There is some evidence (I believe from a commissioned study) that the current interface disproportionately filters out non-technical would-be editors from contributing, because of its heavy use of markup in a plaintext editing field. Stuff like:
<ref name="citekey">{{cite book | title = ... }}</ref>
is impenetrable to some would-be editors, especially when it starts getting more complex and nested. Even as a long-time editor with a CS background, I sometimes find it hard to skim past big blocks of markup to find what I want to edit, and it's easy to screw things up and end up with unclosed ref tags and that kind of thing. To someone who doesn't even know what an "unclosed tag" is (most people), I can only imagine it'd be many times more confusing.
Since people with technical backgrounds are disproportionately male, it could be a contributing factor to the gender disparity. Hardly the only one, but a WYSIWYG editor may at least broaden the population being drawn from.
Since people with technical backgrounds are disproportionately male, it could be a contributing factor to the gender disparity. Hardly the only one, but a WYSIWYG editor may at least broaden the population being drawn from.