The Visual Editor is a huge failure

[Vigilant]

Now we know why they wanted to get rid of Lila.

[Hex]

Wiki-Whac-A-Mole, I've merged your thread into this one.

From linkhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... _to_enwiki.[/link]

Here's a permanent link for that.

However, this is not something I can create from the spilt milk we now have, sadly.

Wow. Forrester is directly and openly implying that anyone disagreeing with this fait accompli is crying over spilt milk. He really is Moeller 2.0. I bet he was licking his chops the moment that he heard that Moeller was getting the boot.

[Kingsindian]

Writ Keeper has simply written a script that turns off VE for new users. I think it's roughly the same thing which happened with the original VE and SuperProtect fiasco? There's talk of simply opening an RfC and implementing as a community action, or even without an RfC. And telling WMF and Jdforrester, "gfy".

Jdforrester seems to have backed down in a new "Resolution" section.

[Vigilant]

How is it that the WMF can let Forrestor speak to the public?
That boy is as tone deaf as anyone I've ever seen.

[MysteriousStranger]

Writ Keeper has simply written a script that turns off VE for new users. I think it's roughly the same thing which happened with the original VE and SuperProtect fiasco? There's talk of simply opening an RfC and implementing as a community action, or even without an RfC. And telling WMF and Jdforrester, "gfy".

Jdforrester seems to have backed down in a new "Resolution" section.

Well, it doesn't automatically turn off VE for new mobile-created accounts, I'll tell you that for sure. I have no idea why someone would want to use it, frankly, even if they weren't on a phone that takes forever to load stuff like I am.

[Kingsindian]

I use the desktop (normal Wikitext editor) version even on mobile devices because it is extremely painful to do any editing in the mobile version. This might just be me, but I have the feeling I'm not alone in this.

[Vigilant]

I use the desktop (normal Wikitext editor) version even on mobile devices because it is extremely painful to do any editing in the mobile version. This might just be me, but I have the feeling I'm not alone in this.

So does the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of everyone on every wiki.

The price tag for the VisualEdsel, when compared to the utilization and factoring in the enormous loss of customer goodwill, makes it easily the most expensive project that the WMF has ever undertaken.

[Randy from Boise]

I use the desktop (normal Wikitext editor) version even on mobile devices because it is extremely painful to do any editing in the mobile version. This might just be me, but I have the feeling I'm not alone in this.

So does the vast, vast, overwhelming majority of everyone on every wiki.

The price tag for the VisualEdsel, when compared to the utilization and factoring in the enormous loss of customer goodwill, makes it easily the most expensive project that the WMF has ever undertaken.

The Ford Edsel was actually a pretty good car, by the way. It was just regarded as ugly. My late uncle had one. It was sweet.

RfB

[The Joy]

Could it also be they've reached the limits of MediaWiki and need to start all over with brand new software? We've argued before elsewhere that rewriting everything in Python5 would be far better than trying to improve MediaWiki.

[Earthy Astringent]

However much money the WMF has pissed away, it's a fraction of what they're raking in every year. But they need a massive change in attitude. And it's not just the software. They need to get it through their heads they aren't that important and start showing some humility.

Move to Detroit. They could use the influx of workers, and as a bonus to Jimmy, it's a short drive to Canda where he can get (a legal) happy ending.

[Poetlister]

Move to Detroit. They could use the influx of workers, and as a bonus to Jimmy, it's a short drive to Canda where he can get (a legal) happy ending.

Jimmy spends most of his time in London these days, not at WMF HQ. Of course, he might feel an urge to return to the USA if TPO folds.

[Kumioko]

Could it also be they've reached the limits of MediaWiki and need to start all over with brand new software? We've argued before elsewhere that rewriting everything in Python5 would be far better than trying to improve MediaWiki.

I totally agree a complete rewrite would be better but I was just wondering why Python and not something like Java or C#?

[Cedric]

Jimmy spends most of his time in London these days, not at WMF HQ. Of course, he might feel an urge to return to the USA if TPO folds.

Forget about it. No backsies.

[Moral Hazard]

Could it also be they've reached the limits of MediaWiki and need to start all over with brand new software? We've argued before elsewhere that rewriting everything in Python5 would be far better than trying to improve MediaWiki.

