Text book, encyclopedia or magazine?

[Chris Day]

http://pilot.citizendium.org/wiki/Talk:Scientific_method

This issue has come up on the scientific methond article and has reached a bit of an impasse. So which one are we?  A bit of all three?

Is our goals to be replicating a text book or britannica style ?  Why can't citizendium do its own thing? Accuracy is critical but i see no problem in experts cherry picking their favourite examples to present in a more essay-like format.

Is there room for more magazine-like commentary, and if so, should they act as an interface, feeding to more textbook like articles? Or should they stand on their own merits?

[Zachary Pruckowski]

I think there's something to be said for doing our own thing.  I think that our format and style should be whatever whatever achieves our goal of providing unbiased, accurate, verifiable information to our readers.

That doesn't answer your question, but instead tries to identify the more generalized question we need to answer.

I commented on the specific article on its talk page (or at least, I will in a second, if home-cooked dinner from Mom doesn't interrupt).

[Derek Harkness]

We are, I think, supposed to be an encyclopedia - akin to Britannica. However, I can see merits in taking an alternative focus.

WP is quite focused on the encyclopedia concept. This focus constrains many factors such as page format, writing voice and style, article subjects, length of articles and what should be deleted or kept. These constraints usually follow form trying to mimic the paper based encyclopedias. Obviously, paper based encyclopedias are constrained by their medium. There is only so much you can fit into the encyclopedia. Our medium is not paper based. There is not much constraint on the size of our publication. So should we try to mimic existing encyclopedias as closely as WP does?

I would suggest we have the opportunity to make something that surpasses what is typically contained in an encyclopedia. While we probably would want to have a comprehensive collection of encyclopedic content, there could be scope for including a more diverse range of content.

[Chris Day]

from the talk page at scientific methods:
"I thought CZ is a free enyclopaedia and not a free magazine. I thpught CZ is a Wikipedia fork, which aims for better content and better organization, but for the same thing: namelly a free encyclopaedia. But maybe Larry did not define this clearly, and I was misslead. I do not see any reason in doing a free magazine.

For me it is obvious that high quality is a more important aspect for CZ than enjoyability (I do not know the best phrase).

I do not see any reason just to try to create something else, while you even do not know, what is that else. I do not contribute to a project, without a clear concept." --Matthias Brendel 03:34, 7 March 2007 (CST)


Matthias, I'm not trying to suggest that we create something else but I think an encyclopedia can be enjoyable too. This is a modest goal but essential to attract new readers and teach them to love knowledge. Kids have a very short attention span, but once you have their attention who knows what could happen. For me, one of the goals is to get their attention, so readbility and enjoyability are essential for CZ to be worthwhile. My highest priority, however, is accuracy and this is where wikipedia can be very weak, at least in my field of biology. With respect to quality, why do we have to lose enjoyability to achive a high quality product? Wouldn't something that is accurate AND enjoyable be of the highest quality?

[Sean T. Smith]

Maybe Matthias is concerned that simplification, with a view to increase the attractiveness to kids, inevitably leads to some loss of accuracy. Look out for my proposal/thread on the subject, that I hope will satisfy almost all readers expectations and prevent author's from leaving the project on the basis of articles not conforming to the standards they had hoped for.

[Chris Day]

Maybe Matthias is concerned that simplification, with a view to increase the attractiveness to kids, inevitably leads to some loss of accuracy.

I don't think that simplification has to result in a loss of accuracy. Certainly the complete picture is often lost, but is that comparable to a loss of accuracy?

[Sean T. Smith]

I don't think that simplification has to result in a loss of accuracy. Certainly the complete picture is often lost, but is that comparable to a loss of accuracy?

I don't think that simplification necessarily has to result in a loss of accuracy but I think that it often (usually?) does. For example, at A-level, we are taught that genetic translation occurs when the codon exactly matches the anticodon. Given any codon, we could come up with (what we though was) the correct anticodon. We weren't told anything about wobble hypothesis or inosine. I thought that 64 codons necessitated 64 tRNA molecules. Simplification in action!!

[Robert Winmill]

We are, I think, supposed to be an encyclopedia - akin to Britannica. However, I can see merits in taking an alternative focus.

WP is quite focused on the encyclopedia concept. This focus constrains many factors such as page format, writing voice and style, article subjects, length of articles and what should be deleted or kept. These constraints usually follow form trying to mimic the paper based encyclopedias. Obviously, paper based encyclopedias are constrained by their medium. There is only so much you can fit into the encyclopedia. Our medium is not paper based. There is not much constraint on the size of our publication. So should we try to mimic existing encyclopedias as closely as WP does?

I would suggest we have the opportunity to make something that surpasses what is typically contained in an encyclopedia. While we probably would want to have a comprehensive collection of encyclopedic content, there could be scope for including a more diverse range of content.

Today was the first time I've looked at this thread.  Interesting thought "Text book, encyclopedia or magazine."  I think that this list could be expanded for CZ.  Because, CZ will by it's nature of being born on a multimedia foundation, transend these printed standards.   CZ will, with the fullness of time, be the source of ALL  information that users will not have to worry about using.

[Derek Harkness]

I happened to be looking a Britannica today. It is worth noting that they included multimedia, maps, flags, images, video and magazine article related to the topic.

There is a discussion about subpages going on else where. We already have non encyclopedia pages such as lists, catalogs and galleries. For example [[Biology/gallery]]. Could this format be expanded so that more forms of media be included?

[Thomas Simmons]

Who we write for and how it effects our style

Has anyone considered a posted reading level, readability scores, that sort of thing, for these articles? If you want to write about complex issues we probably all accept that the article will become jargon dense, and technical and this will significantly effect the style and register we write here. 

On the other hand, an attempt to simplify things for the lower levels would change the register as well.

The reason for considering this here is that the ambiguous terms used in approval standards are wide open to interpretation. What is the median reading level of a first-day-in-class-just-graduated-from-high-school-and-spent-the-last-three-months-of-summer-forgetting-pretty-much-everything-he/she-learned-over-the-past-few-years freshman? What is that same person's median reading level 2 years later? They are both undergraduates.

Articles here that convey very basic levels of understanding, e.g. covalent bonding, gas laws and the unit of a mole, are freshman level stuff and frequently being studied the first few weeks or months of school.

The Point:
The articles for these basic concepts need to be spun for high school students because those are the people who will be reading them, not someone busy picking their graduate programme for the following year.

If we display the reading level scores we can help the most appropriate audience identify their needs here.

I am not saying it will be easy but it is possible.

From Approval Standards [http://en.citizendium.org/wiki/CZ:Approval_Standards]

The standards of a good Citizendium article are complex, and only summarized here:
University-level. Millions of topics can be treated at a level accessible to the average university student, or approximately the level of Encyclopedia Britannica or The New York Times. Certain topics cannot be treated except for specialists, and thus may be more advanced in presentation. In the future, the Citizendium Foundation may start separate projects for a children's encyclopedia, as well as an encyclopedia aimed specifically for specialists.

[Aleta Curry]

I touched on this in the other thread. Catering for all audiences.