[WikiEN-l] Eschatology and Wikipedia

[Ray Saintonge]

On 12/23/10 12:41 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> On 23 December 2010 02:37, Tony Sidaway<tonysidaway at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> I have to disagree strongly with the calls for WYSIWYG editing, not
>> that it's likely to materialize anytime soon. Wikipedia needs to
>> encourage people to concentrate on meaningful content, not dick around
>> with cosmetic matters.
> I think our current markup is one of our biggest barriers to participation.
>
> I don't have WMF numbers, but one contributor on mediawiki-l, who runs
> an intranet covering a large public service organisation in the US,
> reported a remarkable uptake in wiki participation just by going to
> FCKeditor. The users are smart, capable and competent people in their
> fields, but were seriously put off by wikitext.

Wasn't the whole idea of wiki markup to have something simple that 
anybody can learn?  It should continue to be the case that the essential 
wiki markup can fit onto a single page that an editor can print ans pin 
to the wall beside his computer as a cheat-sheet.  What doesn't fit on 
that page isn't basic.

Templates are only useful if you know which are there if you need them, 
and have the advanced skills needed to manipulate them to desired effect.

Ec