I totally agree a complete rewrite would be better but I was just wondering why Python and not something like Java or C#?

Consider the teachings of The Hacker Dictionary.

religious issues
n. Questions which seemingly cannot be raised without touching off holy wars, such as "What is the best operating system (or editor, language, architecture, shell, mail reader, news reader)?", "What about that Heinlein guy, eh?", "What should we add to the new Jargon File?"
See holy wars; see also theology, bigot.

This term is an example of ha ha only serious. People actually develop the most amazing and religiously intense attachments to their tools, even when the tools are intangible. The most constructive thing one can do when one stumbles into the crossfire is mumble Get a life! and leave --- unless, of course, one's *own* unassailably rational and obviously correct choices are being slammed.

holy wars
[from USENET, but may predate it]
n. {flame war}s over religious issues. The paper by Danny Cohen that popularized the terms big-endian and little-endian in connection with the LSB-first/MSB-first controversy was entitled "On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace". Other perennial Holy Wars have included EMACS vs. vi, my personal computer vs. everyone else's personal computer, {ITS} vs. {UNIX}, {UNIX} vs. VMS, BSD UNIX vs. USG UNIX, C vs. {Pascal}, C vs. LISP, etc., ad nauseam.
The characteristic that distinguishes holy wars from normal technical disputes is that in a holy wars most of the participants spend their time trying to pass off personal value choices and cultural attachments as objective technical evaluations.
See also theology.

[thekohser]

Of course, he might feel an urge to return to the USA if when TPO folds.

FTFY

[Hex]

Regression testing? What's that?

[Vigilant]

Well, here we are again.

The first post in this thread was by a handsome, virile stallion of a man on Wed Jul 10, 2013 at 3:44 pm.
It was a rollicking roller coaster of a ride, skillfully narrated by a very clever bloke.

It looks like the Visual Cowpat has entered the maintenance phase of its lifetime.

I can't see how they've spent less than $20M on the development.
It's 4 years with a biggish team and they've got bleed over into the Parsoid team and other areas.


The biggest question on my mind is , "What's the final adoption rate for this project?"

On en.wp, it still appears to be less than 1.5% of total edits.
In the word(s) of the orange shitgibbon: Sad!

From 2013

At some point, they're going to alienate enough of the more productive editors that this abortion of an editor will never, ever get full acceptance even if it eventually gets to be workable.

[The Adversary]

Occasionally I edit on wp-languages I do not understand; typically when I see a link missing.

Alas, damn pl.wikipedia: I was just trying to link a place, (you know: [[Bla-bla|Bla]] )....but that turned out to be completely impossible, as they have put in the visual editor as default: and no, I have no knowledge of Polish (or the VE)...and it is damn impossible to understand how to link it without any knowledge of either.

[Carcharoth]

I suppose it is difficult to work out how to turn Visual Editor off if you don't understand the language. Is there an easy way to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on, or do you have to go into preferences?

[The Adversary]

I suppose it is difficult to work out how to turn Visual Editor off if you don't understand the language. Is there an easy way to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on, or do you have to go into preferences?

Well, I have a SUL account, and I have the " Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" ticked in my preferences, I still get the VE on pl.wp; and I have absolutely no idea as to how to switch it off.

On other wp´s , say the Swedish (sv.wp) you have two two buttons; "redigera" and "redigera wikitext", and it is not rocket science to understand that one is for VE, and one is for plain editing.

However, on pl.wp you only get one option, "edytuj", which brings you straight to the damn VE.

[Vigilant]

And there's no obvious way to have the controls be in English even when you're on another language's wiki?


AHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

[The Adversary]

And there's no obvious way to have the controls be in English even when you're on another language's wiki?


AHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

Sigh, yes: that would have been excellent; if you could decide somewhere what was your "default" language, (English, Polish, Swedish, or whatever), and then all controls would be in that language....keep dreaming.

On https://www.wikidata.org, they have implemented the worst of the worst: you get as a default the wiki (or wikis) for the country where you are.
If you are in, say, an Arabian speaking country, you will get labels for ar.wp etc. (It is much like some of the google-web-sites, or even hotel-booking-web-sites works these days... and I hate it. Have you ever tried to book a hotel-room on-line in an Arabic speaking country...when you don´t speak Arabic?)

