Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor

Note. The visual editor only shows up in the main namespace (articles) and in user namespace. No talk pages. A good place to play around is in a sandbox in a subpage in your user namespace (User:YourUserName/sandbox3). For a sandbox of your own, create it here.

A Very Big Issue

No! Don't remove the old editor! The new one can't edit equations, or templates!.Dimension10 (talk) 07:35, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Not aware of any plans to do that. Click "edit source". Apteva (talk) 22:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

FAQ: But What If I Hate Visual Editors?

[ This is such an FAQ (it's on this talk page about 8 times (now, um, 9)), that I've written this answer and put it at the top -- even though I know that's an uncommon approach. Note that I'm not responsible for this policy; I'm merely reporting it more clearly. ]

As is now noted on the article itself, the deployment of Visual Editor will not replace the ability to edit raw mediawikitext; the traditional editor will remain and there are -- as of this writing -- no strategic plans ever to change that. So if you, like me, prefer the power, speed, and precision of putting the wikitext code mapping inside your head instead of inside your browser, you will be able to do that, by setting a user preference entry to prefer the traditional editor. So relax.  :-)
--Baylink (talk) 20:27, 28 June 2013 (UTC) [Not any kind of administrator or staffer at all]

And it should be noted: if you don't want to use the new system, click "edit source" instead of "edit". The "edit source" button takes you to the familiar Wikipedia editing system. --MelanieN (talk) 17:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't suppose there's away to just make the links to the new editor go away? I want my edit buttons to bring up the old editor, and not have to adapt to the change. Yes, I'm being a curmudgeon - I will admit that. draeath (talk) 19:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

@Draeath: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, the first under "Editing". Note that the JS will still be loaded: the gadget just hides the interfaces changes. πr² (t • c) 19:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you very much! Was this referenced somewhere and I was just being dense? Also, good to know about the ping syntax, there - not using because I don't need to annoy you now :) draeath (talk) 19:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

@Draeath: It's on the FAQ. Also, elsewhere on this page (e.g., #Frankly ridiculous behaviour., #Why can't I turn this off anymore?, #Opt-out). You might also be interested in this discussion on creating a built-in way to opt-in/out, as opposed to a volunteer-maintained gadget. I'm happy to help if you have any other technical questions. :) πr² (t • c) 19:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Disabling Javascript in the browser works just fine for me. Of course, if you use JS for other stuff on Wikipedia, not the best option. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:51, July 2, 2013 (UTC)

Screenshots

Are there screenshots for all non-en-registered user to see of this new editor? --93.203.237.138 (talk) 18:25, 13 December 2012 (UTC)

Here:

• 
  The overall integration
• 
  Loading screen as it pulls a page from the Parsoid service
• 
  The VisualEditor now loaded
• 
  The annotation inspector menu (currently just for links)
• 
  The link annotation inspector with suggestions
• 
  An 'alien' block you can't yet edit
• 
  The mandatory pre-save diff for the current alpha to spot issues
• 
  The error reporting screen from the pre-save diff
• 
  The save dialog if the diff looks fine
• 
  Filled-in save dialog
• 
  Saving screen as it pushes the page to the Parsoid service for saving
• 
  Congratulations! Your change has been made.

Hope these help. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for these, but the example is an unfortunate one as A) the names of cardinal points are used there as adjectives, and B) MOS only supports capitalisation of cardinal point names when the place so named is a political entity of some kind (Newham is in east London in the south of England, East London is in South Africa). Kevin McE (talk) 12:37, 16 December 2012 (UTC)

So I was told; this appears to be a "modern", simplified usage that MOS follows. Oh well. :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 18 December 2012 (UTC)

Only in vector?

I didn't see anything about this on the project page, but it looks like this only works in vector. I normally use modern, and it's not showing up there. Maybe that should be added to the information? —Torchiest ^talk_edits 20:20, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

It works in Vector and Monobook; if people want support for other skins, they would have to build it (at some considerable effort, I'm afraid). Will add a note. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Timeline

Is there anything approximating a timeline for regular, full deployment? I realize that it's early days, so things could change, but is the general sentiment that the VisualEditor will become the normal default later this year, next year, or some future year? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

I believe early June or July (one of the Js) but another of the Js, James F, can probably be more accurate than me. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:37, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

Nowiki tags?

It seems like all template instances typed in VE window end up wrapped in nowiki tags, right? How can one remove these tags from within VE, rather than switching to plain oldtimey editing? Retired electrician (talk) 22:06, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

VE can't handle templates yet. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:53, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Missing What and When and Issues Around Deployment

I just added the date for development. I have no idea why that wouldn't be among the first things you would say about a project. They've been talking about this for months and years now, and it's really irritating for a user that this hasn't been deployed yet. Perhaps there is more involved, but it's hard to find any information about it without wading through really long conversations. There's a great resource for learning about these things... it's called Wikipedia. If you want to actually engage users like the whole point of this thing is intended, the following information is among the minimal, basic information needed in order to do that.

• What is going to be deployed
• When it is expected to be deployed
• The history of development - when it began and why
• Any issues around deployment; I've heard that for example the reason this is taking forever is that it had to be tested slowly because it could be overrun by users and spam. I'm not sure if that's true, because again, it would take me forever to find out.

NittyG (talk) 16:11, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

No. This is intended to be a page about the VisualEditor's deployment on the English Wikipedia. If you want detailed information like that, it belongs on the MediaWiki.org page about VisualEditor. Issues and updates around development are written up on the regular status updates page there (like with all WMF Engineering work), which I also cross-post to the technical Village Pump here for info.

It would of course not be appropriate for me (or anyone else at WMF) to write a Wikipedia article about the VisualEditor due to our inherent conflicts of interest; if the community wants to write such an article, that is of course their call. :-)

Sorry that the beta deployment target date was not in the page (as written in December); I've corrected it. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 27 April 2013 (UTC)

References limitation possibly signficant

When this is installed as the default, and new editors start using it to create new articles, without being able to create references, they will, unsurprisingly be left creating articles, many if not most of which will be deleted as a result. This, I predict, is a signficant new editor bite problem in the making. --j⚛e decker^talk 02:01, 7 May 2013 (UTC) Nevermind, it appears that y'all are on this. Awesome, my bad. --j⚛e decker^talk 02:03, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

No worries. :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 03:06, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Is this a bug?

This new editor used VE and it seems to have duplicated all the references. Or was it just a newbie making a mistake? Darkness Shines (talk) 04:48, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. That's clearly a bug, yes - sorry about this. Have filed it as bugzilla:48227. Do you have more details - for example, what browser were you using when this happened? What bits of that edit did you mean to make? Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

I never made the edit, I just reverted it. This is the guy you need to chat to. Sorry I cannot be of any more help. Darkness Shines (talk) 18:44, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Aha, thanks, will chase them up. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:59, 7 May 2013 (UTC)

Dread

I just wanted to quickly mention that I stopped editing Wikia sites because their visual editor was screwing up the wiki source in the stupidest ways. Even a null edit would sometimes break a previously working table. I trust that the community-consensus model of Wikimedia projects will prevent these kinds of horrors from happening here at Wikipedia... - dcljr (talk) 00:00, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

VE is expected to be much better than what Wikia has been using.

Consensus, however, is unfortunately not capable of preventing bugs, and the encyclopedia community doesn't control the developer community per our policy at WP:CONEXCEPT, so if "prevent these kinds of horrors" means "have the whole thing instantly turned off every time a problem is found", then, no, consensus can't prevent problems or bugs, and it also can't magic up instantaneous patches. Perfection is not IMO a realistic expectation.

If you don't want to deal with the VisualEditor in its early days, just remember that you can always bypass it and edit the source directly, just like you do now. The default editor will change this summer, but you don't have to use the default. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:48, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

I guess what I meant was, I hope there will be more thorough testing of the editor before it becomes the default and a greater willingness to fix problems than was displayed over at Wikia. As for bypassing it, I'm already opting out of the "advanced editing toolbar", so... I don't expect I will be sufficiently impressed by the visual editor to use it beyond a quick test. - dcljr (talk) 00:34, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the Wikia editor's testing, and I know almost nothing about this one's, so I couldn't compare the two. I believe that they are committed to fixing problems. Of course, given the complexity of the project and the desire by some of the devs to actually get some sleep every now and again, it is entirely possible that the fixes will not appear instantly and perfectly as soon as the wish for a resolution is formulated. If you don't want to mess with it, then just don't. (I'm using the old toolbar, too. At this point, I can't even remember exactly why. Some button I couldn't find, but which one? I'm not sure.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:13, 10 May 2013 (UTC)

Love it

I like VisualEditor because it includes the syntax highlighter. 𝕁𝕠𝕣𝕕𝕒𝕟𝕂𝕪𝕤𝕖𝕣22 (talk) 20:19, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

VE vanished from my account

I was trying to mess with this thing, and now it's just vanished. Poof. No tab, no preference setting. Just gone. What gives? --Nathan2055^{talk - contribs} 15:51, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

There was a bug earlier and we've had to disable it; there's a notice at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and Wikipedia:Village Pump (Technical). Terribly sorry :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Wrong handling of character entity references

User:Kephir/acid is a page I created for unrelated purposes. Opening it in the VisualEditor reveals some discrepancies between Parsoid and native MediaWiki parser. Check it out. Keφr 13:34, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

The name made me giggle before I opened it :). I'm seeing an expansion in the divider between different sections - other than that, can you point me to what's worrying you? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:52, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Compare the images on the right. (The link targets also look wrong.) Keφr 20:28, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Native rendering

VisualEditor

The lack of mathematics support is a known, and I know pretty high priority for the team to work on - but the 1 percent/300 percent thing...I'm not sure if the VE should be doing sums (and getting the sums wrong, to boot). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:51, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with support of mathematical formulas in any way. Just parsing wiki markup. I could demonstrate this bug just as well by using a character like 💩 instead. Keφr 12:11, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I can't edit in the VE - this is a talkpage ;p. But, point taken; I'll throw it in bugzilla. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

The future

Is this meant, ultimately, as a supplement or as a replacement for wikitext editing?  — TORTOISEWRATH 21:12, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm not the authority on this, but I think the philosophy is that the new editor is an eventual replacement for markup editing. It will be the default option fairly soon. That said, I've heard of no plans to "shut off" markup editing any time in the near future. If you like markup, you'll be able to continue using it. From the VisualEditor FAQ: "There are no plans to remove the “Edit source” option." PEarley (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much "what Patrick said". I'm sort of treating it as like Wordpress, if you've used that recently - it's got a rich-text editor, which is great 99 percent of the time and totally more user friendly than writing markdown. But for those occasions where the rich-text editor screws up, or the user is more comfortable with markdown, there's a markdown editor. We've got no plans to get rid of source editing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

"Slow to load" - just sucks. That's why KISS is such a good principle. Electron9 (talk) 01:23, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

You're editing a a set of wikimarkup with integrated JS and CSS on the 6th biggest site on the internet using a 10 year old codebase that is then rendered into HTML and served, along with JS and CSS, to 500 million readers each year; there's a limit to how simple it can be. KISS as a principle applies not just to software complexity but to the complexity of using that software - something that the VisualEditor is meant to improve. It is slow, yes, but the VisualEditor team is working on that. Ultimately we have the choice between a simple bit of software that's incredibly complex to use or a complex bit of software that's simple to use. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

That's no reason to keep an editor that just serve the code without anything in between. Electron9 (talk) 15:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Are you saying we should remove the markup editor? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

I am saying people should have a choice to between plain source editing and overloaded bells and whistles. And make beginners aware that they have a choice. Electron9 (talk) 22:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

People do have a choice. We've got no plans to remove source editing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Opt-out?

Is there any way that one could opt-out of using Visual Editor and go back to using HTML? Epicgenius^{(talk to me • see my contributions)} 14:40, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Writing in pure wikimarkup? Yep, the wikimarkup editor isn't going away - there'll be two links in the toolbar, "edit" (VisualEditor) and "edit source" (source editing, as things are at the moment). We've got no plans to remove source editing - first because there will invariably be something the VE can't quite do, in the early days, and secondly because there's a lot of stuff you can't easily do full stop (magic words, for example). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I would recommend, rather strongly, that the main article here include at least a sentence making that point, for the cohort of editors who think -- rather strenuously -- that visual editors are worse than useless. Yes, including me. I would add such a sentence myself, but a) that's really a policy page now, given its link from the default header and b) my opinion is far too strong to pull it off in-tone.  :-)
--Baylink (talk) 17:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Shall do. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:17, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

And I see that you did, and thanks. And on second reading, I see that you are now tripping over something that -- being a nomenclature geek and worker with other wiki engines, I tripped over some years ago: *our markup has no name*. It is not, TTBOMK and as someone else has referred to it elsewhere on this talk page, "markdown"; that's a different markup language. "wikitext" is the most common term, but insufficiently precise; that's a generic term for raw text in the markup format of *any* wiki; it's used in the MoinMoin documentation, among others. I myself call it "mediawikitext", but that's vaguely ungainly. Some proper noun needs to be coined, though, as "wikimarkup" is both new (I've never seen it before this article), and also generic.
--Baylink (talk) 20:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. I'm not sure what a better term would be :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:17, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The only short name I can come up with is mwtext, which is easy to type, but harder to say... --Baylink (talk) 20:19, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

As a conservative editor, who simply wants to keep his layout and modus operandi undisturbed and therefore refuses almost all technical novelties forced upon him, I ask: 1) Is there a possibility of opt-out in advance? 2) Will the opt-out work accross projects with one action (i.e. one mouseclick "killing the beast" instaneously everywhere)? I would be very frustrated if forced to waste time with separate opt-out switching in each of c. two dozens of projects I regularly, occasionally or exceptionally contribute to. --Miaow Miaow (talk) 00:06, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

There won't be an opt-out, insofar as a preference that makes the VE totally go away - but the change to your interface is going to be "the markup-editing button shifts a few pixels to the right". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

"…every time you load the page, making you click the wrong button if you do not bother to wait for that bloody thing you never use to load. And also forcing you to relearn keyboard shortcuts, and awkwardly position mouse to use the editor you actually want. Which will finally create a use case for advertisement blockers on Wikipedia." Please. Keφr 13:01, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Point. Frankly I suspect someone will build a gadget, even if we don't. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

