Re:School vs. Wikipedia
by threatofrain on Friday October 07, 2022 @02:40PM
(#33125297)
There are alternative wikis for math and they’re way harsher. Wikipedia is the middle ground between math wikis written by current students and professionals vs pedagogues. But I’d argue that if you want pedagogy or step by step proofs, then why not simply buy a well vetted textbook, of which math has many?
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That's certainly true, buy I think it also makes it quite unsuited as a reference (except for people who are already familiar with the concepts and just need a quick reminder).
Wikipedia math articles are not useful to get a shallow understanding of a topic. On the contrary, it pulls you into a rabbit hole of dependent concepts just for you just to be able to understand the words in the article's summary.
From an actual reference, I'd expect that it gives a brief, self-contained description of the basic idea of a concept, without going too deep into specifics, possibly with a "see also". That's not what Wikipedia does.