[Wikipedia-l] Re: Parsing

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

> We can do psychological testing to determine when simplicity
> switches, but other people will switch it at slightly different
> times. Best all around to allow both methods.

This I have to disagree with totally.  Leaving in a mix of both is 
horrible.  Our markup here serves a different purpose than other 
markup languages. It /must/ be editable by novices.  Wikitext that 
produces a nice page, but can't be edited, is bad wikitext.  For an 
extreme example, see the article "Duesseldorf"--this is precisely the 
kind of abomination that allowing too much HTML produces.  It might 
be a fine article, but it will never be improved because it's 
impossible to edit.  That's fine for web page, but not for a wiki.

As comfortable as all of us are with HTML, /we/ aren't the kind of 
people we want editing articles (except maybe those on computer 
subjects).  We want Bridge players writing about Bridge, and cat 
breeders writing about cats, and campers writing about camping--the 
kind of people who have never even heard of HTML are the kind of 
people we want most to attract and make use of.  We computer nerds 
are used to dealing with special syntaxes; it is we who should adapt 
to them, not the other way around.