On 02/10/2012 02:24 AM, George Herbert wrote:
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 3:47
PM,<vitalif(a)yourcmc.ru> wrote:
Improving usability is good, but targetting at
people who don't want to be "technically proficient" (emphasis: DON'T
WANT TO BE, not just "ARE NOT") and just want to press a magic button and
"that's all" is not good.
I strongly disagree, as does community consensus on this point.
There are barriers we need to have between would-be editors and the
content - such as basic competence in the language, lack of conflict
of interest, willingness to be a participant in shared editing
processes. Technically, the presence of a web browser is a legitimate
barrier, but the "learn wikitext or else" one is bogus.
I mostly stayed away from the discussion here,
but I feel I have to say (again) that:
I believe that the "wikitext obscuration" will
just break things, not helping the participation
figures as expected.
It might be fun to produce a visual editor etc.,
but this is solving just a completely different
problem from "lowering the barriers" stated here
many times.
The Wikipedia participation problem, especially
at this stage of the project's lifecycle, is a
social problem, not technical. Putting on a new
frontend to the "old" wiki-engine will address
that how? Let's imagine one day of wikipedia's
life with visual editor magically added. What
would change?
The main problem is wikipedia model of
encyclopedical content creation itself has an
inherent, irremovable flaws, if regarded from
the point of view of expertise representation.
All right, /it turns/, the wikipedia is there
(and has some credibility problems, and some
expertise problems), but the main expenditures
in its creation were not on wikitext learning
and using. The essential motivating trick/move
was already there (...*anybody* can edit...),
and it is exactly that trick/move which creates
the meanest problems now, the problems which you
guys try to remedy with business-style projects
like "usability-friendly visual editing of
wikitext".
Sorry if I didn't make myself clear.
Yury