Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 8:34 PM, Jacopo Corbetta jacopo.corbe...@gmail.com wrote: (HTML-style headings do not show up in the TOC, an odd wikitext feature which we surely don't want newbies to use). HTML-style headings do show up in the TOC, and have for a few years as far as I know. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
[Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
Aryeh Gregor Simetrical+wikilist at gmail.com writes: Wikitext is not easy to edit. It is easy enough to edit for power users, who make the large majority of edits; and way more comfortable than WYSIWYG. Wikis require a certain hacker mentality - not in the technical sense, but a desire to understand things in depth. It takes effort to learn the syntax, but once you did, it gives you freedom and effectiveness, because you are actually in control of things (as opposed to rich text editors which sometimes do something similar to what you intended, at other times not even close, because they use some fucked-up internal representation that you have no way of knowing or understanding). This might be a problem for Wikia with its fanboi target demographic that has the attention span of a Naruto episode, but Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and writing a good encyclopedia article requires hacker mentality in the first place, so whatever. And then there is the ecosystem of bots, gadgets and other third-party tools which is based on wikitext, and not only would moving away from wikitext a huge maintenance burden, but again it would be replaced with something that is way less intuitive and actually harder to use (simple text operations are somewhat easier than fooling around with document trees). So if you can do WYSIWYG on top of wikitext, cool (the learning curve is certainly steep for new users, and that will only become worse as new features are added). If you can do a sort of WYSIWYM with syntax highlighting, context-sensitive help and wizards for the more inconvenient elements like templates, that is even better, because it wouldn't create a gap between people using WYSIWYG and wikitext, and would allow for a gradual learning experience. But replacing wikitext with some sort of internal representation that is unreadable for humans would be a huge mistake IMO. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
2009/9/24 Tisza Gergő gti...@gmail.com: It is easy enough to edit for power users, who make the large majority of edits; and way more comfortable than WYSIWYG. Much as vim is more powerful than Notepad. However, impenetrable wikitext is one of *the* greatest barriers to new users on Wikimedia projects. And this impenetrability is not, in any way whatsoever or by any twists of logic, a feature. - d. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 14:36, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: However, impenetrable wikitext is one of *the* greatest barriers to new users on Wikimedia projects. And this impenetrability is not, in any way whatsoever or by any twists of logic, a feature. Adding a gui layer to wikitext is always okay, as long as it's possible to get rid of, since majority of edits not coming from new users, and losing flexibility for power users to get more newbies doesn't sound like a good deal to me. At least all of the GUIs I've seen were slow and hard to use, and resulted unwanted (side) effects if something even barely complex were entered. And this isn't the problem of Wikipedia: google docs, which is one of the most advanced web-based gui systems I guess have plenty of usability problems, which only can be fixed by messing with the Source. And many core people want to mess with the source. So, adding a newbie layer is okay as long as you don't mess up the work of the non-newbies. g ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Tisza Gergő gti...@gmail.com wrote: It is easy enough to edit for power users, who make the large majority of edits; Retention of existing users is not a problem. We don't have to worry that a significant number of dedicated contributors will leave because of a switch to WYSIWYG. They are, by hypothesis, dedicated. On the other hand, new users being reluctant to contribute due to wikitext is a demonstrable and serious problem. I also contest your implication that power users will uniformly or even mostly prefer wikitext to WYSIWYG. I'm a power user by any standard, but I use WYSIWYG wherever possible. Last I heard, by the way, even now most actual *content* is added by occasional contributors. Power users may have more edits, but that doesn't mean they're the most important ones. Of course, I should emphasize that ideally we should keep everyone happy. But making Wikipedia easier to edit for new users is *much* more important than making it easier for established editors. It will *always* be easier for established users to edit than new users, and established editors require a lot less coddling than new editors. Wikis require a certain hacker mentality - not in the technical sense, but a desire to understand things in depth. No, they don't. One of the core principles of wikis is eliminating barriers to entry. Ten thousand people who each fix one typo a month are a tremendously valuable resource even if none of them ever contribute more. But many of them will -- *if* you