At the recent Wikimania Conference, Jimmy Wales said that, contrary to some opinions, barriers to participation are *not* good. We still get vandals, but we're probably missing out on some really good content creators who are not technologically savvy. This is one reason why WM is now working with SocialText to integrate Wikiwyg.
Tim
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] Apple's Wiki Server brings WYSIWYG to wiki From: Christiaan Briggs christiaan@yurkycross.co.uk Date: Fri, August 11, 2006 7:58 am To: Wikimedia developers wikitech-l@wikimedia.org
Yeah, fair points. Couldn't agree more.
Christiaan
On 11 Aug 2006, at 1:30 PM, Steve Bennett wrote:
On 8/11/06, Christiaan Briggs christiaan@yurkycross.co.uk wrote:
On 11 Aug 2006, at 11:51 AM, mboverload wrote:
What does Wikipedia need WYSIWYG? We already have noobs writing POV articles, now you want ...
And there's an example of the attitude I was talking in my first post. It's curious in that it accepts that wiki markup is barrier to participation but that this is somehow a good thing.
Sometimes barriers to participation *are* a good thing. Various online communities have noticed that the harder you make it to participate, the better quality participants you get.
OTOH, Wikipedia explicitly wants contributions from *everyone*, even if they are 14 and have trouble spelling Pok�mon...
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