Mihaly Heder,
It's better to say harsh truth than soft lie. No offense.
In your speech about wikitext you were clearly keeping *current* markup in mind. I'm sure about this because you mentioned LaTeX which also is not a perfect text markup language. Wikitext is not a proper IQ test indeed, it's test for geekness at best in its current form.
But what kind of IQ are we talking about when quoting paragraphs in maillists? Are those ">"s that hard to comprehend? Or are *bold*, /italic/ and _underline_ are much harder to remember than [b], <em> and \stuff?
Let me get this straight: there has no ideal, or even good, plain text editing language created to date, not one that is widely used and known to me. And the overwhelming majority of them are Latin-centric.
A classical freshmen commencement procedure: awkward things to do, some humiliation, and bullies. I understand that wikitext became an important part of this culture. But I also think that the knowledge of wikitext should not be a status symbol of our group membership unless we want to appear as a sect or something like that.
I agree with you completely: "b/w terminal does not pardon some cryptic Unix". Content must be presented and edited in clear form. I am not a big fan of wikitext myself, probably the opposite and I'm all for changing it for the best. And in my opinion visual editor isn't a solution but a concealment.
You assume that it is best solved by using a somewhat cryptic language which will tell us apart the good from the bad.
Absolutely not. It seems I've been misunderstood here :( I'm not voting for keeping current wikitext, I'm voting to rework it.
Knowledge about the article one wants to edit? Surely not. Devotion to make an edit? Probably. Markup skills? Probably. Tolerance for outdated interfaces? I say this, too.
Can you repeat all of this if someone is reluctant to read Wikipedia editing/copyright guidelines? Why in your opinion editing with plain yet intuitive markup is different from rich editor?
I would love to give practical examples if someone has outlined specific causes of "devoted and intelligent people going away when seeing wikitext". For now, I can invent my own - templates of infoboxes that appear on top of most articles can scare anyone out of his senses.
But let's be blunt and say that markup is about text MARKUP, not presentation. Not to the extent that drives such text to incomprehensibleness. If we accept the thesis that markup must be human-readable and everything else MUST be handled by the machine no matter how "complex" this might become for it we can achieve some interesting results. For example, if I'm a "newbie but intelligent" Wikipedian and open the page on "The Earth" I see this:
{{About|the planet}} {{pp-semi|small=yes}}{{pp-move-indef}} {{Infobox Planet | bgcolour = #c0c0ff | name = Earth | symbol = [[File:Earth symbol.svg|25px|Astronomical symbol of Earth]] ... }}
This is how I understand what human-readable markup means: 1. Okay, I understand that "{{" and "}}" are some special symbols - but why pipe is between what seem to be words and in the start of some new lines? 2. What is "pp-semi" why it "move-indef"? 3. Why bgcolour is there? It's presentation. Is any editor going to change background color of the infobox, ever? Perhaps it has a different tone and must be #c0c1ff?
These are just 3 basic questions. Processed, the above snippet might look like this:
{{About Earth, the planet}} {{Infobox symbol = [[File:Earth symbol.svg|25px|Astronomical symbol of Earth]] ... }}
That's it. Now the machine's part: 1. "About" is a special "template" or some other construct. When it's "ran" (processed) it accepts 2 colon-separated "arguments". The first specifies "name" of something (place, planet, object, etc.), the second - its "role". Moreover, even these are article-specific and can be changed. The point is that this line remains equally understandable regardless of the article type. 2. "{{pp ... indef}}" thing has disappeared. If that's something system it must go in system properties of the page, not be visible to anyone - what's the point in seeing it if the page is protected? And it's often protected to prevent changes to such "system" entries anyway. Vicious circle. 3. "Infobox Planet" has transformed into just "Infobox" - we've got "planet" defined in "About". 4. "bgcolor" is system presentation-specific thing, no place for it in the contents. 4. "name = Earth" - we've got this along with "Planet".
We have just reduced the source almost by 50% of lines.
Another example on the same page:
| temperatures = yes | temp_name1 = [[Kelvin]] | min_temp_1 = 184 K<ref name=asu_lowest_temp/> | mean_temp_1 = 287.2 K<ref name=kinver20091210/> | max_temp_1 = 331 K<ref name=asu_highest_temp/> | temp_name2 = [[Celsius]] | min_temp_2 = ?89.2 °C | mean_temp_2 = 14 °C | max_temp_2 = 57.8 °C ... <ref name=asu_lowest_temp>{{cite web|url=...|work=...|publisher=...|accessdate=2010-08-07}}</ref> ...
What kind of false positives are we talking about? Will any sane individual spend his precious time not editing but preparing to edit this mess?
Again, not to offend anyone and least - MediaWiki devs, but if we're talking about wikitext future the above must look much more plain: temperatures = in Kelvin: 184, 287.2, 331 temperatures min = {{Cite from web: url ..., work ..., publisher ..., access date 2010-08-07}}
5 times less "code" and still perfectly handled by the machine and - what's important too - more managable with more features: 1. "temperatures = yes" - obviously, if any temperatures are specified in the infobox then the temperature block is enabled. Is it possible otherwise? 2. No Celsius temperatures - the machine does better job converting values than human plus calculator. 3. No link in "[[Kelvin]]" - the machine can place link itself, can't it? 4. No because it just fixes some engine problem and is problem for its devs, not editors or, mind you, users. 5. Replaced all <ref>s with another "template argument" named "temperatures min". This works simple: the machine calculates minimal value and applies given reference to it, if corresponding argument is passed. If no - no reference. 6. No degree symbols: it's cleaner and users don't have to search for the special char (°).
And at least one added benefit: Should Wikipedia core group decide that there are not just Celsius and Kelvin but some different temperature values it can be added without changing ANY article source as long as conversion between Kelvin or Celsius and the new value can be done. Moreover, since K/C is managed by the machine each Wikipedia visitor can customize what he wants to see or their order (for instance, Celsius is his native and he wants to see it first).
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The above are just small examples not involving large markup changes. I am ready to give more detailed reviews.
Try to imagine what kind of syntax we will get if we rework it from scratch. Personally for years I have been using a home-made markup that I'm using on some of my resources as a replacement for wiki, BB-codes and HTML and from my experience it's possible to create an international and intuitive markup suitable for virtually anyone using a computer. And added a simple plain-text editor like wikEd it will combine powers of both text and rich editors.
Especially if a group like WMF undertakes this task.
Signed, P. Tkachenko