can lure them into making those typo fixes to begin with. Which you can't, if they're scared off by the fixed-width text with random incomprehensible punctuation thrown in everywhere that has no obvious relationship to the article's actual content. And then there is the ecosystem of bots, gadgets and other third-party tools which is based on wikitext, and not only would moving away from wikitext a huge maintenance burden, but again it would be replaced with something that is way less intuitive and actually harder to use (simple text operations are somewhat easier than fooling around with document trees). Are you arguing here that it's easier for *bots* to edit wikitext than XML? Because that seems to be what you're saying, but I don't understand how that would make any sense. Wikitext is unparseable, bots have to resort to fragile regexes and hope they mostly work. But replacing wikitext with some sort of internal representation that is unreadable for humans would be a huge mistake IMO. It's not going to happen anytime soon in any case. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 7:27 AM, Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com wrote: snip Last I heard, by the way, even now most actual *content* is added by occasional contributors. Power users may have more edits, but that doesn't mean they're the most important ones. snip It may depend on your definition of occasional contributor and power user, but the way I tend to think about such distinctions would suggest your statement is false. I've never been able to do the analysis directly for enwiki, because it is too large and lacks appropriate dumps, but looking at other large Wikipedias suggests that as a rule of thumb about 70% of article content (measured by character count) comes from accounts with more than 1000 edits to articles. Only ~15% of content originates from people with 100 article edits or less. In practice, adding sentences, paragraphs, sections, and entirely new articles, is something that most people have to ease their way into. In addition, young editors who try to add large blocks of text too early in their career often find their content is reverted because of writing style or formatting problems. So, the creation of new blocks of content tends to be primarily accomplished by experienced editors. You are right that the multitude of drive-by editors willing to do spell checking and make other small edits is a great resource, and should be encouraged. However, I would suggest that for the expansion and long-term development of Wikipedia it is the retention of existing power users and the development of new ones that is most important. However, making it easier for people to first start editing should also ultimately lead to more potential power editors, so I think the goals are generally compatible. There is no reason why making it easier for newbies should ever be anything other than a net benefit to everyone. -Robert Rohde ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 11:20 AM, rarohde raro...@gmail.com wrote: It may depend on your definition of occasional contributor and power user, but the way I tend to think about such distinctions would suggest your statement is false. I've never been able to do the analysis directly for enwiki, because it is too large and lacks appropriate dumps, but looking at other large Wikipedias suggests that as a rule of thumb about 70% of article content (measured by character count) comes from accounts with more than 1000 edits to articles. Only ~15% of content originates from people with 100 article edits or less. Do these statistics take into account things like vandalism reversions? Also, how do they handle anonymous users -- are they summed up by edit count like anyone else? I distinctly remember seeing a study conclude that most of the actual content comes from users with few edits, but I can't recall where or how long ago (possibly two or three years). Regardless, the point remains that heavy contributors only exist because they started out as new users. Just because you're a power user type of person doesn't mean you'll be less daunted by wikimarkup if you've never seen it before -- any barrier to entry is a problem. (Otherwise, why not require registration too? That's probably *easier* than understanding wikimarkup for most people.) And of course, a lot of contributors that Wikipedia would really like to encourage are people like academics in the humanities, say, who can't be expected to be particularly comfortable with computers. How much of the bias toward science and technology in Wikipedia is because of wikimarkup? ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
