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jacobolusyesterday at 8:36 PM1 replyview on HN

It's extremely difficult to write math articles for a general audience which are both accessible and accurate, and the number of excellent writers working on Wikipedia math articles is tiny.

Please get involved if you want to see improvement. There are some math articles which are excellent: readable, well illustrated, appropriately leveled, comprehensive; but there are many, many others which are dramatically underdeveloped, poorly sourced, unillustrated, confusing, too abstract, overloaded with formulas, etc.


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fsckboytoday at 4:11 AM

no.

there are many math teachers teaching math to people who don't know the subject, basically all mathemeticians. and wikipedia has guidelines for how to serve the audience, the math articles ignore it.

I (got into and) went to MIT (and graduated several times) in engineering and also in finance. I am way beyond the average wikipedia reader in math knowledge. the mathematics wiki articles are imho worthless. the challenge is not how to write articles that are explanatory and reasonable, the challenge is all the gatekeeping of the wiki editors who make it the way it is, that is an unreasonable fight. I tried to make a change a couple of weeks ago to correct an error that was in an article. I got reverted by a person who wanted to collaborate on making the article more abstruse as a solution. "but the error" I said. It's still there.

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