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I am trying to decide between a WYSIWYG editor (e.g. TinyMCE, CKEditor) and a WYSIWYM (What You See Is What You Mean) editor (e.g. WMD) for my web application.

There is a thread on stackoverflow that compares the two approaches.

I would like to know how users, particularly computer novices, have reacted to WYSIWYM editors in deployed web applications. It could be that computer novices are confused by WYSIWYM editors, preferring the immediacy of WYSIWYG; but is that born out in real-world applications? It's not theory I'm asking about here, but empirical evidence of the acceptance or otherwise of WYSIWYM.

+2  A: 

Know your users. SO uses WYSIWYM for a reason, while gmail uses WYSIWYG for the same.

Ben
That's pretty much all there is to it.
Frank Farmer
Yes, OK. Thanks. I won't get feedback from my users until they see my product in action, so I'm trying to make an educated guess about how they will react. To that end, I'm looking for anecdotal evidence one way or the other from people who have already traveled that path.
David
You can do an experiment. Use Google website optimizer, show some of your users WYSIWYG and others WYSIWYM. Compare results (comments submitted).
Ben