User blog comment:Jenburton/An Update on Message Wall/@comment-1714259-20111001131715/@comment-1025281-20111003110615

"...Let these new users learn how to communicate..."

I find this laughable. Where would we be if ten years ago designers concluded that the concept of freely editable websites didn't need massive simplifications to cater to those without a background in computing? What if they had decided, "Let these new users learn all about HTML to edit... who needs wikitext"? Never mind that some teenage geek (full disclosure: I'm that kind of teenager) who's into computers might just be more ignorant on the subject matter than an expert who has to ask his son how to send an email &mdash; at least the geek has courageously taken the time to learn how to edit!

Wikis have always been about mass participation. Its evolutions in design have always been about how best to place everyone in the world on an equal technical footing, so that the differentiation between users becomes one of knowledge rather than computing skill. The concept of being able to communicate without having to learn too many quirks is exactly what is being attempted here. In the meantime, deliberately forcing presumably intelligent people to learn quirks in order to properly participate on a "freely-editable" website amounts to nothing but a betrayal of the most basic values wikis claim to espouse.

The Message Wall may or may not work &mdash; no-one can know for sure until it's been extensively tested. But zealously defending the supposedly flawless method of talk pages against any attempt to make communication easier is very misguided.