Rotem Liss wrote:
And he shouldn't know - but the wikitext as programming language is used only in the templates, not in the pages. (Should be used only there, at least.)
Rob Church wrote:
On 05/04/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 4/5/06, Tim Starling t.starling@physics.unimelb.edu.au wrote:
Don't blame me. I've always been against turning wikitext into a programming language.
Why?
Because the idea of wikitext is to make editing as simple as possible for Joe User who clicks Edit. Joe User who, perhaps, doesn't know what HTML is.
But Joe User still needs to plug information into the template. Or in the course of ordinary editing he runs into a template which is not suitable to his subject, but it's beyond his technical capacity to trace the problem. It's easy to say that he should ask someone more experienced in thee things, but that detracts from his editing experience and the genuine value that he has as a content provider.
I can understand how techies can sit back and narcissistically admire their own creations or clever tricks to develop a uniform or standardized image of everything that fits or can fit. To be sure, there is something aesthetically pleasing about that uniformity and order, but that does shut out a broad range of people who would prefer not to deal with such minutiae. Joe Editor is comfortable with what he knows. He accepts that he must learn a minimum range of wiki markup to do his work effectively. Beyond that any announcement of improvements is a serious cause for concern.
This is difficult enough for Jou Users who work primarily in developed languages where a high degree of educational skill is the norm. Many of those editors have already adapted to some of those changes over time. It is difficult to see how we can progress in less developed societies and languages where technical experience is not the norm unless we make big allowances for non-technical approaches.
Ec