On 8/11/06, Ligulem ligulem@pobox.com wrote:
Looking at the plain table wiki-code is sure more frightening than the clean abstraction presented by an infobox template call.
Probably, but infoboxes are a) much more common, and b) almost invariably at the very top of articles, making them the first thing most users see. *Anything* that isn't very similar to what's displayed is scary to technophobes. The technically-inclined can comfortably look at it and say "Hmm, it must somehow generate the box there, or something", then ignore it, but someone like my mother would become instantly uncomfortable and worried that they might break something if they tried to edit. She wouldn't try to decipher what it actually meant, if all she was thinking of doing was correcting a date or something; she wouldn't want to put in the effort.