Wikipedia’s Science Articles Are Elitist | Hacker News Reader

Wikipedia’s Science Articles Are Elitist

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17 pointsphr4ts18 comments

What's wrong with the articles written by experts for people who seek deeper knowledge? It's not like many people read articles on advanced math on their spare time during coffee break. I like Wiki precisely for the fact that I can find most of technical material I need on certain topic in a single place as opposed to shuffling back and forth through the hundreds of pages on a book. If you can't apprehend a certain topic, it means you need more background in a certain field and you should start from more simple topics. I hate this trend of "dumb everything down" -- expertise require work and dedication, you can't expect to be able to read Wiki article on advanced technical topics in 2 minutes and think you know it.

I agree that there is a fine line between dumbing down and making a topic accessible to a broader audience. However, most authors these days definitely err on the side of being elitist including, unfortunately, Wikipedia.

I, for my part, am back to buying books on certain topics, just because Wikipedia has become obtuse.

These "elitists" give their own spare time to write Wiki articles for no compensation, calling them like this is simply rude imho. Yes, I agree that there are many articles that lack proper introduction or are low quality overall, but that's the whole point of Wikipedia -- if you see something is missing, you can make it better. It's a voluntary activity, you can't demand anything here, or even more so, blame somebody, who actually did something, for not putting enough effort to make it more accessible.

(1) I did not call them elitists, I said they err on the side of being elitist.

(2) Of course I can criticize their work, even if their effort is voluntary, and no obligation to help arises from that.

(3) I'm not demanding anything, I simply turn toward other sources.

If the intention of Wikipedia volunteers is to make knowledge accessible, they are doing an increasingly bad job. Letting them know that is a service, IMO.

>If the intention of Wikipedia volunteers is to make knowledge accessible, they are doing an increasingly bad job. Letting them know that is a service, IMO.

I think 'make knowledge accessible' has too many interpretations to say that article complexity leads to a bad job of it.

I'm sure a Korean-Sengalese dictionary is very accessible, but not to me. A single page that gets every reader from A to B regarding the same knowledge/concept is rarely possible. It's a little reminiscent of Feynman's famous answer to 'How do magnets work?'.

I wonder if the author of the article had found https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page before sitting down to write. If they're not simply engaging in wishful thinking, perhaps they actually want a fork of Wikipedia's STEM articles, with train tracks and mouse-over 'ELI16' definitions.

Ok, so let's be more precise.

What I expect an accessible work to do is to explain things using terms that are as simple as possible. This does not mean to explain it like the reader was a child but, most of all, to avoid one simple pitfall:

Imagine you learn A, then learn B (which builds on A), and finally learn C (which builds on A and B). Now you have the knowledge to explain A more correctly and elegantly in terms of C, and you do so.

However, your beautiful and correct definition of A depends on C, which depends on B, which depends on A. So your reader has to understand C in order to grasp A and A in order to grasp C.

This pitfall has nothing to do with necessary complexity -- not avoiding it is simply bad didactics.

I don't necessarily agree with this. Many of the articles could do a better job at unpacking the material. Take a look at some of the more technical articles for math, there is a significant lack of examples, and even the pages that have examples lack the explanation about why the example is important/useful.

"If you cant explain it in such a way that somebody who never heard of it does understand it, you did not understand it."

The problem is that you trying to perfect the article by your own admission do not write for the wikipedia audience.

Articles on wikipedia should not be watered down for the common masses, especially if those articles require equations/mathematics that underpins them. In the following quote "In making the general point that science uses its intrinsic difficulty as a mechanism for enforcing an otherwise artificial exclusivity" the author doesn't want to accept the fact that, if every science article on wikipedia or for that matter on any website is written for novices, then it would needlessly become lengthy.

Also for many such articles the reference links would point to the articles for gaining a more fundamental understanding of the subject.

There's always https://simple.wikipedia.org

I suspect most of these wikipedia articles end up fairly technical because they're written by bored graduate students.

This the place where the more accessible content should go. If you find it elitist that you would need to read a simplified version... that's your ego hurting, don't make that other people's problem.

