As for the original question of WYSIWYG for MW, I'm afraid I can't provide any more substantial info - except maybe suggesting wikEd* as a possible semi-solution. * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cacycle/wikEd
The issue will apparently be discussed at this week's meeting on the future of MediaWiki (see yesterday's mail from Erik, "Your thoughts on MediaWiki 2.0 / 'phase IV'").
In this regard, here's some food for thought that might be of interest: http://wikieducator.org/Talk:Tectonic_shift_think_tank#WikiGUI
"Just type."
Put blank lines between your paragraphs and click Save. That's it.
That`s exactly my current approach :) Keep it simple, don`t try to overformat things
Actually, I should add this line to our wiki. It was obvious to me, so I took it for granted - but it most likely isn't for the majority of first-time wiki users...
And if you WANT to do formatting, here's a cheatsheet. But don't let that stand in the way of documenting what you know.
And we also have that one :)
So do we, but ours could certainly be improved. However, pulling the help pages from public wikis proved complicated because of various dependency issues. Also, those help pages are often quite extensive and might thus be somewhat overwhelming, so I went for a less comprehensive and more concise approach.
Would you guys mind sharing your cheat sheets? Maybe we could combine efforts at http://scratchpad.wikia.com, possibly cerating a (very basic) help-section template for new MW admins?
Then we have a few motivated people who scurry around improving the formatting on other people's pages as they run across them.
ok, there we currently have only just ONE, but we`re working on it :)
Same here; I'm the only "wiki coach", and reception hasn't really been overwhelming so far...
It worked out well, even with the WYSIWYG die-hards.
It works here - but only with the pure technical staff (and even some of those guys are quite hard to change).
Again, same here; most users with a non-technical background are scared off by the plain-text editing right away, so they don't even get to realize how easy it actually is...
-- F.