
Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment - nikbackm
http://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/12/editorial-wikipedia-fails-as-an-encyclopedia-to-sciences-detriment/
======
RadioactiveMan
"And it's not all physics and math; the entry for the Ka/s ratio, a useful
measure in evolutionary biology, assumes you already know a lot about
evolutionary biology and the genetic code."

It seems to me that any information - in an encyclopedia or anywhere else - on
a subtopic must assume knowledge of the parent topic.

Other gripes by the author seemed to be nitpicks about article quality, which
are fair but extremely minor.

~~~
ghaff
A well-written encyclopedia article should still be able to instruct a
generally educated lay reader about what a thing is and why it's notable even
if the more detailed explanation heads into depths that someone without
appropriate background may not be able to follow.

I had a very similar discussion with someone involved with the Wikimedia
Foundation earlier this year and he highlighted math/science as having exactly
this issue. Way too many articles seem to be written by people who are far
more comfortable and interested in using the equation editor than in providing
an intelligible explanation.

The problem isn't universal to be sure. But it is widespread, especially in
less popular topics.

~~~
madez
There is a formal language for mathematics because we need it for efficient
work. This formal language is intelligible, clear and instructive, given
adequate education. This formal language is mandatory to be present in an
encyclopedia.

Some articles about mathematics like for example that of determinants are
noisy for me because of the well-intentioned “educational” parts. In this
example I even think they do more harm than good for people who are struggling
with the concept.

The first part of the section “Definition” starts with explaining in horribly
ununderstandable natural language english a way to compute the determinant of
some matrix. That text is unnecessarily confusing and complex. That text also
serves as a good example where formal language can be easier to grasp than
natural language. Would you explain quicksort in natural language rather than
with a formal description?

If mathematics is taught like in that article, no wonder kids find math boring
and hard.

~~~
gohrt
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quicksort)

> Quicksort (sometimes called partition-exchange sort) is an efficient sorting
> algorithm, serving as a systematic method for placing the elements of an
> array in order. Developed by Tony Hoare in 1959,[1] with his work published
> in 1961,[2] it is still a commonly used algorithm for sorting. When
> implemented well, it can be about two or three times faster than its main
> competitors, merge sort and heapsort.[3]

~~~
detaro
Next paragraphs as well: they name and link properties it has, but also give a
short definition of them, where you'd otherwise have to follow a bunch of
links and read the definitions there.

------
tokenadult
The author of the editorial comments, "Disturbingly, all of the worst entries
I have ever read have been in the sciences. Wander off the big ideas in the
sciences, and you're likely to run into entries that are excessively technical
and provide almost no context, making them effectively incomprehensible."

I am a Wikipedian. I have been editing various articles since 2010. I have won
the Million Award[1] twice for major improvements to high-traffic articles. In
the sciences I follow most closely in my own research, the Wikipedia articles
are even worse than "excessively technical and provide almost no context," and
are often simply wrong. The worst part is that many Wikipedia articles about
science are wrong more because of omission of things that every working
scientist in each field knows than because of miscopying of correct statements
about science. Most Wikipedia articles are still very thinly sourced, and most
are based only on sources that appear online, and many of those sources are
not from professionally edited publications.

I think it would be a good idea for a rich philanthropist to fund a Free
Online Encyclopedia X Prize to see what combination of organizational,
technological, and other factors could build a team of encyclopedia-compilers
that could put together a better free, online encyclopedia than Wikipedia.
Right now, Wikipedia gets a lot of external funding, but it has a surprisingly
tiny number of active editors,[2] and the Wikimedia Foundation strategic plan
still calls for more improvement of content.[3] I think Wikipedia has exceeded
everyone's expectations, and I see people who have access to better scholarly
resources use it almost every time I'm with other scholars, but I also think
Wikipedia today is like Excite or Lycos in 1998: the best available service in
its category, but rather easily displaced by something as good as, say,
AltaVista. There is still a lot of space to make a much better free, online
encyclopedia, and some friendly competition might make Wikipedia a whole lot
better too.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Million_Award](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Million_Award)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_o...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedians#Number_of_editors)

