On 23 December 2010 02:37, Tony
Sidaway<tonysidaway(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I have to disagree strongly with the calls for
WYSIWYG editing, not
that it's likely to materialize anytime soon. Wikipedia needs to
encourage people to concentrate on meaningful content, not dick around
with cosmetic matters.
I think our current markup is one of our biggest barriers
to participation.
I don't have WMF numbers, but one contributor on mediawiki-l, who runs
an intranet covering a large public service organisation in the US,
reported a remarkable uptake in wiki participation just by going to
FCKeditor. The users are smart, capable and competent people in their
fields, but were seriously put off by wikitext.
Wasn't the whole idea of wiki markup to have something simple that
anybody can learn? It should continue to be the case that the essential
wiki markup can fit onto a single page that an editor can print ans pin
to the wall beside his computer as a cheat-sheet. What doesn't fit on
that page isn't basic.
Templates are only useful if you know which are there if you need them,
and have the advanced skills needed to manipulate them to desired effect.
Ec