Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible
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This essay contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion. |
- For further details, see Wikipedia:Guide to writing better articles.
- For general accessibility issues, see Wikipedia:Accessibility.
- For general technical questions, see Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
Articles in Wikipedia should be understandable to the widest possible audience. For most articles, this means understandable to a general audience.
Every reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that material is presented in the most widely understandable manner possible. If an article is written in a highly technical manner, but the material permits a more understandable explanation, then editors are strongly encouraged to rewrite it.
Depending on the topic and the amount of interest in it, it may be appropriate to write a separate "Introduction to..." article.
[] Ideas for enhanced accessibility
Consider the types of readers that may encounter a technical article:
- People who will simply not understand the concept. All that can be done here is to make clear what prerequisites they will have to master before they can understand it: "In the field of quantum mechanics..."
- The general public, with no technical background. Some technical subjects are important to public policy questions (like genetic engineering) or a common subject of curiosity (like quantum mechanics). A special effort should be made to explain these topics. For other highly technical topics, it should be clearly established what field of study the concept belongs to, and if it has any practical applications.
- People who have studied related subjects in college, and experts from different fields or different specialties. This type of reader might be trying to learn the subject matter in detail for teaching or for their own research needs, or they might just need a general or shorthand explanation (to satisfy their personal curiosity, to give detail supporting some other concept they are more interested in, or to orient themselves to the general area). They may be lacking some prerequisite knowledge, in which case they will only read "prerequisite" articles if they have a serious interest. Or they may already be familiar with the field or supporting fields, and just need to be filled in on this particular concept.
- People already familiar with the subject looking up details for reference. We want them to easily find the details they are looking for. A good table of contents (and thus appropriately constructed section headers) can help a lot.
Enhancements made for the benefit of lay or semi-expert readers can also benefit more knowledgeable readers by providing additional context, providing helpful analogies to use in thinking and communicating about the concept, by providing visual aids, and in making the prose clearer. Even experts sometimes benefit from new ways of viewing a subject.
Here are some more ideas for dealing with moderately or highly technical subjects:
- Put the most understandable parts of the article up front. It's perfectly fine for later sections to be highly technical, if necessary. Those who are not interested in details will simply stop reading at some point, which is why the material they are interested in needs to come first. Linked sections of the article should ideally start out at about the same technical level, so that if the first, understandable paragraph of an article links to a section in the middle of the article, the linked section should also start out understandable.
- Add a concrete example. Many technical articles are not understandable (and more confusing even to expert readers) only because they are abstract. Examples might exist in other language wikis, such as German/Italian wikipedias, which have statistical examples. Use Google, Yahoo! or Systran translation, etc. to help convert. Sometimes a counterexample can also be helpful.
- Explain formulae in English. When possible, even for experts it can be helpful to explain in English why the formula has certain features or is written a certain way. Explaining the "meaning" of a formula helps readers follow along.
- Add a picture. Many people learn better, and many technical concepts are communicated better, through visual depictions, rather than words or symbols. Diagrams should be related to symbolic or verbal descriptions where appropriate. Some templates that might be useful:
- Use jargon and acronyms judiciously. In addition to explaining jargon and expanding acronyms at first use, you might consider using them sparingly thereafter, or not at all. Especially if there are many new terms being introduced all at once, substituting a more familiar English word might help reduce confusion (as long as accuracy is not sacrificed).
- Eliminate long strings of adjectives, particularly technical adjectives.
- Use short sentences when possible. Comprehension decreases dramatically when sentence length exceeds 12 words. However, using too many short sentences in a row becomes monotonous; vary sentence length to maintain reader interest.
- Use more verbs to improve readability — you can replace many technical adjectives with verbs.
- Use language similar to what you would use in a conversation. Many people use more technical language when writing articles and speaking at conferences, but try to use more understandable prose in conversation. [1]
- Use active voice where this brings greater clarity. Extensive use of passive voice may obfuscate an already complex issue. Check for sentences that could be less ambiguous or flow more naturally with use of active voice.
- Use analogies to describe a subject in everyday terms. The best analogies can make all the difference between incomprehension and full understanding. However, Wikipedia is not a textbook, so analogies need to be written in an encyclopedic way and be attributable to reliable sources. Extensive explanations without a specific source may constitute original research, or original research by synthesis.
- Do not "dumb-down" the article in order to make it more understandable. Accessibility is intended to be an improvement to the article for the benefit of the less-knowledgeable readers (who may be the largest audience), without reducing the value to more technical readers.
[] Articles that are too technical
Various templates are available for labelling articles that do not meet agreed standards of accessibility.
For articles that are not sufficiently understandable, the {{Technical}} template should be inserted at the top of the corresponding discussion page. You should put an explanation on the talk page with comments on why you believe it is too technical, or suggestions for improvement. Templates added without explanation are likely to be either ignored or removed. Articles containing this template can be found in Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical.
This tag should be used only on articles which you feel could be improved by someone following the guidelines listed above.
[] Articles that are unavoidably technical
For highly specialised topics where it is simply not possible to even give an overview in terms with which a general audience will be familiar, it may be reasonable to assume certain background knowledge. For example, many topics in advanced mathematics fall into this category.
The technical discussion should be preceded by a discussion aimed at a more general audience, which attempts at least to put the topic in some broader context.
There should be at least a sentence in the lead of the article to give the lay reader some idea of the place the subject holds in mathematics, what (if anything) it is good for, and what needs to be learned first in order to understand the article. A better place for going into technical details might be in the body of the article, after the Table of Contents.
[] "Introduction to..." articles
For topics which are unavoidably technical but, at the same time, of significant interest to non-technical readers, the best solution may be a separate introductory article. An example is Introduction to special relativity. A complete list of current "Introduction to..." articles can be found in Category:Introductions, while a list of main articles thus supplemented is Category:Articles with separate introductions. However, in keeping with the spirit of Wikipedia's guideline on content forking, the number of separate introductory articles should be kept to a minimum. Before you start one, ask yourself
- Following the advice given in the preceding sections, can the article be made sufficiently understandable as a whole, without the need for a separate introduction?
- Given the degree of general interest in the topic at hand, might a well-written lead be sufficient?
You should start an "Introduction to..." article only if the answer to these questions is "no".
[] Examples
Here are some featured articles which cover technical material without baffling less-knowledgeable readers:
[] See also
[] External links
nanotechnology
