The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Apr 06, 2014 12:33 am

Hex wrote:A couple of enterprising Israeli editors have coded up a citation widget for VisualEdsel. But all is not well in VE-land:

Quiddity wrote: There might be a slight problem here... I believe the VE team in collaboration with community feedback, has already put a lot of time and effort into an official and cross-wiki-utilizable "Citation feature" for VE. You can see details and discussion about that here: mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and see yesterday's Metrics meeting overview of the feature (youtube at exact timestamp), and try it out at beta.wmflabs. Did you talk to the VE team about your work on this? Sorry to be the bearer of bad news –Quiddity (talk) 18:00, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
Now get this: those guys got a grant from the WMF to make it (and other VE widgets).

AHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHA

Quiddity, thanks for letting us know, it seems that there was some misunderstanding with the VE team and duplication of work, and we will talk with the VE team to integrate the benefits of our gadget (such as adding optional parameters easily), and the comments above to VisualEditor itself. He hope to see a core support for citation live in production in the near future. Eran (talk) 08:52, 5 April 2014 (UTC)

AHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHA
AHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHA
AHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHA
AHAHHAHAHAHAHHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHHAHA

*whew*

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Apr 11, 2014 1:57 pm

Checking the pulse of VisualEdsel...

Choose "Recent changes" from the left side menu, select 500, scale up to 5000 in the URL, search for "VisualEditor".

Results : mean 6 hits per 5000 edits.

Anyone care to guess at what the WMF has spent on parsoid/VE so far?
Amortizing that over the number of edits made with this complete cowpat of a tool probably yields about $1 spent by the WMF/edit made with VisualEditor.

Money well spent, I think.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sat Apr 12, 2014 3:35 am

Vigilant wrote:Anyone care to guess at what the WMF has spent on parsoid/VE so far?

Probably a couple million in salaries, at least.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:27 pm

Slowly improving

After several months, I gave the Visual Editor another try today. My initial observations:

Basic functionality for text editing and linking has greatly improved: far less glitchy, and the interface is more intuitive than before, with more things behaving in ways that follow the principle of least surprise.
Startup time is much improved
Template editing is also significantly improved: even things like reference templates within references now work. Unfortunately, this is still not nearly enough: templates are so intrinsic to Wikipedia's structure that this needs to be made far more intuitive.
It's not at all obvious how to edit categories: I eventually found it under the menu icon -- this dialog should surely be accessed from clicking on the category box, which should still be displayed on the editable page.

The VE is definitely getting better, and a lot of the "paper cut" bugs are now fixed, to the point where it's actually a practical option for making small textual edits to existing articles. It's still nowhere near being a practical replacement for wikitext editing, though. -- The Anome (talk) 16:30, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

How many man years do they have in this project that will, any minute now, reverse declining editor numbers?

How much more could you improve editor retention by stripping 100 select admins of the bit?

Unread post by **Zoloft** » Sun Apr 13, 2014 9:50 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Slowly improving

After several months, I gave the Visual Editor another try today. My initial observations:

Basic functionality for text editing and linking has greatly improved: far less glitchy, and the interface is more intuitive than before, with more things behaving in ways that follow the principle of least surprise.
Startup time is much improved
Template editing is also significantly improved: even things like reference templates within references now work. Unfortunately, this is still not nearly enough: templates are so intrinsic to Wikipedia's structure that this needs to be made far more intuitive.
It's not at all obvious how to edit categories: I eventually found it under the menu icon -- this dialog should surely be accessed from clicking on the category box, which should still be displayed on the editable page.

The VE is definitely getting better, and a lot of the "paper cut" bugs are now fixed, to the point where it's actually a practical option for making small textual edits to existing articles. It's still nowhere near being a practical replacement for wikitext editing, though. -- The Anome (talk) 16:30, 13 April 2014 (UTC)
How many man years do they have in this project that will, any minute now, reverse declining editor numbers?

How much more could you improve editor retention by stripping 100 select admins of the bit?

I have been mostly using VisualEditor for small changes. It is not stabbing me in the thigh nearly as often. I agree with The Anome (T-C-L) about well, everything he says. I can edit infoboxes now without breaking them. Tables confuse me. Photos are still dicey. But as a gnome-type, it's approaching mediocre. It's time for the VE team to receive an award:

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Mon Apr 14, 2014 4:27 pm

I wonder if there is an "Anderson" or "Dilbert" trapped at the WMF explaining in vain how VE and FLOW simply will not work?

At least I know now that "Let me simplify" means "You are an idiot" in engineer-ese.

