[WikiEN-l] Writing with our readers in mind

Sun Jul 10 15:45:09 UTC 2005

Dan Grey (dangrey at gmail.com) [050711 01:13]:

> Take, for example, paracetamol:
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracetamol#Mechanism_of_Toxicity
> What the hell does that mean?! It is, frankly, total garbage.
> Completely correct, no doubt, but meaningless to the vast amjority of
> people - and a lot of people want to know why paracetamol can kill
> them so easily.
> What to do? I have no idea.

The article validation topics include "clarity" for this reason. This can
be used to flag articles for rewriting better.

(now all we need is the feature ;-)

> Info like that can't be binned, of course. Maybe we could have
> sub-sections for it - "In depth" or something.

That can work very well indeed.  All this is, after all, an editorial
decision.

> But we need human-readable explanations too. Unfortunetly, I can't
> even begin to convert that into something that's actually
> understandable to, say, my mum, because I barely understand it myself
> :-).

This is a very real and wide-ranging issue Jguk raises - and it would IMO
be as ridiculous to assert that BC/AD is required for "clarity" as to
assert that BCE/CE is required for "NPOV". But that's not at all what I
read in the original statement.

- d.