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

[David Gerard]

2010/1/4 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
> 2010/1/4 David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com>:

>> 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?

> You need to look at more than just one number. Of course WYSIWYG will
> increase the number of people completing edits, has anyone suggested
> otherwise? The problems described in this thread aren't problems that
> would show up in that number.


Absolutely, and we have to test thoroughly and not break what we have.

But I think a lot of en:wp regulars forget just how horribly
intimidating wikitext is.

(I'm desperately waiting for MediaWiki 1.16 so I can put the latest
FCKeditor on my work wiki, then I know quite a lot more people will
use it - all the ones who are too afraid to edit "because I'm not a
programmer." And that's on our relatively uncomplicated office wiki!
They see wiki markup, they think "computer code, I am teh dumb" and
don't do anything. This is anecdote, not data, but it's an anecdote I
experience rather too often.)


- d.