Looks like we'll finally be ditching MediaWiki in our office next year. Apple has come to the party with a WYSIWYG wiki of its own: http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/leopard/wikiserver.html We've been using MediaWiki for our office intranet over the years but it's never been adopted to a level that we think it could be, because of the requirement that users learn wiki markup. It's always surprised me that WYSIWYG editing has not been a high priority for MediaWiki, considering the fact that MediaWiki and Wikipedia are founded on the idea of participation. The biggest obstacle, it has often seemed to me, is an installed base of Wikipedians who see wiki markup as a way of protecting their territory and minimising participation by others. MediaWiki has therefore been a bit of a love hate relationship in our office, and instead of being sad to see MediaWiki go we will be very happy indeed. Thanks to those who have been working on WYSIWYG for MediaWiki, particularly in trying to integrate FCKEditor. I wish your efforts had borne fruit earlier and it's a pity you haven't had more support, but I'm sure you'll get there eventually. Cheers, Christiaan

On 8/8/06, Christiaan Briggs <christiaan(a)yurkycross.co.uk> wrote: Congratulations! MediaWiki is not targeted at internal office use. While some people do use it successfully in this market, we offer no support, have no marketing, make no income from it, and don't make any effort whatsoever to be more than tolerable for it. I'm glad you've found other software which is more appropriate for your requirements. We really are not trying to sell MediaWiki to you or to anyone. It *really is* good for us if you need something different and you *use* something different because of that. That's better both for you and for us. That's absolutely false. Rather, the reason that all attempts have failed so far is that we have an installed base of millions of *pages* of *content* over *five years* with which compatibility *must* be *retained* for *Wikimedia*. Hacky HTML editors damage the text and destroy pages during editing, which is completely contrary to our requirement to preserve page text across tens of thousands of edits. We simply have no interest in your intranet. It's not on our radar. We have no deal to provide you with intranet software. It's not what we do. I advise you not to waste time waiting on these integration efforts. The back-and-forth conversion they require is likely to never work properly. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

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

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(a)matthart.com> wrote: -- Gary Kirk

MHart a écrit : this is probably just a lack of informations. I see two problems * page layout. urge the new user not to take any value to the layout. Use a "simple editor" way of life: titles are some word on one line, paragraph breaks are two carriage return, period. others will do the final layout, _this is collaborative effort_ * you need a table: open mozilla composer (or NVu), build your table there, open the source windos and copy.paste the content between <table> and </table> in the wiki page. with this 90% of the wiki pages will go. images one by line, thats all. _wiki is a collaborative effort_, let the experienced users do what you can't do and insert _your own invaluable experience_ as text... jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos

What I meant was this kind of thing: [[Image:Name.png|left|250px|Description]] in the right order etc - I can never remember so I have it on a tools page in my userspace on en:wp. -- gary kirk On 8/8/06, Frederich, Eric P2173 &lt;eric.frederich(a)siemens.com&gt; wrote: -- Gary Kirk

You can believe what you want, but in a corporate environment there is (and always will be) inertia. Not everybody wants to learn new things, many unless they are pressured to. Jld. -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Ron Hall Sent: August 8, 2006 11:56 To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki Gary Kirk wrote: This was essentially my argument also, but apparently it's too hard? And no it was not any more quantifiable than that. Even tables are not that hard, sorry they're not - really. Absolute positioning of images, well this is a problem, but then again we're not designing for absolute pixel placement? Are We? just my thoughts on the subject. r _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/411 - Release Date: 07/08/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/411 - Release Date: 07/08/2006

Yes, I found myself looking at the code for an existing page if it has been a while since putting an image in the system too but I have only been using wiki for about a month now. I believe that 95% of new users who know nothing about wiki would be able to take an existing image and change the caption under it if it existed or other minor edits. So forget about modifying some paragraph that already exists, we want people to add content. I still believe that those same 95% of non-wiki people would be able to add valuable content to the page (save new tables and new images). Most of the remaining 5% of people who couldn't contribute anything using wiki markup would probably have a hard time adding anything using a WYSIWYG editor anyway. I think the only thing you will gain from a WYSIWYG editor is the ability for a 'virgin' to the system to be able to add a new image or table. What I am hoping to happen in our corporate environment is to have people designated as Wiki Authors who can take a word document or an e-mail from somebody and wikify it. As someone said in another post to this list, it is a collaborative effort. Just add your content and somebody will make it pretty or put it in a table for you. ~Eric -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gary Kirk Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 12:16 PM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki What I meant was this kind of thing: [[Image:Name.png|left|250px|Description]] in the right order etc - I can never remember so I have it on a tools page in my userspace on en:wp. -- gary kirk On 8/8/06, Frederich, Eric P2173 &lt;eric.frederich(a)siemens.com&gt; wrote: adding edits. a wikitext. Save? as clean -- Gary Kirk _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l

