Topic on Talk:Parser 2011/Flow

The inline citations and templates are extremely painful when looking at things in edit mode. You can't even see the prose. Asking people from outside to write this way is absurd. Everyone has had MS Word on their desktop since 15 years ago and it handles citations fine, so they are hyperlinked the same way when editing or when reading. The Wikipedia has HUGE spaces where the content is lacking or poor quality. But why would a good writer or an outside expert want to write here, when you value his time so little that you make him use this inefficent interface.

71.246.147.40 07:52, 16 October 2011 (UTC)

P.s. I don't like how this page does not clearly set out the problem but has a lot of bland vague comments.

The Visual Editor project is aiming on making it way easier for people to use citations & templates. Check out https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Visual_Editor_design .

The individual wiki pages about our product strategy/annual plan, the visual editor, real-time collaboration, etc. have some more details about the problems we're solving -- check those out.

Thanks. I still think it would be better if you had some screenshot showing how BAD things are now. Just open up a random Featured Article and go to a heavily cited paragraph.

I want to see how gut-wrenching BAD things are now...and then a mockup of how they will be better.

Your pages need to be more gutty in describing the real problem and the solution. And less theoretical.

I think it will help build support and motivate your work.

Everyone already knows how bad it is. Such "motivation" won't get things done any better or faster.

there are troglogytes who think that since they have gotten used to it, they don't understan why others should not. Or people that are not active prose editors. I think nothing lost by rubbing the truth in people's faces. It may motivate action. After all, the problem has been allowed to fester for many years after it was obvious.

No, that is nothing more than a distraction from the actual work.

I tend to agree with ROTTT here. It's very easy to write yet another thread pointing out the problem (and there have been many; this subject was just in the Signpost not that long ago), but posting messages here is not nearly as effective as trying to code a solution, or at least contributing some thoughts in Bugzilla as to what specific type of implementation might be effective at overcoming the technical barriers to making this a reality.