Wikipedia talk:Readers first

message: I disagree strongly with readers first. For a very strange reason perhaps:
It divides people into editors and readers. 
Our foundation principles state that  everyone is an editor!
All of our process is designed around the ability to edit pages.
Most people (probably you included) are editing wikipedia either because it's fun, and/or because it's useful for themselves. Why *else* would they contribute?
Kim Bruning 00:52, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the important thing to get out of Wikipedia:Readers First is that the person writing the article is not the same as the person who will be reading it. Yes, that other person will also be a (possible) editor, but that doesn't mean we aren't different people who have different backgrounds. --malathion talk 01:15, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  It's like with jetliner oxygen masks, always write for yourself first, then think of others. Otherwise there's a chance that neither you nor others will ever see anything at all! :-) Kim Bruning 01:20, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  How do you think that analogy applies here? --malathion talk 01:30, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  At the risk of repeating myself, people generally edit wikipedia to scratch their own itch, or to fix a shortcoming for themselves, (or because it's fun, of course, but that comes later! :-) ), so to get started, well, making edits for yourself is no big deal. If you then later edit some more to improve for others, that's nice, or someone else might have already fix your work for fun of course :-) Kim Bruning 01:44, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Generally, I would say that what's fun about Wikipedia is not just the writing, but the idea of writing something that will be useful to someone else. I think this is a useful tip to help people to make their edits more encyclopedic and constructive for others. --malathion talk 01:50, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Except where it discriminates between readers and editors, which I'm not too pleased about :-) Kim Bruning 02:10, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

text: Perhaps we could find a better name for the policy, that doesn't make the sharp distinction between intellectual editors and simple readers. How about Wikipedia:Write for your mother? ;-) — Matt Crypto 11:33, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Readers vs editors 

message: I like this. I think it is a good codification of common sense, and is very valuable as a general guideline to point people at. I'm not sure we need to make it a concrete policy, though; working out a sensible level of assumed technical knowledge from the reader is, and should remain, a judgement call by editors. For example, many maths articles (C0-semigroup) are never going to be written in such a way that the average high-school student can grasp, nor should we bother, because these are deeply technical topics that the average high-school student would never have a need to look up. (My candidate for "Incomprehensible Article of the Week" would be Plastic -- we all think we know what plastic is in everyday use, but this article doesn't really help the everyday reader understand the topic). — Matt Crypto 11:29, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I also strongly disagree with this: "explain all jargon clearly on the article page - a link to another article is not enough". Part of the usefulness of links is that they eliminate much of the need to clutter the article with footnote or parenthetical remarks to explain a concept; the link is sufficient to explain the concept to any reader without the requisite knowledge. I would suggest changing this to, "Consider briefly explaining obscure jargon inline, rather than relying on links to other articles, particularly if the expected audience of the page is unlikely to be familiar with the term." or something. — Matt Crypto 11:42, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm with Matt on this one. Could you imagine if all the jargon in C0-semigroup had to be explained in the article? It would entail instructing the reader in mathematics up to the level where they'd be sufficiently educated to understand the concept, all done right there in the article! The ability to link to other articles where you can get an explanation of a term is surely one of the defining characteristics of the hypertext model we employ. This is why our article count can't readily be compared with traditional encyclopaedias to get a measure of our comprehensiveness. Asking editors to explain terms in the article instead of just providing a link so the reader can go and have a look if they aren't familiar with it is proposing a massive and fundamental change to the way we have always written wiki articles. Since jguk wrote this proposal I'm surprised it didn't occur to him that the cricket articles he spends much of his time on are hopeless from a jargon-explaining point of view if the reader is not expected to follow the links. Have a read of slip (cricket) or Australia v Bangladesh 18 June 2005 and imagine you're unfamiliar with cricket and incapable of following links to other articles. I can't help but think this page was just created to further the AD/BC cause in the interminable eras debate, as one of their main lines of attack is to claim readers are incapable of understanding CE/BCE. — Trilobite (Talk) 12:39, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Overly detailed articles 

message: The removal of the template implies that this page has been accepted by the community, which doesn't appear to be the case.
Jguk says above: "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."
Being that the project page sets out a box specifically designating "Guidelines", it's hard to see how the page is not proposing "guidelines".
"Drive" is defined as "an organized movement to achieve some purpose". The page is not an organized movement, it is static instruction. 
Jguk has been opposed to instruction creep in the past. If this material is kept, I don't see that it deserves its own page. Maurreen (talk) 22:57, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Template removal

