Editing Transaction costs/Brainstorming (section)

=== Wiki Contributions: WYSIWYG Editing ===

The success of wikis is, in part, credited to a lowering of the transaction costs associated with contributing to a website. Part of this is in terms of the lack of authentication prior to contribution -- even in situation where the are pseudononymous logins -- and a default, immediate, live status for all contributions.

Another important aspect of wikis lowered costs is the fact that changing or adding to a wiki is done by editing "wikitext" which, for many new users, is easier than editing HTML.  "What You See is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editing is the ability to edit wikis using a more familiar word processor-style WYSIWYG interface.  Since this interface is more familiar to most users, the initial contributions is easier for many users. Since users do not need to check or preview their work to ensure that rendering is appropriate and expected, general costs are lower.

General thoughts:

* There is large wikimedia community discussion about WYSIWYG editing nd its value in lowering the start-up costs and necessary knowledge to contribution on a wiki -- most particants seem to assume this is a godo thing.
* There should be good evidence on the impact of WYSIWYG editors into wikis from existing wikis with published information. I would assume that we see an increase in contributions -- especially from anonymous users and especially in the form of small edits.
* It seems possible that certain types of contributions are more likely by people using WYSIWYG editors and their effect will be uneven.  Certain types of contributions (e.g., contributions from experiened users or perhaps larger contributions) will be less likely to be deterred by the use of WYSIWYG.
* Certain types of contributions (e.g., templates) do not have support in WYSIWYG editors. I would not expect to see an increase in these types of contributions from a WYSIWYG editor.

Related thoughts:

* The choice of markup language might have an impact on contributions -- some markup languages are probably more difficult and have higher costs associated with them than others.  The choice of a particular and easy type of markup may make things easier or more difficult for users. 
* Additionally, the presense of documentation on edit screens may increase the likelihood of contributions from anonymous uses.  Alternatively, it might simply increase the number of incorrect contributions from users who make mistakes. Potentially that could be followed by additional contributions to fix them.
* Since one poor contribution might imply additional contributions, the raw number might be hard to measure.