But why make people create a gadget which unloads the whole thing instead of simply leaving the option to not load it in the first place? This is a waste of so many kinds of resources. Keφr 13:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Because at the moment we're running against the clock to get as many bugs fixed before launch as possible, and, as you say, resources should be thrown at the highest-priority project. Something will be developed, of that I have no doubt (I'm spending my day asking volunteer devs nicely if they'd look at it). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:56, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion: use a common edit link, and load either the fancy new editor or the old one based on a user preference. Default to the shiny new editor, but this lets us curmudgeons stay happy as well :) Keep up the good work! draeath (talk) 19:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I too would like the ability to opt out, I find the new visual editor to be disruptive to many older editors ability to edit productively.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 20:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Attracting the wrong type of editors

It's a little dissapointing to see that first priority isn't being given to all the experienced editors who have made the greater bulk of contributions to wikipedia all these many years, as our standard editor will soon be replaced by Visual Editor as the default editor. This will invariably invite a whole slew of 'editors' at the grade school level who wanna-be an editor too.... I predict the number of edits will sky rocket, and the age, education and intelligence of the average editor will drop, along with the quality of edits. Isn't our first priority also building a quality encyclopedia?
We should use VE on a trial basis, and if all the 'easy editing' results in a flood of low quality edits that have to be cleaned up by experienced editors, no doubt increasing the edit wars, then we should 'can' this please-everyone-all-of-the-time idea and get realistic again. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:01, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes, exactly one of my thoughts. By forcing users to learn wiki markup we are ensuring that they are serious, or at least dedicated. Forcing them to create accounts would have the same effect but that is a failed proposal. In my opinion we should have as many obstacles as possible that would generally be overcome only by those who would want to become serious, constructive editors. The visual editor will not necessarily solve the retention problem anyway as I pointed out below. Cathfolant 20:10, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I think more editors have left because they were frustrated by the community, rather than technicalities. Too much time and bandwidth is spent on discussions whether to capitalise a four-letter preposition, or discourses on superiority of em-dashes over hyphens, or whether this or that editor has been uncivil/assumed bad faith/made a personal attack/etc., or whether search-and-replace functionality is an automation tool or not, or whether some discussion between three editors counts as consensus, or on bickering by spam-only accounts that "this citation is obviously notable", or on creating thousands of useless userboxes and fancy signatures. In short, too much meta-matters. Too little time goes to searching for sources and actually writing articles. Keφr 22:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

I can't speak for Wikipedia users in general, but I for one am far more likely to start making meaningful contributions to Wikipedia because of the new editor. I've been on Wikipedia for several years now but have only made minor correction type edits. I have a PhD in biology and feel that I could make quality contributions to relevant articles. I haven't to date because I got frustrated trying to deal with all the HTML necessary to create a good article. It wasn't that I couldn't learn it. Instead I simply have too many other things to do in my life besides spending my time on this. If this new editor reduces the obstacles standing between my desire to contribute and my ability to actually do so then I am all for it. Mantisia (talk) 00:29, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Good point, @Mantisia: :). @Gwillhickers:, @Cathfolant:, most editors do not start out as "serious" editors. I can only speak for myself here, but when I started in 2005 all I wanted to do was add categories to uncategorised articles. That's it. The featured and good articles came a lot later; in my early days I wanted to make individual, trivial fixes. Having to learn an entire markup language just to be able to parse the page and get to what I wanted to change was a substantial barrier to this. As Mantisia says above, it's nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with the priority people put on editing Wikipedia. I don't think this will attract "less intelligent" editors or "less educated" users - I think this will attract the users who don't want, in 2013, to learn an entire markup language to be able to fix a typo. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:51, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I concur. I had not heard about the VisualEditor thing until it started popping up on my watchlist and I have to say I'm not impressed. If it's more or less automated, why are there no edit summaries? It's always a nuisance to see a great deal of editing done without a summary and this is often a mistake made by new editors. That should be automated somehow. And the edits that I have seen so far by new editors using VisualEditor have been vandalism. Not a good start. freshacconci talktalk 14:26, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Have you tried using it? It's nothing to do with automation. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Frankly, I didn't know it existed until today and had no idea how to enable it (made a comment at the bottom of the page). I was completely in the dark about this and I'm guessing I'm not the only one. I edit daily and had not heard about this until today and could not find how to enable it. I just tried it out and it doesn't prompt the editor to provide a summary and this is going to be a big problem. freshacconci talktalk 15:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Yes it does. When you hit save page, the flyout pops up asking you to "describe what you have changed". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I concur with Gwillhickers' point. I, for one, am more comfortable using Wiki markup and source code; it's what keeps the community of professional editors linked together. I would rather stay with source code my whole life than be forced to use VE and learn a whole new type of editing. HandIsNotNookls (talk) 00:15, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

We're professionals? We're volunteers. And nobody is forcing you to use the VE; as said, source editing will still be available. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:31, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I trust the option to use wiki-markup will be a visible button, won't it? — Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 12:06, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Most definitely; instead of "edit" as you have now, you'll get "edit" (takes you to the VE) and "edit source" (wikimarkup) next to it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

In the FAQ for this it has this as a question answer: "No. It is the official policy of the English Wikipedia that the editors are not in charge of the website or its software." This is against the spirit of a wiki. Wikis don't exist for executives to force bad decisions on the wiki against the consent of the wiki's editing base. They're about consensus. I can promise you right now, the majority of the experienced wiki editors here are going to be against this. And you'll justify doing it anyway because you're of a higher authority. That's not how things ought to work. That's just begging for disaster. This absolutely is going to attracted the wrong kind of editors and is going to degrade not only Wikipedia, but every wiki it influences, which is all of them. Everywhere. Trying to force your way in this issue is going to accomplish nothing but driving away many of your most valuable editors. And you'll be stuck with inexperienced ones who have no idea what they're doing. See, that's why it's consensus-based whether you like it or not. You force bad decisions on it, you lose valuable editors.Matt (talk) 00:23, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry; the consensus policy is one written by editors. We didn't write it, although we don't disagree with it. What you're actually stating is not "you're forcing it on us!" but instead "we're allowing it to be forced upon us! This is your fault" when it isn't. Lots of things Wikipedia does is against the spirit of a wiki. Page protection, the existence of arbcom - the utopian spirit of a wiki ultimately has to compete with the practicalities of reality. I'd argue that the VisualEditor is much closer to the spirit of a wiki, an environment in which anyone with the enthusiasm to edit can do so, than the alternative you'd leave us with, which is that wikipedians are people who have (a) enthusiasm and (b) the willingness to learn wikimarkup in exchange for being able to read an article, in exchange for being able to fix the typo in it. Because that's what we're talking about here - not making editing easier because "meh, why not", but making editing easier because most people don't come here ready-made as Wikimedians, or wiki editors. They come here as someone who wants to fix something small, and then get sucked into fixing big things. The existing markup editor, in 2013, is a hindrance to this, providing substantial cognitive overhead to contributions.

You won't be forced to use it; it'll just be an option open to you. There is nothing we're doing here that directly harms your work. If it works, however, it means that a lot more work will be done, and I think that's something we'd all appreciate. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:00, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

The editors never agreed to have their ability to form a consensus removed. That was an executive decision made by "editors" who are WMF staff, similar to yourself. And it doesn't justify forcing a bad idea that the community doesn't agree with simply because you want it. Many times here already several people have asked you source your claims, and you ignored them. You are making baseless claims about what is happening to the retention rate without backing any of them with credible facts. You are forcing a feature down the throats of everyone that they don't agree with that you can't even prove the necessity for. And don't say it's optional. That doesn't mean anything. It'll still create problem edits that the people not using it will have to fix. It'll screw things up and make things more difficult for everyone whether they opt to use it or not. You claim this is about raising retention rates. Are you seriously willing to force your way in this issue, knowing full well that the community is against you? Can't you see how that is going to push people away and make them want to leave? You're antagonizing the very problem you claim you want to fix. There's no way you can get out of this without making your argument look hypocritical.Matt (talk) 02:09, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Really? Who? I know WhatamIdoing was involved in the conversation, but that was long before she was hired. If you can point me to staffers at the time who were involved, I'm happy to scold them, and if you can point to the particular claims you'd like supported by a citation I'm happy to address those, too. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:39, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

AFAIK, the idea that the developers' decisions about how to run the website are not subject to "consensus" by the editorial community first appeared in that policy in January 2007, and I wasn't involved in that discussion in any capacity. WP:Consensus can change, of course, and Matt's welcome to start a discussion at WT:CONSENSUS about his idea that the community should get to control the website, but I doubt that Matt will find support for it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I unexpectedly met an editor face-to-face last week. He's a professional journalist, and he said that he often reads Wikipedia, and donates to the WMF to keep the lights on, but he has given up on editing. It has gotten so much more complicated in recent years that he just closes the edit window in dismay. His main interests seem to be film or books, and he'd like to correct errors and provide sources.

I don't think that someone should have to spend hours and hours learning wikicode to prove that he's "serious" or "dedicated" to be able to say "Hey, this guy's published eight books now, not just six". Why shouldn't we encourage people who just want to help out casually? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

First off, I think it's better to be honest about this and not hold back. I'm sorry if this comes off as rough, but I think it has to be said. The potential consequences of holding back and letting things happen are too severe to be too cautious. You both ignored what I said and went off on the consensus thing. A small handful of people that are either WMF staff, WMF hopefuls, or close to WMF staff are hardly represent a significant, unbiased part of a community the size of Wikipedia. Even if they had absolutely no conflict of interest, do they represent the community? How can you claim the community agreed to give up consensus when it's essentially the same as a small town in the US voting on, and deciding on the US president, single-highhandedly, and calling that the "nation" choosing them? Anyway to the actual point. Okeyes, I told you exactly what you haven't sourced. All the claims on retention rates. No one has backed up those claims. They just claimed it was happening, and gave a very ambiguous graph that shows retention rates falling. That doesn't prove your claim. All that shows is that retention rates are falling, which is a problem every wiki on the internet is having, and it does not prove your hypothesis as to why it is happening. Don't just cite them here, where only a few people will see it and it'd be lost in an archive, actually cite them where you have the claims. And you ignored that the the consensus problem is largely irrelevant because if you use WMF authority to force this despite that, you will lose valuable experienced editors in exchange for inexperienced casual editors who will have next to no incentive to ever improve beyond a very basic level. So it doesn't matter if you force your way despite the majority being against you. Things will not go your way either you invoke the WMF right to overrule consensus or not. You cannot honestly keep insisting that this is about improving the retention rates when you have shown absolutely zero interest in keeping anyone who happens to disagree with you. Your own studiesshow that as far as you know, issues with the community are about a forth of the reasons for leaving. And the complexity is also about a forth. And the other half is issues completely beyond your reach. Of two the key problems you were able to determine with retention rates, you chose to address one in a way that would exacerbate the other. I don't think those findings are entirely accurate. I personally think that disagreements in policy make up the overwhelming majority of the non-personal reasons. But for the purposes of this discussion, we'd assume your findings are valid. And in that case, your argument here is completely illogical. Your loses would at least cancel out your gains, and more likely exceed them in value. I do have a prediction for your response. You are going to ignore all of this (as you did before), say your right to overrule consensus is all that matters (as you also have done a few times), or are going to go off on an tangent to dismiss what you don't want to hear (as you just did now). If you choose to ignore this all and just insist on your way, you will make a very bad impression on everyone reading this. There were people who disagreed with you before I spoke up. Maybe I'm a bit more assertive than them. It's who I am. You need to realize the position you're in when you have that kind of responsibility. You can't just causally make huge decisions without actually listening to the people that it is going to directly affect on a daily basis. You can't just say "I don't care what you think, we're doing this my way" when you're more in a management position and it's not exclusively you who's going to have to deal with that actual mechanics of what you want to do on a day-to-day basis. By just insisting on your way when everyone's telling you it'll be a disaster, you decay community faith in you. That can cause all sorts of problems, most relevant to this discussion, it'll make the falling retention rate even worse. So what's it going to be? Are you just going to keep telling us that it's going to be what you want no matter what, or are you actually going to respond to our concerns without repeating the same meaningless, hollow replies over and over that don't answer anything at all?Matt (talk) 12:32, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Matt, I know that change can be painful, and if you're already wondering whether Wikipedia is worth your time, then any little thing could seem catastrophic. But I don't think that you're thinking about this clearly. You've basically asserted, for example, that WP:CONSENSUS, a major policy here watched by hundreds of users, was re-written by WMF stooges six years ago, well before you and I ever created our accounts, and that nobody at the English Wikipedia happened to notice or object ever since. I don't think this is true. I think it far more likely that experienced editors here believe that the content (including the policies) belongs to them, and the website belongs to the devs.

I'm also interested in understanding how you know that the existence of an alternative editing system will actually drive away experienced editors. Most people in that study who said that they left "because of the community" left because of unpleasant personal interactions with the community, such as being blocked or being told to stop their POV pushing or having someone yell at them. Do you think that the existence of VisualEditor is going to make people behave worse to each other?

Separately, you're asserting that "it will be a disaster". How do you know this? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I totally agree with the first post, the changes are very, very, dissapointing, and probably will made more WP experienced editors to leave. Please reconsider it unless its too late. Wikipedia's accurancy and credibility is dropping at high speed every day...--HCPUNXKID (talk) 14:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you point to any specific problems, and evidence of accuracy and credibility problems increasing? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

See the bottom of the page for more about it. Or just wait a month and you'll see... Evidence of accuracy and credibility problems increasing? For example, the increasing use of Facebook or You Tube as sources by some "editors", totally contradicting WP policy.--HCPUNXKID (talk) 15:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

So it doesn't matter if the majority of editors are against it just because of WP:CONSENSUS? That is nonsense. That is bad for any website even ones without a consensus policy. SL93 (talk) 16:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Feedback

Just out of interest, how many users are really being driven away by this 'problem' with editing? If it was acceptable in 2001, why not now? What changed? I know the retention rate has fallen, but have we got any solid statistics that definitively show that new users are leaving just because they're unwilling to learn wiki markup? Why are we so sure this is the cause? I don't think there's any way to prove that. I suspect there is something else at play here besides having to edit the source, and the retention rate may not necessarily be brought up by this visual editor. The vandalism rate might also be brought up by having an easier way to edit pages, if it really is easier and not still discouragingly slow when it is implemented. If it's still buggy when implemented it could decrease vandalism, but it would also decrease good-faith edits, as does any barrier to editing.

It would be a real shame if this were implemented at all before a non-buggy version was created. I have edited (Wikia) wikis that default to the slow, buggy visual editor and it is so annoying to have to wait while the thing loads - especially for one who knows wiki markup and would much prefer being able to use that instead. If the buggy version is implemented by default on English Wikipedia as well, I will take care to stay away until I can edit pages normally and painlessly; and I know I'm not alone in feeling this way. The two edit tabs would address this concern - one might also have something in preferences that would let you choose which editor you wanted to use by default.