Jean-Lou Dupont wrote: hah hah hah - this is funny. true but funny. And I'm installing FCKeditor in a test instance of the wiki :) Life is a laugh a minute in this corner of Paradise :) r

I am not so sure about your numbers (95% - 5% split) -- the way I see things, corporations have Powerpoint, Word & Excel-DNA that isn't easily mutated/substituted. But then again, I have been many times wrong before. Jld. -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Frederich, Eric P2173 Sent: August 8, 2006 14:14 To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki Yes, I found myself looking at the code for an existing page if it has been a while since putting an image in the system too but I have only been using wiki for about a month now. I believe that 95% of new users who know nothing about wiki would be able to take an existing image and change the caption under it if it existed or other minor edits. So forget about modifying some paragraph that already exists, we want people to add content. I still believe that those same 95% of non-wiki people would be able to add valuable content to the page (save new tables and new images). Most of the remaining 5% of people who couldn't contribute anything using wiki markup would probably have a hard time adding anything using a WYSIWYG editor anyway. I think the only thing you will gain from a WYSIWYG editor is the ability for a 'virgin' to the system to be able to add a new image or table. What I am hoping to happen in our corporate environment is to have people designated as Wiki Authors who can take a word document or an e-mail from somebody and wikify it. As someone said in another post to this list, it is a collaborative effort. Just add your content and somebody will make it pretty or put it in a table for you. ~Eric -----Original Message----- From: mediawiki-l-bounces(a)Wikimedia.org [mailto:mediawiki-l-bounces@Wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Gary Kirk Sent: Tuesday, August 08, 2006 12:16 PM To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki What I meant was this kind of thing: [[Image:Name.png|left|250px|Description]] in the right order etc - I can never remember so I have it on a tools page in my userspace on en:wp. -- gary kirk On 8/8/06, Frederich, Eric P2173 &lt;eric.frederich(a)siemens.com&gt; wrote: adding edits. a wikitext. Save? as clean -- Gary Kirk _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l(a)Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l -- No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/411 - Release Date: 07/08/2006 -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.405 / Virus Database: 268.10.7/411 - Release Date: 07/08/2006

On the whole I think this is a great development for people who are looking to get wiki functionality in a corporate enterprise environment. As it has been stated before, Mediawiki was never designed with that intent in mind and so the people trying to make it work in that capacity rely on hacks and custom code to make it work for them. Wiki markup is a barrier to entry for some people. It just is, for any number of reasons previously mentioned and more. I know I picked it up very quickly, spent some time with the docs and whatnot, but I'm fairly techy. As my Mediawiki deployment is on a corporate intranet I'm very nervous about the adoption of the system by the average user. I work at a very technical company and even then I don't expect more than 10% of our user base to actively contribute. Not knowing what the numbers are for Wikipedia, however, this may be about the right ratio regardless. Not to be inflammatory, but I do see some of the points being raised here about elitism and "technocracy", and although I think it's more rampant in the Linux community (the most rabid of which seem to think any knid of user-friendliness is the mark of Satan), it may very well be a problem for wiki communities as well. Fortunately there are solutions. If one truly feels left out or underprivleged it really isn't that hand to read some docs and work it out. Administrators can ease the burden by making quick reference pages easily available and providing the proper support and training to the user base. Expecting to just "build it and they will come" is naive, especially in the corporate enterprise.

On 9 Aug 2006, at 4:09 AM, Erik Moeller wrote: "We'd all love to see it" Are you sure about that Erik? Christiaan

On 9 Aug 2006, at 12:11 PM, Gary Kirk wrote: Yeah you're right, I just saw "This list is aimed at people who are running wikis with the MediaWiki software" but I think I'd be better off writing to wikitech-l(a)wikimedia.org. Christiaan

On 9 Aug 2006, at 4:01 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: No but I'm suggesting it might be an obstacle to having development of it prioritised. I did post this thread to the wrong email list and I apologise for that, although many people here seem keen to discuss the matter. I'm getting a more appropriate response on the other list. By the way, I'm not necessarily talking about "WYSIWYG in MediaWiki" either. It's more about WYSIWYG for Wikimedia projects. If integrating an editor into the current environment is so difficult maybe there needs to be a new approach, such as developing new software/syntax with some type of WYSIWYG editor built in from the start. Christiaan

On 9 Aug 2006, at 4:49 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: Sounds good. Last time I looked SocialText was a hosted service and I couldn't download their wiki software though. Has this changed? Does WIkia develop there own wiki too? Christiaan

On 9 Aug 2006, at 5:02 PM, Erik Moeller wrote: Well, there ya go. Sounds great! Christiaan

Lane, Ryan wrote: We don't have the resources for it right now, but it's an option for the future which gets occasionally kicked around. It may or may not require some corporate restructuring; can the non-profit operate such stuff? cf Mozilla etc. -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

