Wikipedia:WikiProject General Audience

The General Audience WikiProject is a project to ensure that articles in Wikipedia remain accessible to a general audience. If you would like to help, please inquire on the talk page.

Scope
This project supports the style guide Make technical articles accessible; all articles are within its scope.

Participants

 * Eequor
 * Flammifer
 * StuRat
 * I've been hit by this before and would love to help out. --Cel e stianpower háblame 21:30, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Dan100 (Talk)
 * A.Z.
 * User:Filll

Goals

 * 1) To ensure the significance of all articles can be understood by general readers to at least an introductory level.

Requests
If you have found an article difficult to understand, or feel it may be too difficult for others, please list it here. It is helpful to explain in which areas the article needs work.


 * Derivative totally bemuses me. I think it assumes knowledge of calculus but I'm not sure. Very technical and inaccessible. --Cel e stianpower háblame 21:38, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * This article doesn't look too bad to me. I think adding the "trampoline" introduction to calculus will be sufficient, rather than changing this article (on the theory that you need to pick your battles with the mathematicians).  What do you think ? StuRat 11:08, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I have to agree with Celestianpower: It might as well be written in Aramaic for all the information it imparted to me. I freely admit that I got absolutely clobbered by calculus in college (twenty-plus years ago), and didn't pursue math any further than that, but it would be useful to have at least something that someone with only a high school education could follow.
 * Septegram 21:19, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * This article is indeed not very difficult to understand, but mathematics require concentration and re-reading. The part that should be altered is the introduction, where a few illustrations of concept of derivative applied to simple functions, and some links to what the tangent line is (and its use) - or embed tangent ilustration in introductory illustrations. Needs link to what qualifies as real-valued function etc. is. For a swift look-up of the derivative, lots of illustrations in the introduction will do the trick. Perhaps multi-variable analysis should be brought up in the article, too... Aelon 21:29, 2 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The article as it stands today, 27 December 2006, is challenging but nevertheless seems more comprehensible to me than any of the articles on logic that I've nominated. 69.140.173.15


 * Statistical hypothesis testing may benefit from a table or legend of what the commonly used Greek-letter symbols mean, even if the article itself is clear as-is. 69.140.173.15 04:37, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * propositional calculus


 * monadic predicate calculus


 * first-order logic


 * second-order logic


 * Dining philosophers problem: the problem is easy to understand, but the solutions (as stated in the article) elude me.  69.140.173.15 04:37, 28 December 2006 (UTC)


 * De Morgan's laws 69.140.164.142 15:30, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Electromagnetic radiation: a very important fundamental concept in physics that is explained here in so technical a way as to be almost useless for the average Wikipedia reader. RobertM525 (talk) 08:08, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Adopt an article
Similar to Collaboration of the week, but on a smaller scale, you might want to "adopt" an article. This would involve doing research and expanding a particular article. Of course, everyone else can still edit an adopted article, and you can work on other things too, but the idea is to find a focus for a while, to try and build up the number of quality articles the project has contrbuted to. A variety of articles can be found in the category Wikipedia articles that are too technical.

Current adoptions
If you would like to adopt an article, please add it to this list and sign your name with three tildes.




 * Boolean logic. It's a simplification of Boolean algebra, which had the tag on it before I started the "fix". The old Boolean logic article was just as bad and was moved to Boole's syllogistic. StuRat 22:02, 21 September 2005 (UTC)


 * Computer representation of surfaces. This is a simplification and change in emphasis from surface, which was again controlled by mathematicians. StuRat 14:56, 23 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Wave-particle duality. I've been largely unsuccessful in making this article accessible, as my edits are immediately reverted by a PhD there. As of now, the most I've been allowed to do is add the section "Duality of light" using color as a simple example of the wave nature of light. StuRat 14:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Hyperplane. I believe I've made this article simpler by editing the opening paragraph and adding a diagram. StuRat 14:52, 23 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Moment of inertia. I haven't had much luck there due to reverts, particularly over my simplification of moment of inertia as equivalent to "rotational mass". However, I was able to add sections "Types of moment of inertia" and "Application of moment of inertia" to explain the term more clearly. StuRat 14:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Trampolines
Trampolines are articles written as easily-approached accompaniments to articles on difficult subjects. Although a trampoline may lack many technical details found in the main article, it should cover its subject as completely as is possible in simple language. A list of trampolines can be found at Category:Introductions.

Suggested topics for new trampolines

 * introduction to calculus → calculus

Portals
Portals serve primarily to link related articles while explaining the relationships between them. Their goal is to cover a subject in breadth, not in depth, remaining approachable to all audiences throughout. Please add new portals below.

Suggested topics for new portals

 * torus
 * Riemann hypothesis
 * Biotechnology

Infoboxes

 * {{subst:preq}} adds the standard prerequisites template to a page. At right is an example appropriate for this page.

Other templates

 * technical identifies articles that may not be accessible and places them in Category:Wikipedia articles that are too technical.

Related WikiProjects

 * Article Improvement Drive
 * Collaboration of the week