

Wikipedia's getting a new look - shivam14
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:User_experience_feedback/New_features

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blahedo
The problem here is it is absolutely not "more user friendly" to just
automatically make things more WYSIWYG. When it is important to preserve
content and structure rather than just presentation---as is _nice_ in HTML
generally but _crucial_ on Wikipedia---you need to provide a tool that helps
you do that, not just make it pretty.

I have a student who has just completed an honors project that demonstrated
that if you give web novices a simple markup language and a _non_ -WYSIWYG
editor (but do give them a preview button) they confirm presentation but focus
on content, which ultimately makes websites more usable and often prettier
too. It won the ugrad research competition at SIGCHI this year, so I don't
think she was out in left field on this.

So, short version: Wikipedia's making a big mistake here.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I don't think Wikipedia is making things more WYSIWYG, they're mostly just
collapsing some data heavy sections until you click on them.

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lukeqsee
I've been using the beta now for about 5 months, and in my experience it's
cosmetic. Those cosmetics definitely are an improvement in usability and
looks.

IMHO, it's a small step, but in the right direction for sure.

~~~
niels_olson
and the direction of the total step is about 60 degrees off, leaving sqrt(3)/2
step in the right direction.

~~~
gjm11
If your direction is 60 degrees off then the right-direction component is 1/2,
not sqrt(3)/2. (You move sqrt(3)/2 in the perpendicular direction.)

~~~
niels_olson
this is what happens trying to remember trig after 30 hours on call.

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pclark
it still blows my mind that they haven't implemented a more user friendly
editor.

~~~
tom_rath
It's the unfriendliness of the editor_s_ which has been the problem in my
experience.

When someone goes through the trouble of creating a well-cited article only to
have it deleted for being 'not notable', they're unlikely to bother again. If
there's a Wikipedia issue to resolve, it's the deletionists and the strange
environment which encourages their behaviour.

~~~
tokenadult
Out of curiosity, what kind of topics are you writing about when you submit
well-cited articles that are later deleted?

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tokenadult
I can read mark-up languages (I have been using them for editing since well
before the invention of HTML), so the barely changed editor seems fine by me,
but I can well believe it is off-putting to most would-be Wikipedians. The
best feature of the editor is preview mode, so I can get a reality check on
whether I've edited correctly or not.

I tried out the new look in beta beginning more than a month ago. The most
habit-changing change was the relocation of the search input field. But that
just gets it closer to the industry standard of being in the upper right of
the page, so I'm gradually getting used to that.

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rradu
Will they stop talking about it and do it already? I'm tired of hearing of
this new look and not seeing it 100% live yet.

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FabriceTalbot
I don't know, I'm pretty ok with the way the editor is now. Maybe I've just
grown accustomed to it.

~~~
nailer
I still don't know, nor can be bothered working out various different
unnecessary markup languages, and I program. God forbid anyone whose talents
lie elsewhere tries to contribute.

~~~
elblanco
It's okay, most likely some overzealous editor will simply delete whatever
that person contributes anyway. Contributing to Wikipedia as a non-editor is a
massive waste of time since even minor submissions get killed quickly and
quickly turn into massive fights over notoriety and content.

~~~
tokenadult
_Contributing to Wikipedia as a non-editor_

Do you mean "contributing to Wikipedia as someone without a user account"? I
just started doing Wikipedia edits, having first set up a Wikipedia account,
when I declared a vacation from Facebook. I like to contribute good content to
the Interwebs. On Facebook, I was mostly contributing links to articles about
Facebook privacy issues. While I was taking a break from Facebook, another HN
participant linked to a Wikipedia article in an HN thread, and I saw an edit I
could do there that would change the close-enough-for-government work word
into the exactly correct word. So I made the edit. Later I made a more
substantive edit and added a recent reference to a more visited and more
controversial article--on a subject much discussed here on HN. Over time, I
will check how well my edits are accepted. Someday I'll try posting a whole
new article, when I have a sense of what is missing and have reference
materials at hand. I'll evaluate my experience by how other Wikipedians
respond to my edits.

~~~
elblanco
No, with an account. I happen to know a bit about a few, completely unrelated
areas (the area I live in, foods from a certain country, digital music
composition, a couple martial arts, computer sciency stuff, etc.) that I
wanted to make substantial contributions to fill those portions of wikipedia
out. About 2 and a half years ago, I signed up and made an account and started
dutifully filling out information, adding new articles, editing some old ones.
Normal stuff.

I probably did a few hundred edits and contributed 30 or so new articles. As
far as I know, not one of those things survived the first month.

I haven't even bothered after that experience. Citing the submission
guidelines led to nothing.

The cabal of super-user types there that seem to want to fix wikipedia on the
current status quo (unless they themselves edit something) made wikipedia at
the time unbearable as a new contributer. It wasn't like there were even
requests for changes or new edits (things that wouldn't have been a problem
since I was new and learning the ropes) -- just deletions. Sometimes within
minutes.

It wasn't even that somebody had come along and cleaned up my submissions, or
provided some editing work, just....gone.

After that wonderful experience I decided to spend those few hundred hours
someplace else.

