[Foundation-l] Big problem to solve: good WYSIWYG on WMF wikis

[Samuel Klein]

David Gerard writes;
> Our current markup is one of our biggest barriers to participation.

Yes.

> * Starting from a clear field makes it ridiculously easy.

We could start with solutions for first-time posters, new articles,
and new talk-page comments -- any comprehensive solution should be
compatible with short-term solutions that solve this 'ridiculously
easy' part -- which happens to address what many first-time editors
need.


Stephanie Daugherty writes:
> Not only is the current markup a barrier to participation, it's a barrier to
> development. As I argued on Wikien-l, starting over with a markup that can
< be syntacticly validated... would reap huge rewards in the safety
and effectiveness
> of automated tools.

A lack of WYSIWY* is often a barrier to adoption of MediaWiki as
opposed to other wiki platforms, independent of whether or not
potential editors who visit a MW site feel comfortale editing it.  I
recall that P2PU for instance wanted to run MW but used pbwiki instead
because of its WYSIWYG editor.

> By aiming for WYSIWYM, some things would render in the editor in a
> way that makes them easier to understand and edit. For example, templates
> could render in the editor as tables or as a block that loads the template
< parameters into a sidebar when clicked...  WYSIWYM editors can be friendly
> to both experienced and new users alike - take LyX as a good example

Victor writes;
> I always viewed wikitext vs. WYSIWYG dilemma as similar to LaTeX vs.
> Microsoft Word one.

In this context, LyX is a good example; it sees its WYSIWYM
implementation as halfway between the two.

Stephanie writes:
> Layouts would be a new form of template, designed to apply as a
> block-level outline to an article, providing both a framework to build a
> particular type of article, and defining the formatting for that article in
> a manner that templates and article markup would no longer be permitted to
> do. It's likely that layouts would be treated like highly used templates and
< the interface itself... one to an article, so the interface to
select one would
> probably be just selecting it from a dropdown or typing it's name.

I really like the idea of separating article text, local templates,
and page-wide layout.  I don't know if 'three different paresers' are
needed, but just being able to define a stylesheet for a named layout
would save time and frustration.


Brion writes:
> Getting anything done that would work on the huge, well-developed,
> wildly-popular Wikipedia has always been a non-starter because it has to
> deal with 10 years of backwards-compatibility from the get-go. I think it's
> going to be a *lot* easier to get things going on those smaller projects
> which are now so poorly served

How do we make it easier to implement new things for individual
smaller projects?


> For the Wikipedia case, we need to incubate the next generation of templating

Is this a problem space we could tackle in tandem with MindTouch and
others who care about simple interfaces to edit and view complex
information?


Sam.

-- 
Samuel Klein          identi.ca:sj           w:user:sj          +1 617 529 4266