by Matt Lee
Quick Summary
I came across some advice online recently, which went as such: “If a Wikipedia article is too complicated, type simple.wikipedia into the URL for a dumbed-down version.” I think there’s value to wading through difficult text,
Body
I came across some advice online recently, which went as such: “If a Wikipedia article is too complicated, type simple.wikipedia into the URL for a dumbed-down version.” I think there’s value to wading through difficult text, and that even complicated Wikipedia articles are usually accessible for folks in our profession, but I could imagine situations where some of our students and patrons could be overwhelmed by terminology, jargon, or specificity.
Simple.wikipedia.org is a site that provides entries that use basic vocabulary and shorter sentences. It doesn’t in any way rival the number of articles in Wikipedia, but covers many, many topics. It can be searched directly, or accessed by following the online advice I received and replacing a Wikipedia URL’s “en” with “simple” to see if there’s a simple version:
As with any Wikipedia article, these are best considered as starting places, but for a topic like quantum mechanics that’s exactly the kind of thing I’d need.
