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

[Charles Matthews]

David Gerard wrote:
> 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.
>   
I think we need to define what problem it is we need to solve. In a 
previous thread on this I recall making a slightly weary comment, to the 
effect that we would probably get a WYSIWYG interface because it was the 
sort of project that sounded pretty good and would get funded. (Whether 
or not I sounded weary, I probably was.) If the fundamental issue here 
is that the existing wikitext syntax is unmanageable (in someone's 
sense) then that might be the actual bottleneck.

Of course we need to recruit and retain good editors - always have done, 
always will do. I don't suppose there is any sort of definitive solution 
there, though.

Charles