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:01 am

http://xkcd.com/1341/

Clipperton · Unread post by **Clipperton** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 12:03 pm

Vigilant wrote: Anyone care to guess at what the WMF has spent on parsoid/VE so far?
Amortizing that over the number of edits made with this complete cowpat of a tool probably yields about $1 spent by the WMF/edit made with VisualEditor.

Money well spent, I think.

Hello, I'd like to announce our hiring of Matt R. Stone (User:WTFDoIActuallyDo? (WMF)), the WMF's new Wikipediocracy Outreach Coordinator. We hear your concerns, which is why we've now dedicated two full-time staff positions to liaising, outreaching and reaching around with the respected Wikipediocracy Global Community.

As to your concern with Visual Editor, qualitative factors play an important role in accounting for the value of Visual Editor. What we haven't done a good enough job of doing -- I'm the first to admit it -- is helping the community understand these qualitative factors. You see, every second edit using Visual Editor is by the key 'New Female Editor' demographic, in the 20-34 age bracket (Jimbo really stresses the 20-34 demo). If every 'NFE' tells a friend, and she tells a friend, and her friend tells a friend, well in 3 generations that's eight new editors!

The remainder of VE edits are made by our Wikipedia Zero editors (now with better taste), each representing a talented individual in a second or third world country accessing Wikipedia for free using a cell phone. These editors are new, engaged, and full of information that will be reverted in five seconds because it's not on the English web. They are the future of our Micro-Donation Initiative, in which we use QRPedia tattoos[1] that redirect to Wikimedia's Paypal account so that when a Zero editor wants to tithe, he just scans his forearm.

Visual Editor is all about attracting our underrepresented editor groups.

If you have any questions, join me on the IRC channel. It is my top window from 800-430 except when we're having meetings when another IRC channel is my top window. (None of which implies I'm in the office when anything is my top window.)

Matt P. Stone
Senior Wikipediocracy Outreach Coordinator
WMF Global[2] Expense Padding Division

[1] Required for Wikipedia Zero device.
[2] Not to be confused with MF Global, which fucked you in completely different ways.

Jim · Unread post by **Jim** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 1:17 pm

Clipperton wrote:
Vigilant wrote: Anyone care to guess at what the WMF has spent on parsoid/VE so far?
Amortizing that over the number of edits made with this complete cowpat of a tool probably yields about $1 spent by the WMF/edit made with VisualEditor.

Money well spent, I think.
Hello, I'd like to announce our hiring of Matt R. Stone (User:WTFDoIActuallyDo? (WMF)), the WMF's new Wikipediocracy Outreach Coordinator. We hear your concerns, which is why we've now dedicated two full-time staff positions to liaising, outreaching and reaching around with the respected Wikipediocracy Global Community.

As to your concern with Visual Editor, qualitative factors play an important role in accounting for the value of Visual Editor. What we haven't done a good enough job of doing -- I'm the first to admit it -- is helping the community understand these qualitative factors. You see, every second edit using Visual Editor is by the key 'New Female Editor' demographic, in the 20-34 age bracket (Jimbo really stresses the 20-34 demo). If every 'NFE' tells a friend, and she tells a friend, and her friend tells a friend, well in 3 generations that's eight new editors!

The remainder of VE edits are made by our Wikipedia Zero editors (now with better taste), each representing a talented individual in a second or third world country accessing Wikipedia for free using a cell phone. These editors are new, engaged, and full of information that will be reverted in five seconds because it's not on the English web. They are the future of our Micro-Donation Initiative, in which we use QRPedia tattoos[1] that redirect to Wikimedia's Paypal account so that when a Zero editor wants to tithe, he just scans his forearm.

Visual Editor is all about attracting our underrepresented editor groups.

If you have any questions, join me on the IRC channel. It is my top window from 800-430 except when we're having meetings when another IRC channel is my top window. (None of which implies I'm in the office when anything is my top window.)

Matt P. Stone
Senior Wikipediocracy Outreach Coordinator
WMF Global[2] Expense Padding Division

[1] Required for Wikipedia Zero device.
[2] Not to be confused with MF Global, which fucked you in completely different ways.

Very good. Extremely fond of (User:WTFDoIActuallyDo? (WMF) (T-C-L)). Excellent use of tattoos. (needs more "surfacing")

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 3:15 pm

Jim wrote: Very good.

+1!

Jim wrote:Extremely fond of (User:WTFDoIActuallyDo? (WMF) (T-C-L)). Excellent use of tattoos. (needs more "surfacing")

(Off-topic) That prompted me to see how many accounts are named starting "WTF". Funny.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Mon Apr 21, 2014 8:42 pm

WTF IS THIS!? I TRIED TO EDIT AND IM BLOCKED! CLUMEIN,WILLYA? (talk | contribs) (Created on 24 July 2006 at 17:50) (blocked)

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 3:49 pm

Hex wrote:(Off-topic) That prompted me to see how many accounts are named starting "WTF". Funny.

