This is a great example of how terrible Wikipedia is for complex concepts. The "Theory" section I'm sure is 100% accurate, but is pretty impossible to understand without pre-existing domain knowledge. If you are already steeped in the domain, presumably you would have other ways of finding out about or understanding the theory of operation of these chips, and possibly even worked with one before.
I find the math and high level physics articles to be similarly upsetting. What's the point of having an explanation of a subject that only makes sense if you are a domain expert and presumably already know about the subject.
I actually find it refreshing that Wikipedia doesn’t cater to the lowest common denominator in the theory section of technical subjects. For sufficiently popular subjects, they often have more accessible explanations on their “Simple English” version of the page.
> What's the point of having an explanation of a subject that only makes sense if you are a domain expert and presumably already know about the subject.
If you're in a related field it means that you can understand things very quickly. The majority of the professional scientific articles on Wikipedia are written by scientists, for scientists, with a high information density. As a scientist, I really value this. Quite often the simplified explanation comes later, bit it's important to note that a lot of the technical detail that is lost in the process of generating it remains absolutely vital and removing it may be unintentionally misleading...
5 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 20.8 ms ] threadI find the math and high level physics articles to be similarly upsetting. What's the point of having an explanation of a subject that only makes sense if you are a domain expert and presumably already know about the subject.
If you're in a related field it means that you can understand things very quickly. The majority of the professional scientific articles on Wikipedia are written by scientists, for scientists, with a high information density. As a scientist, I really value this. Quite often the simplified explanation comes later, bit it's important to note that a lot of the technical detail that is lost in the process of generating it remains absolutely vital and removing it may be unintentionally misleading...