[WikiEN-l] simplicity of markup and presentation

Tue Sep 2 23:18:50 UTC 2003

A while ago some bright spark thought to put a DIV around the statement 
of maths theorems, with a dashed purple border.
Today it's boxes with coloured borders for disambiguation notes.

Here's why these are bad ideas:

Firstly, Wikipedia is a wiki. That means source text should be as light 
on markup as possible. Knowing HTML should not be a prerequisite. We 
currently have HTML for tables and floated images -- this is something 
to be dealt with, not taken as a springboard for more. Besides, tables 
and floated images serve a purpose, which leads to:--
Secondly, wiki markup is structural. This is one of its great strengths: 
in accomplishes in one fell swoop the whole HTML/CSS separation of 
content and presentation.
Thirdly, there is the aesthetics of it. Wikipedia thrives on simplicity. 
Anyone can write a plain text article. Granted, there are certain style 
guidelines, but do we really want to add purple borders to the manual of 
style? Is the instigator of these pretty tweaks really going to go round 
every single page to bring them into line? Which bring me to:
Fourthly: common sense. Suppose we *do* want a purple border around a 
theorem, or a pink background to a disambiguation notice. This is *not* 
the way to do it. If we really wanted this, we'd set these colours in 
the stylesheet (because that is where presentational information 
belongs) and we'd somehow tag paragraphs in an XML-like manner: 
<disamb>This is a disamb.... etc </disamb>.
Though even that, IMO, would be bringing too much markup into the wiki 
source.