Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

This is a problem that I've wondered about, especially when I was working with Wikkii before they decided to go AWOL with their official staff. The debate was whether or not it would be a good idea to implement WYSIWYG editors (similar to Microsoft Word) on the wikis there to make it easier and more friendly for new users. One of the former Community Staff members (I removed him for being a donkey, and this http://pastebin.com/X3LVyeGZ) was against it because "users would never learn how to edit the wiki", ignoring the fact that new users might never try if looks like they have to learn a scripting language.

Dakka uses MediaWiki, so you might have used it here, or if you edited Wikipedia. Do you think that it's too much of a problem for new editors, especially with it looking too intimidating to learn?

I have experience with MediaWiki. I've also fixed a couple formatting issues on pages here at Dakka. I do not think that the markup is too hard to use.

Of course, I'm comfortable with various programming and scripting languages, so I'm probably not representative of the average user opinion that you're looking for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, it looks like your social network page has been thoroughly compromised.

 daedalus wrote:
I have experience with MediaWiki. I've also fixed a couple formatting issues on pages here at Dakka. I do not think that the markup is too hard to use.

Of course, I'm comfortable with various programming and scripting languages, so I'm probably not representative of the average user opinion that you're looking for.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, it looks like your social network page has been thoroughly compromised.

Thanks. Having experience with HTML usually helps since it's similar.

I'll delete those spammer accounts. We need to find some way of preventing spammer registrations. I think IP blacklists are the way to go since I've heard a lot of them are human and not bots and aren't stopped by anti bot features.

The question is worded rather strangely -- markup languages are nothing like scripting languages, so I suppose it's meant to be "do you think wiki markup is too complex", based on the first post.

To answer that: to me, no, but I've been doing web development professionally for a while now. To someone not familiar with computer languages in general, it might be a bit weird but I feel like people would still get the basics, for the most part.

 Vaerros wrote:
The question is worded rather strangely -- markup languages are nothing like scripting languages, so I suppose it's meant to be "do you think wiki markup is too complex", based on the first post.

To answer that: to me, no, but I've been doing web development professionally for a while now. To someone not familiar with computer languages in general, it might be a bit weird but I feel like people would still get the basics, for the most part.

I understand that it's different, but when new users see it, they might think that's what it is or they might think it's equivalent or something like that.