On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:36 PM, wiki <doc.wikipe...@ntlworld.com> wrote: >[...] > If I dare to be a seer, I worry about software that looks increasingly 2004 > in a Facebook world.
Let me focus that a bit, if you don't mind - Craigslist looks like 1997; other than the occasional image change for the logo, Google's main search page and its results look like about 2000 still (and not much different, to me, than AltaVista did shortly after it launched, though it's subtly better in many ways). Yahoo has a lot more modern interface design than its competitors; it must be successful, right? I believe that from a user (reader) point of view, Wikipedia is suitably capable from an interface standpoint. >From a user (editor) point of view, there is a distinct remaining lack of WYSIWIG and steep learning curve. Our existing editor base are "used to it", but I always wonder if we're not losing significant potential contributors from the Facebook generation who aren't willing to put up with learning our syntax. General worry? No. Discouraged potential contributor worry? Yes. > And I'd be interested to wonder what other nightmares of the future keep the > Wiki-saints in fear and trembling. Community actually hitting a consensus management barrier, though I predict we'd muddle through a representative system of some sort if push came to shove. Someone (else) doing a WYSIWIG, sematic / fact based competitor with at least equal participant community access and a dump of our database as a seed point, with a way for them to do AI-scanned update management from the Wikipedia pages. Expanding - Wikipedia is several things - an online encyclopedia (the actual article content, images, etc), a software system for managing that content, and a community that does the management. What's functionally critical are the content and the community, though the software is an enabler. If people could walk across the street to NextPedia and have a really snazzy UI experience to updating the shared content and still have the supportive and managing functions of the community... Wikipedia NG discussions are a perennial favorite, and always hit a tactical wall. Strategically, I feel that's a mistake. Not that I can wave a magic wand and fix it, but it always worries me. -- -george william herbert george.herb...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
