I can see both sides of the wiki markup issue.
I think it is very easy for anybody to change an existing page by adding something to a list, changing some wording around or other minor edits.
To start a new page from scratch it can be intimidating.
The one thing I like about wiki markup is that it is readable unlike html. I am not sure how other wiki software does with WYSIWYG but I cannot stand any WYSIWYG html editor or WYSIWYG content management system.
-----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gary Kirk Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 11:46 AM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki
I'm sorry, but I just don't understand how it is hard to use...sure, tables might be a little difficult, and having images how you want them too, but for simple editing it really isn't, especially with the edit bar.
-- gary kirk
On 8/8/06, MHart wiki@matthart.com wrote:
Intuit uses MediaWiki in the majority of its internal wikis - over
100. We
have one MediaWiki running with fck. Some groups are migrating to
Jotspot
since it provides wysiwyg.
The lack of wysiwyg is indeed a hurdle for contributors. Even at a "techie" company like Intuit, half the potential contributors see wikitext as a hurdle.
This number likely reflects the rest of the world - it wouldn't
surprise
me if many potential Wikipedia contributors are also stymied by wikitext.
Do
you have the number of Edit clicks that didn't then result in a Save?
That
might be a decent indicator of first-time contribution attempts that failed for some reason - possibly intimidated by wikitext.
The one wiki we have with fck was an add-on to an existing wiki and encountered the compatibility issues Brion mentioned. However, just as
the
community cleans up wikitext pages, the community cleaned up the conversion issues - just as they would in Wikipedia.
You get the closest conversion that you can and then people will clean
up
what remains.
- MHart
MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l