Talk:Cambrian

Comments on revision

Another editor was right to remark on the language being not simple enough. But his editing comment seemed a bit too aggressive. The correct way to approach this kind of situation is to discuss it on the talk page. Well, he rewrote the whole article, and I have revised it again, keeping what I think is the best of his ideas. I should like to make these comments:

1. It is not the case that every technical term must be explained on the page. Because we are a hypertext, we can use links. It is perfectly satisfactory to link a non-simple technical term. In fact, after a lot of editing, the most common technical terms in biology and geology are available as links in this wiki.
2. The language should be accessible to a person with limited skills in English, but at the same time a science article has to be science, not baby-talk. This is not just my opinion. The fact that science pages must be allowed to be genuine science has been discussed several times in our wiki, and there is a consensus on this question.
3. Sometimes one sees pages which were mainly edited with younger children in mind. Our remit covers adults also, especially those whose native language is not English. As well as simplifying the English, we have to make sure this is a genuine encyclopaedia which serves a rather varied audience. Obviously many of its pages could do with improvement. I accept that this was one of them; I just think the other editor had his attention too much in one direction.

Macdonald-ross (talk) 07:15, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't want to question your philosophy without knowing more about the local politics, so I'll just ask about one word: Is "rapid" instead of the better-known synonym "quick" or "fast" an example of "science, not baby-talk"? Art LaPella (talk) 15:09, 22 August 2012 (UTC)