[3]
[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Stra...](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Movement_Strategic_Plan_Summary)

~~~
jessriedel
> could build a team of encyclopedia-compilers

OK, but if we want better science articles, we need to find a way to get
practicing scientists to contribute. You can't improve the article on quantum
memory without them.

> ...that could put together a better free, online encyclopedia than Wikipedia

What's the advantage of making it separate from Wikipedia? The only one I can
think of is that you can put domain experts in charge who are allowed to
appeal to their expertise rather than verifiability. But in this case, you
want domain-specific encyclopedias rather than general purpose ones, like the
celebrated Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

~~~
ghaff
Arguably, you want better science writers to contribute who may or may not be
practicing scientists. After all, the goal probably shouldn't be to replicate
physics journal depth in Wikipedia but, rather, to provide a mainstream source
of information for those who may have some background but are not specialists
on a given topic.

~~~
jessriedel
> ...you want better science writers to contribute who may or may not be
> practicing scientists.

The practicing scientists don't necessarily need to be controlling the whole
process, but if they aren't playing an integral roll then the encyclopedia
will be bad. Even in the mainstream news, reporters know that they can't just
read a few journal articles and then start writing up a popular piece. They
have to interview scientists.

In practice, I think the only way to do this for a reasonable price is to use
non-monetary incentives (e.g., fame) to get the scientists to do at least some
of the writing themselves. But maybe someone can figure out how to start a
foundation that hires professional writers to interview scientists.

(As an aside, this does make me wonder why, when there is a collaboration
between skilled writers and skilled scientists, the writers are always in
charge and use the scientists as a resource. You'd think there'd be room for a
model where the scientist outlines all the bullet points and uses the writer
as a resource.)

> ...the goal probably shouldn't be to replicate physics journal depth in
> Wikipedia...

The question of whether to purge all physics topics from Wikipedia that have
no hope of being useful to laymen (of which there are many thousands) is more-
or-less the inclusionist/deletionist debate. Personally, I don't see why you'd
want to get rid of them.

~~~
ghaff
>As an aside, this does make me wonder why, when there is a collaboration
between skilled writers and skilled scientists, the writers are always in
charge and use the scientists as a resource.

Probably because it's the writer who is publishing the book whereas most
scientists are far more focused on journal articles. That said, I'm sure that
many of the well-known working scientists who also publish books had plenty of
editorial help--as, indeed, do most published writers.

>is more-or-less the inclusionist/deletionist debate

I'm actually mostly in the inclusionist camp myself. I think notability is
pretty hard to define because it's so dependent on context. Pretty much
everything/everyone is notable if you get local enough.

------
m3mnoch
/shrug

i guess.

i mean, what's the layman's description of a rabi cycle? anyone? if someone
can lay on me a description my very smart, but non-techy wife would
understand, i'll be happy to update the wikipedia entry.

seems like all you have to do is explain quantum physics to a layman first.
then (apparently) how a two-state quantum system interacts with an oscillatory
driving field and what that has to do with that original layman's explanation
of quantum physics.

piece of cake.

~~~
brownbat
> i mean, what's the layman's description of a rabi cycle?

Ars technica tackled that without blinking in this article from 2010:

[http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/10/riding-a-rabi-
cycle-p...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2010/10/riding-a-rabi-cycle-past-
the-limit-of-moores-law/)

It's tempting to dismiss lay explanations as impossible when you're assuming
the laymen needs a full and complete understanding of every implication. But
in lay explanations, you're not graded on completeness, you're just offering a
foothold so people know generally what you're talking about and one or two
implications.

What are we talking about? Quantum mechanics. What's that? When things are
really tiny they seem to obey unexpected rules (of physics). So quantum
mechanics describes the behavior of really tiny things. What's a rabi cycle?
So you have some of these really tiny things, and they're flipping between two
states, like a light switch. Maybe you shine a light on them to get them
excited, and when they're excited in a certain way, they flip back and forth
between these two states.

What does that get us? Maybe it helps us make lasers that have effects that
are more focused than we would expect given diffraction limits--that's the
limit of how focused light can get based on the properties of the lens you're
using.

~~~
jessriedel
There's nothing in that article that the layman can use to predict anything,
i.e., the reader will not be able to answer any questions afterwards that
aren't directly addressed in the original article. That's a sign that those
sorts of explanations give the _feeling_ of understanding, but don't actually
impart knowledge.

