On 02/10/2012 08:26 AM, Erik Moeller wrote:
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 10:17 PM, Yury Tarasievich yury.tarasievich@gmail.com wrote:
The Wikipedia participation problem, especially at this stage of the project's lifecycle, is a social problem, not technical.
It's both. The development of a Visual Editor is a necessary but not a sufficient change to broaden and diversify the editor population.
Okay, okay, so it's both, but in what proportion? The social kind still beats the technical.
Now, Helder tells us "not all Wikipedias are at the same stage of its lifecycle, and not every wiki is Wikipedia". Well, that's valid, but not quite relevant to the issue. E.g., there would be no MediaWiki development as we know it, if not for the English WP.
So, you are going to "break things" for the distant and rather doubtful gain. But do you indeed want "broad and diverse population of editors", so the social problems will, in fact, flare? And not, for starters, some kind of organisational "mechanism" targeting the content quality?
Like I said, I wouldn't say no to something visual, representing the content structure as as tree with collapsible sections. I don't know, something Texmacs-like? But not some sort of not-quite-Word.
Don't let that stop you. :)
Yury