On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 11:42 PM, Dmitriy Sintsov <ques...@rambler.ru> wrote: > * Brion Vibber <br...@pobox.com> [Tue, 4 Jan 2011 13:39:28 -0800]: >> On Tue, Jan 4, 2011 at 1:27 PM, Dirk Riehle <d...@riehle.org> wrote: >> Wikis started out as *very* lightly formatted plaintext. The point was >> to be >> fast and easy -- in the context of web browsers which only offered >> plaintext >> editing, lightweight markup for bold/italics and a standard convention >> for >> link naming was about as close as you could get to WYSIWYG / WYSIYM. >> >> > It is still faster to type link address in square brackets than clicking > "add link" icon then typing the link name or selecting it from a > drop-down list. Even '' is a bit faster than Ctrl+I (italics via the > mouse will be even slower than that).
This exercise is not about making it easier for us, those who have already run smack out onto the long statistical tail in terms of mastery of MediaWiki editing. Yes, it would be nice if we preserve a geezers-mode for those of us who know shortcut methods. Adoption rate of new tools among existing userbase is a major issue with any changes; if we lose too many of the existing crowd due to a change then it takes us many years worth of newbie friendlyness to regain the losses during the conversion. But we should not hamstring thinking about how non-tech people would or could use the project by thinking in terms of geezers-mode. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