In the experience I mentioned, the wiki didn't have a lot of content before switching to FCK - about 11 pages IIRC. If you have an active community, they will likely clean it up. The pages are still readable in FCK, but the formatting is messed up. I did not write a conversion utility, however. For a wiki of, say, 25 or more pages, a conversion/clean up would probably be indicated. I've wrote a conversion from HTML help to wikitext that worked very well, converting thousands of pages into wikitext with very little cleanup needed, so it's definitely possible. - MHart

the layout. Use a "simple editor" way of life: titles are some word on one line, paragraph breaks are two carriage return, period. others will do the final layout, _this is collaborative effort_ << You've already lost these people when you say "titles are some word on a line". No it isn't. A title is a Title, and they want to make a Title look like it would look in a document line word. I select the font size and make it bold and it's a Title. == Title == doesn't make sense to these people. Sure, maybe after they've done it a few times. Problem is, that 50% I'm talking about will never do it when it looks like that. What's mozilla? What's NVu? What does <table></table> mean? These are their questions - the people I'm talking about will look at the paragraph you just wrote and see complete gibberish. They just want to Insert / Table and press Tab to add a row. Tables in Word are hard for people to understand - in wikitext or html or anything else? Forget it. do what you can't do and insert _your own invaluable experience_ as text... << I agree - that's the ideal. But it doesn't work that way in the real world. If a "wikitext-challenged user" - call him a WCU, clicks Edit to contribute and sees: __NOTOC__ == People == {| !Desc !Name |- |Architect |Matt H |} That WCU is going to click Cancel or Back. They aren't going to add their name to that - they have no idea how. Show them on a page how to add a line to a table - and they're still not going to do it. Afraid of messing it up. They are used to wysiwyg editors, they are not used to revision history and the restoration capability of MediaWiki. - MHart

MHart a écrit : I often _sleep_ at those presentations, probaly the ones you quote... jdd -- http://www.dodin.net http://dodin.org/galerie_photo_web/expo/index.html http://lucien.dodin.net http://fr.susewiki.org/index.php?title=Gérer_ses_photos

quote... I make sure I have some candy with me so that I can stay awake :-) - MHart

Perfect example just came in - I was asked a question, and this was part of the email thread - names, emails, etc... removed... ******* -----Original Message----- From: ------------ Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 10:16 AM To: ---------------------- Subject: RE: Simplicity Wiki Admin Very true. The markup makes it much harder to use. The wiki is only going to be used to document key dates and releases so -------- and I will be doing most of the editing. We originally wanted to document it on our ---------- but this was much easier. ---- - Yes, just in case, I would like to be an admin too. Thanks, ------ _____________________________________________ From: -------------- Sent: Friday, August 11, 2006 8:06 AM To: ------------------------- Subject: RE: Simplicity Wiki Admin Hi there, I am the admin and had it set up originally. I've found though that SimplicityWiki had extremely low adoption rate relative to the WoMWiki because mediawiki is much harder for the lay-person to use. --------- - if you'd like, I will email ---------- and ask him to set you up as the admin. Let me know. ---------- | --------- | Senior Marketing Manager | ---------------------------- -----Original Message----- From: ---------------- Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 7:35 PM To: -------------------------- Subject: RE: Simplicity Wiki Admin It looks like you guys are on the MediaWiki engine that most Intuit teams use. That engine is run by iLab, and if you're interested in talking to anyone you should speak to -----(me)-----, he's Mr. Wiki at Intuit. ------- _____________________________________________ From: --------------- Sent: Thursday, August 10, 2006 6:00 PM To: ----------------- Subject: Simplicity Wiki Admin Hi -------------, I am not sure who owns the Simplicity Wiki, but the ---------- team has built a subsection off the Wiki for our own purposes (http://------------/-----/index.php/---------). Just wanted to know who the admin was in case we run into issues in the future .. Thanks, ------- --------------- | Rotational Development Associate | ------------------------ ***** - MHart

Gordon Joly wrote: Yes, it was a for-profit company and got bought by another for-profit company. Hence, what I said above. ;) -- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)

On Wed, 2006-08-09 at 18:48 -0400, Brion Vibber wrote: I am not a lawyer, but I would think some of the same issues Mozilla had would apply. Christopher Blizzard lays it out really well in his blog: http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/?p=19 In particular, this part: So, conceivably, Wikimedia Foundation might be able to get away with offering support contracts, without change. However, if the total of those support contracts started to make up a significant component of the revenue of the foundation, a restructuring would probably be in order. My understanding with the Mozilla Foundation was that they were already getting a pile of money from Google, Nokia, and others for which there was a little too much quid pro quo for too much of their revenue, so they needed to act. I'm guessing WF doesn't have that problem yet. Personally, I've done a little MediaWiki consulting, and have been toying with the idea of offering a standardized paid support option myself, but I'm unsure if the market is ready for that yet. My question for the list: if such an option were available, would there be customers for it? Rob