[p2p-research] some wiki editing rules

[Maria Droujkova]

Hi, I am Maria and I like WYSIWYG.

It sounds only slightly better than, "and I am an alcoholic" - but there it
is. I am confident in my abilities to read code, to program and even to do a
little computer science if needed. But I want to confess my love of tools
like Wikispaces, Google Docs, Etherpad clones and Jing, because they support
two things I do daily, in bulk:

- Copying and pasting of content without reading code
- Inviting noobs to do one-time contributions

I have been using Elluminate, provided free through LearnCentral, to host
one-hour conversations about math communities:
http://mathfuture.wikispaces.com/events
For someone who has not done a webinar before, it typically takes about half
an hour to configure the sound system and to try out the five relevant
moderator tools. As we do this training, we discuss the event, so I feel it
is fair to ask for that time, in a live on-topic conversation. But with
shorter contributions that don't focus the community limelight on the
contributor quite as much as a hosted event, the ratio of training/creation
has to be significantly smaller than 1/2. Actually, I only feel comfortable
with one-liner training: "The edit button is at the top right" or
"Double-click anywhere to add your comment."

I looked at the WYSIWYG versions of the pages linked in this thread, and at
the first glance, they seemed "editable enough" with code pieces marked as
<special>.

The personal conflict expressed in this thread, and implications for the
communities I am trying to build, makes me long for the structure of the
World of Warcraft guild to which I belong: a benevolent dictatorship. It
looks like p2p is going for a meritocracy, though, and currently two
different dimensions of merit, content and technological, are clashing in a
rather scary manner.

Cheers,
Maria Droujkova

Make math your own, to make your own math.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/attachments/20100810/ead95d85/attachment.html>