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I did a small edit on the opening paragraph of this page to make it clear that the article was about an armoured prehistoric fish. To my surprise, the edit was reverted, leaving the opening paragraph a dense clump of terms unknown to the average reader. The reverter commented that anyone not familiar with the terms could look them up on Wikipedia.
This is contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia in two ways. First, it assumes a reader familiar with an esoteric vocabulary, and – more important – removes a good faith edit that made the page easier to understand for the general reader.
If no-one has any compelling reason not to, I am going to reinstate the reverted edit. Protitanichthys is an armoured prehistoric fish.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Rconroy (talk • contribs)
You talk as if readers are utterly powerless to clink on links. Stating that it's "an armored prehistoric fish" in parenthesis is amateurish, and unnecessary. Furthermore, there were other several other groups of extinct chordates in addition to placoderms that fit the description of "armored prehistoric fish."--Mr Fink (talk) 16:43, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
If people want information couched in impenetrable jargon, they can go elsewhere. Wikipedia is aimed at literate non-specialists – the people you might refer to as "amateurs". We are all amateurs at something, and it is for these people we should be writing – for the curious.
It's easy to write dense, terminology-heavy text. The real accomplishment is writing it in plain language. I urge you to consider who Wikipedia is for.
And I'm saying it's unnecessary, if not inappropriate to provide an unhelpfully overly simplified summary to dumb everything down when all of the terms are hyperlinked. That is, if you're not implying that the average reader is physically incapable of clicking on linked terms. Mr Fink (talk) 22:23, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that the alternative to talking posh is "dumbing down". If you need jargon to make something sound esoteric and academic, I have no objection to your speaking like that. Just have reservations about the utility of writing for the general public in this manner. But it's not worth having a protracted tussle over a wikipedia page that is unlikely to attract a wide readership.
