[Foundation-l] Ideas for newbie recruitment

[Jussi-Ville Heiskanen]

On Mon, Oct 31, 2011 at 3:06 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 31 October 2011 13:01, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>> I imagine for the other 14.6 percent the
>> process goes something along the lines of "oh, it says I can make the
>> changes myself, lets do thaWAUGH, WHAT IN CTHULU'S NAME DOES ALL THIS TEXT
>> MEAN"
>
>
> I've been editing nearly 8 years and I get that reaction ... here's to
> usable WYSIWYG!
>
>


Purely aside from the clutter effect of all those tags, particularly
the references syntax is remarkably opaque. I would imagine a huge
part of non-stickyness of edits and the
subsequent demoralisation, stems from the steep learing curve for
citing sources, Personally I have added a few refences, and each time
had to pore with considerabe expense of time
over the relevant help and policy pages. It really is hard to remember
how the syntax works.
Would it be overwhelmingly hard to program a pop-up dialogue which
would first ask which type of source the editor is citing from, which
would lead to a form with labeled textboxes for the
various elements of a reference citation with an asterisk beside the
elements considered vital. My guess is that quite a few of the
elements of such are already in the code.


-- 
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Jussi-Ville Heiskanen, ~ [[User:Cimon Avaro]]