[WikiEN-l] Why we need a good WYSIWYG editor

[David Gerard]

2010/1/4 Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell at gmail.com>:

> So lets not confuse the usability goals or making editing SIMPLE,
> NON-INTIMIDATING, and DISCOVERABLE all of which are very much "wiki"
> concepts, with the values of WYSIWYG which encourages increased but
> hidden complexity.


And never mind the actual numbers from Wikia, which look very like
having a WYSIWYG system for presentational markup was *the* key to
having people actually complete a planned edit rather than click
'edit', go "what on earth" at the computer guacamole and go away?

Obivously proper usability testing would be needed. But, y'know,
there's nothing wrong with bad presentation in the edit. This is a
wiki, someone will be around with a bot to fix it in about two
minutes. The barrier is getting them to contribute at all and not run
away screaming forever. I believe you posted something recently
pointing out how easy it is to get someone to run away screaming
forever.


- d.