news.cnet.com — Anyone who's ever edited or created a Wikipedia entry can attest to the fact that it's not that self-explanatory. They're in luck--the non-profit anyone-can-edit encyclopedia has received $890,000 from the Stanton Foundation in order to make it easier to use.
Dec 3, 2008 View in Crawl 4
asgardshillDec 4, 2008
I hope that Wikipedia doesn't retain the same computer geniuses who designed Spamcop <a class="user" href="http://www.spamcop.net">http://www.spamcop.net</a> for this effort. They are an excellent example of how NOT to produce documentation and how to make it as user-unfriendly as humanly possible.Spamcop's FAQs, instructional texts, and documentation devoted to perform one simple task, the reporting of spam, could easily fill the Library of Congress. I've never seen such a piss-poor, cluttered, and crappy design for documentation in any one place short of nuclear power plant operating instructions.
Closed AccountDec 4, 2008
Being a serious dork <>(!=) serious geek.
crazyhorse13Dec 4, 2008
I didn't say they were the only ones who could edit. Just pay some experts to do a little info maintenance.
flamekebabDec 5, 2008
salomejones - No.You do sound incredibly condescending and pretentious.Being able to only enter content via markup might have been fine back when Wikipedia started but now it's nearly 2009 and it is NOT too much to ask for a more user-friendly interface!I *can* enter stuff via markup, I know how.That doesn't change the fact that it's a royal pain in the arse to quickly format stuff.If a citation is required why can't there be an option to insert one easily, rather than requiring so much tedious markup and formatting?
jessehaddenDec 5, 2008
Hmm... I think my mother would find it somewhat off-putting. There are HTML editors that permit access to a restricted set of capabilities, that would be sufficient for Wikipedia's needs. An HTML tidying library would ensure only the set of allowed tags would render in the finished page. Plus, any input can & should be checked before it is saved to the database.
knownDec 5, 2008
One word: TooltipWikipedia must display tooltip on focus for every field on its page to make it average user friendly.
simucalOct 14, 2009
You do realize that the point of "Operating Systems" class is not to learn about the latest contemporary flavors of certain Operating Systems, right?It is to learn, on a theoretical level, how Operating Systems work. How Processor Scheduling works, Memory Management, IO, etc are handled.It isn't about learning about Ubuntu/Windows by any means. I'm honestly glad you quit, because it now takes you out of a certain employment pool so that I won't have to cross paths with you.