The banner announcing this says 'logged-in' users. What about IPs? What will they see? Will they still be forced, as we all are now, to edit the source? Are we just testing the feature on logged-in users initially or will it never be enabled for IPs as well? This is a bit confusing.

Finally - 'tiny corrections' mostly do not need knowledge of wiki markup and I don't understand why it says they do. Tiny corrections, as I understand the word 'tiny', consist mainly of things like typo fixing. That has nothing to do with wiki markup, does it? Cathfolant 20:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Many people who contain valuable information and knowledge about certain subject. Some of these people do not have time to learn wiki markup, and it is not our place to put down people like that. But it isn't fair to try to stop people from editing Wikipedia just because they don't know wiki markup. After all, Wikipedia is the encyclopedia that can be edited by anyone, regardless of computer skill. With the vandalism issue, you do have a point where it becomes easier for people to vandalise pages. But as this is true, the opposite is true. Before, if some casual viewer saw vandalism, they might have had to learn wiki markup just to fix it. Is that worth it for them? No. A visual editor would make it easier for the casual reader to fix small issues, overall I think vandalism will go down. As with a non-buggy version, that isn't really in my control. But I have been using the alpha and beta visual editor since the start, and I've never had a problem with it. Just my two cents. dominiktesla -talk- 20:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Not true. Writng a paragraph or two doesn't require knowledged of mark-up, and there is always the talk page where ideas can be proposed and where other editors can help. Fixing textual and grammatical errors doesn't require a VE -- and VE will do nothing to help the "casual editor" fix mark-up errors and issues. And frankly, we don't need "casual editors" who decied to make edits at a whim. Wikipedia has gotten along fine all of these years without VE as a default edior. We shouldn't try to make a system that pleases every age group and every intelligence level. Again if someone is serious about including information they can still do so without knowledge of markup. VE is only an invetation to bring the average age and/or intellignce of editors down to the grade school level. Did anyone even discuss this before they came up with this 'feel-good' idea? Was the idea of a trial period even mentioned? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 21:33, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

But editing the talk page also requires knowledge of markup. Also, have you ever looked at WP:AFC submissions? Even getting proper separate paragraphs in markup can be quite a trouble for some people. That said, I am no enthusiast of VisualEditor. What benefit would there be to getting more casual editors to write if their edits are going to be reverted because they did not meet our standards, which they never got to actually learn about? I would rather focus on getting WP:Flow to work everywhere, not just on user talk pages. Keφr 21:51, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Editing the talk page requires only knowledge of indentation colons and signatures. It is not all that hard to learn and I can't understand why it would be such a problem. (rest of comment moved to Wikipedia talk:Flow) Cathfolant 23:51, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Let's break this down, here; we're not saying "you can't write a paragraph without markup". You can! As long as that paragraph doesn't contain links or references, and if it doesn't contain references it'll get reverted. But if it somehow doesn't get reverted, it'll be fine! Except, of course, that for the average internet user being presented with a screen full of markup is a terrifying experience. It's hard to follow, hard to compare to the article you were reading, and I had one user tester - who, contrary to Gwillhickers' insinuations about the users we're trying to attract being stupid, 12 years old, or both, was a lady in her 40s comfortably earning a middle-class living - assume she'd broken the page. This isn't about whether you can, in theory, create a paragraph without markup. This is about how off-putting markup is to users, and how much cognitive overhead it requires a user to take on. For power users who are plugged into the community, that load makes sense. For someone who just wants to add a citation or correct a link or add a category (heck, adding categories is how I started off) it's a tremendous barrier. They don't want to have to parse the entire page to add a category. And they don't; they switch off and don't edit. Gwillhickers, if you think we don't need casual editors you have absolutely no idea about the editing demographics of Wikipedia or the workload distribution. Oh, and while explaining to us how we were going to attract idiots, you misspelt "invitation". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:37, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The community has been asking for a simpler page editor for many many years (See sample links, in the /FAQ). There are large quantities of people who do not contribute, because they find the window of wikicode utterly intimidating or too densely obtuse.

Even people who are comfortable with computers, can find wikimarkup baffling. I was talking to a WikiHow user a few days ago, who had hundreds of wiki-edits, but no idea how to make indents on talkpages.

I know plenty of intelligent elderly people, who are somewhat comfortable with Microsoft Office (having used it for years and years), but who have no interest in learning what looks to them like "code". They can write (and with a better grasp of the English language than many younger folks..) but they not inclined to do it in a sea of brackets.

Professors and teachers don't all want to have to learn the intricacies of template code, just to share links to valuable research. They'd much rather use ottobib or citegen, and equivalents thereof.

As for "how many users are really being driven away" - Again, see the FAQ, specifically the link to strategy:Former Contributors Survey Results#Key findings (Other research supports the same conclusions. e.g. Wikipedia:WikiProject Editor Retention#Work groups and discussions). So a large percentage of the people who give direct feedback: gave up, or left, or never contributed, because of wikimarkup complexity. –Quiddity (talk) 23:50, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

You make good points and yes I did neglect to read some stuff. As I said, as long as one can choose which editor to use, and the annoying slow version is never implemented, it is a fine plan. We will just have to see how many casual editors are the sort we don't want around, and if the drawbacks of casual editors outweigh the benefits of providing an easier way to edit, the visual editor should be removed. We will have to keep a close eye on the statistics somehow and remember not to focus only on the benefits. Cathfolant 23:57, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Nonsense. If the "casual" vandal can come into WP and do a number I'm sure most potential contributors can also. And how does anyone know how many people come and then leave because of the "complex" mark-up? Do these people leave a message, and if they do, why can't they also make a written contribution? Are the promoters/programmers of VE standing to make a lot of money -- is that why its really being pushed? I ask because the reasons for implementing VE seem quite transparent. Again, any idiot can come on to WP and start writing. "Casual" users, grade schoolers, have been doing it for years. All of the sudden we have a problem? -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:36, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

So you just want to stop any progress of making the editor simpler, just because you're comfortable with wiki markup? Because you don't like change? And why would you say that the programmers are making money? Wikipedia is a non-profit organization, along with all the code. dominiktesla -talk- 00:59, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

(ec)If you look at Quiddity's links, there has been some data collection and surveys on this topic. The complexity of markup was a significant factor for a lot of would-be good faith editors leaving the project. Now, what happens after removing the markup barrier is an important question. If it becomes clear that a "speedbump" (that is, a barrier to participation that filters for desired behaviour) is needed to keep the editor base at a healthy ratio of good faith/bad faith, then we may have to figure one out. But using markup as that speedbump is clearly filtering out people we want: experts like Mantisia in the thread above. It surely filters for vandals as well, but, at what rate compared to the good people? The A/B test going on right now will hopefully answer some of those questions, the results will be posted as soon as they're in. As for the devs making off like thieves, I believe that, as an extension of MediaWiki, it will be freely available and not a great moneymaker. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

(In case anyone wonders why I left the discussion, I had to go to bed.)

Gwillhickers - the motivation behind this change appears to be totally in the interest of improving the new editor experience and retention rates. I see no reason to believe that it is about making money - why would it be about making money? This all seems to be entirely in good faith; I have had no reason to assume otherwise and it is probably most helpful to bring up potential problems with the new feature rather than speculate about the motivations of those who came up with it.

PEarley - good points. Thank you. I haven't really got anything to add at the moment. Cathfolant 16:40, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Gwillhickers, why the heck would the programmers make a lot of money? Our developers exist whether they're working on the VisualEditor or something else, and this is free software. Sure, it's theoretically possible to monetise it, but if the objective was to monetise then this would be quite literally the worst way of going about it, short of printing off your only copy of the source code and handling it to one of the homeless people who adorn the Financial District. I agree; our motives for doing the VisualEditor are entirely transparent, both ways. Cathfolant can see through them, and you evidently can't see them at all. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:06, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Minor point: The current editing system didn't exist in 2001. And if you want to understand the difference between then and now, compare this version of Helium, which qualified as a Featured Article in 2003 against the current version of the article. Most people could probably figure out how to change the text of the 2003 version, except for the nasty HTML table at the top, on their first try. There's almost nothing there except words, section headings, and wikilinks. Now, there are more than a dozen images, 112 inline citations, and a large number of templates. The software needs to get simpler to use because the articles have gotten far, far more complex. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 11:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC) one

Just for fun I looked at your 2003 example. It made me cringe- where were the references? So for a little more fun I tried to add one. I pressed one off the two little icons and up came a screen and a question-What do you want to reference? Well that was a brick wall. I tried the other one and it starts talking about groups? Another brick wall. I left quickly before my exit route was bricked up. What we need are new editors to reference their source, or it will be wiped.WP:POV We do not allow editors to add the results of their research WP:OR that will be wiped- so all this incredible hard work to make something pretty really misses the point. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ClemRutter (talk • contribs) 13:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that you found the refs feature complicated. I'd like to get some of the labels changed, or at least linked to something explanatory. Whatever you put in "What do you want to reference?" (which I, too, had bypassed previously) gets pre-filled into the ref when you move to the next screen. (Maybe someday, it will accept a URL there and turn it into a pre-filled ref.) The "groups" thing is about WP:REFGROUPs, which most articles don't use. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

PLEASE make sure this can easily be disabled

For those of us actually used to Wikimarkup, it's far easier to use that. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:00, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

There are no plans to disable the wiki-markup/source editor.

Some of us power-users actually like looking at code, on top of being "used to" it! There would be pitchforks at dawn, if it were disabled.

Plus there are (and will remain for some months to come) certain tasks that simply cannot be accomplished in VE (table-construction and complex math formulas, for example).

There are no plans to disable the wiki-markup/source editor! –Quiddity (talk) 23:54, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Precisely. Cathfolant 23:59, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Quiddity, I don't know why you're reciting the obvious and assuring us about something no one said was going to happen. No one is concerned about the standard editor disappearing. What we are concerned about was written in full view of your reply. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

@Gwillhickers: I'm answering the FAQs, because they are FAQs. If people can't find the /FAQs, or don't want to search through or read the entire thing, then they ask in places like this, and volunteers like me answer them. Hopefully the people who are starting the threads, whom I'm primarily replying to, find the replies I'm writing helpful.

If I understood incorrectly, and Adam really did mean something more like "make it easy to disable", then I could point towards Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and suggest that the option to turn it off (or hide it, or whatever) will almost certainly be found there, both now and in the future. –Quiddity (talk) 00:56, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Quite. Instructions for how to turn it off, and a direct link to do so, need to be in the banner that announces it having been turned on, and for new users.

I actually worry this could be horribly counterproductive, basically encouraging people never to learn the Wikimarkup necessary for any high-end work. I really, really doubt Visual Editor is ever going to allow people to make a template, for instance, so the new users could easily become an underclass.

This also has the potential to completely screw over projects that require use of templates, like WP:FPC, so I'm really, really hoping that this got tested. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 00:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Why would it screw over FPC? It's only going to be live in the article namespace. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Adam is exactly right. All this is going to to is encourage lazy editing and discourage actually learning the code. In the long term this will diminish the number of people who know how to do things such as add references, edit templates, sort categories, etc. A WYSIWYG editor is always going to to create errors. It is impossible to get around it. That's a cold, hard fact of computers that you cannot avoid no matter how much you want to. If people are too intimidated by the coding, they shouldn't be trying to edit a wiki in the first place. And they absolutely shouldn't be demanding things be watered down and simplified for their sake. Not when it'll just reduce the overall quality and reduce the pool of experienced users. Everything about of this whole idea seems horribly misguided. And what many here fail to realize is that what Wikipedia does influences every other wiki on the internet. Many others are deadset against WYSIWYG editors for good reason. But if Wikipedia does this, new users across the net will be demanding such editing interfaces on those wikis. You do not live in a bubble, it's not just about you. Many of the people who leave Wikipedia, for whatever reason, tend to go to other wikis. And with this diminished knowledge of wikicode will spread to the other wikis and reduce the overall knowledge of the whole wiki community. And this whole movement is based on the assumption that wikicode is a major reason for low editing retention. Where's the proof? You can't just show us a graph of retention rates going down and say "There, that proves wikicode is turning people away. Correlation doesn't equal causation. I agree with some of the others here. If this were a main namespace article, it'd be flagged for not having a neutral point of view and having unsourced claims. This is not going to go well at all. Has anyone bothered no remember that Wikia tried this exact same thing a couple years back and it ended in disaster? First they did a WYSIWYG editor, and that devasated them. They lost a lot of valuable editors and staff because it caused more harm than good. That was kind of overshadowed by Oasisgate sometime later, which was even more devastating to them. Learn from others' mistakes. No one who has tried a WYSIWYG editor has ever had it end well. It's blown up in their face every single time.Matt (talk) 23:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Can you give more examples of people who have tried WYSIWYG editors, then? I accept the Wikia experience didn't go well, and I think they do too - we've got a couple of their developers assisting us and trying to build something far better than theirs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:38, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Trial basis

Can some one tell us whether the VE will be used on a trial basis -- or bring it to the attention of the various individuals who are making these decisions for us? That would be 'neet'. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 00:21, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The trial is ongoing - available as an option for all editors, and activated as the default for fifty percent of the new editors from Monday passed to this Sunday night. The decision makers have contracted people like me to advocate for community members - I will definitely pass on anything you'd like to them. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• What I am getting at is if VE proves to increase the number of low quality edits (i.e. Gee honey, anyone can edit now -- let's log on to Wikipedia tonight), lowers the average education and intelligence level of the average, uh, "editor" (i.e. I wanna-be an editor too!) increases the number of edit wars, increases the amount of clean up, and makes it easier for IP vandals, making it easier to be more creative/deceptive, then VE needs to be pulled and written off as another idealistic fallacy.
• Will there be a way to distinguish edits made with VE from those made with the standard editor in edit history? Perhaps an automatic 'E' or a 'V' notation for edits made with the standard editor and VE respectively in the edit summary -- a notation that can't be deleted, btw.
• When you say "the trial is ongoing" will it involve more than just sitting back and watching with no definite time frame and plan in place? Or will there be a definite time period, with standards that must be maintained? e.g. Pulled if the amount of clean up, edit wars and vandalism goes up.
• Last, by making VE the default editor when you click on ' [edit] ', you are saying we care more about the "casual user" than all the registered editors who have given years of their time and effort and who have contributed the greater bulk of content here at Wikipedia. Thanks guys. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 15:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