message: I'm very glad that this has been written as it's absolutely spot on. There is no point in writing to a level higher than that of Mr Average - no-one who is already expert in a particular area would come reading about it in Wikipedia, but so many articles have ended up being written to that level. The articles on drugs are perfect examples: many, many people are interested in the likes of fluoxetine and paracetamol, but much of either article is inpenetrable. Let me put it this way: my mum recently wanted know more about both, and I naturally pointed her to Wikipedia. Needless to say, when I read those articles I wasn't in the least bit suprised that she'd come away disappointed. Dan100 (Talk) 22:22, July 30, 2005 (UTC)
: You say, "no-one who is already expert in a particular area would come reading about it in Wikipedia". I strongly disagree. As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia is a reference work, not a textbook, and experts are always using reference works. Few people can store all the knowledge they need in their heads, even when they are thoroughly familiar with a field. I don't disagree with the need to factor in the needs of "Average" readers, but we shouldn't exclude the needs of "Expert" readers also. — Matt Crypto 22:47, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  EEK, AARGH! Dangerous meme! Now you guys are dividing between editors and readers too, Let's not do that! Can't we rename delete this page? Kim Bruning 23:46, 30 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  Erk, sorry, but I'm afraid I'm not sure where you're coming from here ;-) Where was I suggesting a division between those who read and those who edit? Reading and editing are actions available to everyone: all who edit read at some point (one would hope!), and many of those who read edit. But regardless of whether someone edits or not, we're discussing the extent to which we make pages accessible to everyone who reads, or "readers" in a shorthand word. I was arguing that experts may read about topics they already know a lot about (they will edit too, hopefully, but that's beside the point). — Matt Crypto 10:26, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Spot on 

message: I have a single, simple recommendation for anyone who is concerned about accessibility. Rather than preaching and magnifying instruction creep, instead simply proceed in normal Wiki fashion:
# Select an article which you find difficult to understand.
# Come up with some questions that you'd like answered.
# Ask them on that article's talk page, or on Wikipedia:Reference desk.
# Integrate the answers with the article, or ask the answerers to do so.
# Repeat with a new article.
There is no need for any "movement", and certainly no need to pound on the spurious, harmful Readers-vs.-Editors myth.
By the way, I'd like to specifically repudiate and condemn the claim that "there is no point in writing to a level higher than that of Mr Average". When I read an encyclopedia entry, I do so to raise my level of knowledge of the subject matter. If the article is so simplistic that it is unable to tell me anything I don't already know, it fails. Likewise, if the article uses dumbed-down language in an effort to avoid "jargon" (that is, precise language used by practitioners), then it leaves me unable to talk about the subject with anyone who really does know it. (Experts use jargon not to obfuscate, but because jargon offers a level of precision unavailable in ordinary language. This is as true in science as it is in knitting.) --FOo 16:55, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Practical guide to building accessibility 

message: As an editor of many years, this is the first time I have stumbled across this. What a superb brief summary. I should like to expand it, but that of course would not be the point – do you know how many pages WP:MOS has? I don't!
I may, however, quote it in WP:RFD, my usual hangout and (you may have guessed) a near typo to this. It encapsulates what we try to do at RfD: Not what is "right" in some abstract editor way, but what will serve our readers best? We must make educated guesses across the realms of all topics, but we have a good bunch who sort it out as best we can, without malice and with much intelligence It's  good place to hang out since there is such a variety of topics from across the speculum.
Superb. Si Trew (talk) 07:03, 25 October 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brilliant summary 

message: The main point of this essay (which could use a nutshell, btw) seems to be that editors should keep in mind readers, many of whom may be different than themselves. I'm looking for an essay to cite that expresses something similar but very distinct from this: that the interests of editors and readers are distinct, and that content in mainspace should be tailored for readers rather than editors. Such an essay would be cited, for instance, to rebut proposals to further blur the front-end and back-end portions of WP, or to explain the differences between Wikipedia and WP:About. Does such an essay exist? Sdkb (talk) 06:57, 14 March 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Update: I found pretty much what I was looking for in WP:READER, which was very unhelpfully not previously linked in the see also section. I fixed that.  talk 06:55, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Looking for something similar but not quite this