[WikiEN-l] Newbie recruitment: referencing

[Ray Saintonge]

On 11/03/11 7:36 PM, Alan Liefting wrote:
> On 3/11/2011 10:45 p.m., Ray Saintonge wrote:
>> On 11/02/11 3:38 PM, Ian Woollard wrote:
>>> I'm thinking that the problem here is inline references. An inline
>>> reference is one where you plonk the reference in the middle of the text
>>> <ref>lots of stuff</ref>. The problem with those is that they break up the
>>> flow of the text, making it very hard to maintain.
>> Inline references are a problem even for newbies wanting to make a
>> simple correction.  In a reference rich article the error may be easily
>> visible in article space, but becomes difficult to find in edit space
>> when one needs to wade through a lot of references.
> WikEd has syntax highlighting to make editing easier.
>
That just introduces another geekish piece of software. In a random page 
in need of help there is no link to this software, If I want to fix an 
obvious typo with one or two keystrokes I don't want to spend an hour 
tracking down and learning some new tool.  That just makes the cure more 
onerous than leaving the error in place. Non-technical people are 
quickly turned off by the fairy world of additional software.

Ray