[Foundation-l] Can anyone really edit Wikipedia?

[Delirium]

Thomas Dalton wrote:
> That's true, but when people use LaTeX they always do it properly with
> all the semantic information included, when people use Word they
> rarely do. WYSIWYG doesn't stop you doing things properly, but it does
> make it easier not to.
>   
Hah, I wish that were true. Since the LaTeX stylesheet language is a 
terrible stack-based monstrosity that nobody wants to edit, real-world 
LaTeX use is riddled with manual formatting, especially nonsense like 
\vspace{}. In any case, WYSIWYG doesn't make it easier not to do things 
properly; *Word's* specific implementation of WYSIWYG makes it easier, 
by making lots of semantically-meaningless formatting commands easy to 
get to. Nobody is saying that a wikitext WYSIWYG editor ought to copy 
the interface of Word.

In any case, if we're taking LaTeX as an analog for wikitext, there are 
LaTeX WYSIWYG editors (like LyX), so the analogy isn't much of an 
argument against wikitext WYSIWYG editors.

-Mark