If someone writes "there's a war in Syria", then the reader can accurately
predict that there will be an above-average number of bombed out buildings,
and probably lots of refugees on the border. But if someone writes "Rabi
oscillations are when very tiny things flip back and forth", there are no non-
trivial questions the reader can answer. The reason is that the reader knows
roughly what "war" is and what a country is and that "Syria" is a country. But
when you tell them tiny things are flipping...all they know is that tiny
things are flipping. (Ask "do you think you can catch the tiny thing on it's
edge part way through it's flip?" Or "Do the tiny things flip faster or slower
than sound waves?" The reader will have no idea.)

In other words, "Energy makes it go!":
[http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm](http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)

------
Sideloader
Wikipedia will always be in flux. I don't use it much for looking up science
based stuff but I do check it to see what's being said about the conflict in
Syria, the Israel/Palestine conflict and other contentious geopolitical
topics. Edit warring and vandalism/inserting bias are the norm for these
pages. (I do edit entries when I have the time.) Arguably there is no "right"
answer that can settle arguments about political topicsand no matter what is
written somebody will come along and claim bias and change the wording or
delete sections they find objectionable. Pages about less publicized event
(e.g Russian-Georgian war of 2008, the Mahar Arar affair) are blatantly
slanted to one side or another and stay that way for months or even years.

The science articles I have read are sometimes overly technical or needlessly
verbose but others know more about that than I do so I can't provide examples.
If every person who posts a long rant or complaint on an entry's Talk page
took the time to edit(in good faith)the parts they think need improvement the
public would benefit by having access to better quality information. As it
stands people put a lot of energy in pointing out, often valid, flaws but very
few actually do anything about it.

Wikipedia is only as good or as accurate as its editors make it and humans,
being the strange creatures we are, have a difficult time agreeing on even
relatively basic things so it will always be a work in progress. That it
exists is a positive thing overall and to really get a sense of how accurate
an entry about a topic you know little about is reading the Talk page is a
must. And if you do know have knowledge that you think is missing from an
entry or think you can improve the wording...be bold and go for it!

------
Avshalom
Isn't the whole selling point of the hypertext format that we can follow as
many links as we need for context and foundational information?

------
a-nikolaev
Yep, wiki tries hard to be impenetrably technical

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_position](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_position)

[http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GeneralPosition.html](http://mathworld.wolfram.com/GeneralPosition.html)

------
zatkin
There's always simple.wikipedia.org for Simple English explanations of
complicated topics, though it's lacking in nearly the same size as the regular
English Wikipedia.

~~~
dingaling
"Simple" shouldn't mean "limited vocabulary". The problem isn't the words
used, it's the way the writer expresses the subject using words.

It _should_ mean gradually revealing a complicated subject by building one
simple concept upon another.

An example is explaining a rainbow; avoiding the word "refraction" would
actually make the explanation more difficult, so instead start by explaining
what refraction is.

~~~
gohrt
That's why hyperlinks exist.

------
andrewmcwatters
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curse_of_knowledge)

------
Nadya
Well if the author wants layman terms... Wiki has that: simple.wikipedia.org

example: simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Theory

As for quality: then try and improve it. Much information gets hidden or lost
in the Talk pages because of internal politics and other such pettiness.

And subtopics will always require knowledge of the parent topic. This goes for
science, mathematics, linguistics, and hell - even video games.

------
DefaultUserHN
Layman's Explanation of Gravity: Gravity is a force that pulls objects
together, the more mass an object has, the stronger the pull. The closer an
object is, the stronger the pull. On Earth, gravity pulls at 9.8 meter per
second squared. Bla bla bla.

Wiki's Explanation of Gravity: Gravity is a 3 dimensional vector that
transform another vector along the 4th dimension. On Earth, this transform can
be integrated over the 4th dimensional to bla bla bla. Given a topological
surface, this gravity vector, if the magnitude is big enough, can transform
and bend the geometric space into a hole. Bla bla bla.

Layman's Thought: What the f*ck that all that even mean?

------
swiley
Maybe if universities offered incentives to undergraduates who cleaned up some
of the articles? It would help them get recognition too.

------
ozy123
I think betterexplained.com demonstrated that there is an alternative way of
detailing information that a lot of people found helpful. Perhaps multiple
versions of a page each with a different take on explaining it, perhaps rated
versions... etc

