Get Help Now! How well do you know your wikis? Do you turn to WikiLeaks? Do you search through Wikipedia? The confusion is all the more understandable given that these two sites even look alike. Well, wonder no more. Wiki was introduced to the lexicon by computer programmer Ward Cunningham in when he created collaborative software that he called WikiWikiWeb.
As reflected in the terms WikiLeaks and Wikipedia , wiki is sometimes used in creating blended words or portmanteaus : a wikiholic devotes a vast amount of time to wiki-based projects. Their paper, published in First Monday, is quite readable. In late , the Simple English version had a readability score of 80 Easy. By , this score had dropped to 70 Fairly Easy. One interesting finding in this study is how many Wikipedia articles consist of five or fewer sentences. Eliminating these short articles, the authors found that the readability score of the majority of Wikipedia Eliminating these from the calculations, the reading score for the Simple English Wikipedia came in at In fact, The authors took a further step — comparing articles with the same title between the two versions.
Comparing these, they found that the Simple English Wikipedia had an average score of The results of this study show that the readability of the English Wikipedia is overall well below a desired standard. Moreover, half the articles can be classified as difficult or worse.
This finding confirms our hypothesis that numerous articles on Wikipedia are too difficult to read for many people. The authors also created a tool you can use to test the readability of any entry in Wikipedia. There are two simple explanations for the declining readability scores in both the standard and Simple English versions of Wikipedia. In fact, experts are notoriously bad at writing for non-expert audiences.
Readability problems in medicine plague patient-education materials, for example. A study of patient-education materials aimed at parents and discussing pediatric topics found that the reading level was about four grades higher than the intended goal.
A study of patient-education materials written for family medicine patients found a similar disparity. It seems that if you want to find an area where every medical specialty group is failing, you need look no further than the readability of their patient-education materials.
I once worked on a publication aimed at patients that went through academic editors as part of its approval process. Needless to say, the publication folded, having attained a reading level only a graduate student would understand. Wikipedia is free, yet it presents readability barriers to many of its users.
This suggests that the challenge of making scientific information approachable — and therefore, accessible — is much deeper, much more difficult, and much more complex than simply removing reader funding. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own. Or you can tap the trackpad with three fingers if the gesture is selected in Trackpad preferences. If your trackpad supports force click , you can set the Look Up gesture to use that instead of a tap. See the word in the Dictionary app: Click Open in Dictionary.
Need even more definitions? Homophones, Homographs, and Homonyms The same, but different. Ask the Editors 'Everyday' vs. What Is 'Semantic Bleaching'? How 'literally' can mean "figuratively". Literally How to use a word that literally drives some pe Is Singular 'They' a Better Choice? The awkward case of 'his or her'.
Take the quiz. Our Favorite New Words How many do you know?
0コメント