• So, let's go through that bit by bit. First; "if" is right. If it increases low-quality edits. We don't know that - we're running an A/B test right now to find it out. Second, yes, there will be a way to distinguish, there's a "visualeditor" tag. I find the argument that we don't care about "registered editors who have given years of their time and effort and who have contributed the greater bulk of content here at Wikipedia" patently ludicrous. I've been here since 2005, written 14 pieces of featured content and near 90 good articles. I'm one of those registered users. Can you explain how the VE being the default editor in any way disadvantages you? The ability to write markup is still present and is still a button presented on every article. We have no plans to remove it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I assume he means that he finds it easier to edit the source and it would disadvantage him to be taken to the visual editor by default. It certainly disadvantages me when editing Wikia wikis; however, I believe we will have a better solution on Wikipedia than what's been done to Wikia wikis, and as such it should not disadvantage anyone. Cathfolant 16:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Okeyes, how does this A/B test reach all the "casual users"? Isn't the only way to accurately see the effects and results of VE is to actually put it into use in WP Main? Also, I didn't speak in terms of being disadvantaged, only that first priority is being extended to causal and non registered and not to experienced editors by making this the default editor. I believe I was clean on that the first time. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 17:56, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Your worry is that it'll increase vandalism - presumably if the vandalism was due to existing casual users, we'd have blocked them. The A/B test has been hitting half of all newly-registered accounts with the VisualEditor and looking at what they'll do. Actually I haven't seen a particular pickup in vandalism (@PEarley (WMF): can speak to this more directly than I can, since he's been monitoring more actively - I've focused myself on user feedback) and when I have seen vandalism, cluebot has got to it before I have. One weakness of the test is that it doesn't hit IPs, as the VE will, but there isn't really a consistent way to give it to IPs without causing trouble. The quantitative data should be in soon and will hopefully be illuminating. If your argument is that you're not being treated right as an experienced user because the default editor is going to become "the editor that is usable by most humans", I'm not sure what to say. Yes, the default option will be the option that is most usable, just like the default option for skins is vector rather than monobook. As a monobook user, I don't feel like the development of a new skin is indicative of people not caring about my opinion, even if I don't particularly like it, because I'm not forced to use it. Editing wikimarkup will still be around, you'll just have to move your mouse slightly further to the right when you click 'edit', and invariably some user will come up with a gadget to hide the VE editing link entirely. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's the best way to get a grasp on what's being added by new users with VE enabled: RecentChanges with VE filter. It's been awhile since I did R.C. patrol, but I'm not noticing an uptick in bad edits. A purely unscientific estimate is that the vandalism rate hasn't increased significantly, but we'll have to wait for the A/B test analytics to be sure. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Current limitations include:

Just commenting about this page- I have spent days tracking the feedback page and 24 hours assisting in providing data for the programming team so I feel that can constructively comment here- and these comments are about this page.

In principle the section labelled current limitations does not reflect the feedback page.

• Slow to load- still not addressed
• Impossible to add references encouraging joe public not to- adding to the maintenance backlog
• Shakey- what you see is possibly what will be saved, and what you do is usually but not always
• Edits- can remove unrelated text- or whole sections

Redlinks

There are two redlinks- having status reports would be a very good idea

Newsletter

And sign up here -(no link)

Accuracy

In 2001, this was acceptable; in 2013, it's driving contributors away.  

If anything this statement needs to be backed up with a reference. As such it is a POV, and most of us would just delete it in main space or if it was a newbie {{cn}}.

but by the end of July 2013, we expect this to be the default editor for users on almost all Wikipedia projects. Please tell us that this should read 2014, at the moment what we have can only e described as 'Proof of Concept' as it is nowhere near submitting it for beta-testing. It is functionally flawed, and the way that users see inline comments, the way they add references, and visually edit tables needs to be thought out, the specifications written and put out to consultation before any coding is even started.

How to help

useful if people could update help pages, based on our tutorial to using the VisualEditor.

Firstly the tutorial isn't a tutorial it is a list of how to use each button. It is pointless damaging help pages when everything is changing on a daily basis. Looking at the referencing section it shows a button pushing approach- ten years behide the system used for DYK of GA on wiki- maybe in 2001 it was done that way but look at Little Moreton Hall and examine how we now expect referencing to be done.

Adding TemplateData to templates

Even following the links there is no simple description to say how to do the task.

The VisualEditor features a nice template editor,

Well that is a POV- and a delusion (my POV). My other POV is that this is a software project that is not being managed, subject to no professional discipline where the coders have been allowed to assume control, and will lose editors and confuse the hell out of newbies who are used to rock solid apps- who will not hang around.

Could someone stop 'rearranging the deck chairs' and clean up this page. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 09:16, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Clem, I don't engage with requests that feature citationless accusations of incompetence. If you wish to reword your statement so that it does not needlessly assume malice or stupidity on the part of the people maintaining the software and associated documentation, I am perfectly happy to continue a conversation with you. Until then, I will not engage. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Please delete the bits you find offensive, but do get some one to clean up the page. We do need a space to discuss the general direction and the assumptions being made, here seems as good a place as anywhere. I have spent a few hours looking at the process of editing using the new system- I can't test because there does not appear to be a functional specification to test against. I have left a sizeable number of issues. The feedback page is purely for discussing the software not the philosophy. The standard A level Computing textbook used to be P.M.Heathcote, Computing 4th Ed, 2000, Payne Galloway isbn 1 903112 21 4. Pages 300-317 apply. We can use this as a starting point. We have a sizeable number of articles on the Software development process which illustrate different philosophies.{{Software engineering}} For a project of this importance one different philosophy does need to be chosen. I haven't used ISO/IEC 12207 as any projects I have worked on have been far to small but a project manager does well to keep the concepts in mind.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 16:48, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Clem, if you're incapable of understanding what I'd find offensive in a statement that includes the line "My other POV is that this is a software project that is not being managed, subject to no professional discipline where the coders have been allowed to assume control", and wish to compound that by recommending to a team of developers led by the former head of Data.gov.uk an A-level computing textbook, there's not much I can do for you. The testing framework and functional specification is this: if you can do it in the source editor, there should, 99 times out of 100, be either a way of doing it in the VisualEditor or plans for such a mechanism. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:07, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

As I said remove all the bits you want from the posting - giving the warning is more important than leaving it around. The project is more important than personalities. Most of my software engineering books are in deep storage- Somerville was handy and pertinent. It is difficult to be specific if you are not sure what software development paradigm is in use because that affects the vocabulary you use, ISO/IEC 12207 is esoteric but provides a EC US agreed vocab. I suggest we close this here as time is short at moment and the conversation is best carried on at a Wikimeet over a good bottle of wine. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 09:09, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Browsers

Specifically, Internet Explorer. I use nearly exclusively IE8 as it is the highest version of IE which XP Pro can support. Both the OS and browser are still on a huge percentage of machines, is still supported by MS until next Spring, and I'm sure will remain a large percentage for a significant time after. (And will have to be pried out of my cold dessicated hands from my desecrated crypt)

I rather not entertain or field discussion or comments about what the browser/OS can and cannot do. I've been online since the days when "the internet" was a series of interconnecting courtesy portals between dial-up BBSes, and I've not had a significant viral infection in the past decade, the chief exception being a week I tried Firefox and wound up infected with a total of 213 virii (detected by Avira, not one of those pop-up fake detections). In addition to a strict regimen of what I do and do not access, download, or open, I don't use a slew of add-ons, opting instead to utilize IE's built-in features and My Good Ole "Mark I Computer Number One" to recognize what is real vs spoofs. My system and Browser have been tweaked to minimize things such as ads and other things which in my experience Other Browsers will not support without add-ons. And frankly I've found every add-on is a potential hole in security.

My point mainly is that I HOPE IE8 will be considered as "latest of IE", cause otherwise I will be severely impacted. — Love Robin (talk) 14:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

IE8 is not likely to be, I'm afraid :/. Problems with IE8 itself means that to support it, there would essentially need to be an entire, second version of the VisualEditor written just for that browser - and even then big chunks wouldn't work (or wouldn't work properly). The good news is that this isn't disadvantageous; users who are on unsupported, blacklisted browsers will simply get the same editing interface they get now by default. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, that might be troublesome. XP penetration is still fairly high -- especially on business desktops, but consumers aren't left out of that; it's almost 4 in 10 over all. So we're saying that we think deploying a visual editor is critical... but we're ok with 37% of our audience being potentially unable to use it? That sort of pokes a hole in the balloon, no?
--Baylink (talk) 18:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

5.52, according to our numbers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Yep, virtually the entire US government and a large majority of Corporations still use XP. Although there has been somem effort towards migration to Windows 7 or better, its still a long way off. OKeyes, How will VE work or act when you guys turn it on live for everyone? Will it conflict or just not work and everything will still look and act like it does now? Kumioko (talk) 19:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

If it's a blacklisted browser, the latter; I made sure to find that out (graceful degradation is a wonderful thing). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok thanks, no worries then. Kumioko (talk) 19:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Will there be any problems with IE10 (Windows 8)? Respectfully, Tiyang (talk) 02:17, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

At the moment, 10 isn't supported, so you'll get the existing interface, but we fully intend to support 10. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 02:24, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I also have Google Chrome, but like 10 better. Respectfully, Tiyang (talk) 03:22, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

So, where, exactly, is it?

For something that is supposed to be user-friendly, it isn't easy to find. Where exactly is it? Why don't I seem to have access to it? The blurb at the top of the VE page says it's been around since Dec. 2012 (?) I've never heard of it until today (and I edit daily) and I cannot find it. freshacconci talktalk 14:42, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Preferences → Editing → Enable VisualEditor (only in the main and user namespaces) Keφr 14:50, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Is this automatically enabled for newly registered editors? Established editors really should be told somehow. I'm sure there's a newsletter but a banner letting people know this is now in place and how to enable it would be useful. freshacconci talktalk 15:03, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

That's a good point; I'll make it more prominent in the project page and FAQ. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I just tried this out

I edited my userpage using this editor after enabling it in my preferences. It seems to work all right though I did find it more than a little confusing - you can see what I did, it wasn't anything useful - vandalism, essentially.

However, something very strange happened: it decided my edits and edit summaries needed spellchecking, and it shows funny red lines under stuff even now I've got Visual Editor turned off! I appreciate that some of us like spellchecking, but I don't, and I would like to know how you fix this bug; as it would appear to be a bug. It never spellchecked anything before now.

As for speed, which was all I really wanted to test, it is quite a bit faster than the Wikia visual editor, though it does take slightly more time to load and to save. As far as that aspect it looks to be about ready to become a permanent feature, should we decide it is a good idea.

Another comment about the necessity of this - we do already have toolbars on the edge of the edit window that allow you to semi-automate the addition of bold text, italic text, reference tags, etc. It seems a bit strange that these wouldn't be enough. I suppose it's not necessarily easy to understand what happens to the source code when you press certain buttons:

Bold text--Cathfolant 17:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)gndig

[[—≈≥≤]]

...but then I don't know who would do something like that on purpose with the intent of being constructive. All I'm saying is that the toolbars I produced that hash with are apparently intended to avoid driving users away with wikicode, and the emergence of the visual editor means that this previous strategy must have been ineffective. Cathfolant 17:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that even if you hit the bold button to bold things, you're still confronted with all the potential wikitext in an article when you hit 'edit' in the first place :/. Interesting bug with the spellchecking; could you take a screenshot? (Browser, OS?). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

I just took some screenshots of this: [1], [2]. The second one shows just how useless and annoying the spellchecker is for wiki editors: it doesn't like 'subst', which is not a word but also doesn't need any correction. (The apparent vandalism I reverted and gave a warning for in those screenshots I actually found by viewing Recent Changes filtered for VisualEditor, by the way.) Cathfolant 14:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

We don't have a spellchecker (building one would be silly, we operate in ~200 languages and sub-dialects) - that's your browser. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:01, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

That's true. But the spellchecker wasn't displaying before I tried VisualEditor, and I'm wondering why. It's actually only doing it for Wikipedia now - the other wikis have got back to normal. Not really a very important 'bug'. Cathfolant (talk) 21:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hmn; it's displayed for me for quite some time. How odd :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:26, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

This article

Is unclear.

'The system as is, is somewhat old hat.'

'This new system is being rolled out.'

'There may well be bugs.'

So how do old and new systems compare? 'The casual passer by' is none the wiser.

Do people actually mind putting square brackets and quote marks around things to 'get text to do what they want' - or do they regard it as one of the charms and standard procedures of WP? Jackiespeel (talk) 21:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

The user testing videos I've done and the feedback I think a lot of those of us involved in outreach have seen is that people do, indeed, mind it. As for testing it out; you're welcome to enable the VisualEditor and find out :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Some of us wish to see what it does before enabling it. All that is needed is eg to compare it to the 'buttons for editing' on some Wikia wikis. Jackiespeel (talk) 10:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

A comparison with Wikia is only likely to be useful to those of us who use Wikia. You can simply enable it and test it out - you'll be able to disable it afterwards (well, until Monday) and whether you disable it or not, wikimarkup editing will still be available. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:02, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

The article explains how the system will improve editing (and I assume some of the comments about it on the talk page ater the usual teething troubles) but does not provide a 'compare and contrast' (including with 'standard computer programs'): possibly to be followed by a (separate page) 'table of old system and Visual Editor conversions' Jackiespeel (talk) 22:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean by conversions? This would be rather difficult to do; how are we defining standard computer programs? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:36, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

(reset) More 'To achieve (x) in conventional WP do [this sequence], in VisualEditor do [this sequence]' for convenience/on those occasions when people find one method preferable to another/trying to disentangle snarly-ups. Jackiespeel (talk) 21:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, we have a user guide that goes through things here. I'm hoping we can make it more prominent on launch. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Passing thought - and could a link to the User guide appear at the top of the article page?

