Requests for comment/Knowledge requirements template

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Wikipedia writing guideline states that contributors must "assume readers are reading the article to learn and that it is possible that the reader knows nothing about the subject: the article needs to explain the subject fully".

However some articles, especialy those which treat non-obvious subjects assume knowledge requirements. That may lead the user to a frustrating situation where the topic seems ungrabable. Of course that kind of article would idealy need to be improved. On the other hand, some community member aren't find with the idea to "expand the whole subject from the ground" in every article, and the most knowledgeable on a topic are not necessarily those with the best pedagogic skills.

So our concern here is to bring a solution to user who want to know, but don't necessarily have the basic knowledge expected to understand it. The "let's make the article perfect for everyone" being out of reach, the proposal to avoid user frustration is to inform him that the article have knowledge requirements that she can acquire with some pedagogical materials (preferably on wikversity/wikibook/wikisource).

In one of the 2013 Wikimedia Hackathon design workshop, we worked on this "Knowledge requirement" problem. Mokcup of a possible solution was already thought before this workshop, but within it, designers were able to come with something probably far more relevant : simpler, less invading, while at least as much informative. The idea is to use a something similar to Template:Disambiguation, and to list all the "dependencies" in a section at the bottom of the article or in a subpage.

Moreover this template may rise a warning message when this sections/subpages don't exist, like with the ref and references markups, so that if one place the template in an article, if would be inclined to create the corresponding sections/subpages.

Now what is needed is to design/pick the text (which should short of course) and the picture/icon to illustrate it. Some researchs on commons were already made to find a releavant icon, but maybe someone could come with a better proposition, or even an original icon which fit the topic.