I am all for science education, and ultimately I agree with the sentiment that it would be nice to have a repository of easy-to-understand articles about technical topics.

However, I still can't help but feel that this is a profoundly selfish point (probably because of the negative connotations of "elitist"). I don't think articles should be simplified for the minority of readers that don't have sufficient background. Most people who read about electroweak interactions or graphene won't be laymen. Shouldn't the articles cater to them?

Not everything is easy, science can intrinsically be hard, and I am not being elitist for pointing this out.

Many articles could use a plain-language introduction, and I think it is even the policy that they should have one.

But as an "expert", I've found one of the articles they mention - Electroweak Symmetry Breaking - really useful, "gnarly formulas" and all. At least I read it when learning particle physics, and I used it to double check the formula for (gamma, Z0) in my thesis.

There are many things I don't like about Wikipedia, but I do like that articles often have technical depth - and you can always read related articles or references if you need more context.

It's really a question of who they intend it to be a resource for: the occasional curious layman, the amateur enthusiast, the undergrad, the actual scientist who is probably using it just to check they remembered the equations right.

The present article looks useful to all but the first category. Rewriting it for them would make it less useful for the rest.

I'd argue it's most useful as it is.

The author says, "I have no idea who the article exists for because I'm not sure that person actually exists: someone with enough knowledge to comprehend dense physics formulations that doesn't also already understand the electroweak interaction or that doesn't already have, like, access to a textbook about it."

As a point of contrast, I'm sitting next to just such a person - my partner. He grew up in the inner-city and doesn't have a college degree, but has self-taught himself a number of high-level technical and other subjects using Wikipedia as a primary resource. To give him credit, he is very self-motivated and willing to read carefully in order to fully understand a subject.

That being said, I doubt he is the only such person. It seems a bit presumptuous of the author to assume that there is no one without high-level academic training who is willing to take the time to understand a technical Wikipedia article.

In addition, when the author says (in his comment below), "However, your beautiful and correct definition of A depends on C, which depends on B, which depends on A. So your reader has to understand C in order to grasp A and A in order to grasp C. This pitfall has nothing to do with necessary complexity -- not avoiding it is simply bad didactics", he is almost critiquing the idea of concepts that depend on other concepts. It is very difficult to define something well in isolation from its component topics. For example, when my partner started to read about the RSA algorithm, he had to go back to read about modular arithmetic so as to understand the math behind the algorithm. He then worked out the math on paper to more fully understand it. There is no way to explain how the RSA algorithm works in-depth without referring to prior subjects, and the same is true for many other subjects, including the very subject of the article - elitism. In order to understand the concept of elitism, you need to understand what an elite is and what social class is. It wouldn't make sense to explain elitism without those prerequisites. So the author's article actually ends up disproving his own point.

The problem is not elitism, the problem is that most Wikipedia articles are not excellent. Just merely good enough. And most of 'good enough' is just being something and that something being available and reasonably correct. Compared to Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia is clearly better in terms of topic existence and availability. Reasonable correctness depends on whether not saying anything is better than a mediocre article and the weight given to the circulation of old print encyclopedias and the outdated information these contain versus the ability of anyone to vandalize a Wikipedia entry + the number of outdated Wikipedia articles.

It's also worth considering that Wikipedia is also a resource for experts (or at least the near experts that populate the internet). Wikipedia is not just one business venture with a market segmentation plan.

In my experience, most people are generally uneducated about science and math. People educated in science and mathematics are not "elitist", they just have a better understanding of reality. Wikipedia does a pretty good job of explaining things.

Incidentally, phr4ts is using the word "elitist" incorrectly. The dictionary definitions are:

... Relating to or supporting the view that a society or system should be led by an elite. (adj)

... Demonstrating a superior attitude or behavior associated with an elite. (adj)

... A person who believes that a society or system should be led by an elite. (noun)

Alt title: Wikipedia Readers Shouldn't Need Science Degrees To Digest Articles About Basic Topics'

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