2009/9/24 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com: Do these statistics take into account things like vandalism reversions? Also, how do they handle anonymous users -- are they summed up by edit count like anyone else? I distinctly remember seeing a study conclude that most of the actual content comes from users with few edits, but I can't recall where or how long ago (possibly two or three years). Aaron Swartz. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia Most of the edits are done by a very small group of regulars. But most of the actual text is contributed by drive-by contributors and then beaten into shape by the regulars. - d. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 10:44 PM, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: Adding a gui layer to wikitext is always okay, as long as it's possible to get rid of, since majority of edits not coming from new users, and losing flexibility for power users to get more newbies doesn't sound like a good deal to me. There does seem to be a common presumption that us old-timers would switch off the WYSIWYG and get straight into the wikitext. Speaking for myself though, I'd love a good interface where I didn't feel compelled to do that. I hate the amount of time it takes just to find the point I want to edit. I'd love to be able to hide all the wikitext that I'm not right in the process of editing. I can't really picture such a beast yet, but hopefully someone else can. Steve ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 12:50 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/9/24 Aryeh Gregor simetrical+wikil...@gmail.com: Do these statistics take into account things like vandalism reversions? Also, how do they handle anonymous users -- are they summed up by edit count like anyone else? I distinctly remember seeing a study conclude that most of the actual content comes from users with few edits, but I can't recall where or how long ago (possibly two or three years). Aaron Swartz. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whowriteswikipedia Most of the edits are done by a very small group of regulars. But most of the actual text is contributed by drive-by contributors and then beaten into shape by the regulars. Yes, I have seen that too. My analysis, using a blame engine against a Wikipedia's full history, suggests that Aaron's thesis is simply not true in general. There could be any number of reasons he got a different result. For example he looked at only one article discussing a fairly well known person, which may not have been representative of the bulk of Wiki cotnent, or things may be different in English rather than say Russian (one of the wikis I used), or things may have changed since 2006. Whatever the reason, my conclusion is that the core, highly-active community (perhaps 25,000 accounts on a site the size of enwiki) contributes more than 50% of the currently displayed text. To answer Aryeh, yes, I paid attention to handling vandalism reversions, and yes anons were tracked as if they were users. I went into it expecting a result like that described in the blog post, and came out with the opposite conclusion. -Robert Rohde PS. A full write-up of this analysis has been on my to-do list for a while now. ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
Re: [Wikitech-l] Wikitext vs. WYSIWYG (was: Proposal for editing template calls within pages)
On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 05:44, Peter Gervai grin...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Sep 24, 2009 at 14:36, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: However, impenetrable wikitext is one of *the* greatest barriers to new users on Wikimedia projects. And this impenetrability is not, in any way whatsoever or by any twists of logic, a feature. Adding a gui layer to wikitext is always okay, as long as it's possible to get rid of, since majority of edits not coming from new users, and losing flexibility for power users to get more newbies doesn't sound like a good deal to me. At least all of the GUIs I've seen were slow and hard to use, and resulted unwanted (side) effects if something even barely complex were entered. And this isn't the problem of Wikipedia: google docs, which is one of the most advanced web-based gui systems I guess have plenty of usability problems, which only can be fixed by messing with the Source. And many core people want to mess with the source. So, adding a newbie layer is okay as long as you don't mess up the work of the non-newbies. I totally agree with this analysis, and that's what brought us to write MeanEditor. Unfortunately I don't have much time to work on it right now (it was part of a much bigger wiki project which never came to light), so it's just a prototype. It would be valuable if someone with a lot of wiki experience could write a list of what can be considered basic wikitext. That is, syntax that newbies can be reasonably expected to understand and manipulate through a (visual) editor. My list is at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:MeanEditor#Details. I also want to share a funny fact with you: we have a sandbox on which anyone can test the editor. For some reason, a _lot_ of people expect to be able to write HTML code in wikitext (maybe they are implementing a CMS and are used to HTML coding?). Some even write stuff like h2heading/h2 and then complain that the editor lets them enter the text (of course, it's valid wikitext after all), but not edit it afterwards (HTML-style headings do not show up in the TOC, an odd wikitext feature which we surely don't want newbies to use). It might be useful to have a list of these common mistakes and show a warning (Do you really want a non-TOC heading? Use == heading == otherwise.). I'm not sure if the Usability team is working on this. They ran a visual editor survey some time ago, but right now they are probably working on more urgent matters. -- Jacopo ___ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