[Vigilant]

And there's no obvious way to have the controls be in English even when you're on another language's wiki?


AHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

Sigh, yes: that would have been excellent; if you could decide somewhere what was your "default" language, (English, Polish, Swedish, or whatever), and then all controls would be in that language....keep dreaming.

On https://www.wikidata.org, they have implemented the worst of the worst: you get as a default the wiki (or wikis) for the country where you are.
If you are in, say, an Arabian speaking country, you will get labels for ar.wp etc. (It is much like some of the google-web-sites, or even hotel-booking-web-sites works these days... and I hate it. Have you ever tried to book a hotel-room on-line in an Arabic speaking country...when you don´t speak Arabic?)

WMF engineering: Where amateur incompetents give the gift of software...

[Jim]

I suppose it is difficult to work out how to turn Visual Editor off if you don't understand the language. Is there an easy way to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on, or do you have to go into preferences?

Well, I have a SUL account, and I have the " Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" ticked in my preferences, I still get the VE on pl.wp; and I have absolutely no idea as to how to switch it off.
On other wp´s , say the Swedish (sv.wp) you have two two buttons; "redigera" and "redigera wikitext", and it is not rocket science to understand that one is for VE, and one is for plain editing.
However, on pl.wp you only get one option, "edytuj", which brings you straight to the damn VE.

They probably have it set to "use one edit button" where it's supposed to remember and use whatever mode you used last, so theoretically if you can work out, while editing, how to switch to the source editor it should use that next time. This is, of course, probably very difficult if you don't speak the language. The fact that every wiki handles this differently is, of course, shit design, born of desperation to shoehorn VE in as default.

All of this stems from all the end-runs they have tried around community desires that VE not be offered by default, with each attempt making the whole mess less workable. See here for where they argue that shit, badly implemented interface screw-ups like this are the community's fault for not wanting VE, not WMFs for ignoring that and jemmying every back door indiscriminately:

viewtopic.php?p=131629#p131629 (start there, and read on for "fun with verbs" and "how to keep the uppity customer in his place").

[The Adversary]

I suppose it is difficult to work out how to turn Visual Editor off if you don't understand the language. Is there an easy way to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on, or do you have to go into preferences?

Well, I have a SUL account, and I have the " Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" ticked in my preferences, I still get the VE on pl.wp; and I have absolutely no idea as to how to switch it off.
On other wp´s , say the Swedish (sv.wp) you have two two buttons; "redigera" and "redigera wikitext", and it is not rocket science to understand that one is for VE, and one is for plain editing.
However, on pl.wp you only get one option, "edytuj", which brings you straight to the damn VE.

They probably have it set to "use one edit button" where it's supposed to remember and use whatever mode you used last, so theoretically if you can work out, while editing, how to switch to the source editor it should use that next time. This is, of course, probably very difficult if you don't speak the language. The fact that every wiki handles this differently is, of course, shit design, born of desperation to shoehorn VE in as default.

All of this stems from all the end-runs they have tried around community desires that VE not be offered by default, with each attempt making the whole mess less workable. See here for where they argue that shit, badly implemented interface screw-ups like this are the community's fault for not wanting VE, not WMFs for ignoring that and jemmying every back door indiscriminately:

viewtopic.php?p=131629#p131629 (start there, and read on for "fun with verbs" and "how to keep the uppity customer in his place").

Well, the thing is: I see that I edited pl.wp last year (just to remove a wrong picture - a picture which wasn´t of the town it said it was)...I would not even be able to do that today

But I see the VE is not implemented on the talk-pages...so I could notify "the community" there, I suppose.
As if I could bother, at this stage.

[Poetlister]

And there's no obvious way to have the controls be in English even when you're on another language's wiki?


AHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

Maybe that's a deliberate policy to discourage people from editing in languages they don't understand. We've often noted that some editors of English WP don't seem to speak English well and as a result are making articles less readable. Why shouldn't that be true for the Polish WP?

[Zoloft]

And there's no obvious way to have the controls be in English even when you're on another language's wiki?


AHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAHA

Maybe that's a deliberate policy to discourage people from editing in languages they don't understand. We've often noted that some editors of English WP don't seem to speak English well and as a result are making articles less readable. Why shouldn't that be true for the Polish WP?

Because anyone can edit!

[The Adversary]

A little bird sang to me that you *could* change away from the VE....first click the "edytuj"-button; up comes the hated VE....but it has at the top far right a button marked: [[ ]].
Click that, and you are back to normal editing!

Also, down to the left, above the link to the same article in other languages, there is a small "wheel" : There you can get the "Display" and "Input" language set.

The bad news is that you have to set them for each and every wp! And the default is the language in the country you are in!
Say, if you are in Sweden, your default language will be Swedish, you may change that to English for say, pl.wp, but you need to do the same for each and every other wp you use.

Why the heck did we get a SUL-account??


(And who, except those who have a PhD in wikiology would guess the above??)

[Vigilant]

A little bird sang to me that you *could* change away from the VE....first click the "edytuj"-button; up comes the hated VE....but it has at the top far right a button marked: [[ ]].
Click that, and you are back to normal editing!

Also, down to the left, above the link to the same article in other languages, there is a small "wheel" : There you can get the "Display" and "Input" language set.

The bad news is that you have to set them for each and every wp! And the default is the language in the country you are in!
Say, if you are in Sweden, your default language will be Swedish, you may change that to English for say, pl.wp, but you need to do the same for each and every other wp you use.

Why the heck did we get a SUL-account??


(And who, except those who have a PhD in wikiology would guess the above??)

You ... you ... you don't realize that they worked REALLY hard on this.
Even harder than they worked on their macaroni picture for arts and crafts.
* stamps foot and runs out crying *

Dear WMF,

It was a valiant effort in the face of overwhelming idiocy.
Now is the time to take old Nelly out to the back forty and put a slug in her noggin.

Your friend,
Vigilant
P.S. Why does James Forrestor still have a job?

[Kelly Martin]

P.S. Why does James Forrestor still have a job?

Because he has been a long-term consistent supporter of Jimbo's claim to be Wikipedia's constitutional monarch.

Oh, you meant that as a rhetorical question.

[Vigilant]

Good to see that the VE twerps have stayed true to their roots.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... _editathon

[The Adversary]

Also, if you look at the most "recent 500 changes" on Polish Wikipedia, (this link) then I typically find that only 40-60 edits are made with the VE.
.....which means that about 90% of edits/editors disable the VE when it is put in as a default!


Well, .......silly, silly me, who thought that "the default" should be the most common choice???

(And I wonder how many Polish editors never got to start editing the Polish Wikipedia, as they didn´t have a degree in Wikiology, and did not know how to disable the VE??)

[auriental]

P.S. Why does James Forrestor still have a job?

Thanks for asking that. If you ever figure out (I assume you won't get one!)an answer I'll be waiting to hear it too.

[Vigilant]

P.S. Why does James Forrestor still have a job?

Because he has been a long-term consistent supporter of Jimbo's claim to be Wikipedia's constitutional monarch.

Oh, you meant that as a rhetorical question.

I meant it as a technical question.

[Poetlister]

P.S. Why does James Forrestor still have a job?

Because he has been a long-term consistent supporter of Jimbo's claim to be Wikipedia's constitutional monarch.

Oh, you meant that as a rhetorical question.

I meant it as a technical question.

I suppose they sent him a dismissal notice and he pointed out that it didn't apply to him because his name is actually Forrester.

[hættulegt]

I suppose it is difficult to work out how to turn Visual Editor off if you don't understand the language. Is there an easy way to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on, or do you have to go into preferences?

To use the traditional edit window, change "&veaction=edit" to "&action=edit" in the URL of the page you are editing.

[Vigilant]

I suppose it is difficult to work out how to turn Visual Editor off if you don't understand the language. Is there an easy way to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on, or do you have to go into preferences?

To use the traditional edit window, change "&veaction=edit" to "&action=edit" in the URL of the page you are editing.

Or disable javascript...
That solves a whole slew of WMF coding problems.

[Vigilant]

Back to check on the uptake rate for VsualCowpat on en.wp.

Running the last 500 Recent Changes in article space and searching for Tag: Visual, yields 16 results.

You've got a 3% adoption rate for your totally awesome new editing tool on the biggest wiki in the world... yay

What's your dollar spent per edit made ratio right now?

[Randy from Boise]

Back to check on the uptake rate for VsualCowpat on en.wp.

Running the last 500 Recent Changes in article space and searching for Tag: Visual, yields 16 results.

You've got a 3% adoption rate for your totally awesome new editing tool on the biggest wiki in the world... yay

What's your dollar spent per edit made ratio right now?

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly. That won't stop them from pouring more millions into the effort, of course.

RfB

[Poetlister]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

[Randy from Boise]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

Still, you'd think that even a WMF-mangled total piece of shit WYSIWYG editor would be pulling something like half of the edits by this late date, would you not?

RfB

[Vigilant]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

Still, you'd think that even a WMF-mangled total piece of shit WYSIWYG editor would be pulling something like half of the edits by this late date, would you not?

RfB

Sure, if it weren't a horribly designed 'product' that was full of bugs when it was released all over the community's most strenuous objections using a brand new power, SUPERPROTECT, to advance WMF engineering managements's wet dreams.

[Midsize Jake]

I was gonna say that one sampling of 500 article-space edits probably isn't enough to draw a fair conclusion, but I tried it just now and only got 13.

[Randy from Boise]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

Still, you'd think that even a WMF-mangled total piece of shit WYSIWYG editor would be pulling something like half of the edits by this late date, would you not?

RfB

Sure, if it weren't a horribly designed 'product' that was full of bugs when it was released all over the community's most strenuous objections using a brand new power, SUPERPROTECT, to advance WMF engineering managements's wet dreams.

Drive-by ding dongs are even avoiding it though. Why would they do that if they don't know the history of the software or have a clue about its problematic aspects?

If half the editing is by drive-bys and half is by the core volunteers — my rough guess — one would expect a 50-50 use of Edsel and Wikicode. Yet things are enormously skewing towards the old system. This I do not understand.

RfB

[Vigilant]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

Still, you'd think that even a WMF-mangled total piece of shit WYSIWYG editor would be pulling something like half of the edits by this late date, would you not?

RfB

Sure, if it weren't a horribly designed 'product' that was full of bugs when it was released all over the community's most strenuous objections using a brand new power, SUPERPROTECT, to advance WMF engineering managements's wet dreams.

Drive-by ding dongs are even avoiding it though. Why would they do that if they don't know the history of the software or have a clue about its problematic aspects?

If half the editing is by drive-bys and half is by the core volunteers — my rough guess — one would expect a 50-50 use of Edsel and Wikicode. Yet things are enormously skewing towards the old system. This I do not understand.

RfB

The Edsel *is* dogshit.

* It has a reputation for being comically unreliable, especially from one version to another as WMF engineering seems unable to master the fundamental art of regression testing.
* It is slower, by far, than wikicode.
* It has a well deserved reputation for losing data and/or corrupting articles.
* Its interface is really poorly designed.
* The community liaison staff who 'support' it are simply terrible. Probably the worst I've ever seen.

Given this, why would anyone with any experience editing wikipedia ever recommend it to anyone new?
Given that the community forced the WMF to turn it off by default, with a wink and a nod to turning it on in a dialog on first starting to edit, how would newbies ever get started using it?
Even if newbies do start using it, with terrible support staff and no veteran knowledge base on using it, why would they continue using it.

It's a clusterfuck from top to bottom.
Honestly, this is the worst rollout of a new product I've ever witnessed.

[thekohser]

This I do not understand.

And based on my long-term (and lovable) observation of your opinions about Wikipedia, this is not the only thing about Wikipedia that you do not understand!

[Poetlister]

I was gonna say that one sampling of 500 article-space edits probably isn't enough to draw a fair conclusion, but I tried it just now and only got 13.

Unless you think that the rate varies wildly with time, it's enough to show that the rate is almost certainly below 5%.

[Randy from Boise]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

Still, you'd think that even a WMF-mangled total piece of shit WYSIWYG editor would be pulling something like half of the edits by this late date, would you not?

RfB

Sure, if it weren't a horribly designed 'product' that was full of bugs when it was released all over the community's most strenuous objections using a brand new power, SUPERPROTECT, to advance WMF engineering managements's wet dreams.

Drive-by ding dongs are even avoiding it though. Why would they do that if they don't know the history of the software or have a clue about its problematic aspects?

If half the editing is by drive-bys and half is by the core volunteers — my rough guess — one would expect a 50-50 use of Edsel and Wikicode. Yet things are enormously skewing towards the old system. This I do not understand.

RfB

The Edsel *is* dogshit.

* It has a reputation for being comically unreliable, especially from one version to another as WMF engineering seems unable to master the fundamental art of regression testing.
* It is slower, by far, than wikicode.
* It has a well deserved reputation for losing data and/or corrupting articles.
* Its interface is really poorly designed.
* The community liaison staff who 'support' it are simply terrible. Probably the worst I've ever seen.

Given this, why would anyone with any experience editing wikipedia ever recommend it to anyone new?
Given that the community forced the WMF to turn it off by default, with a wink and a nod to turning it on in a dialog on first starting to edit, how would newbies ever get started using it?
Even if newbies do start using it, with terrible support staff and no veteran knowledge base on using it, why would they continue using it.

It's a clusterfuck from top to bottom.
Honestly, this is the worst rollout of a new product I've ever witnessed.

Yes, but all this assumes some sort of knowledge of the history of Edsel and its failings. Why are even random drop-ins, with no connection to Wikipedia or Wikipedians, avoiding it. It's not like they do A/B performance tests of the two systems for their one-off article on their cousin Courtney's new YouTube channel...

RfB

[Vigilant]

It is a bit mindblowing that Visual Editor has failed so badly.

I don't think that many of the regulars here are surprised. The general opinion of WMF developers and their managers is not exactly sky-high.

Still, you'd think that even a WMF-mangled total piece of shit WYSIWYG editor would be pulling something like half of the edits by this late date, would you not?

RfB

Sure, if it weren't a horribly designed 'product' that was full of bugs when it was released all over the community's most strenuous objections using a brand new power, SUPERPROTECT, to advance WMF engineering managements's wet dreams.

Drive-by ding dongs are even avoiding it though. Why would they do that if they don't know the history of the software or have a clue about its problematic aspects?

If half the editing is by drive-bys and half is by the core volunteers — my rough guess — one would expect a 50-50 use of Edsel and Wikicode. Yet things are enormously skewing towards the old system. This I do not understand.

RfB

The Edsel *is* dogshit.

* It has a reputation for being comically unreliable, especially from one version to another as WMF engineering seems unable to master the fundamental art of regression testing.
* It is slower, by far, than wikicode.
* It has a well deserved reputation for losing data and/or corrupting articles.
* Its interface is really poorly designed.
* The community liaison staff who 'support' it are simply terrible. Probably the worst I've ever seen.

Given this, why would anyone with any experience editing wikipedia ever recommend it to anyone new?
Given that the community forced the WMF to turn it off by default, with a wink and a nod to turning it on in a dialog on first starting to edit, how would newbies ever get started using it?
Even if newbies do start using it, with terrible support staff and no veteran knowledge base on using it, why would they continue using it.

It's a clusterfuck from top to bottom.
Honestly, this is the worst rollout of a new product I've ever witnessed.

Yes, but all this assumes some sort of knowledge of the history of Edsel and its failings. Why are even random drop-ins, with no connection to Wikipedia or Wikipedians, avoiding it. It's not like they do A/B performance tests of the two systems for their one-off article on their cousin Courtney's new YouTube channel...

RfB

Even the dialog box says, "Switch to using the Visual Editor" or "Start editing right away".

Incompetence.

[Randy from Boise]

I was gonna say that one sampling of 500 article-space edits probably isn't enough to draw a fair conclusion, but I tried it just now and only got 13.

Unless you think that the rate varies wildly with time, it's enough to show that the rate is almost certainly below 5%.

People have noted rates under 5% here before, it seems like an empirical fact at this point that use rate is south of 5%...

RfB