On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 2:22 PM, Aryeh Gregor <Simetrical+wikilist@gmail.comSimetrical%2Bwikilist@gmail.com
wrote:
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Brian Brian.Mingus@colorado.edu wrote:
This round the Usability Initiative got 800,000 dollars. That's a load of money. If the Foundation decides that it wants to fix the problem the correct way then it can. And it can start at any time! We just need to
agree
on a solution.
Only at the expense of sacrificing some, most, or all of the work they're already doing. $800,000 is not a particularly large sum for a programming project, and the usability project had to prioritize it. They decided to target things other than WYSIWYG first. I'd be inclined to think that's wise, without having considered the issue very deeply. Full WYSIWYG *is* really needed, but it would be unjustifiably expensive when there are so many more minor improvements that could be (and are being) made much more easily.
I definitely think it's a good idea to go after the low hanging fruit first, which it sounds like is what they are doing with this 800k. Fixing the core of the problem is definitely not low hanging fruit - it's hard work. On the other hand, the foundation just got a couple million in unrestricted funds, and when I say that they can start fixing the problem at any time, I mean they can seek out an additional grant if necessary for this specific issue. Basically what I am saying is that I don't jive with the perspective that we should accept wikitext as it is and hack in new "fixes" on top of it. I would like to see the foundation go out and try to fix this problem the correct way, starting nowish.