On 8/11/06, Ligulem <ligulem(a)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.