Steve VanSlyck wrote:
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.
I have to disagree with you given my experience. In one government department where MediaWiki was installed we saw the active user base spike from about 1000 users to about 8000 users within a month of having enabled FCKeditor. FCKeditor definitely has it's warts, but it very closely matches the experience non-technical people have gotten used to while using Word or WordPerfect. Leveraging skills people already have cuts down on training costs and allows them to be productive almost immediately.
Cheers, Rob.