[Wikipedia-l] Re: Re: GUI? WYSIWYG?

[Michael R. Irwin]

Daniel Mayer wrote:
> 
> On Saturday 10 August 2002 11:35 pm, you wrote:
> > Ward Cunningham, the founder of Wiki, says on
> > WhyWikiWorks (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks)
> > "Wiki is not WYSIWYG (WhatYouSeeIsWhatYouGet). It's an
> > intelligence test of sorts to be able to edit a wiki
> > page. It's not rocket science, but it doesn't appeal
> > to the VideoAddicts. If it doesn't appeal, they don't
> > participate, which leaves those of us who read and
> > write to get on with rational discourse."
> >
> > I think he's probably right. We should remember that
> > one of the reasons why Wikipedia has been successful
> > while other encyclopedia projects have not is the wiki
> > way of contributing.
> >
> > Stephen G.
> 
> Well said Stephen. I'm glad you dug-up that original quote.
> 
> However Mirwin does have a point about the need for specialist-type
> functionality. But I am unconvinced that the only way to do this is to
> abandon text-based Wiki; why not simply extend the capabilities of Wiki
> markup and hide much of this in special namespaces if needed?
> 
> I know I spend a large percentage of my time on a Word document simply
> playing with the formating (this tendency is also supported by a good deal of
> research on worker productivity). In Wikipedia there are few obvious
> formating choices which leads to more concentration on content than
> presentation. Somebody has already said that Wikipedia is not PowerPoint. I
> tend to agree.

You miss part of the point.  I have not seen anyone proposing
to eliminate text, only augment it.  It would be better if
people were saying Powerpoint is not Wikipedia.  Asteroids, Space
Invaders, Warcraft, Starcraft, etc. are not Wikipedia.

Having developed and given a few PowerPoint presentations I tend
to agree that Wikipedia is not PowerPoint.  I would not stake the future 
of my projects and career on Wikipedia's current presentation
capabilities 
if PowerPoint were available to present or summarize key information to 
decision makers.

The question we wish potential readers to be asking is:
"Why waste time on video games when Wikipedia has 3D presentation 
tools and examples which I can read about and manipulate to see how the
real 
world works according to leading scientists and educators?"  It is fun
to catch apparent mistakes made by busy smart people and propose ways to 
fix them.

There are theories that play is a mammal's way of preparing
for the future.  Flight simulator's are getting popular as games.
Why?  Apparently it is fun, for some, to prepare for flying jumbo jets, 
military jets, or Piper Cubs .... via an accurate graphics simulation
or presentation in response to the user's inputs.

Why do people spend time on formatting?

Engineers carry around stacks of drawings in the field.  Why?

The information is presented in a form more compact and easier to 
follow than equivalent but more voluminous stacks of text.  It is
easier to trace mistakes, figure out corrections, and then redline
the drawing to record the changes.

Regarding this community obsession with forcing contributors to 
concentrate on text content and completing high quality articles.   
It is counterproductive in a volunteer project. If the volunteers are 
enjoying themselves in the stacks then the
work will get done because we will soon have sufficient volunteers.  
Hopefully, some of the work that gets done will be graphics and 
formatting.

Our goal is not to revolutionize publishing by rolling the presses
back to the days of text only documents.  The stated goal is to 
produce a free online Encyclopedia of high quality which readers 
will enjoy comprehending and editors will enjoy improving.

> 
> Given our rate of growth I don't think anything is fundamentally wrong with
> the way we are currently doing things and introducing a GUI might lead to
> loads of mediocre material as the VideoAddicts invade. 

Mediocre diagrams are much better for some purposes than even
outstanding text.   Pick up an old trigonometry text published
before graphics capabilities got cheap.  Compare it to a modern
trigonometry or statics text.  The lack of diagrams and heavy
dependence on text based theorems is not old fashioned quality.
It reflects the economics of publishing a hundred years ago when
graphics were produced via hand carved lanolin blocks suitable 
for typesetting.

Most introductory statics course spend weeks training engineering
students to always draw and analyze free body diagrams prior to writing
down the equations to calculate forces, stresses, etc.  Why?

Comprehension of all the forces involved is required to reliably
avoid mistakes that are easy to introduce in the equations.  The
pictures of vectors in 3 dimensions are much easier to comprehend
and track mentally than the balancing terms in the equations.

If somebody else
> develops a Wiki GUI and we begin to loose contributors because of it, then we
> can incorporate that into our code (most Wiki software is GPLd, no?).

Perhaps.  Reaction and copy catting is a poor strategy in the
open source free mind share game.

Consider the difference of a few months or a year in the Wikipedia
and "The Fact Factory".  Now consider "The Fact Factory" plus effective
GUI editing tools or procedures.   How many "video addicts" are
necessary 
for "The Fact Factory" to overtake Wikipedia in volume and quality of 
content in graphics intensive subjects such as ..... human knowledge.

The purpose of an encyclopedia is to convey information 
from the team that compiled it to the readers.  This is even 
more important for Wikipedia than Britannica because Wikipedia's
project model is built around the assumption that some of its 
readers also become future editors.

Perhaps an alternative to overly complicating the existing wiki text
interface is too establish some procedures and policies for 
tracking submitted graphics and source files.  Having a set
of community recommended free tools for preparing graphics and
encouraging
the source files to be GPL'd or FDL'd and loaded into user accessible
locations (for download) when the graphic is inserted would assure that 
the graphic can be tweaked.   Not as easily as from a greatly desired
Super GUI with all bells and whistles simple enough for a "video
addict" to start using; but still wikifiable rather than starting 
from scratch.

regards,
mirwin