[Foundation-l] Can anyone really edit Wikipedia?

[Dirk Riehle]

Well, Brion probably knows what's coming, but what you are describing
was attempted here:

http://www.wikicreole.org

A commonly agreed upon wiki syntax that is easy to use. Wiki Creole is
actually mostly derived from Mediawiki Syntax.

It is a success---many wiki engines use it. Brion was at the first
workshop and expressed his support and interest, and we discussed many
migration options. As far as I can tell nothing happened wrt to
Mediawiki using WikiCreole---the reality of day-to-day work and the
complexity of a heavy-duty wiki engine took its toll (my guess).

If you are serious about reviving efforts for simplified or more
formally defined wiki text (i.e. a specification not just an
implementation) I suggest you talk to the Wiki Creole guys. You may
also like my own work on an (EBNF) grammar for wiki text, see
http://www.riehle.org/category/wiki-tech/

Cheers,
Dirk

On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 4:48 PM, Husky <huskyr at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Mediawiki software, the wiki syntax and the Wiki interface is in
> desperate need of a few people with some knowledge on user interfaces
> and semantics who can make useful suggestions on enhancing it. That
> won't be easy, as the wiki syntax was built in a very organic way,
> without a lot of standardization or good thought on how it will work
> in the future. This had the benefit that the projects could grow very
> fast, but the problems are showing right now.
>
> WYSIWYG editors are not the solution because, as Delphine pointed out,
> they don't magically add semantic meaning to text, they just make it
> look pretty. What is really needed is a standard on what wikitext is,
> what wikitext isn't and what wikitext will be in the future. HTML has
> gone through the same process, and i believe we are on the same stage
> right now as when people were beginning to think that the <blink> tag
> was a bad thing.
>
> So, something like a specification for MediaWiki wikitext should be
> agreed upon (in a text document, not in the MediaWiki PHP code). After
> that, on a solid foundation, nice gadgets can be built to help people
> built tables and templates.
>
> -- Hay / Husky
>
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 1:03 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 9:14 AM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 2008/9/25 geni <geniice at gmail.com>:
>>>> 2008/9/25 phoebe ayers <phoebe.wiki at gmail.com>:
>>>>> I was going to say as well, what happened to that proposal to define
>>>>> references at the bottom of the article instead of inline? And then
>>>>> Pathos posted a nice implementation above. It does make a whole lot
>>>>> more sense from both a reader and an editor's point of view to have
>>>>> reference metadata in a single place, away from the wikitext. Defining
>>>>> refs with a "refname" in the text doesn't seem too bad... other than
>>>>> the mess of trying to get a different stylistic system going, is there
>>>>> some reason we don't do this?
>>>>>
>>>>> -- phoebe
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Basically it results in a high maintenance cost with a fairly high
>>>> chance of errors. It means you have to keep the article text and the
>>>> end section in sync rather than just keeping all the stuff in one
>>>> place.
>>>
>>> If a reference is used more than once, it's not all in one place
>>> anyway. It actually solves the issue of someone accidentally deleting
>>> the text for the ref not realising it is used elsewhere. For refs only
>>> used once, it makes maintenance of the ref a little harder, but
>>> maintenance of the rest of the article much easier.
>>
>> And arguably it would make it easier, not harder, if you had several
>> similar refs, to correct any errors in all of your references at once,
>> see irregularities, etc.
>>
>> -- phoebe
>>
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