on 9/3/03 11:09 AM, Ray Saintonge at saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Bj wrote:
I agree that unnecessary markup is... unnecessary. But there are two sides of the coin, on one hand we don't want people to have to install MS Frontpage (or whatever it is called) and have three years web design experience. But on the other hand, most Wikipedia pages are rather ugly and boring. They are like just text! I mean who wants to read four pages of NPOV encyclopedic text where the most interesting things are the paragraph breaks? :-)
The choice is between information and pretty packaging. If Wikipedia is going to have any long term reputation it will depend on the information, not the packaging.
But see: http://credibility.stanford.edu/guidelines/index.html
Boring is OK. Fixing the boring should
not come at the expense of the primary purpose of the encyclopedia. For people with slow connections pictures can be a problem. Others who pay by the on-line second, both to their ISP and the telephone company, may not appreciate paying to download uninformative pretty pictures. Furthermore, if we want to appeal to impoverished parts of the world, we need to take into account the fact that their services are rudimentary.
I hear you, I started on the internet with a 2400 connection, I absolutely hated commplicated websites with intensive graphics.
. So instead of letting the not so smart people be a hinderance for the way of the future lets make them smarter by providing good documentation and make everything as easy as possible so that everyone can be happy.
That's an outrageously elitist attitude. The project is not about making people "smarter", it's about providing information. How are these "not so smart people" a hinderance anyway? If you think that better documentation will solve the problems you're welcome to write it. That should not be difficult unless you are one of the "not so smart people". ;-)
Ec
Like a lot of programming issues, it is not about being smart. It is about having a life. If you don't fiddle around with markup a lot you are lost and ignorant no matter how smart you are.
Fred Bauder