Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2011-03-07/Technology report

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Dear Lord... Please tell me WYSIWYG will not be the default. If it is I it will basically turn us into WikiaPedia. 184.168.192.27 (talk) 03:29, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My concern is that "rich text editor" (as in, avoiding wiki markup when bolding some text) has very little to do with the most serious editing problems for novices: templates, footnotes, and tables. For these three things (and to a much lesser extent the text for categories and images), what is shown in the editing window bears very little resemblance, in almost all cases, to what is visible to the reader. A really good editing interface would move the text for templates, tables, and footnotes out of the main editing window (regardless of how that text is physically stored in the database); for tables, there should be a separate WYSIWYG editor (as is the case in a number of wikis that don't use MediaWiki software). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 05:48, 9 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know / can't remember if you've been party to the discussions on the various mailing lists, John, but I'm pretty sure tables, references, templates are what everyone's been thinking about here. Not just bold and italics, you'll be relieved to know. - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 21:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Lord... Please tell me that people complaining that "OMG! We shouldn't allow people not as L33T as me to edit Wikipedia" will not derail the process of making wikimarkup simpler. Witty Lama 02:27, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Liam (Witty Lama) on this one: although I don't think that easier editing will boost the number of new editors a lot, I'm convinced it's worth a go. (I try not to let my own views creep into the articles, but it is hard: please call me up on any perceived biases.) - Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 21:08, 11 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Witty, I don't think 27 is trying to derail it, but there are concerns that WYSIWYG would encourage edits not to improve the encyclopedia and other projects, but to increase unsourced non-encyclopedic edits from people who refuse to read other articles, instruction pages, policy pages, etc.. We just don't want wp to turn into post-September Usenet. Make it easier to edit sure (as an option?), especially if it's a barrier to good content being added, but also be prepared to undo do it if it causes an avalanche of crap which the bots and patrollers can't handle. -- Jeandré, 2011-03-13t22:32z