[Wikipedia-l] GUI? WYSIWYG?

[lcrocker at nupedia.com]

>> When someone makes a GUI frontend to 
>> Wikipedia, those features will become more
>> sophisticated (wysiwyg).
>
> Blasphemy! GUI? WYSIWYG? Now that would be unwiki. 
>
> Seriously; one of the reasons why we are successful is because
> there is a bit of a learning curve to being a contributor (small,
> but it is there). I hate to say it, but this small learning curve
> acts as a kind of filter against those that have nothing but
> incoherent and random nonsense to "contribute".
>
> If the basic concept ain't broke, why fix it? Wiki is dead easy
> to learn anyway. But it does require some cognitive faculty and
> mental discipline to get the hang of. 

While I'm receptive to the "pons asinorum" argument, I rather like
the idea of a GUI wiki interface someday.  That's why I want to get
the markup language adequately specified and unambiguous, and why
I entered a feature request for myself to design a stable API for
fetching and editing pages.  We'll just make sure that setting up
the GUI application requires them to enter a URL or something. :-)