When people contribute to stuff, is there a way to set it up with one of those text editor kind of things so they don't have to write in the code that is on wikipedia when writing or editing pages?
Topic on Project:Support desk
See Extension:VisualEditor, but it is somewhat technical to set-up.
It can be tricky to install but if the stars align correctly, it can be surprisingly easy. There are several methods to get to to a wiki with VE including Intranet or MediaWiki-Vagrant
Before you try VE, you should install Extension:WikiEditor which may be enough and is a lot better than the stock editor thing and is easy to install.