them that are on highly specialist topics. --- Charles Stewart 01:32, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

There's a certain German-published mathematics magazine I cannot remember the name of that fits this guideline as well, if I recall correctly (it's been a while since I read one). ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 01:55, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I think you mean Spektrum der Wissenschaft: it syndicates a lot of SA material, but published more and in more editions each month. --- Charles Stewart 02:03, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... that may be it, though the name doesn't sound quite right. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 02:05, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Math. intelligencer? --CSTAR 04:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's the one. ^_^ ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 05:48, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

There's a few other science oriented magazines in Germany, like Geo, but I'd say SdW is nearer SA in quality and breadth of coverage than the others. --- Charles Stewart 02:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

In almost every article I've contributed to in WP I have been aiming at the level of say Encyclopedic dictionary of mathematics, with however, an introduction that was generally accessible (if possible) to at least tell the reader the area of the article. --CSTAR 04:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

This is a good strategy in general, but the Maths space contains many articles whose scope is much more technical than an encyclopedia aimed at anyone other than professional mathematicians would tackle. In general, I think (i) WP is right to do have these articles, and (ii) I agree with what you say about the introduction, also having a history section tends to give the lay reader more to take from the article, but on articles about highly technical concepts the lay reader is rightly a peripheral concern. --- Charles Stewart 15:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

A "back link" would quickly and easily solve this without it taking up too much space in the main proper article. So if I person goes to an article and sees after the first paragraph they are way out of their depth the can "backtrack" with a "back link" to an article which is more in tune to their current abilities. Mathmo 19:36, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Three things about the Math. Intelligencer

One, I've started the Mathematical Intelligencer article. Two, I don't think we should regard it as a German journal: It's publisher is indeed Springer, but its editorial board is centred in Canada and the USA. Three, it is indeed a much better example for maths than SA, but I still don't think it would run an article narrowly on analytic continuations rather than more broadly on the Riemann conjecture or the Logic as Geometry thesis. --- Charles Stewart 15:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Complaints about proposal

1. It still suggests inserting Template:Technical at the top of articles, not talk pages, is the right thing, and now suggests that the Template:Technical_(expert) is good to insert there also;
2. It still claims Template:Math2english should be used, despite the strenuous and unrefuted arguments that it is not helpful;
3. No effort has been made to see how the proposal fits with the existing Wikipedia:Audience guideline;
4. The proposal still asserts that every article should be accessible to the general reader, citing Special relativity for beginners as a good model.

These are not the only problems that stand between me and supporting the proposal when it comes time to vote, but if the proposal is still seriously being made, then the proposers should get started on addressing all of these. It is not the task of the objectors to fix the proposal, and without repair the proposal stands the proverbial snowball's chance. --- Charles Stewart 18:06, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More complaints about the proposal

It is an admirable intention to make articles acessible, but sometimes one should pick which articles to put the {{technical}} template on. Or at least, please explain your reasoning.

I put the following text at the bottom of this article

It is requested that when you label an article too technical you put a brief explanation on the talk page or in the edit summary with comments or suggestions for improvement. This may be helpful to contributors to that article..

I would like to discuss what you think about it. Please do not revert it unless you discuss it first.

There is also a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#Frustration with make technical articles accessible policy about this issues. Good read. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:02, 12 November 2005 (UTC) Postscript current link to WP:VP discussion --- Charles Stewart 16:24, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a good addition. I think the page as it is now may be acceptable, but I'm still not convinced the widest possible audience is distinct from a general audience. I maintain there is certain nontechnical information common to all subjects, such as history, relevance, and practical consequences: nothing exists in a vacuum. ‣ᓛᖁᑐ 03:41, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

For certain subjects, the history, relevance, and practical consequences, are themselves all too technical to explain to someone without a specialized background. Of course, if you trace far enough back, you can find a connection to something a general audience knows about--but tracing that thread is not very different from teaching them the subject. It certainly can't be repeated in every article. --Trovatore 04:17, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

I liked Oleg's new paragraph, but I felt it was easily overlooked and too softly worded, so I have moved it to a more prominent position and strengthened its wording. Gandalf61 14:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

While we are at it, I also implemented some other suggestions that came out of the discussion here. As an anonymous editor wrote in the first section, and Charles Stewart in the previous section, the template should go at the talk page because it is directed to editors. Furthermore, I removed the mentioning of {{math2english}} (see the remarks of Gandalf61 in Section 2 and of Charles Stewart again in Section 4). Since nobody disagreed, I felt it was safe to do this.

