[Wikipedia-l] Re: Wikipedia-l digest, Vol 1 #1216 - 14 msgs

[sgilbert at nbnet.nb.ca]

On 2 Jul 2003, at 20:43, The Cunctator wrote:

> > My reasoning for this was that Wikipedia has two uses:
> > - a work of reference
> > - a collaborative editing system used by us.
> > 
> > We need to find the right balance between making editing easy and making
> > reading Wikipedia unobtrusive. Some work on this is being done in the
> > Skin department, for example, where we will probably end up with a Skin
> > preferred by editors, and one that is more friendly to non-editing
> > users.
> 
> This would be a terrible violation of the basic Wiki-nature of Wikipedia.

A "reader" skin wouldn't make it hard for people to edit; it would 
just keep things as simple and uncluttered as possible, with 
navigation tools and an "Edit this page" link. The complicated stuff 
would be tucked out of sight. If you want to argue wiki-nature, I'd 
say this simple skin would be more "wiki" than our current 
cluttered, full-featured and somewhat confusing interfaces.

- Stephen G.
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Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
http://www.wikipedia.org