Board Thread:Support Requests - Community Management/@comment-3417079-20150626034226/@comment-3417079-20150707082021

452 wrote: Templates are basic functionality, and the concept of a or a $1 being replaced is basic functionality.

What you are asking for is advanced functionality.

A 404 error page is not a good example, as a 404 error page is something that is intended to be seen by "everyone". The welcome message mediawiki page is not something that is meant to be seen by everyone, it is only meant to be seen by the admin who is editing it.

A better example has already been mentioned by DEmersonJMFM: Templates. I'm not going to dwell on this since it's off-topic, but to clarify...

Editing a wiki welcome message is not advanced. Seems like a pretty basic thing to want to do.

However, because of what's currently involved in editing a welcome message, it requires advanced skills and, as such, a segment of the population will have trouble editing it. You might say "well, they shouldn't be admins."

Maybe. But I'm saying that with better design, almost anybody would be able to edit an admin message.

'''Re: 404 pages. '''

Just because something isn't seen by everyone doesn't mean it shouldn't be accessible as possible.

By that logic, WordPress admin pages should be mostly code or require variables and such similar to the Wikia welcome message, rather than being the excellent, accessible dashboards that they are.

Since welcome messages will likely be edited by the many, many admins Wikia wikis have, they should be as simple as possible to edit.

People who would generally say otherwise are, like, programmers or something, heh. The users I'm thinking about are the people in real life who can do basic stuff, but simple wikia coding stuff is likely going to be beyond their ability or desire to learn, and better, more accessible design can include those people.

It's the Blizzard Entertainment donut principle: create things for your hardcore users (the small circle in the middle), then make it accessible for everyone else (the larger circle surrounding the smaller one, representing the masses).

As I said, I'll submit this as feedback to Wikia. I'm sure they'll understand, or they wouldn't have introduced things like the visual editor. Visual editors aren't needed, but they sure make things easier and more accessible for many people.