> You can see this problem in most Wikipedia math pages.
This gets mentioned so often that I feel it hints at a deep misunderstanding at what Wikipedia is or is supposed to be.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not a teaching resource, and it shouldn't be. (Nor, for that matter, is it a primary source, which makes it useless as a reference if you're writing a paper, unless you're specifically writing about Wikipedia.)
Mathematics is such a ubiquitous language. Different people will require different kinds of mathematics, for vastly different purposes and in various levels of depth and formality, there's no way this can be unified into a single-size-fits-all resource. If you want to learn mathematics, now more than ever there is such an amazing breadth of text books, blog posts, lecture videos, online communities and so on that you can use depending on your very specific needs. I don't know why people go and try reading up on mathematics from Wikipedia, out of all places.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not a teaching resource
Isn't an encyclopedia a teaching resource? Etymology isn't destiny, but the "pedia" part is from Greek παιδεύω, meaning "child rearing". I'd interpret that as meaning "instructional".
The "encyclo" part means "circle", which in this case alludes to "comprehensive". As in, it's not just one instructional resource, but a guide to everything.
The word will grow and change over time, but I think most encyclopedias are still used as teaching resources. That doesn't mean Wikipedia has to be, but if it really wants to be an encyclopedia, I think it means the opposite of "shouldn't be a teaching resource".
No, it's not. An encyclopedia is a reference (as you can, indeed, ironically find out by checking the Wikipedia entry for "encyclopedia").
> Etymology isn't destiny [...]
exactly.
> [...] but I think most encyclopedias are still used as teaching resources.
Of course, learning how to use a reference properly and effectively can be a goal in didactics, especially when you're studying a particular subject. But the reference work is not, by itself, a teaching resource such as a textbook.
I don't understand what's so controversial about that. If I open a page about, say JIT compilation, I'm also immediately confronted with jargon. The fact that most people here would be familiar with that jargon doesn't mean that that page is of any use to someone who doesn't know what a compiler is. The same applies probably to hundreds of different subjects, be it biomedical, philosophical, etc.
This gets mentioned so often that I feel it hints at a deep misunderstanding at what Wikipedia is or is supposed to be.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia. It's not a teaching resource, and it shouldn't be. (Nor, for that matter, is it a primary source, which makes it useless as a reference if you're writing a paper, unless you're specifically writing about Wikipedia.)
Mathematics is such a ubiquitous language. Different people will require different kinds of mathematics, for vastly different purposes and in various levels of depth and formality, there's no way this can be unified into a single-size-fits-all resource. If you want to learn mathematics, now more than ever there is such an amazing breadth of text books, blog posts, lecture videos, online communities and so on that you can use depending on your very specific needs. I don't know why people go and try reading up on mathematics from Wikipedia, out of all places.