Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-33168089-20170821015513/@comment-168424-20170919184147

Kirkburn wrote:

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.

Most of us understand the end goal behind the experiment, but at least I'm pretty sure Fandom doesn't have even half the development resources to do even an adequate job.

Atlassian has way more resources, way more experience, a more interconnected data-driven base, and huge head start and they still couldn't come up with anything that doesn't strip out 80% of the customization that even comes close to Fandom's current version of MediaWiki or Wikipedia.