In the process, I reformulated Gandalf61's latest edit which could be interpreted as that somebody who wants to use the template, should first add an explanation on the talk page and wait for comments, and only then add the template. I am not sure whether this interpretation is what Gandalf61 intended or not, but it is not present in Oleg's text, and I don't think it is necessary to have a two-phase procedure to add {{technical}}. -- Jitse Niesen (talk) 17:10, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

If the template is now being added to the talk page rather than the article page (a change which I definitely support) then I agree that a two-phase procedure is not necessary. Gandalf61 12:18, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

I have added Template:check talk to the "technical" and "technical (expert)" templates in accordance with the discussion above. --Trovatore 21:04, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] comment on subst:

I've moved this out of the main article: Trovatore 22:48, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Using subst: is a bad idea, since it both makes it harder to change the styling of the template later and makes it harder to find uses of the template. It should be done in a way which does not need subst:. --cesarb 22:42, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Oops, sorry. I had just noticed I had edited the project page instead of the talk page. --cesarb 22:57, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

So on to the merits: In AfD they ask you to use subst:, claiming that it reduces the load on the servers. Is that a serious issue? I really don't know enough about the internals to comment intelligently. --Trovatore 23:06, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

The AfD template is a transient template; there's not much problem if its style is changed but some articles keep the older style for some time. On the other hand, things like infoboxes, {{shortcut}}, talk page messages, etc., are not used with subst:. This template looks a lot like an infobox (or a "series" template).

But it's not a problem anymore; I changed the template so its header and footer are in two separate templates. This way, the template styling is kept separate from the contents, and both problems I listed above are solved. It is now more like a template, to be either used with subst: and later edited, or copied and pasted by hand, and then edited in a single save.

--cesarb 23:11, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Differing Needs

Along the same line as Charles, Some technicalities that can be condensed for the layman may need to be expanded for the expert. For example, it is simple to say that electrons in an atom are like planets orbiting in a solar system. This description will give the layman the general idea but the technical background for expert research would need to include complex clarifications like the Uncertainty Principle.

This may quickly lead to mulitple articles for different levels of experiance. How about making only seperate links to clarify difficult concepts depending on the user's level of technicality? Then you would not need to rewrite the entire article. Veritas Liberum 22:48 6 December 2005

[edit] Improvements benefit everyone

A lot of the fixes I suggest to technical articles improve them for everyone, really. I proposed some general ideas on the project page, to give people some specifics to ponder. Even simple analogies like the "solar system" model can be useful to experts in their own thinking, or at least when communicating with non-experts. Though that particular model is probably best reserved for schoolchildren, historical coverage, or something like: "People often think of electrons as spherical particles orbiting the nucleus, like planets orbit the sun. While electrons are in some sense discrete entities (they can be counted, like particles), in reality they are somewhat more complex..." I think it is preferable not to fork articles into simple and advanced versions unless there is a pressing reason. Most times, you can put introductory information up front, and get progressively more technical, and it will fit within 32k. (It doesn't fit within special relativity, which is one of the reasons there is a fork there.) Keeping everyone literally on the same page means all editors are contributing toward the same product. Otherwise, one or the other version will be missing out on updates applied to the other, like factual corrections, expansion, diagrams, additional details, social context, etc. "Background information" supplements linked inline (or at the top of a section or article) are a good compromise. It's hard to know in advance which articles, if any, need a "simple" fork, or when to separate out background material, so it's probably easier to just struggle with individual cases than try to come up with a general policy. -- Beland 20:45, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template placement

The debate about template placement (article vs. talk page) has re-opened on Template talk:Technical. -- Beland 20:47, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Endorsing the proposal

