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There are simply way to many forms and inputs we have to deal with on Wikipedia to make it a one off for every case. We eat our dog food all over wikipedia for

There are simply way to many forms and inputs we have to deal with on Wikipedia to make it a one off for every case. We eat our dog food all over wikipedia for that reason. Personal user styles and javascripts are even stored as wiki-pages. We use Wikipages as IPC for bots and users. We use Wikipages for user messaging. I mean it's everywhere. User's get used to it and can figure out wikisyntax through the site and it's easy. For it to get added as a special page, it has rise to a general enough thing to be needed by everyone using Mediawiki or something so pressing that could never or should never be on a Wikipage. Meta concepts usually only fit that (like permissions and stats and new page reviewing).

kstenerud 15y ago
"We use Wikipages as IPC for bots and users. We use Wikipages for user messaging. I mean it's everywhere." And that's actually a big part of the problem. You're extending a paradigm far beyond what it's good at. When you're researching, you're looking for all of those deep nuggets of information that you'll get from poring over reams of data. Those tangental links are a joy to discover. For a user trying to accomplish something quickly, however, it doesn't work. Reporting an issue, contributing to discussions or even FINDING them, navigating a voting page... Basically everything PROCESS related is a place where a wall of text is the most unwelcome thing you can be presented with. It's great that you dogfood; just remember that the old unix hacks ate their own dogfood too. But rather than make things friendlier for people, it just made the unix hacks more defensive about their unfriendly system.
- wpietri 15y ago
  That's a reasonable concern, but I think the alternative historical paths are all worse. Wikipedia was run on a shoestring for many years. Developer time was in incredibly short supply, and was mainly spent on keeping the site alive. However, there was a massive surplus of labor from people who could work a wiki. People did what they could with what they had. Had they put more of there developer time into lower-priority features (e.g., a fancy but unnecessary discussion system), they could well have blown up. Or they could have tried to get more developer labor by increasing revenue sooner. But that would have meant ads, which could have destroyed Wikipedia in a different way. Going forward, Wikipedia should definitely be more friendly, and the Mediawiki Foundation is devoting substantial resources to that.
  - kstenerud 15y ago
    That's very cool. Right now many experts are turned off by the unfriendliness of the system as it stands today. If that can be remedied, it will be a great boon to human knowledge as we'll see an increase in expert contributions.

kstenerud 15y ago

"We use Wikipages as IPC for bots and users. We use Wikipages for user messaging. I mean it's everywhere." And that's actually a big part of the problem. You're extending a paradigm far beyond what it's good at. When you're researching, you're looking for all of those deep nuggets of information that you'll get from poring over reams of data. Those tangental links are a joy to discover. For a user trying to accomplish something quickly, however, it doesn't work. Reporting an issue, contributing to discussions or even FINDING them, navigating a voting page... Basically everything PROCESS related is a place where a wall of text is the most unwelcome thing you can be presented with. It's great that you dogfood; just remember that the old unix hacks ate their own dogfood too. But rather than make things friendlier for people, it just made the unix hacks more defensive about their unfriendly system.

wpietri 15y ago
That's a reasonable concern, but I think the alternative historical paths are all worse. Wikipedia was run on a shoestring for many years. Developer time was in incredibly short supply, and was mainly spent on keeping the site alive. However, there was a massive surplus of labor from people who could work a wiki. People did what they could with what they had. Had they put more of there developer time into lower-priority features (e.g., a fancy but unnecessary discussion system), they could well have blown up. Or they could have tried to get more developer labor by increasing revenue sooner. But that would have meant ads, which could have destroyed Wikipedia in a different way. Going forward, Wikipedia should definitely be more friendly, and the Mediawiki Foundation is devoting substantial resources to that.
- kstenerud 15y ago
  That's very cool. Right now many experts are turned off by the unfriendliness of the system as it stands today. If that can be remedied, it will be a great boon to human knowledge as we'll see an increase in expert contributions.