With Wikia there are Monobook (WP style) and Oasis camps: and in most Windows programs there are usually several ways of doing things (of which one uses one and occasionally another when more convenient) - the same is likely to happen here. Jackiespeel (talk) 18:16, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, yeah, but the VE appears the same in both monobook and vector. Looking at recent gerrit submissions there will be a user guide link, yep. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I meant in the sense of people tending to choose one form/method and sticking to it. Jackiespeel (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Missing warning message for editing protected or semi-protected pages

I'm I missing something, or is there no warning message like MediaWiki:Protectedpagewarning and MediaWiki:Semiprotectedpagewarning that displays on the VisualEditor when editing a protected or semi-protected page? This is just as important as the page notices. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

bugzilla:50415. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:02, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

@Zzyzx11:, thanks :). This is a great bug. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Spellchecking

Just tried out VE in Firefox. I edited Nazaaray. A lot of words are red-underlined, presumably that's flagging them as spelling errors. However, this is sometimes wrong (kilometres, winemaking, favoured - is the spellchecker using US English only?), and often over-zealous (1. there's no sense flagging the word Naazaray in the article when it's actually the title of the article, so can be presumed to be correctly spelled; 2. Ghumman is marked as a misspelling even though it's a link). Colonies Chris (talk) 11:10, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

We don't actually have a spellchecker, to my knowledge; what we have is integration with the browser spellchecker. Firefox editions regularly come with only a US-ENG dictionary, which annoys me greatly (there's a good British English one here). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:01, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I generally use IE9, just trying Firefox for VE. I've downloaded a British English dictionary, and that's fixed a couple of the issues (though it still doesn't like 'winery' or 'southeast'), but there's still a lot of unhelpful redlining, as I listed above (including, I've just noticed, it failing to realise that "Melbourne's" is a derivative of 'Melbourne', which it accepts). I have my doubts whether integrating with a spellchecker is going to be helpful to editors - WP has so many non-dictionary names of places and people and events which are linked on first reference, but the spellchecker will always see them as errors. Plus, since articles are written in different varieties of English, editors would have to keep swapping dictionaries. It might be as well to disable the spellchecker by default. Colonies Chris (talk) 16:00, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, but, well, we have spellcheckers in source editing, too (my one is objecting to winery, but likes wineries, for some reason. Also objects to 'spellcheckers'. Bleh.) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

PS: Thank You, Oliver Keyes!

OKeyes, July will be an adventure—an Odyssey — Thank you for your great work, Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 12:18, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

@Charles Edwin Shipp: Thanks! I can't claim full credit, or even a plurality of it; James and his team are the ones we owe thanks to :). If it's going to be an Odyssey, I bagsy being Odysseus; the survival rate for the rest wasn't, as I recall, particularly fantastic :P. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Bad user interface for adding references

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52458

I was super excited to hear about VisualEditor and tried it out as soon as I saw the banner. The thing I'm most excited about is how it could make adding references to articles easier. References are by far the most irritating part of editing Wikipedia for me, because it involves digging up lots of different bits of information and stringing them together as a long hard-to-parse lump of Wikimarkup. I almost always do it by copying an existing reference and swapping the content out. It's fiddly and boring. So I was excited to see how a friendlier UI might streamline this experience.

Unfortunately, the experience wasn't good. I've taken some screenshots and documented my thought process to explain it.

I tried to add a new reference to the Hail to the Thief article. This is a page I've spent a lot of time on over the months.

I go to to the point I want to add the reference and click the add reference button. A window pops up: http://i.imgur.com/FazafG1.png

OK, so there's a list of all the references in the article so far, cool. But I want to add a new reference.

There's a box that contains the text: "what do you want to reference?"

Hmm. I don't understand this question. Is it asking for a URL, or the name of the publication I'm referencing, or what?

I want to reference an article in the music magazine NME, so maybe this is asking that. I try typing "NME": http://i.imgur.com/7MCQv4n.png

Ah. it narrows the list of references in the article to ones containing the word NME. so this is actually filtering the existing references. That isn't indicated by the text.

Clearly I need to do something else to add a new reference. There's a piece of text that says "Create a new source", but it doesn't look like a button, and it's above a very similarly-framed text that says "Use an existing source", which I don't think is a button at all, but rather a heading. I'm also confused because sometimes references are called sources. Are these different things?

Anyway, I click "Create a new source". Nothing happens except that's highlighted. That wasn't what I was hoping to happen: http://i.imgur.com/O3y5mGQ.png

Now I'm sort of out of ideas. So I click "insert reference" at the bottom, even though that feels like it's going to close this window and insert something into the article that doesn't actually contain anything.

Sure enough, that's what seems to happen... momentarily. Then a new window opens: http://i.imgur.com/L7qTqVJ.png

"Reference content" - what does that mean exactly? Is it reference the verb - am I referencing content here? Or am I giving content to the reference?

What is the Options heading all about, and what does "Use this group" mean?

I have a little window here to type into. I'm not sure what to type. Do I just write out my reference in Wikimarkup and click "Apply changes"? Or do I write them out as if I'm writing a list of references at the end of an essay?

At this point I'm really disappointed. I was hoping to be given a complete list of individual fields to fill out - a box for author, a box for date, a box for date accessed, a box for the title, a box for the URL, and so on - and have this generate the reference nicely for me. Instead, I seem to have the old system in a confusing UI.

At this point I give up and add the reference with Wikimarkup instead.

VisualEditor is definitely the future, so I'm glad it's happening. But it still has a way to go if we want people to find editing easier. I actually work as a technical writer/UI designer at a software company, so I'd be happy to help out trying to fix this if need be. Popcornduff (talk) 16:43, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

This is truly fantastic feedback; thanks for it :). (everyone else watching - this is how you do it.) I'm going to try and summarise these into a bugzilla report and throw it at the frontend engineers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:17, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Glad to be of some help. Like I say, I do this for a living, so if you want any more feedback, or some help finding better words and buttons, drop me a line on my talk page. Popcornduff (talk) 12:46, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Ooh, will do! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I've been thinking about it a fair bit and I think any interface we create for adding templates with VE, especially citations, should allow a block by block fill in. The problem is, in many cases, they still need to know the template exists which is unrealistic for every template. Its not even realistic for a drop down. The only way I can see this done is as an add on module to VE, similar to how twinkle adds on to the additional functionality of Wikipedia. I don't think we need every template but we should have some of the common and required ones like citations. The other problem is citation has a lot of parameters, many of which are uneeded, so I think we need to stick with the most important ten (title, URL, author, date, etc.). What I don't think we want to do is add a bunch of extra empty parameters just to take up space. So as they are developing the ability I think someone should mention we don't need to add the whole template with a bunch of blank parameters. Sorry need to clarify a little more. The way it is now, its just a free form text box. We should make it a fill in the blank prompt page. Kumioko (talk) 13:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Without thinking about it very much, my first thought would be to provide a bunch of fields for common paramaters, like URL and author and so on, and then have an "add more citation fields..." button, or some such. Popcornduff (talk) 13:26, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Through things like "cite web"? It'd be nice. The problem is that templates like that are enwiki specific :/. I think what we need to do is make sure we have great TemplateData and great support for templates - if most referencing styles are templated (and they are), that kind of field/parameter-based setup is pretty easy to implement on a per-wiki basis. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess I need to understand the mechanics of Wikipedia a little better before I start hypothesising about improvements.

Incidentally, by sheer coincidence, I just had lunch with a colleague who mentioned he tried to add a reference using the new system over the weekend and had exactly the same experience. He too didn't realise the "What do you want to reference?" box was a filter/search box. Purely anecdotal, but interesting! As an inexperienced editor, he's also the sort of person VisualEditor is trying to help out, so the fact that he wasn't able to complete the task is worrying. Popcornduff (talk) 11:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed; it's getting worked on :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank God I'm not a Wikipedia user anymore

Forcing these features is a good way to alienate users, especially new ones. Good job, fools. --200.8.219.76 (talk) 00:10, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

It's not a forced feature because the original method is still there. Also, you're still technically a user of Wikipedia just by commenting here. SL93 (talk) 02:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Speechless

I have to say that some comments I am reading here really leave me speechless. Personally I can't understand all this bad reaction to VE. To write my experience...
About a couple of years ago, I wanted to edit an article and when I clicked on the "edit" button I was in shocked with what I saw. I didn't know that to just write something, you had to learn a whole code. I edited only 5% of what I wanted because it was the easy part, but when I tried to edit something more, I couldn't. Not because I couldn't learn the code but because I didn't have time to do it. That since two weeks ago...
An article of an actor I like was not updated for the last two years and everytime I was getting here I was getting frustrated seeing that. So, having free time this time, I updated it completely. Took me hours and days to manage to do it and learn how to "move" within the code but I did it. Except from writing in the main article (that's the easiest to do), I added and created templates, I created new tables, new articles and added many references. I even translated a page to my language and posted it there!

While still learning the code, I found VE and I started using that instead. It's way more exciting than using the code because except that it saves me time, I am not going back and forth to be checking what I am doing. Cause with the code that's what I was forced to do. Click "preview" and scrolling up and down the page checking what I did wrong to correct it! Not to mention wasting time to find the exact line the mistake was! With VE I don't have to do that because simply the mistake is right there where I am writing and I can correct it immediately! I can't even imagine how much time I am saving on that part!

Many people mentioned that new editors won't be able to add references, create/add templates etc. As a new editor who is learning both systems in two weeks, I CAN add references, I CAN add templates/infoboxes that already exist and I CAN create a new template by using only VE! Did it took me time to learn how? Of course! Did it took me time at the beginning to learn how to do it with the code? Ditto! But learning how to do it with VE took me much less time and sure takes me much less time to add a reference using it than using the code.

I know people are not willing to change something they know for something new easily. But before you crucify it, give it a try. Yes it will take some time to learn how to do things with VE, just like it took time to learn how to do them when everyone started with the code. But that doesn't mean VE is not a good thing. All I say is, give it a try and some time. Don't give up on it because you can't add a reference in 30sec. It took me time to find out how to do it right with VE, but now it only takes me 30sec. It's not difficult to do it!

And after all, VE is not forced to the editors as many people say. The option to edit with the code is still there and it's not going anywhere. Some people reacting like tomorrow the option to edit with the code will vanish! There are still things that can't be done with VE. For them and only them, I am using the code but for everything I know I can do with VE, I am doing it with it! Was it a little confusing at the beginning going from one way to another? Yes! But it's all matter of will and try.

And one last thought about vandalism (I am sorry for the long post). I am reading comments all the time that with VE people will vandalize more. The way I see it, if someone wants to vandalize, they WILL vandalize either VE exists either not! That is something that happens everywhere in life. To vandalize is the easier thing to do and trust me, the person who is willing to do it, doesn't need to learn the code to do it, the code won't stop them! So, if they either click "edit" or "edit source", the action will be done.

Just wanted to say my thoughts on the subject and again, I am sorry for the long post and if there are any mistakes I am sorry again. English is not my first language.

P.S. The comments saying that code is for the "intelligent" people who can learn how to use a code and that VE is going to allow everyone who's not "smart enough" to learn the code are just ridiculous AND INSULTING. TeamGale (talk) 03:20, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the lovely note, TeamGayle. I think it's worth us trying to keep our heads cool here; nothing productive is gained by insulting people, whether they're individuals or a group. I'm going to endeavour not to do so; I hope others will do the same. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

You are absolutely right. It's just that I am seeing and reading those comments for a week now and I just wanted to say that things are not just black or white. I just wish those people who had spent so much time here complaining about something that WILL happen, no matter what, and making all these long convos, if they had spent that time on VE, it's very possible that they wouldn't have any problems editing with it by now. And if they find an issue to report it like many people are doing so all the bugs and issues go away one moment sooner. I don't intent to answer or get involve in any type of convo like the above ones, I just felt many times insulted from comments coming people talking about new editors/people they don't actually know like they do. I just wanted to post my thoughts and I did. I won't spend my time arguing. I prefer spend it on actual productive work/editing. Again, a huge thank you for all your hard work you are doing for us. TeamGale (talk) 12:57, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

And right back at you :). The "keep our heads cool" thing actually wasn't aimed at you, it was largely aimed at me (and some of the people I'm arguing with, of course). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hey

Can I create new test account for visual editor? --M4r51n (talk) 11:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

That's totally fine, but if you enable it via preference, you'll be able to disable it pretty easily - at the moment. It goes to default on July 1, so ultimately a test account at this stage (a day before!) may not be that helpful. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:38, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

It CAN be done

Not sure if I can post this here...just wanted to say that editing with VE it can be done if you just try it!

Article's history and article itself

Goodnight everyone! Happy editing! :) TeamGale (talk) 23:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hidden comments cannot be seen or edited with VE

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51603

Hidden comments are very useful in preventing many unnecessary edits. Unfortunately, it is not possible to view or edit them using Visual Editor, especially given how many users are using it by default. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 00:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, we're working on that as a high-priority enhancement :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I ran into that problem myself at Color. A new user changed the spelling to colour but had no way of knowing that there was a hidden message in the Wikitext telling them not to do that. Howicus (talk) 16:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Double tags?

Hey, just a quick question, what is the significance of the two VisualEditor tags (the normal one and a separate "Check" one) in this edit? Did I miss something? Or is this just for debugging and the like? Theopolisme (talk) 17:39, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

That looks like....some kind of bug I've never seen before. How weird :/. I'll look into it; thanks for bringing it up! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Deployment delayed?

According to the timetable, I should be seeing the new interface today, but nothing seems to have changed. -- Beland (talk) 21:19, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Should be there for you - are you using an older browser? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

And you should definitely notice it now :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Seeing it now! -- Beland (talk) 21:58, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Change site notice? It still says "VisualEditor will soon be enabled for all logged-in users. Learn more, help out and give feedback." Apteva (talk) 22:16, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Yup, right, thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

There may be some confusion in that you won't see the feature on a page until you reload it, if you had loaded it before the activation. -- Beland (talk) 22:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Are there plans to roll out VisualEditor to talk pages?

