Wikipedia talk:Explain jargon

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Contents 1 Old talk 2 Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles 3 Template 4 Rule weakness 5 Merge

[edit] Old talk

Supporters of this rule include: Larry Sanger, JerryMuelver, Tim Shell, Pinkunicorn, AyeSpy (fervently), Janet Davis, drj, GWO, tbc, AxelBoldt, Koyaanis Qatsi, Enchanter, Rotem Dan, Bensaccount Nu Aeon, Bjorn Tipling

Discussion:

Of course jargon should be explained. Unfortunately, the technique suggested (making links to pages where unfamiliar terms would be explained) will inevitably result in the deletion of the explanation when it's moved to wiktionary as a "dictionary definition". -- Nunh-huh 21:04, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Is there any other way? Bensaccount 21:39, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• Persuade people not to delete things from Wikipedia when they grab them for Wiktionary. - Nunh-huh 22:10, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

• -Shouldn't this be a no brainer? I would think that deleting any entry would be a negative. Nu Aeon

Opponents include: 24

24 - it sounds good, but really, you should be avoiding jargon in most articles - where it's impossible to avoid, of course, I support this rule. But remember, much jargon overlaps between fields and someone clicking down may well find that a "term of art" has become fuzzed out by many definitions. Imagine ontology, for instance, a branch of metaphysics, or a practice of knowledge representation? The article written for one will be incomprehensible to the person who is expecting the other.

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Can this be modified to include trying to be reasonable about one's use of jargon? If I have to look up six words in the first sentence, and for half of them I have to look up another two words just to understand the explanations, I could end up reading twelve articles just to form a basic understanding of one sentence. The goal is to make communication easier, not more difficult. It's okay to use a specific technical term if it means exactly what you want it to mean, but if every other word has to be linked to an explanation, that's probably excessive. [[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 21:20, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

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I think you can have some common-sense expectations about the audience of particular articles. If someone is reading cell (biology), they well may not be aware of protein as anything but something-or-other that's in food. I haven't looked, but I'm confident the word protein is a link in that article. If they're reading CD133, they can reasonably be assumed to have a pretty good idea what a protein is. If I write an entry for CD133, I may not make the word protein a link. --dsws 19:11, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to consolidate advice on writing better articles

At present there are many articles in the Wikipedia namespace that seek to give guidance on how to write better articles. I propose consolidating these into a much smaller number. On User:Jongarrettuk/Better writing guide I propose how these could be consolidated. The proposal is not to change advice, just to consolidate it. If I have inadvertently moved what you consider to be good advice that is currently in the Wikipedia namespace, please re-add it. I'm hope that the proposal to merge all these articles, in principle, will be welcomed. Of course, it may be preferred to have 2, 3 or 4 inter-connected articles than just one and would welcome advice on how this could be done. (In particular, perhaps all the guidance on layout should be spun off into one consolidated article on layout.) I'm also aware that putting lots of different bits of advice together may throw up anomalies or bits that people now disagree with (including bits that I myself disagree with:) ). I ask for support for the consolidation. Once the consolidation has happened, the advice can be changed in the normal way. Please feel free to improve on the current draft consolidation, but don't remove or add advice that is not currently on the Wikipedia namespace. If all goes well, I'll add a new Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles page on the 19th, though maybe some bits of the new article will need to be phased in over a longer period. I'll also take care to preserve all the archived discussion in one place. vjguk 19:44, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Template

Is there a template which can be added to articles asking for an explanation of jargon? If not there should be.--naryathegreat | (talk) 05:02, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

I would say you should probably just raise the issue on the talk page. That kind of thing needs more specifics than, say, "wikify" does. --Dmcdevit 05:37, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Yes, the template is known as Template:Technical. Add it a talk page using

• {{technical}}

--DavidCary 07:13, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rule weakness

I think this rule needs to be changed to discourage editors from using wikilinks as an excuse not to explain jargon.

The current rule does the opposite. It seems to discourage defining terms in the text:

"You can simply make your jargon terms links to articles explaining them; you can then link to that same explanation from many places. Alternatively, you may introduce the jargon term the first time you use it; beware, though, that technical terms often have a very precise meaning and that short explanations of their meaning may introduce some inaccuracies."

