Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor/Archive 1

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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)

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)

It's not available in my preferences under "Usability" in the "Editing" tab. I am logged in and using English wikipedia. :-/ (talk)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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, 2 July 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)

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)

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)

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)