On 05/29/2014 08:57 PM, James Salsman wrote:
but it was misplaced because being able to figure out
wikitext
is an excellent attribute in new editors
I think that statement fails on two aspects: for one, saying that the
enthusiasm 'was misplaced' is rather premature as VE itself is rather
incomplete - we do not yet know its potential.
Secondly, and more importantly in my mind, "being able to figure out
wikitext" might be a good attribute, but making it a requirement pretty
much sacrifices any hope we have of getting rid of our systemic bias.
The vast majority of the planet cannot - or will not - have the time and
resources to learn an arcane and overcomplicated mishmash of markup
languages; yet many of those have knowledge and skill to share.
In 2004, when articles were mostly unformatted, that argument made
sense. Most anyone with minimal computer skills (and that's already a
very restricted slice of the population) could edit a page to fix a typo
or add a statement or two without much difficulty.
Nowadays? Not so much. For the untrained eye, even finding the glaring
typo you saw in a reference is nearly impossible after you hit the edit
button.
-- Marc