Or is it only going to be switched on for articles and user pages? If not, isn't that going to be a problem? I've tried out VisualEditor and I like it - it feels much more user-friendly than wikimarkup, and I can barely believe it's taken Wikipedia so long to adopt something like this. If used everywhere, it should make Wikipedia more accessible for newbies. But if it's only going to be used on articles but not talk pages, that seems like it will make Wikipedia more complicated for newbies by requiring them to understand two different systems. If the current thinking is 'talk pages aren't meant for newbies, and they don't need to know how to edit them', I can only say that I disagree. Robofish (talk) 22:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey Robofish! No, it won't be--but talk pages will be changing to be more user-friendly. Take a look at WP:FLOW. Theopolisme (talk) 22:47, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

That's right. As Flow develops it may incorporate VisualEditor at least in part. We decided it best to not duplicate our efforts to make talk page communications easier. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanations. I do now remember coming across Flow before, but I'd forgotten about it. I guess that will be used in Wikipedia-space as well (on pages like this one). I can only wonder what will happen to, say, policy pages, but newbies aren't really supposed to be editing those anyway. Robofish (talk) 22:55, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah. That's a good question, however, and one we hope to be able to answer :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Opt-out

I want to opt out of this. How? I see nothing in preferences about it. Everyking (talk) 23:05, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

If you do not wish to use VisualEditor, you can simply click "edit source" to load the wiki-markup editing interface. There is not an option to turn VisualEditor off or opt-out in your preferences- we do hope that you'll give it a try- but if you want to hide it from your interface you can add importScript('User:Matma Rex/VE killer.js'); to your common.js file. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I edit by double clicking. I don't appear to be able to edit source by doing this. Please restore this facility and don't default it to the new editor which I don't want and don't need. Where was the notice that this new default was going to happen? Because I didn't notice it anywhere - it's just appeared. Highly unwelcome, high-handed and introduced with zero notice or discussion anywhere I've seen. -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello Necrothesp, we ran a site notice for the past week that this was going to be enabled, and we've been looking for feedback for the past six months. I invite you to participate in the discussions there. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

This was, I note, preceded by watchlist notices of various forms since December 2012, which is when we enabled the opt-in alpha. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

All very nice. Although it clearly wasn't advertised that well, as I (and obviously others) didn't seen anything about it. And would you care to answer my question about the double click editing? Thank you. -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you mean by editing through double clicking. Are you saying that double clicking the page to you to the source? Double clicking the tab to edit? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

@Keegan (WMF): See Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing->"Edit pages on double click (requires JavaScript)"

Also a few details at meta:Help:Preferences#Editing. –Quiddity (talk) 23:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I see, Quiddity, thanks for the pointer. In all my time on Wikipedia I've never changed my preferences much. @Necrothesp:, yes, I see what you mean. If you install the code mentioned above in your /common.js, your double-click preference should be fixed and now taking you to the source page for editing again. A thanks to Matma Rex for updating the script for this request. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

There should be an option for that. VisualEditor seems to be the "default", adding an extra step and making it more confusing if you want to edit traditionally. No doubt most of us who have been editing the same way for years would like to keep doing it that way without having some unnecessary hurdle placed in the way. Everyking (talk) 23:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

What is my "common.js file" please, I'm an editor not a programmer. I asked before to "opt out" of this and was told that I shouldn't worry about it. Well It's been changed and I want to go back to what it was yesterday. And I can't save this stupid file because people keep changing it before I can save it and I'm getting conflict errors. This is idiotic Bwmoll3 (talk) 23:21, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about the edit conflicts, I've been getting them as well, this is an active topic! You can create the page at User:Bwmoll3/common.js. The result looks like this. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I added this line - importScript('User:Bwmoll3 Rex/VE killer.js') - and I'm still getting the visual editor after logging out and logging in. Perhaps this page wouldn't be as busy as it is if you hadn't made this quite unwelcome change 23:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I fixed this for you as a volunteer, using my volunteer account. Refresh your browser and you should be set to no longer see VisualEditor. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

We need a simple opt out under preferences. Being discussed here as well [3] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:47, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't understand the reasoning behind not having an opt-out option in preferences. I used the script, but how many editors actually know of such a thing? SL93 (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that link, Doc James, for those that wish to visit the straw poll you set up. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

We were actually promised an easy opt-out before the launch. I asked, and was assured it would be easy. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 10:55, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I am sorry about this :/. Where/when/who from? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Why can't I turn this off anymore?

There's no box in Special:Preferences I can uncheck now that lets me entirely turn off the visual editor (i.e. make it go back to normal so there's no edit source tab). Why not? I don't mind it being the default but I'd like to just turn it off. I don't need this. It was fine with the checkbox in preferences. Cathfolant (talk) 00:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

The discussion to include this is happening in many places related to VisualEditor; I encourage you to check out the link to a new straw poll mentioned above this section. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree, users should be allowed to disable Visual Editor. It's a bit annoying to have to always be careful in order to skip "edit this page" in order to get to "edit source". Especially at sections. —  Ark25  (talk) 00:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

You can disable it; if you go to the "gadgets" tab in your preference, there's a checkbox at the top of the 'editing' section. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Why was it moved from "Editing"? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 01:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It's a different implementation, basically. This hides the VE via userscript, rather than via MediaWiki. I suspect we'll have discussions about what we do in relation to prefs as we go, but I can't promise it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I am having problems. When I disable this on preference. My internet explorer windows don't show the edit tab at the top at all after Ii disable it. It appears for a brief second than hides behind the view history tab. Everything is normal on google chrome but I want to use internet explorer and have it disable. Any help?--KAVEBEAR (talk) 07:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Which version of IE are you using? It does not appear in the list of supported browser though, you should not be seeing VE at all with it, and I read that someone has already filed a bug for this. Thanks for your feedback, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

No really sure. It's Internet Explorer with the blue "e" if that helps. The edit tab just hides itself each time I go to an article page. It doesn't do this on the sections, which I can still click edit next to the section headings, and it is also fine on talk pages and other non-article pages.--KAVEBEAR (talk) 07:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

VE is only deployed on a few namespaces at the moment, Article and User. I will add your report to a Bugzilla one about IE, thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Would it be impossible to have a preference to disable VE? I ask as I don't know terribly much about it but I can't see why there couldn't be. I just tried it on a new laptop, Windows 7 and Chrome, and it wouldn't let me click through to the edit source page or alter a link and then crashed the window.--Gilderien Chat|List of good deeds 18:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If you don't use Javascript for anything else on Wikipedia, you could disable it in your browser when you're here. Then clicking Edit does what it always did. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:56, July 2, 2013 (UTC)

Page notice problem

I thought a screenshot here would explain this most easily:

This obscuring page notice box is what I see on every page when I try to use the visual editor. If relevant, I'm using the latest Firefox on an Imac.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes; this is a hack added in by enwiki editors :/. Normally it shouldn't display if there are notices (and for non-admins, it doesn't) but users decided they wanted some way to surface to every admin "hey! you can add page notices". Quite annoying at my end too, but not something the WMF did. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. Regardless of the origin, we need a workaround and it seems to me this is likely technically solvable. I'll drop a note at VPT:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

@Fuhghettaboutit: agreed, it's been annoying me for weeks :D. Best of luck! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:31, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

No notice

It is annoying that the first time I ever hear of this thing is when I click on "edit" and there it is. I wanted to change a hyphen to an en-dash and I didn't see any way to do that with this new "visual editor". I've disabled it. When and where was this ever discussed?

(And is there any way to edit Wikipedia articles by using vi (the thing that's been called the "visual editor" for decades)? I've seen the possibility of using external editors, but only if you're using Windows or Macintosh, not Linux. Point-and-click editors are slow and cumbersome compared to vi.) Michael Hardy (talk) 03:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

One thing that's user-hostile about this new editor is that it doesn't instantly invite you to click on something to disable it. Michael Hardy (talk) 03:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Michael, I'm sorry your first experience wasn't satisfying. The ability to add special characters like en-dashes is being tracked here: Bug 50296. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 03:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

That bug has "Importance: Lowest enhancement", and that doesn't give me much confidence that the people who have rushed VisualEditor into production have any concept that lack of en dash capability is really going to crap up WP. We already have our hands full changing hyphens to en dashes because a lot of editors don't know the difference, but now even those who do know can't easily produce an en dash, and many will simply stop trying to do it right. How do we get this fixed quickly? Chris the speller ^yack 14:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Re: Where was it announced? See this older version of the FAQ for a sample list of some of the prominent locations it was officially announced, which is how testers and feedback have been requested for many months.

Re: Can we edit with vi? I saw a mention of Vim on Kim Bruning's userpage, so, maybe? Ah, over at Wikipedia:Text editor support might be what you want. –Quiddity (talk) 03:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

How do I turn this editor off? I asked for no change to my editor, but got it anyway.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Wish you'd give it a chance, but if you're not a fan - go "Preferences --> Gadgets ---> Editing" to find a preference to not display VE. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 03:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Tell whoever was in charge of it to next time give us some warning and a choice. Maybe I'll ease into it later but such a forced change without warning is very disruptive to Wikipedia.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

As Quiddity says above, we've been doing quite a bit of announcing, using watchlist notices, banners, and posts, but clearly we didn't reach everyone. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 03:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Didn't work.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

No, definitely didn't work. Which makes the change seem exceptionally high-handed. If you want to alienate experienced editors then this is the right way to go about it. Oh wait, you're only interested in the new editors. Or at least that certainly seems to be the case. The hostility to the changes here seems to point to the fact that (a) this wasn't properly discussed or announced and (b) it's not popular with the people who've actually spent years building this encyclopaedia. -- Necrothesp (talk) 07:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Necrothesp, can you suggest a better place/way to inform people which is not among those linked above? You see, I'm really interested in how the arrival of VE could surprise some users, since I will use more or less the same pages for it.wp. Thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed; I'd be interested in hearing too. There is certainly unhappiness, which I think is unfortunate, but I would like to note it's unhappiness from a relatively small number of users given the total number of contributors we have - we haven't reached everyone (and we need to work out some way of doing so, in future) but we've clearly reached quite a lot of people (or, alternately, they're fine with the VE). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Banners at the top of the screen. If there was one I certainly didn't spot it and I edit pretty much every day. Even consider posting messages on the talkpages of regular editors (I can't imagine it would be that hard to design a bot to do this). As for the old "only a few people have complained" argument, that's always the excuse used by companies with poor customer service on consumer watchdog TV programmes. Most people don't complain, fact. The fact that anybody has complained should be taken seriously. The fact that as many as this have complained should be taken very seriously. You should also have initially introduced this as an option, not as the default. By introducing it as the default it makes it appear that you are trying to railroad editors into using the new system. I'm sure that was not your intention, but that's the way it seems. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

We had those banners; I'm not sure why they didn't work, but suffice to say we'll look into a better way of handling them in future (I think it may be a problem around how CentralNotice's cookies work. bleh). To flip that around, yes, the fact that so many people are complaining is something we should take seriously and are taking seriously. We've got 8 staffers assigned to handle this launch period (although most of them hand off to Maggie and myself in a few hours). But just as most people don't complain if something is wrong, most people don't feel the need to turn up and say "good job!" if something is going well - it's probably not something we can use as a reliable estimator. I would point out we've had it as an option since December 2012; advertising that, too, is something we need to do better at next time, I think. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I was told that the CentralNotice banners weren't always visible to everyone because of cookies. If you dismissed any CentralNotice, then all of them (including new ones) were dismissed for two weeks. (I believe it used to be one week, except that editors here complained that it wasn't long enough.) They used CentralNotice to announce Board elections (or was it the results?), and the result was that some people missed at least one of the multiple CentralNotices about VE because some of the announcements were within the two-week window for some users. There were also watchlist notices, but that doesn't help people who don't use a watchlist. Necrothesp might have seen this announcement at MILHIST if he watches the page, rather than just participating occasionally.

Someone else suggested having really large, colorful sitenotices, on the grounds that just large, bold-faced text in a box that appears on every page until you manually remove is too easy to overlook. Of course, whenever the WMF has done that in the past, people have complained about the fact that the banners are are ugly and distracting. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I use a watchlist. Every day. Didn't notice anything. And I didn't dismiss notices. And still I didn't notice. That might just be me, but it does point to the fact that they really weren't terribly noticeable. And you still haven't answered my biggest concern. Which is why was this just introduced out of the blue as the default as opposed to just an option? Editors who edit by double clicking are generally going to be experienced editors - why did this just override the default we've been using for years? -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• I saw various announcements and so was not surprised by this. But to ease the introduction of new features, I suggest that you emulate Google and other providers, who provide a dialogue which explains the new feature when it is first used. You can then turn off the introduction when you have "got it". Warden (talk) 09:21, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Warden, we actually just added the "?" icon linking to User Guide and Feedback for users' convenience. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• @Warden: I really like that idea; the Guided Tours project Steven's team has been working on sounds like it would lend itself to the task. Something to look into for future releases, I think. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

References

I made a game attempt at using the thing today; don't like it but I suppose I could get used to it. But one problem arose immediately: I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to enter a reference. Is there a user's manual somewhere? The "cite" button on the current Wikipedia editing window is so user-friendly - just fill in the blanks and it plugs the info into the preferred formatting style - but all I could figure out to do with the VisualEditor "references" button was to enter the entire reference link by hand. --MelanieN (talk) 03:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

The references functionality needs work, we're tracking it here: Bug 50458. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 03:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

HotCat

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T45335

This seems not to work with VE. Is there something I should fix in preferences or is it a software problem? And if so, how long till we get this fixed? Daniel Case (talk) 04:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey Daniel. It seems to be working on and off. It's being tracked, but has been given low priority, so might take a bit. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 04:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I saw something recently about HotCat being turned off for everyone, so double-check your prefs. (If memory serves, it had gotten turned on by default for everyone, and then was turned off for everyone, including users who had it turned on before.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 10:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it was made the default for everyone, but it was recently un-made the default because lots of newbies thought it was meant to allow them to add text, so pages ended up being added to nonexistent categories whose names were a paragraph long. I don't like using it, so I'd already disabled it, but I heard from users (such as Acroterion, if I remember rightly) that they'd had it removed by accident. Nyttend (talk) 17:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:VPP#WP:HOTCAT_on_as_a_default et seq for the discussion. You'll just need to re-enable it in your Gadgets tab. I'm not sure why the change had the effect of disabling it for everybody who had it specifically enabled before last November. Acroterion (talk) 17:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Usability test - Small report

Discovered the WYSIWYG editor today. My first impression: Wow! A huge technical barrier flatted, usability taking a big leap forward! This will encourage loads of users, who previously did not dare to edit a site.

Yet I don't know how the editor will work with more complicated scenarios, but my first interaction with it turned out very satisfying!

Usability protocol:

1. When I tried to insert a link, I first pressed the reference icon (which btw gave a wonderfully comprehensible reference list!), then at a second glance the link icon ("chain-part", the generically established icon for a link). It even autosuggested the link, as the selected term existed as a wiki article! Great feature.
2. The layout of the editing toolbar is perfectly comprehensible (from left to right), I expected the "Save" button at the very right, and there it was. I hesitated shortly, as I wanted to add a editing note. I did not see one or not a checkbox or link for expanding a textfield, so I assumed, it will very likely ask me for it after submitting. And it did exactly that, in place as an overlay to keep the mental context. Perfect! In the old editing mode, due to the server request response inbetween, and the need to scroll to a certain position, it was a lot of mental effort to catch up again (took 5-10secs, what should take <1sec).

