[Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?

Wed May 19 14:50:52 UTC 2010

Our experience has been that once the FCKeditor was installed on our 60+ wikis usage went up.  Our users are mostly intermittent, using a wiki infrequently, so learning and retaining wikitext is not something we can take for granted.  And I agree if it were just bold, italics, etc, everything would be fine, but its text color, tables, image placement and formatting, and other things people are used to when using a word processor that wikitext does not make simple.  

I teach users how to use our wikis and before we installed the FCKeditor the course was 3 hours long with tables taking up 45 minutes.  Now teaching all editing takes 20 minutes as I go over the buttons and demonstrate what they are already familiar with from using other word processors.  I used to get a call every day with a wikitext question.  Now I get very few if any questions on editing.  

WYSIWYG editing is about 15 years old so it is nothing new, so I'm perplexed why it is not available with Mediawiki, which has editing at its core.  If this is how Mediawiki wants to continue because its main customer is Wikipedia, then I have no problem, I will simply find another wiki that includes a usable editor if the FCKeditor effort dies.  I just don't understand the mindset that people should be expected to use wikitext when they use no other text formatting language to edit in other places, on facebook for example.  Can you imagine facebook's acceptance had they required wikitext?

-Jim

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve VanSlyck [mailto:s.vanslyck at spamcop.net] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 10:16 AM
To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct venue?

Take a look at what Wikipedia is currently doing with the vector skin. I'm 
having no problems, and, really, asking people to do their own markup is 
not something I see as a great issue. It requries people to engage 
mentally - at least somewhat - with what they're doing and forces them to 
use the interface. Every car needs to run reliably, but every car does 
not need automatic mirrors or A/C.

I'm not suggesting that luxuries and tools are not warranted, but only that 
the users really do not require as much hand-holding as we think they do, 
and if they're insisting on it for something which is really pretty basic 
then I have to question why. I am a great believer in 
tools-for-efficiencies, but I also believe that a little bit of work 
never hurt nobody. Typing ''2,'' '''3,''' or '''''5''''' single quotation 
marks, or [one] or [[two]] brackets, or even <u>underscoring</u> one's 
own text really isn't a big deal.

On tables I agree with you 100%, but for bold, underline, strikeout, 
italics, and links, well, I think people can - and largely should - do it 
themselves. I don't want to have to learn Dreamweaver simply to edit a 
wiki page. And if we're not carefull that's exactly what we'll end up 
with.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sullivan, James (NIH/CIT) [C]" <sullivan at mail.nih.gov>
To: 'MediaWiki announcements and site admin list' 
<mediawiki-l at lists.wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, 19 May 2010 09:59:52 -0400
Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct 
venue?

> I've been following the CKeditor effort and their promises, once version 
3.0 was out, to work on a CKeditor+Mediawiki.  Version 3.2 is now out and 
no sign of a CKeditor+Mediawiki effort, and most concerning is the lack 
of any recent responses to direct questions about the previously promised 
effort on the CKeditor's forum.  Wikia's efforts are not comforting 
either.  Almost all wikia wikis I have visited have the wysiwyg editor 
disabled, which is not the default, so people must be purposely disabling 
it.  And the discussion page of wikia's editor help page 
(http://help.wikia.com/wiki/Help_talk:Rich_text_editor) has people asking 
for the older version of the editor because of problems with their latest 
version.  
> 
> We are currently using version 2.6.4 of the FCKeditor and even with its 
issues have found it has lead to a wider acceptance of using our wikis.  
For us there is no going back to wikitext.  If the wysiwyg editor future 
is not resolved for Mediawiki soon I'm afraid we will be forced to move 
toward another wiki software, most likely commercial where wysiwyg has 
been around for years, because requiring non-technical people to learn a 
markup language to use a wiki seems archaic in the 21st century.
> 
> -Jim
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Clayton [mailto:ccornell at openoffice.org] 
> Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2010 3:51 AM
> To: MediaWiki announcements and site admin list
> Subject: Re: [Mediawiki-l] FCK Editor svn head and MW 1.16b2 - correct 
venue?
> 
> On 05/19/2010 01:20 AM, David Gerard wrote:
> > On 18 May 2010 18:35, Platonides <Platonides at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> Forwarding on behalf of Jack, which is not subscribed:
> > 
> >>> Maybe the best idea would be to kill off our FCKeditor extension and 
try
> >>> to collaborate with Wikia regarding their CKeditor integration 
extension.
> >>> It certainly would be cool to have a good WYSIWYG editor for MediaWiki
> >> one day...
> > 
> > 
> > argh argh argh. I was so looking forward to 1.16 specifically for a
> > half-decent WYSIWYG editor ...
> 
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