Proposal:Multi-level Articles (By Difficulty)

Status (see valid statuses)

---

The status of this proposal is:
Request for Discussion / Sign-Ups

Strategic Priorities

Every proposal should be tied to one of the strategic priorities below.

Edit this page to help identify the priorities related to this proposal!

1. Achieve continued growth in readership
2. Focus on quality content
3. Increase Participation
4. Stabilize and improve the infrastructure
5. Encourage Innovation

Share this:

Summary

This applies mainly to Wikipedia. Currently, articles are present with a certain level of difficulty. Whether an article is too hard or too simple, it won't fit all people. The articles should be provided in different levels of difficulty.

Proposal

A beginner level, a moderate level, and an expert level.

Wikipedia's readers are not of the same cultural backgrounds and intellectual capabilities. Currently a 7-year-old child and a 50-year old field- expert learn from the same article. This isn't right by any reasonable sense. Articles on programming and programming languages, for example, are very difficult for non-experts , and this makes acquiring knowledge for beginners a daunting mission. So, articles should be provided in levels of difficulty like, for the matter of fact, in any other learning place.

This is somewhat available now by the presence of Simple English Wikipedia as it provides articles in a simpler way. But this needs to be done within other Wikipedias and mainly of course the English one.

Motivation

The goals is to make knowledge available for everyone! This is what Wikipedia was founded for. And availability is not just physical accessibility but functional accessibility as well. You may have physical accessibility to a book in a foreign language, but it remains in a foreign language, so you can make no use of it. The same way, Wikipedia can have an article written in jargon or technical language, and regular readers can't make good use of it, and if it is revised for them, this will be at the expense of the more knowledgeable readers.

Key Questions

Are the current Wikipedia articles reasonably understandable by the average native user?

Can we make it more understandable without sacrificing content?

Potential Costs

This is in effect creating two more wikipedias! So it takes much time, effort and money.

This sure is big and ambitious, but so was Wikipedia, and this is for making knowledge for all, so it's worth it.

Concerning Wikipedia managers, we just need them to make it possible, inform and encourage contributors about it, and let them do their work!

Community Discussion

Do you have a thought about this proposal? A suggestion? Discuss this proposal by going to Proposal talk:Multi-level Articles (By Difficulty).

Want to work on this proposal?

1. .. Sign your name here!