So far, very good! --PutzfetzenORG (talk) 11:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks so much! I'm glad that you like it :). Let us know if you run into things we can do better. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual Editor: site-wide roll out? - angry thread

I was of the impression that the visual editor was planned to tested on:

(a) a sample of new users

(b) for a limited period

(c) to gather usage/test data

(d) on the understanding that it contained bugs.

That seemed sensible to me - although I did think wider community notice than was proposed was needed to handle possible issues.

Yet, low-and-behold, it appears that:

(a) a buggy piece of software

(b) affecting core functionality

(c) has been rolled out across all users

(d) with an unadvertised opt-out buried in user preferences

(e) without the community being notified properly.

WTF!?

Editing is the core of what we do around here. Irrespective of whether individually we like or dislike the visual editor, changing the production UI for all editors to a buggy WYSIWYG editor without proper notification and education is not on. This is not merely a matter of whether an individual editor chooses to use the new UI or not — we also have to deal with problems, bugs and issues arising from other editors decision to use it.

Believe it or not some folk here want to produce an encyclopaedia. The live environment is not a suitable place for this kind of experiment. And that's before I say anything about how disrespectful the lack of communication and involvement with editors ahead of deploying this change to the live environment is. --RA (talk) 12:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry that you misunderstood what was being done here. :( We did try to make sure that everyone was aware. To quote from another discussion on the topic (currently at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback), "This has been discussed publicly for more than a year and scheduled for June/July since at least March. Announcements appeared in the WP:Signpost, WP:VPT, the mailing lists, on the Watchlist, and other places. Whether or not it is a disruptive change, there was definitely a lot of notice that it was coming. Dragons flight (talk) 05:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)" and "Not to mention the banners at the top of every page. :-) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)"

You can see links to some of those conversations at this older version of the FAQ. You can see the original watchlist notice which included specific mention that it would be enabled for all users in early July - 10 days later, it was modified as follows. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:55, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd also note that it has been in opt-in form since December 2012. As well as the things Maggie mentioned, we also have a centralnotice up. If you can think of other ways we can notify users, please let us know - we appreciate this hasn't been the smoothest software deployment and do want to improve. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Watch list

I qualified my criticism of notification and community involvement with "properly". For example, discussion on this page don't count. The community would first need to be notified properly of this page.

A watchlist notification is be nice start - though easily missable. I didn't see one. All I've seen for the past few weeks is notification of a wiki meet-up in the UK. In any event, a change of to core functionality like this requires a little more effort. See for example the donation banner which (by change) has just popped up. That's how to get someone's attention.

Donations - big yellow banner

In any case, notification aside, the wisdom of rolling out software like this in a live environment is something I would question. And it's a pretty poort that more community involvement – and efforts to attract community involvement - did not take place. --RA (talk) 13:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi there, allow me to answer to your points, although other people have done it before and better than me. At first, I'd like to second your thoughts about the respect for editors: if the VisualEditor initiative did not come out of that, I (a Community Liaison, just a volunteer till a few weeks ago) would have not been hired to work on it. Then:

(a) a buggy piece of software

We know, it's beta, and beta means some bugs. Still, there are users creating perfect new pages, fully referenced an everything, only using VisualEditor;

(b) has been rolled out across all users

No. Not logged-in users still can't see it;

(c) with an unadvertised opt-out buried in user preferences

It's day 1. I am presonally grateful that there is already that gadget along with the perfectly usable, in-built feature that one can just ignore the Edit label and click Edit source instead;

(d) without the community being notified properly.

Please see this thread, and all the others which link to the huge list of pages/notices where all of this was announced. Thank you. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I completely agree with the originator of this thread and I have been saying the same things. VE is not ready for release. There are still far too many problems with it. Unless the WMF is going to help us lowly editors clean up the messes that VE is leaving behind, it does not need to be released yet. It is coming together nicely and a lot of improvements are actively being made, so I don't want to sound like its never going to happen. But its still entirely too soon. Kumioko (talk) 13:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Which is precisely why, Kumioko, you can still edit with the old editor and will be able to for probably years, and also why people from WMF are taking care of checking messed-up edits - and in case, revert those actions. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I completely agree that this will be a good tool and I completely agree that we need it. What I do not agree with is the WMF's seemingly cavalier attitude that releasing an unfinished, moderately working tool with a long list of known problems, is sensible. A beta test is not appropriate for a wide scale release. A beta test is supposed to be a group of people who know what to look for and can identify the problems. The vast majority of those using the tool, will not even know if they made a mistake. I understand you folks are watching the changes, but you/we shouldn't have to do a bunch of reversions of bad edits just because the WMF couldn't wait a little longer and wanted to rush the release. That is not a good way to build the support of the projects active members and doesn't present the WMF in a positive light. I do not have any problem with you, or the other folks at WMF, several of which I have met and have a lot of respect for and like. But this rushed release is not the right way to go. Kumioko (talk) 13:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you point me to one of the "users creating perfect new pages, fully referenced an everything, only using VisualEditor" Interested in trying further and wish to ask advice. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Goodbye Blue Sky (Defiance); @TeamGale: is doing some darn good work with it, and can probably help with the specificities of wholesale creation more than I :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:31, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

KumiokoElitre, with respect, and I don't want to put you off on your efforts, but your reply reads like a press officier not a community liaison officer.

• (a) Betas in a live environment are to be expected. And betas will contain bugs. As a software engineer, I'm very comfortable with that idea. However, creating and editing pages is a core functionality of MediaWiki and a core requirement of software supporting this project. As an editor, user (and software engineer) I am not confortable with rolling out flaky software affecting core functionality across all users on the live environment. Being pleased that " Still, there are users creating perfect new pages ... only using VisualEditor" doesn't cut it. We are not here to test software, we are here to write an encyclopaedia.
• (b) [face palm] Great. Another bug affecting all users in the live environment. Because you should be able to see it.
• (c) It is Day 1. Editors and users of this site should have been informed and knowledgable about this change ahead of Day 1.
• (d) Clearly the message of those thread is not getting though to you. Your reply to this point is why I say your reply reads more of all like a press officier than a community liaison officer. If people are telling you they were not informed, guess what ... they're not informed. It doesn't matter what efforts you (or anyone else) took to inform them, they were not informed. And everyone should have been informed - and made feel involved - in advance of this change.

--RA (talk) 13:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

(ec)Lol Beat me to it. Just to clarify I am not a community liaison or a press, I don't work for the WMF (I just know a bunch of them), I'm not even an admin, just an editor. I completely agree with your point on A and I have been telling them for weeks it wasn't ready. I also agree that it hasn't been discussed enough in the community. But that is a recurring theme with WMF implementations and this rollout is not an isolated incident. A lot of us users have been telling the WMF that its not ready but they are hell bent on releasing it ready or not. There are a lot of problems with VE that should have been addressed prior to its release not the least of which should have been to properly notify people. Kumioko (talk) 14:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Kumioko is not a community liaison. :)

User:Rannpháirtí anaithnid, I am unsure why you did not see the watchlist notice or the many other avenues that were used to reach out to editors (some of which are linked above), but I'm happy to say many others did. Without their assistance, we would not have been able to get VE to the state it is in now. No one is forced to help test the software. You are welcome to continue using the old interface, just as everyone is. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Not Kumioko, alas.

a) just keep ignoring VE, as Maggie says. If doing it was not allowed or foreseen, you would right now be forced to use only VE despite what it can or cannot do. ;)

b) it's not a bug, my bad: they can't see it meant they still can not use it - they'll be able to in a week or so. It's written everywhere.

c) They were. Again, too bad we did not manage to reach you in any of the multiple ways we used. But saying we did not try, is just false.

d) We have already apologized fully and largely for not being able to reach every single user of this site, but it does not depend on our will, believe me or not. We now know (thanks to users who reported about this) that Centralnotices, watchlist notices and other systems simply failed, presumably for reasons related to cookies. I would like to add that this specific point damages VE more than anything else, since some people might just refuse to use it because they feel they were not adequately notified and not because they really don't want to help with it. Thanks. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

"No one is forced to help test the software." / "just keep ignoring VE, as Maggie says."

Guys, you're not getting it. Should I ignore it when the new UI deletes content ([https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50481 bug 50481) unbeknownst to the user? If I see an edit like that, is it vandalism, a bug, intentional?

Bottom line: buggy software affecting the core functionality was pushed as the default configuration in the live environment. It is affecting the project. I don't know why you are so intent on pushing it before it is ready.

And, Elitre, please, do not misrepresent me. I never said you did not try ("...saying we did not try, is just false."). --RA (talk) 15:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

There needs to be a site notics NOW saying - not just that Visual Editor has been rolled out - but stating - exactly and clearly, with a clickable link to the page to do it on how to turn it off. I can't believe Wikipedia has handled this so badly that they didn't think of doing that. That's how every other live beta I've ever seen has worked. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

When Philippe wakes up I'm going to ask him about making the opt-out more prominent; unfortunately several of the senior staff are on PDT, so are currently in the land of nod. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Expectations also needs to be set amongst all users (both editors who opt-in and opt-out and readers) to expect issues, such as unexpectedly added or deleted content.

All editors need to be informed about how to identify edits made using the visual editor. They need to know to be observant for errors it will introduce to edits. They need to know this both to correct those errors and so as to not falsely identify editors using the Visual Editor as vandals (or otherwise disruptive) or as making unexplained edits.

Readers need to be informed about the change so as to be forgiving about unexpected formatting or missing or truncated content as a result of the introduction of new software.

Both editors and readers need to be informed about how and where to log issues they identify with the Visual Editor.

These notices need to be big and clear and obvious. --RA (talk) 15:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

a clickable link to the page to do it on how to turn it off.

Amen to that! But this is the WMF. Shafting the most established editors is just par for the course. 8-(

(Please, does anyone have that "just make the damned thing go away" link?) Andy Dingley (talk) 15:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

In User Preferences, Andy: here Gadgets - Editing - check Remove VisualEditor from the user interface (then "save"). Begoon ^talk 16:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

About whether we were notified or not, which seems to be a recurring theme in this thread: Yes, there were notices at the tops of pages saying that a Visual Editor was going to be rolled out one of these days, and that we could test it now if we want. That's quite a different matter from coming to Wikipedia to do some editing, clicking "edit", and being surprised by a very unfamiliar window. There was also no advance information, and still no labeling or information, to let us know that "edit source", whatever that might mean, provides a way to use the familiar format; I suspect most of us found that out by trial and error. --MelanieN (talk) 16:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Sadly, WP has previous on this - when the new style search box was rolled out a few years ago, it was just sprung upon us without a lot of notice and in a buggy state (it was basically unusable for about two days until bugs were resolved). Ah well, guess we just have to work through these things!  — Amakuru (talk) 17:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for a User Council

Out of this discussion, I have made a proposal for a formal User Council to represent the needs of Wikipedia users to the Foundation. --RA (talk) 20:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

A category and a userbox

• Category: Category:Wikipedians who have turned off VisualEditor
• Userbox: User:Technical 13/Userboxes/Anti-VE

Tito☸Dutta 14:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Another userbox for those on the other side of the spectrum - User:TheOriginalSoni/Userboxes/Pro-VE

P.S. I love VE, but am still waiting for the References to work properly and the speed to increase. TheOriginalSoni (talk) 14:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Help me! - Election box template

If an expert on the VisualEditor could help me out over on Ynys Môn by-election, 2013 I'd be grateful. I've tried to fathom out how to build a new election box with the new system but it's beyond me =/ doktorb _words^deeds 14:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Oy veh! Looking at the existing elements, that's a particularly complex example of templates :(. I think until the template itself is modified, to add some kind of wrapper, you may be better off with the markup editor for that task, frankly. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm worried by just how complicated this could get. But unlike most of the people on here, it seems, I want to be constructive and help out :) What I noticed was the ability to copy/paste everything, then by using 2 windows, copy and paste again from the existing template to the new one. But outside of an election year, that's fine. In an election setting, that's going to get complicated. If I can offer any help for developers, I will do! doktorb _words^deeds 14:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Communication pointers

I'm sick of editors posting that "I'm sorry you misunderstood us" or "I'm sorry you didn't get the message" or "I'm sorry it wasn't clear to you" -- it is never the listener's responsibility to understand the speaker. It is the speaker's responsibility to be understood by the listener.

Never say, "I'm sorry that you were confused" -- say instead "I'm sorry that I was confusing to you" -- that's a start.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it's somewhat more nuanced than that. We have many thousands of editors from completely different backgrounds, who bring completely different attitudes to the table; I think it's the responsibility of people to try to make themselves understood as best they can, but that doesn't mean an inability to communicate is always going to be the fault of the person speaking. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes it does.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Okeyes, I don't mean to beat up on you because you are obviously very committed, but as a product/software developer making a deployment to a live environment, it is absolutely your responsibility to be understood by your user base. No excuses. --RA (talk) 15:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Strong agreement. As a former commercial software developer, I recognize this principle as bedrock. It is your job to make sure your users have received the message, period. As a long-time but deliberately infrequent editor, and very frequent reader, I absolutely agree with others that the roll-out notices for this have been far too limited and easily overlooked (unlike, as many have pointed out, various fundraising, meet-up, and anti-regulation notices) and that information about the visual editor and instructions on how to edit in the traditional style need to be front and center. Wichitalineman (talk) 23:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Frankly ridiculous behaviour.

I suggested the following Sitenotice. I was careful not to say anything negative about Visual editor, but simply say how to opt out, and where to report bugs:

Wikipedia is happy to announce the live Beta of VisualEditor, a tool that offers a way to edit pages without needing to learn wikimarkup. This has been automatically activated on all accounts. If you need to edit without VisualEditor, you can choose "Edit source" instead of "Edit". For bug reporting, go to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.

To opt out of VisualEditor, simply go to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets, scroll down to "Editing", tick the box labelled "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface", then scroll to the bottom and click "Save". You can reactivate it at any time by unticking the box.