There are two problems with simply wikilinking words rather than explaining them. The first is that it makes understanding an article a time-intensive procedure, since the reader has to look up all the different terms on the page.

The other problem is that the articles on the jargon words are often more difficult to understand than the original article. Take the article on lightning. It begins as follows:

"Lightning is a powerful natural electrostatic discharge produced during a thunderstorm. This abrupt electric discharge is accompanied by the emission of visible light and other forms of electromagnetic radiation. The electric current passing through the discharge channels rapidly heats and expands the air into plasma, producing acoustic shock waves (thunder) in the atmosphere."

Now, it's unlikely the average reader is going to know what electrostatic discharge or plasma is. But if the reader can't understand the lightning page, he or she certainly isn't going to understand the page on electrostatic discharge.

In this case, electrostatic discharge begins by saying "Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is the sudden and momentary electric current that flows when an excess of electric charge, stored on an electrically insulated object, finds a path to an object at a different electrical potential (such as ground)." The reader now has to click on electrical potential, which is the most-complicated article yet encountered, full of mathematical equations. And so on -- he or she could go on clicking all day without understanding the lightning article.

I believe wikilinks should be used to provide extra information on a topic if the reader chooses to seek it. They should not be used instead of defining terms the reader is unlikely to know.

I'm not saying every wikilinked term needs to be defined in the text. If it's a word the likely reader of the article probably knows, such as weather, it need not be defined (unless it's the weather article, of course). Also, if the reader does not need to understand the term to understand the article, and defining the term would be unwieldy, it could be excluded. For example, the article on Silesia says most of it was taken by Prussia in 1742 in the War of the Austrian Succession, but does not define that war. There is no need to say the war was a conflict between Prussia and allies on the one hand and Austria and allies on the other resulting from Maria Theresa's succession to the throne, because the reader does not need to know that to understand that Prussia took Silesia from Austria in 1742.

On the other hand, the reader of the lightning article does need to know what electrostatic discharge and plasma are in order to understand the opening paragraph. If I were to rewrite the lightning article, I would change "electrostatic discharge" to "discharge of static electricity," since most people know what static electricity is. I would also refrain from mentioning plasma until later in the article -- perhaps a "thunder" section -- when I would have room to explain that it is a form of matter in which atoms have been stripped of their electrons. (Or so I understand; I can't really understand the plasma article).

I think editors, when they write articles, should ask themselves whether the article can be understood by a likely reader without the wikilinks. If it can't be understood without the wikilinks, it should be improved to be easier to understand -- Mwalcoff 03:59, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I fully agree, a reader only somewhat familiar with a topic should not be required to click through half a dozen wikilinks to get a basic understanding of what is being talked about. Another reason also is that if Wikipedia is put in print, the articles will not be understandable. —Centrx→talk • 03:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Science and mathematics It makes sense to include terms like electrostatic discharge or plasma (the state of matter, of course), as science has developed a necessary jargon to discuss topics that are otherwise unintelligible. The thing that's really irritating is when neologisms are inserted into social studies articles or pop culture topics for no reason. Why can't you just put [[backronym|backwards acronym]] or [[portmanteau|compound word]]? Is that so hard? For instance, I'm changing Thomas Jefferson from [[miscegenation]] to <nowiki[[miscegenation|marriage between blacks and whites</nowiki>, so people can click on the link and learn more if they want, but they aren't compelled because they're reading an unintelligible articel. It's distracting and not helpful to the reader to include jargon where it is unnecessary (unlike, say, articles on quantum physics.) It also turns Wikipedia into Wiktionary, since people are constantly learning frivolous new terms. -Justin (koavf)·T·C·M 01:29, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using terms like "plasma" or even "miscegenation." But they should be explained if some readers are likely not to know them. -- Mwalcoff 22:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Merge

I think this should be merged with Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions and Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible.-- _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk}  00:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

This page applies to any jargon, whereas those appear only to scientific and similar terms, with specific recommendations. This style guide is general and simple. Perhaps the recently added Mathematics section here should be merged into Wikipedia:Technical terms and definitions. —Centrx→talk • 04:58, 30 July 2006 (UTC)