On 10/31/2011 7:18 PM, foundation-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org wrote:

On 10/31/2011 10:09 AM, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote:

...

...

Robin McCain, 31/10/2011 17:20:

...

...

We must also remember that the wiki edit interface and markup can be a little intimidating to a newbie, so opening an edit window and making no changes may be more common than we think. Are there any stats on this?

Yes, it was something like 70 % of "edit" clicks are not followed by save. It's difficuilt to tell how many of those were people (or even stupid bots) looking for the source text.

For me, the most common reason why an "edit" click is not followed by a "save" is because I end up not having the time to complete the work, or the edit I had in mind becomes more complicated than I thought (sometimes the latter partly explains the former). To put it idiomatically, it's a reaction to biting off more than I can chew.

That may not be entirely typical, but in the sense of "editing proved more difficult than anticipated" it probably explains many abortive attempts at editing. I suppose it's been suggested before, but I think more fine-grained section editing capability, so you can simply highlight any portion of an article and open an edit window for just that portion, could be helpful.

--Michael Snow

Unless a page is extremely short, it is a good idea to throw in a few ===section=== headers here and there to make it easier to edit just one section. I would think that an editors time would be much better spent adding a few of these to a new entry rather than waste time telling someone their new topic isn't important enough to be included.

As for the "freeze" you experience, we've all had such moments - especially when trying to apply for grants online - where every character counts and you only have one chance to make the maximum positive impact. I learned a long time ago to write my stuff in a text editor then cut & paste into a html form for markup - avoids butterflies in the stomach. :-)