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I suspect that removing having the ability to learn Wikipedia's markup language as a filter for contributors will decrease the average quality of edits. If you'

I suspect that removing having the ability to learn Wikipedia's markup language as a filter for contributors will decrease the average quality of edits. If you're incapable of learning simple patterns or closing parentheses, maybe the quality of your thinking and judgement is not that high. If so, I don't really want to read your ideas or opinions.

anigbrowl 13y ago
And I suspect you're wrong. I didn't find Wikipedia's markup language difficult, but I did find it needlessly cumbersome, plus it makes proofreading more difficult. Do you have any evidence for judging the quality of authorship by the standards of typesetters?
- pervycreeper 13y ago
  Just compare the average Tumblr blog to, say one produced with Jekyll, document produced with Latex vs. Word, etc. Relatedly, making things too "easy to use" often obscures what's actually happening underneath and makes them harder to understand for certain classes of user (i.e. those that want to understand what they're actually doing).
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    I guess that's a no, then.
  - malandrew 13y ago
    Just create a reputation system for edits. For every edit, ask it to be given a type (typo, additional info, factual correction, etc) and a quality score. Wight the value of a rating using the rating of ther rater. People who make good contributions will rise to the top. Those who make poor contributions will fall to the bottom There are better solutions than making something needlessly complex.
    - anigbrowl 13y ago
      Quite. I don't think that making it hard automatically makes it better, any more than I think that using vi will make you a better programmer than using [insert your favorite GUI editor here].
taspeotis 13y ago
I'll see your opinion and raise you an anecdote. At our business we use Confluence. The earlier versions had a proprietary wiki syntax that us technical types found easy to use but the rest of the company did not. Confluence added a visual editor and since then the quality of the non-technical documentation in Confluence has improved, because the ability to edit it is more accessible to the people that know the most about it.
ivanbrussik 13y ago
this. definitely the reason wikipedia isn't all full of crap spamm.
- nitrogen 13y ago
  Spam is often added by bots anyway.
teeja 13y ago
Actually that might remove some of the grunt work for experienced editors. It's a lot easier to prettify existing data than to do it all from scratch. There's a lot more to advanced editing than "learning simple patterns". Eliminating some of the trivial editing will free experienced editors for more important tasks. Wikipedia is not about users ideas or opinions, it's about citing ideas and opinions from authoritative sources. This isn't 2003 any more.
sp0rk 13y ago
I don't think the complexity of the editing system has any meaningful impact on the quality of submissions. Most vandalism and content of poor quality that I've ever seen has simply been added to existing articles. Somebody does not need to be at all familiar with Wikipedia's editing system to insert a few sentences or paragraphs into an article that already exists. There are many people out there, experts in their field, with valuable knowledge to contribute that may have a difficult time (or don't have the time/motivation for) learning how to properly format an article using the old editing system. I think the barrier to entry should be as low as possible to enable people like this to contribute as well. I don't really see why knowledge of a cryptic and proprietary text editing format should be used as a filter for people attempting to contribute information from fields that have no relation to it.

anigbrowl 13y ago

And I suspect you're wrong. I didn't find Wikipedia's markup language difficult, but I did find it needlessly cumbersome, plus it makes proofreading more difficult. Do you have any evidence for judging the quality of authorship by the standards of typesetters?

pervycreeper 13y ago
Just compare the average Tumblr blog to, say one produced with Jekyll, document produced with Latex vs. Word, etc. Relatedly, making things too "easy to use" often obscures what's actually happening underneath and makes them harder to understand for certain classes of user (i.e. those that want to understand what they're actually doing).
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  I guess that's a no, then.
- malandrew 13y ago
  Just create a reputation system for edits. For every edit, ask it to be given a type (typo, additional info, factual correction, etc) and a quality score. Wight the value of a rating using the rating of ther rater. People who make good contributions will rise to the top. Those who make poor contributions will fall to the bottom There are better solutions than making something needlessly complex.
  - anigbrowl 13y ago
    Quite. I don't think that making it hard automatically makes it better, any more than I think that using vi will make you a better programmer than using [insert your favorite GUI editor here].

taspeotis 13y ago

I'll see your opinion and raise you an anecdote. At our business we use Confluence. The earlier versions had a proprietary wiki syntax that us technical types found easy to use but the rest of the company did not. Confluence added a visual editor and since then the quality of the non-technical documentation in Confluence has improved, because the ability to edit it is more accessible to the people that know the most about it.

ivanbrussik 13y ago

this. definitely the reason wikipedia isn't all full of crap spamm.

nitrogen 13y ago
Spam is often added by bots anyway.

teeja 13y ago

Actually that might remove some of the grunt work for experienced editors. It's a lot easier to prettify existing data than to do it all from scratch. There's a lot more to advanced editing than "learning simple patterns". Eliminating some of the trivial editing will free experienced editors for more important tasks. Wikipedia is not about users ideas or opinions, it's about citing ideas and opinions from authoritative sources. This isn't 2003 any more.

sp0rk 13y ago

I don't think the complexity of the editing system has any meaningful impact on the quality of submissions. Most vandalism and content of poor quality that I've ever seen has simply been added to existing articles. Somebody does not need to be at all familiar with Wikipedia's editing system to insert a few sentences or paragraphs into an article that already exists. There are many people out there, experts in their field, with valuable knowledge to contribute that may have a difficult time (or don't have the time/motivation for) learning how to properly format an article using the old editing system. I think the barrier to entry should be as low as possible to enable people like this to contribute as well. I don't really see why knowledge of a cryptic and proprietary text editing format should be used as a filter for people attempting to contribute information from fields that have no relation to it.