This is an excellent proposal. Too many of the technical articles on Wikipedia are written in terms that make them useful only as reminders to people who have already studied the subject at the university level, with no context that might explain to an educated nonexpert what field the article pertains to or what its general purpose might be. Durova 00:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, my knee-jerk reaction is to say that I couldn't disagree more. Take a look at Manifold -- shamefully nominated just today for featured article ... unfortunately, all of the content that made it actually interesting was removed. This article contains absolutely zilch that you wouldn't get in a college class. Its now pedestrian and banal and throughly boring. For somebody who actually has studied the topic at the university level, and wants to find out more, its a dead end piece of drivel. Even the "see also" section fails to allude to any of the advanced topics. :( I really think that a far better balance needs to be found. linas 07:31, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I endorse the proposal too, particularly with regard to mathematics. I'm an experimental physicist. I very often find that even mathematics articles on things I use and understand are nearly incomprehensible. They seem to veer off into group theory and advanced number theory on the least excuse, even when the concept can be explained perfectly well without them. This is just not a good way to make an encyclopedia article.--Srleffler 01:47, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. — Omegatron 05:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prerequisites

Prerequisites
Labor theory of value
Thermochemistry
Computational complexity theory

I am strongly opposed to any article having a box of the top with necessary prerequisites, as on the right. I don't think that is encyclopedic style. Wikipedia is a reference work, an encyclopedia, not the mother of all textbooks.

If an article introduction is well-written, there will be relevant links embedded in context, which should give a smart person enough hints of what to read first. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:34, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Oleg. These occasionally show up in articles, and are usually/always argued about. Their use should be eschewed. linas 18:22, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Oleg. I've been involved in editing the article on American Conservatism and the article on Manifolds, and I've found it much easer to get liberals and conservatives to agree than to get mathematicians to agree. The battle seems to be between those who want the mathematics articles to start out with a "This is what this area of mathematics is all about." paragraph, accesable to the layperson, and those who call this drivel, and want, for example, the article on the limit to begin, "For every epsilon there is a delta..."

One of the best pieces of advice I got on giving a mathematics talk is that everyone in the audience should understand the first ten percent of your talk and at least ten percent of the audience should understand all of it. I think this is a good criteria for a technical article as well. Someone above complains that the person who has already taken a course in the subject finds nothing new in the Wiki article. Nor should they -- other than, perhaps, an insight into what it is all about. If they want something beyond an introduction, they should turn to the research journals. Rick Norwood 19:13, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. — Omegatron 05:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Keep or Not

I'm in favor of keeping this information for reference to future editing. DyslexicEditor 08:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I think this should be merged with Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions and Wikipedia:Explain jargon.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  00:18, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Changes made

I've updated both Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical and Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible based on comments in both places. --Scott McNay 03:53, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How Scientific American does it

If you want to know how Scientific American (and its competitors) makes science accessible, I wrote an article about that. Before he died, I asked Gerard Piel how to explain science. He told me. Nbauman 05:07, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I was hoping for real tips on how to make difficult concepts accessible without compromising them. Instead, when I followed the link above, I found a depressing account of how a once-great magazine surrendered to the fifteen-second attention span.

We should be looking to Scientific American for examples of how to "make technical articles accessible"—but not the SciAm of today. Go to the library (I know, I know) and go down in the musty old stacks, and find the ones from, say, 1955 to 1980. Pick any issue at random, and read an article at random. Be prepared to give the article at least an hour; it'll be worth it. You'll learn something you didn't know, at a serious level, with no sensation of effort.

The magazine was still good into the 80s; the reason I set 1980 as the upper bound was not really the science, but because that was when (as I recall) they started to get political. --Trovatore 16:48, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

I too have been reading SciAm since 1955, and I agree with you about the decline. I think the high water mark was their September 1996 special issue on Cancer. They got a National Magazine Award, then they moved into a smaller office and hired magazine consultants to figure out how to make more money. Gerard Piel was the guy who created the concept and guided it through its greatest years, and I think his explanation is still useful.

As for politics, we don't have to agree on everything, and I disagree on that. SciAm, Science, New England Journal of Medicine, and probably all the major science magazines were always political. SciAm had articles in the 1960s (and maybe 1950s) about nuclear war strategy, and they supported the nuclear test ban, as did NEJM. I remember reading about Soviet dissidents in Science. You might call them liberal, but there are other professional magazines, and popular magazines like Popular Mechanics, that lean conservative. Scientists have always been involved in politics, politics has always been a major part of science, and a magazine that informs its scientist readers about the important things in their profession has to include politics too. (Altough the Soviet science magazines were negligent in that area.) Do a Google search for "Chris Mooney". But I digress. Nbauman 04:40, 2 November 2006 (UTC)