[jacquesm]

That's one very interesting observation. I've commented in that vein a short while ago where I noticed that once I finally understood what some paper was about my usual response (definitely not always) would be 'That's it?'.

Wikipedia has been a godsend for me, to be able to understand core principles without having to wade through what seems to be obfuscated English in order to hide something relatively trivial at the heart of the document.

[saagarjha]

Wikipedia for certain topic is often just as inscrutable as papers would be. I have no idea why this is, but my guess is that it’s written by people with passing interest in the field who lack the experience to effectively distill their knowledge like paper authors might.