On Mon, 14 Mar 2005 11:59:47 -0700, Sterling D. Allan wrote:
I can see that the sheer number of HTML/Wiki code possibilities used in mediawiki would make the WYSIWYG task nearly impossible if one wanted to be able to enable all possible formatting options. So the "price" one will pay in going with a WYSIWYG editor would be a narrowing of formatting options.
In my case, that is a price that I would be willing to pay because I want to make it easy for those brilliant scientists who barely know how to spell.
Or, say, for my mother, who is likewise not going to learn wiki syntax any time soon. Just opening an existing page to make a typo edit is slightly baffling to her. Especially since by default she doesn't have section-editing turned on, and figuring out how to scroll to where you were in the viewable document is... non-trivial.
When I ask regular readers why they don't contribute, the most common response is they're not experts in anything, they don't feel they have anything to add. A close runner-up is that they tried once but got frustrated; they're not sure where to add an idea, or how the syntax works; or they don't have time. The clearer and more intuitive the editing interface, the faster the learning curve, and the fewer people who will think they don't have time to figure it out.