Unfortunately someone lobbed the "proposed policy or guideline" template on the
project page. I never intended this to be policy or guideline. It's more a drive
towards making more articles accessible to more people. After all, it's better to have
an article that can be understood by 1,000 readers rather than none at all. The point here
is that it is better still if 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 can understand and learn from it.
As far as how this is meant to pre-suppose what readers want - it only assumes that
readers want accurate and informative articles that they can understand and that they
enjoy reading. It makes no more assumptions than that. It's not meant to be a panacea
to be applied everywhere (and it will not resolve or help the BC/BCE dispute). But it may
improve other articles. Take the article on chromosomes, for instance. Don't look at
it yet. What would you expect/want such an article to offer?
I think it should tell a reader not familiar with biology what a chromosome is and why it
is important. It should explain to that same reader what it does. It may have a small
section at the end containing technical details for someone with more advanced knowledge,
but really I'd be surprised if there's much that can't be explained to a
novice.
Now look at the article.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome It tells me nothing. Not
what one is, not why it's important. To me (and I guess to anyone else who is
unfamiliar with what a chromosome really is) it is meaningless. And it's here that
Wikipedia ceases to function as a proper encyclopaedia. I also ask myself, what would it
cost to those who already know quite a bit about biology if the article was more
accessible. The answer's nothing - no information needs to be deleted, none should be
removed. It's just a question of rephrasing so that more can comprehend.
This is what Readers First is about. Encouraging editors of articles to think about their
audience - and in particular to aim for as wide an audience as possible. Einstein wrote a
best-seller on relativity and Hawkings a best-seller on time (although the later chapters
admittedly beat many people). They did show that complicated ideas can be explained to a
general population. There's no reason why we should not try to make our articles as
accessible to as
many as possible.
If there are volunteers who understand chromosomes and who have the patience to explain it
to a layman, then let me know and I'll work with them to improve the article so you
can see how much better it can get.
Jon (jguk)
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