[WikiEN-l] Jason Calancis on Wikipedia's technological obscurantism

[Charlotte Webb]

On 10/14/07, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> I don't think it's a good idea at all.
>
> Instead, I would suggest having two edit boxes on the edit page -- one
> at the top for templates, and a second one for the main article text.
> The one at the top would be hidden by default, you would click a button
> to expand it.
>
> The dividing line between the two would be determined heuristically on
> the server side.
>
> A link would be provided to a non-JS version of the edit page, for
> compatibility. A user preference could also be added.
>
> Contrary to popular belief, PHP programming is not impossible.
>
> -- Tim Starling

Maybe a type of section break that does not produce a visible header
or appear in the TOC would be useful. This could be put at the end of
infobox template code. Then follow it up having a slightly more
intelligent section-edit url syntax that corresponds with the TOC
(decimal points, etc, so the infobox would be section "0.0") and also
allow editing of a specified range of sections. Probably in this case
it would be everything from "0.1" to the end (or earlier if we wanted
to disregard stuff at the bottom).

Might be a bit more hackish but it might be of more general usefulness
than just ignoring infoboxes when editing.

—C.W.