How about the nearly 3,000 accounts that start with "Jimbo"?

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 5:18 pm

thekohser wrote: How about the nearly 3,000 accounts that start with "Jimbo"?

Epic. I think "Jimbo the First, by the grace of Ayn Rand, Emperor of Wikiland" is my favorite out of those.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Tue Apr 22, 2014 10:55 pm

thekohser wrote:How about the nearly 3,000 accounts that start with "Jimbo"?

Virtually all (well, mostly) Grawp. He must have been like SlimVirgin, gobbling amphetamines with both hands.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat May 03, 2014 3:55 pm

Infobox

There is a display bug with the infobox when editing, moreover [1] VE modified the infobox even if I didn't modify this part of the page. This happens with Chrome 34, Windows 8.1. Sorry if this was already reported, I am not familiar with VE on the English Wikipedia (but a lot more on the French WP). NemesisIII (talk) 20:04, 2 May 2014 (UTC).

Hi NemesisIII,
Thanks for your note. Basically, the current status is that VisualEditor (or the underlying Parsoid software) doesn't work with the strange infoboxes used in many articles about ships on the English Wikipedia. I've been meaning to ask the editors who work on ship articles why they're using such an odd system. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Why do you people insist on using templates that break our shitty software?! The nerve!

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Mon May 19, 2014 6:23 pm

VisualEditor Software Engineer for hire

Software Engineer - VisualEditor (Features)
Feature Engineering | San Francisco or Remote

Summary

We are looking for someone to join our Features team working on the VisualEditor. The team focuses on developing functionality necessary for increasing the Wikimedia contributor base. You will be working on solving technical impediments associated with Wikimedia's editing interface. As a core engineer you will be deeply involved in the success of this project, building a sophisticated, elegant and responsive visual interface for editing content on Wikimedia websites using JavaScript, CSS, AJAX and HTML5 technologies.

Description

Develop VisualEditor’s core interaction tools embedded within the editing surface, ensuring they are simple, consistent and intuitive
Help develop other elements of VisualEditor as needed
Participate in and conduct design and code reviews
Support testing efforts for deployments of features
Participate in periodic technology meetings to discuss design, development & testing of features

Requirements

Experience developing user-facing interactive Web tools
Significant development experience in JavaScript/AJAX/HTML5/CSS
Multiple years of experience building Web applications
Multiple years of experience with application development, testing and production deployment
Extensive experience with cross-browser development and in-browser debugging
Knowledge of good user interaction principles and best-practices
Comfortable working in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment
B.S. or M.S. Computer Science or related field preferred

Pluses

Experience with using object-oriented JS and PHP
Experience with MediaWiki and other open source PHP- or JS-based content management systems
Experience in the Wikimedia community and/or a Collaborative and open development project(s)
Experience working with git/gerrit and continuous integration systems
Good sense of humor always a major plus.
Creativity, high degree of motivation and a self-starting attitude
Ability to work effectively in multiple cultural contexts
Experience contributing code to open source projects
Understanding of free culture / free software / open source principles
Experience working with online volunteers
Experience with wikis (mediawiki software) and participatory production environments

<b

We’d like to see your work! Please provide links to any existing open source or other work you may have done (own software or patches to other packages) if available when you apply. We'd really like to see what you can do!

About

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects in 285 languages. Together they receive nearly 500 million unique visitors per month making it the 5th most popular Web property. Wikimedia’s globally-distributed staff of 150 interact with a community of more than 100,000 people worldwide and remains committed to creating a world in which every single human being can freely and easily share in the sum of all knowledge.

More

http://wikimediafoundation.org
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2012/12/07/in ... mediawiki/
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor

<p

http://hire.jobvite.com/CompanyJobs/Car ... o8jyYfwH&s

I wonder if the broken HTML tags in the post are part of the test?

An M.S. in Computer Science? Wouldn't that outrank most of the engineering team? Employers tend to not like hiring people who could threaten their own positions. Not everyone on the team has a B.S. in Computer Science either, do they? Most were developers in the Wikipedia community who were hired by the WMF.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Mon May 19, 2014 6:33 pm

...or hacks that couldn't find a better job.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon May 19, 2014 6:42 pm

The Joy wrote:VisualEditor Software Engineer for hire

I'll bet.

