One of the biggest areas we have had problems in terms of making the contributor experience better is in the article editor. We would like to put forth a design for a new better article editor, that will make contributing to the knowledge base faster and less confusing. I'd like to open a discussion about the criteria for the new editor.
Here are my thoughts:
One of the plan from the very beginning of the support project was to have a "What You See Is What You Get" (WYSIWYG) editor. The SHOWFOR feature will make this a litle tricky, so we may need something like tabs. In addition, you wouldn't have to save an edit to see SHOWFOR work.
Adding and removing tags sucks. There are often slight variations in tags names, meaning two or more articles that should have the same tag, end up not having the same tag. It would be nice to know which tags have already been created. (either through auto complete, or using checkboxes to add tags)
The additional categories sometimes get misused. It very rarely makes sense to change them after the article is created. Perhaps it would be better to only set them when creating a new article, and only make available afterward for admins/locale leaders. The in-product help checkbox is certainly one that should never be touched.
Copying and pasting content labels or sample codes from the Using SHOWFOR tutorial is something that is often needed. We need the ability to quick paste often used content.
Not many people are citing references when adding content to articles, or even explaining their changes. I've already filed a bug on making the summary field mandatory, and relabeling it to something that includes asking for a reference. But maybe there are other ways to fix this. Perhaps a reference field?
Some minor things:
We need our own custom images for quicktags, and to re-evaluate which quicktags are needed.
Upload image should be part of quicktags.
{SHOWFOR(spans=on)/} should not have to be added manually.
Increase the size of the content area.
Make the category selector less abusable. Perhaps turn it into a drop-down menu.
The "Alert translators" checkbox is already going to be removed on non-English articles, and we should rename it to be more clear of its purpose.
One of the biggest areas we have had problems in terms of making the contributor experience better is in the article editor. We would like to put forth a design for a new better article editor, that will make contributing to the knowledge base faster and less confusing. I'd like to open a discussion about the criteria for the new editor.
Here are my thoughts:
Some minor things: