On 7/2/03 4:25 PM, "Mark Christensen" <mchristensen(a)humantech.com> wrote:
> We need to
find the right balance between making editing easy and
> making reading Wikipedia unobtrusive. Some work on this is being
done
> in the Skin department, for example, where we
will probably end up
> with a Skin preferred by editors, and one that is more friendly to
> non-editing users.
This would be a terrible violation of the basic
Wiki-nature of
Wikipedia.
No it wouldn't. Anybody can use any skin they want! The idea is only
to give people tools optimized for use. Readers and casual editors
don't want confusing and redundant links. Long time editors don't mind
trading increased learning curve for more functionality, and the
potential to do what they want with one or two less clicks.
Making wikipedia easier to use for everybody isn't a terrible violation
of basic wiki-nature, it's just being nice to users. And, that -- in my
opinion -- is a just a good idea.
If "Anybody can use any skin they want!" were true, I would agree with you
100%.
But only logged-in editors can use any skin they want. Forcing editors to
log in to use useful features is a violation of Wiki-nature. I'm willing to
hedge on "terrible".
I'd first try to develop an interface that avoids confusion without
requiring cookies, etc. That would be the optimal solution.