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back to article Wikimedia edges closer to banishing Wikitext

Wikimedia's planned visual editor, a tool that will make it possible to pen Wikipedia entries without having to learn any markup language, will emerge as a beta “early July”. The new tool was first made available in Alpha status to select users since December 2012, before all registered users were offered the chance to play in …

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  1. Camilla Smythe
    Pint

    Friday-O-Clock

    And El Reg invites people to try out the new Wiki Editing tool on their own Wiki Page..

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  2. Charles 9

    Seems a little behind the times.

    The Wikia network has had a visual editor available for its numerous wikis for some time (and BTW, they do retain a Source Edit mode in case of preference or necessity).

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    1. Ninetailed
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      Thumb Up

      Re: "Seems a little behind the times."

      Better late than never. They could do a lot worse than to copy Wikia's example.

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  3. g e
    Devil

    With any luck

    We can all throw away TinyMCE soon, then.

    I wish Google or someone would make a replacement for that devilspawn, maybe Wikimedia will achieve it.

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    1. RISC OS
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      Re: With any luck

      A replacemnet for tinymce? Never heard of aloha?

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  4. nigel 15
    Devil

    lowering the bar

    basically having to learn a markup language stops stupid people editing it.

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    1. JimC
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      Re: lowering the bar

      [studies various wikipedia pages]

      The evidence would suggest that's not the case. It appears to be more than accessible for editing by stupid people.

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    2. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Re: lowering the bar

      On the other hand, restricting editing to people with the time and motivation to learn obscure markup probably doesn't select for the optimal participants either...

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  6. RISC OS
    FAIL

    "...make it possible to contribute to its various projects without having to learn WikiText..."

    No... what is needed to make it possible for people to contribute text is if the "editors" - the 30 something virgins who still live in their mum's house and the 13 yr. olds who think they know more about physics than brian cox, because of (ironically), what they have read on wikipedia - wouldn't revert everything within 2 minutes under the vandalism label, just because they don't agree with it.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Reverting just because they don't agree with it ..

      `No... what is needed to make it possible for people to contribute text is if the "editors" - the 30 something virgins .. wouldn't revert everything within 2 minutes under the vandalism label, just because they don't agree with it'.

      And reverting is done because of some ever changing obscure WP policy, eg WP:RS

      a. Rolling Stone isn't a `reliable source' ..

      b. Can't mention someone's birth-date as it would be an invasion of privacy, the article isn't biographical, because we didn't mention the parents birth-dates, because she isn't the subject of the article, 'not being the subject of the article' is a consensus on Wikipedia ..

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  7. RISC OS
    Thumb Down

    This will be useful...

    ... it will help people add to the ever expanding cesspit of information about tv shows and every character that has even been on the show, isn't wikipedia just on online guide to tv shows?

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  8. The Axe

    WordPress

    Would be nice to see it ported to WordPress to so that you don't need to remember loads of shortcodes and their arguments.

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  9. DaiKiwi

    Does it matter?

    Since most editing takes place within the paras etc, does it really make a difference? No knowledge of mark-up language was needed for that. It will probably even out to the current level. Probably. Over a sufficiently large sample. On average. I guess.

    Oh, OK, it will be a bl**dy disaster!

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  10. Kanhef

    Hardly banished

    Just because your editor doesn't show the markup code doesn't mean it no longer exists.

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