Here's Okeyes's [response]:

“ I this move would be highly damaging, and to be blunt while I'm not in a position to speak for the Foundation I strongly suspect that making such a prominent notice will not be appreciated. If you want to talk through interim steps to see if it helps - listing the gadget in the FAQ, for example, comes to mind - I'm happy to do so, but I'd ask that we wait for a couple of hours at least until more people have woken up (particularly those in the office). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC) ”

I find this ridiculous. Everyone else agreed? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 15:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not quite understanding why you find it ridiculous; I'm talking about trying to find a middle ground, here. I've tried to set out my thoughts in more detail on AN, where people can go for a more comprehensive version of the discussion, and I'm happy, as I say in the message you've quoted, to talk about ways to increase the prominence of the opt-out that don't rise to the scale of a sitenotice. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Can we condense this text to over two or three lines? I would then support it running for a week. While I support the VE in theory people need to know how to get around it at least. Some of our long term editors have become frustrated. This would reach out to them. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

What is ridiculous is to add a totally different new editor when people who really want to add (and had been adding) reliable relevant sourced content know to do it. As other users had pointed, by not making editors to register and made themshelves an account and by not making them to learn a bit how to edit, we are encouraging everyone to edit, including vandals, wich will rise more & more, no doubt. I think that everyone would agree that: more easiness to edit = less WP accurancy, its logic. With this type of things, WP is less reliable every day...--HCPUNXKID (talk) 15:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Open editing is one of our core values. It's why we exist. The editors of Nupedia were also quite concerned with opening editing to everyone, but so far it's working okay. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Like it I like this as a site notice. It would have helped me and would have been far less disruptive. As it stands now, I fear that we will lose many editors due to the sudden change without notice and lack of understanding of the new tool. I cannot imagine why anyone would be against it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I understand that there can be a lot of frustration when people disagree, but "frankly ridiculous behaviour" isn't language that's likely to lead to good collaboration and it's not exactly encouraged communication technique. :/ Making sure people are fully informed of options is important, however we decide that's done, but surely we can remain civil while we do it.

I see the text has been added to the top of this page, and the centralnotice that sends people to find out more will put that front and center for everyone who cares to click the link. I think that gives us time to work out if additional steps should be taken. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

But what if it is ridiculous behavior? This "editor" has been rolled out in a highly disruptive way and is clearly bad for Wikipedia. The few that are "in charge of it" are truly behaving in a "ridiculous way" but if you want policy instead, their actions are clearly opposite of WP:CONSENSUS. When editors oppose consensus on Wikipedia to the extent that they have here, they get blocked. That hasn't happened here, and it looks like it won't. And that is ridiculous behavior. But if you want to propose another word, please do so. I'm emotionally charged at how people are being treated here and I'm not the best person to choose words right now.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If you read the consensus policy you'll see it explicitly excludes technical changes. I agree we could have done better with the rollout; I don't agree that my statement - which is that we need to handle notifications in a way that balances making the option available to the community and making sure the VisualEditor isn't completely undermined - is ridiculous. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The Wikimedia Foundation has developed this tool for use on all language Wikipedias (that's over 290 different communities, although some will have to wait until language specification issues are addressed) - after years of requests from the community, mind, and at the direction of the Board of Trustees - and has taken great steps to notify the communities and especially this one that this was coming, including using all the media outlets we have at our disposal (both in Wikipedia, as the Signpost, and out, as the blog) as well as at in-person events and through banners on the site itself. Even external media was aware of and reported on this. (For instance, [4]) I understand that you did not notice these; I'm sure it was a shock, and I'm sure you're not alone. It is extremely difficult to reach everyone, in spite of efforts. The WMF has no desire to force VisualEditor use on anyone - this is why it remains and will remain optional. If you are emotionally charged, you may want to consider some of the approaches in the many essays written about Wikipedia:Civility - I have myself long been partial to Wikipedia:Staying cool when the editing gets hot. :) The basic point here is that labeling people's behavior (individually or in aggregate) as "ridiculous" is not going to help advance the discussion. VE is finally here, after years in development, and there is certainly no current plan at WMF to take it away. I suspect the best thing to do now is to make sure that it is as helpful as possible for those who use it while continuing to support those who would prefer not to use it themselves. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Maggie, with respect, VE is not here. It isn't ready. There are too many problems and bugs that need to be resolved before it can be declared here. What we have is nothing more than a prototype. A lot of effort has gone into it and will continue too. But releasing an unfinished product full of bugs cannot be declared as anything but a disaster. I feel bad for you and Oliver and many of the others that are essentially getting thrown to the wolves on this. I'm certain you discussed the communities concerns and I am pretty sure at least some of you encouraged them to wait to release it until some of the bugs wer worked out and you are the ones that have to take the heat. I know that you are basically required to get behind this app and try and sooth our souls. But the release is poor, the priduct is unsatisfactory as it is and many of the problems need to be addressed before its released. With that said, many many users including me have levied their complaints. Whether the you all at the WMF listen and do something is up to you. I'm not going to continue to harp on it and I don't really feel that our comments are being taken seriously. Just disregarded as a few editors who aren't happy with the change. So with that, I am going to stop commenting here and disable VE. There is no need to continue to comment and test something if the probelms aren't going to be addressed or taken seriously. Kumioko (talk) 16:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I realize that you and I are using the term differently, Kumioko, but from where I'm sitting, VE is very much here. :) Some people are finding it easier to adapt to than others, which is understandable. I don't find the transition from the familiar system all that easy myself. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't have a problem with the tool being in use, I have a problem with a tool with more than 350+ current bugs, being released to all users knowing that there are still major problems with it. Kumioko (talk) 18:18, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

What a mess...

As other users had pointed, it seems that this change had been made to push WP editors to abandon it. My case: I had added deleted relevant sourced content to the Ahmed al-Assir article, and now the sources appeared after the text, instead of in the References section. Anyone could help or I could start think in retiring? Thanks, --HCPUNXKID (talk) 15:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by "added deleted relevant sourced content". As has been said many times, you do not have to use the visual editor; the old way of editing is still accessible. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

For some reason the editors edits added a bunch of nowiki tags. [5] I have little experience with the visualeditor so have no idea if this is a known problem and/or the editor did something wrong perhaps confused by the interface. The editor removed some themselves altho I suspect inadvertedly [6] I removed the rest of the tags manually.Edit: There's another report above suggseting it relates to templates. Nil Einne (talk) 15:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, any use of wikimarkup in the VE :/. We need to get a lot better at handling this, if only by actively warning the user. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

(EC) Reading more carefully, I wonder if the problem is editors are still adding templates manually in the visualeditor which isn't support (will never be supported?) and the visualeditor detects it's wikicode and will be intepreted by the engine so adds the nowiki tags to stop this under the assumption whoever added it wants it to be displayed not interpreted since it's a visual editor aiming for some degree of WYSIWYG. This behaviour is perhaps desirable but even if so maybe some more warning is needed for experienced editors? The alternative would be more sophisticated handling where the editor is somehow informed and given the option of whether to intepret or display the wikicode as is. Nil Einne (talk) 15:52, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, I could finally resolve the problem using the old editor, a reason for not using that abominable new method, wich, and that must be said, no one had notified users that its gonna be implemented. I only assure that if in some moment WP decide to delete the old editing method, several experienced editors will leave it, as its totally logic...--HCPUNXKID (talk) 16:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

The new editor has been live in an opt-in form since December 2012. There has been a watchlist notice since 7 June, and several before that, coverage in the signpost many times, weekly announcements on the village pump (tech) going back a year, and a centralnotice for the last week. We put a heck of a lot of effort into notifying users about it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

That effort did not include (and still does not include) telling people that "edit source" means a way to edit under the original format. As I noted above, most of us are finding that out by trial and error. --MelanieN (talk) 16:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Very buggy

Every time I try to use VE, Firefox becomes extremely slow and/or crashes. yonnie (talk) 15:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

What version? I agree speed is a problem; we're actively working on it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Change is rough

I am a little puzzled by the tone of some of the comments here and elsewhere on the project regarding VE. By its nature, change is disruptive, but this one isn't that hard to manage for experienced users. This change was declared and had a pilot, but the heterogeneity of the community (and the tools they use) made roll-out likely to be problematic. We're all working on the same project, let's work like a team with no deadline. -- Scray (talk) 16:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I got a bit of a shock just now when I hit the edit button and something completely unexpected happened. I hadn't heard about it at all :) Let's see how it goes anyway. Could make life easier, you never know... Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 16:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

My solution was to disable Visual Editor as soon as I could figure out how to do it. I also don't believe in making it easier for neophytes to edit Wikipedia without the need to learn Wiki Markup Language; all it is likely to do is allow articles to be messed up more efficiently than ever before by people who don't know what they're doing. — Quicksilver^{T @} 17:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Good observation, Scray. Well put. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 17:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

The problem is the WMF isn't working as a team with us. They want us to say what a great tool VE is and pat them on the back. We have been telling them for weeks/months the software wasn't ready but they refuse to listen and rushed out this half assed broken code anyway. I like the idea of VE and I think its coming along and has a lot of potential. But it is a long way from being ready for release. Kumioko (talk) 18:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I promise, that's not at all what they're looking for. They wouldn't have employed 24 hour coverage for that. You can receive kudos at any time. :) They are relying on the community to help as an integral part of this process - Linus's Law. This is particularly important given the complexity of our project, our user base, and the relatively small number of staff. Google has over 7,000 engineers who have profiles on LinkedIn in the US alone. I think we have just a bit over 170 employees in all departments. Pretty massive difference. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

And I don't think most people are saying there can never be a VE, at least I'm not. But we need one that doesn't mysteriously delete content or perform changes that were't expected, Only works in 2 namespaces, encourages users to not add citations, etc. We have waited this long for it, a couple more months to make sure more of the bugs were fixed would not have been a bad thing. The WMF made it optional from December 2012 - June, most people didn't know about it until May and some didn't find out till today. Plus the WMF just rushed out and hired a bunch of people to support the rollout at the last minute because they knew they were going to get a hailstorm. I cannot even begin to go over all of the areas were the WMF failed in this development cycle. Kumioko (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

This could have been handled better. Way better. Yes, you want testers, beta periods are nice. But never in my 10+ years of software/hardware/product development and support have I ever forced a beta version to everyone and told people to just "deal with it". You release the beta to a handful of people, especially with something that is breaking content left and right. This does not improve Wikipedia. This does not help Wikipedia. Don't get me wrong. I'm all for a new editor! Bring it on! It sounds great! I'd love a new way to edit pages. But to force a clearly broken editor onto people is wrong. If it was working better and didn't include over 300 bugs then people might have been a little more excited about it, and a bit more accepting of the change. But as it is, you have crippled what we're here to do. It may recover, but the trust is honestly lost here. Kumioko is right here, this is great, but it's a long way away from a site-wide release. Jguy _Talk^Done 20:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

"Crippled", really? Click "Edit source" or just disable as has been outlined above. No one is being forced to use VE. It'll get better. I know it could've been implemented better, but I don't see much value in hyperbole. -- Scray (talk) 20:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I wonder how many editors who don't deal with wiki-politics know that there is a way to use the old editor. SL93 (talk) 22:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

What about people in developing nations or who don't have new computers?

Per bugzilla:49685#c0, is the team mostly focused on "industrialised, Western nation[s]"? I'm aware that the vast majority of edits, at least on the English Wikipedia, come from "Western nations", but I hope you will make it possible for people who might not have access to the newest technology to contribute. πr² (t • c) 18:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

In terms of VE's functionality, certainly it's a goal to get this editor working well for everyone everywhere. It's moving along in stages and expanding as they go. I think the point there was simply that, while some lag is more common in some technology (even with the existing system, larger pages are difficult for people on dial-up as Wikipedia:Article size has long explained), lag experienced on "state of the art" technology is likely to constitute a significant problem for everyone. VisualEditor is an option alongside traditional editing, so access should not decrease for anyone. :) The goal is to make it better for all. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick explanation, and I hope my comment didn't sound rude! I support the idea of the VisualEditor in general, to make it easier to contribute. πr² (t • c) 18:27, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, not at all. :) It's an important goal to make sure that we support everyone, and I appreciate your interesting in making sure we don't lose sight of that! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• People could install Firefox browser to use VE: Even in areas with mostly slow dial-up access, with Internet Explorer 7 or IE 8, people could download a version of the Firefox browser, and then be able to use the VisualEditor, although likely to be somewhat slow. In fact in some hotels, with older Microsoft systems, there are already copies of Firefox installed for customer use. So, perhaps in third-world schools or other groups, some people could download the Firefox browser to allow people to try different options. In general, IE8 has remained the world's most-popular browser for over a year, as found in many public libraries, hotels, and even hospital rooms with computers installed since 2009. So that indicates a base computer system which could run Firefox, with perhaps only slightly slow performance to then run VE using Firefox. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:18, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

bad link syntax?

I don't know if this was actually caused by VE, but a short while ago I noticed about 20 bad links on Hunting. I've corrected them, but they had a bad syntax form of [[./display|link]] (note the ./). I'd been to this page a few weeks back and the links were fine - I'm suspecting someone accidentally got VE to mangle some of the links while they were editing (but I can't find the specific edit to blame). I'd rather drop a note here and be proven wrong then ignore it and potentially let a nasty bug slip by. draeath (talk) 19:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe add this to WP:VisualEditor/Feedback, which is for more specific bugs? And, yes, it seems to have something to do with VE (it was tagged with "VisualEditor: Check"). It's very strange that it occurred to all links on the page. Is this happening with other VisualEditor edits? πr² (t • c) 19:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

When VE thinks it has gone wrong it tags the edit in "Recent changes".[7] When I looked I saw Hunting at the top of the list and, going there, saw you had corrected things already. See WP:VPT#Checking up on VisualEditor edits Thincat (talk) 20:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Holy crap! This page has gotten LONG

The File/page size right now is over 289KB, so I am setting up automatic archiving. The present size of this page will probably cause issues for anyone accessing WP on a mobile device or an older browser. Shearonink (talk) 21:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If you're talking about the Feedback page, we have automatic archiving at every 2 days. It's just really active right now. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm talking about THIS page. Regardless of where Feedback is supposed to go, this is where a lot of it has ended up. The automatic archiving that was already in place didn't have an actual Archive Page yet so I fixed that and tweaked some of the code. The archiving should kick in sometime within the next day or two. If there's something funky about the way I set it up, then please, someone fix it! (For instance, the talkpage header isn't quite "right"...) Shearonink (talk) 21:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, it's a good idea to set up archiving here; I think I was confused, because it only looks like 189KB to me (plenty long, but not as bad as the feedback page. :)) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Hotcat, what happened to it?

ok, what happened to hotcat? --Sm8900 (talk) 21:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

See #HotCat :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't find preference

Hi, I have gone into the editing section of preferences, and I can't find the option to enable VisualEditor. Can anyone help? Cadillac000 (talk) 22:55, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. You shouldn't need to enable VisualEditor - if your browser is supported, it should be automatic. Wikipedia:VisualEditor/FAQ has information about which browsers are and are not currently supported. More are being added as we go, so if yours is not on the list, I hope it will be soon! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)