If you are a regular reader of my blog, then you may know that I am a huge proponent for collaborative genealogy – specifically, platforms for working on family trees and genealogical information via shared tools where multiple contributors work together. Well, I recently stumbled across Wikipedia’s Visual Editor and it’s awesome! I have contributed to Wikipedia many times in the past, but have always abhorred having to use the Wiki markup language. However, their Visual Editor program is nice because it makes editing much more “WYSIWYG” or “what you see is what you get.” As stated in the video below, it
..makes writing for Wikipedia like writing a paper for class or sending an email..
I am loving the Visual Editor and would love to see something like it implemented on the FamilySearch Wiki and at WeRelate. Other genealogy-based wiki’s would also benefit. I contribute to FamilySearch now as it is and they do have a visual editor option, but it works differently and I think Wikipedia’s Visual Editor approach is a great model for how FamilySearch Wiki could be improved to make it even easier for people to share what they know.
Do you contribute to FamilySearch or WeRelate? Do you think it would be great to have edits work like Wikipedia’s Visual Editor?
That would be awesome to have true WYSIWYG editing! One of the difficulties to getting people more involved in sites like WeRelate is getting them comfortable with wiki editing.
Yes Amy – very true. Though I am well-versed in HTML for example, I am not a fan of wiki markup at all. 🙂