[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Stephanie Daugherty]

I think trying to bolt on WYSIWYG to the current parser is a mistake. Even
if it "works" there will be complex markup cases still that are beyond a
WYSIWYG editor (and way beyond 99% of potential editors). Either replace the
current parser, or strip out the complicated parts systematically.

If you want to strip down the current parser, you could do this by making
articles a small subset of the markup, and letting full markup be used in
templates. Gradually depreciate, and then turn off features that are too
complex. A good start would be HTML code in articles, it's not necessary,
and it lets people introduce inconsistencies that look unprofessional, as
well as leaves text in an article that's hard to edit.

If you want to start over, start simple, and think "WYSIWYM" (What you see
is what you mean) rather than "WYSIWYG". That is, the editor should make it
easy to see the structure of the text and edit it without concern for the
final formatting. LyX is a good example of this sort of interface, although
the underlying LaTeX markup probably isn't what we want (just as complex as
what we have now, it's still too presentation oriented, etc).

If we end up replacing the parser, the only way to do that smoothly, would
be to run both parsers at the same time during the transition period. Those
articles that can be converted automatically are converted early on.
Software restrictions (perhaps an edit filter) can prevent starting an
article with the old markup, and discourage reverting to versions with the
old markup. There would be a large number of articles that couldn't be
automatically converted. There are a few ways to handle that. A large manual
conversion effort would be needed. At some point, we should disallow saving
changes to the old markup (forces editors to convert the article to edit it,
or allow an automatic conversion that could break the article after a
certian deadline.

In either case, the process would be painful, but would pay off in the end
with improved editorship, and I suspect greatly improved article quality.
Editors that aren't familiar with the more advanced markup constructs tend
to have to dance around them when editing, and that makes editing harder, as
well as leaves behind broken markup. That means a lot of fixes end up either
not happening, or happening anyway, and doing more damage than what they are
meant to fix.

This would amount to the largest usability project we've undertaken no mater
how we go forward, but the payoffs would be enormous.

On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 4:31 PM, George Herbert <george.herbert at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 3:51 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 23 December 2010 11:48, Tony Sidaway <tonysidaway at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Not everybody works that way. Most of us don't.  To those people the
> >> buttons I find annoying may be the only thing they *do* understand,
> >> they're the most accessible way of using a computer, and a user
> >> interface lacking those buttons is alien and incomprehensible. With
> >> the buttons, these people are intuitively able to produce a reasonable
> >> minimal subset of tasks immediately as long as the result of their
> >> work is displayed immediately (WYSIWYG).
> >> It's still annoying, though.
> >
> >
> > Yeah. It won't be a happener on WMF sites, I think, until WMF has
> > money to throw at developers to develop something that actually works
> > and has fidelity with wikitext as it's used. This is a *big and hairy*
> > problem that interested parties have been dashing their foreheads
> > against for *years*.
>
>
> Right.
>
> The social stuff which is complex is something which is a barrier, but
> one that all western society members who are modern communications
> literate are fundamentally equipped to handle.  Some will fail at it
> but you really just need to be good at electronic communications,
> functionally literate, and social enough to handle basic give and take
> discussions.
>
> Very few people master the markup; very many fewer than that can hack
> or understand the underlying code.  I'm a coder; I've dived into the
> MW parser on and off, and other parts of it, to understand functional
> behaviors better.  But I also do outreach and computer training at
> times, and most normal people could never approach that level, and
> find wiki markup onerous when I ask them about it...
>
>
> --
> -george william herbert
> george.herbert at gmail.com
>
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