Wikipedia Gets Big Grant To Simplify Contribution Process

And the Stanton Foundation has stepped in with $890,000 to make that happen.  Its money should back a small project team.  According to a release, the team will "commission research to identify the most common barriers to entry for first-time writers, and then work to systematically reduce or eliminate them.  It will specifically focus on hiding complex elements of the user interface from people who don't need them."

This effort is scheduled to start in January and continue through April 2010.  Improvements should be rolled out along the way, and it'll no doubt be interesting to see what sort of new interest in Wikipedia comes about as a result.