Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment

Re:Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment by tshadwell on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @05:54PM (#10809602)

I'm inclined to agree with you, but instead I agree with the author's sentiment as represented here -- not specifically on Ka/s however. I spend a considerable portion of my time reading Wikipedia articles and very much enjoy it, however:

despite a strong background in science and engineering I can't make much of the considerable majority of mathematics-heavy articles. Many articles as the author no doubt notes define concepts in mathematical symbols which are left undefined, whose meaning is utterly lost on someone without the relevant academic background. For the rest, I find myself lost in a nigh recursive maze of definition upon definition.

Imagine, for example trying to understand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camera_matrix with little mathematical background

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Re:Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment by vilhelm_s on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @06:45PM (#10809846)

But who are the hypothetical readers who need to understand the camera matrix without knowing math? In general, my feeling is that most Wikipedia articles are pretty well pitched to the people that would be interested in the article topic.

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Re:Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment by ollifi on Tuesday December 29, 2015 @07:38PM (#10810056)

Camera projections are very common technique in computer graphics and software often refer to this kind of terminology. When I try to get better understanding what they actually mean I often find wikipedia articles lacking. It's like looking up a traditional food and finding only receipe.

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Re:Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment by tshadwell on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @07:00AM (#10811738)

I'm not sure that the idea that an encyclopaedia should be targeted to only the already well educated, especially one with the goal that Wikipedia has is much short of elitism.

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Re:Wikipedia fails as an encyclopedia, to science’s detriment by maus42 on Wednesday December 30, 2015 @02:44PM (#10813893)

...what exactly is missing?

Okay, the paragraph about projective spaces and degrees of freedom is a bit of mystery to me, but the actual concept seems to be simple enough. Should every article utilizing matrix multiplications to describe linear mappings spend time rephrasing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrix_%28mathematics%29 i.e. a basic linear algebra course?

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