Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-33168089-20170821015513/@comment-126761-20170919183207

A significant part of the test is to see whether it is possible to make a more data-driven, UI-first editor that does not rely on users potentially having to deal with complex code, yet still allows them to make varied, engaging content.

To put it another way: the aim is not to remove wikitext, but to look at whether wikitext is a necessary part of wiki life, and whether a different style of editing can allow you to do other, more interesting stuff without it.

With data at the centre of the editor, it could unlock some pretty interesting possibilities like being able to do proper data queries (a bit like Semantic MediaWiki), and easily provide accurate semantic information about article information (like writing a date of birth that can be recognised as such by other tools). Hopefully as the experiment continues, we can make those aspects easier to understand and utilize.

But again, we know that wikitext has served wikis well for a long time - and that fact isn't being discounted.