Software Engineer - VisualEditor (Features)
Feature Engineering | San Francisco or Remote

Summary

We are looking for someone to join our Features team working on the VisualEditor. The team focuses on developing functionality necessary for increasing the Wikimedia contributor base. You will be working on solving technical impediments associated with Wikimedia's editing interface. As a core engineer you will be deeply involved in the success of this project, building a sophisticated, elegant and responsive visual interface for editing content on Wikimedia websites using JavaScript, CSS, AJAX and HTML5 technologies.

So, they're starting over?

Description

Develop VisualEditor’s core interaction tools embedded within the editing surface, ensuring they are simple, consistent and intuitive
Help develop other elements of VisualEditor as needed
Participate in and conduct design and code reviews
Support testing efforts for deployments of features
Participate in periodic technology meetings to discuss design, development & testing of features

First time I see it, I'll be surprised.

Requirements

Experience developing user-facing interactive Web tools
Significant development experience in JavaScript/AJAX/HTML5/CSS
Multiple years of experience building Web applications
Multiple years of experience with application development, testing and production deployment
Extensive experience with cross-browser development and in-browser debugging
Knowledge of good user interaction principles and best-practices
Comfortable working in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment
B.S. or M.S. Computer Science or related field preferred

If they get this, it'll be the first person at the WMF with these qualities.
What?! No "hangs out in IRC perpetually making misogynistic remarks" requirement?
Got that demographic represented in whole?

Pluses

Experience with using object-oriented JS and PHP
Experience with MediaWiki and other open source PHP- or JS-based content management systems
Experience in the Wikimedia community and/or a Collaborative and open development project(s)
Experience working with git/gerrit and continuous integration systems
Good sense of humor always a major plus.
Creativity, high degree of motivation and a self-starting attitude
Ability to work effectively in multiple cultural contexts
Experience contributing code to open source projects
Understanding of free culture / free software / open source principles
Experience working with online volunteers
Experience with wikis (mediawiki software) and participatory production environments

Another first. It's correlated with intelligence, so that's not a surprise there.

We’d like to see your work! Please provide links to any existing open source or other work you may have done (own software or patches to other packages) if available when you apply. We'd really like to see what you can do!

Way to set the bar high...morons.

About

The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California that operates Wikipedia and its sister projects in 285 languages. Together they receive nearly 500 million unique visitors per month making it the 5th most popular Web property. Wikimedia’s globally-distributed staff of 150 interact with a community of more than 100,000 people worldwide and remains committed to creating a world in which every single human being can freely and easily share in the sum of all knowledge.

More

http://wikimediafoundation.org
http://blog.wikimedia.org/[b]2012/12/07 ... mediawiki/[/b]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor

Dear lord...it's like they can't even see how badly they've failed.

I wonder if the broken HTML tags in the post are part of the test?

An M.S. in Computer Science? Wouldn't that outrank most of the engineering team? Employers tend to not like hiring people who could threaten their own positions. Not everyone on the team has a B.S. in Computer Science either, do they? Most were developers in the Wikipedia community who were hired by the WMF.

I'd prefer that they require people who have actual documented proof of having delivered working software...for a fucking change.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Mon May 19, 2014 6:56 pm

I agree with that last comment totally, having a degree is great but I know lots of smart people without one and lots of rocks with more than one. I have met and worked with several PhD's that could barely form a coherent sentance (which explains where I get it sometimes and the misspelling was intentional). If they can get the degree anyone can.

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Mon May 19, 2014 7:04 pm

I found "Comfortable working in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment" to be an entertaining and thoughtful statement.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon May 19, 2014 7:18 pm

Kumioko wrote:I agree with that last comment totally, having a degree is great but I know lots of smart people without one and lots of rocks with more than one. I have met and worked with several PhD's that could barely form a coherent sentance (which explains where I get it sometimes and the misspelling was intentional). If they can get the degree anyone can.

It's all about Gaussian distributions.

Anecdotal outliers don't make for good policy.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Mon May 19, 2014 7:30 pm

Kumioko wrote:I agree with that last comment totally, having a degree is great but I know lots of smart people without one and lots of rocks with more than one. I have met and worked with several PhD's that could barely form a coherent sentance (which explains where I get it sometimes and the misspelling was intentional). If they can get the degree anyone can.

Whenever my grandmother met an idiot with a degree, she used to say "You can also teach a bear to dance."

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Mon May 19, 2014 7:30 pm

The Joy wrote:I found "Comfortable working in a highly collaborative, consensus-oriented environment" to be an entertaining and thoughtful statement.

Reminds me of a military recruiter trying to get recruits...You like Hunting? You get to shoot a lot. You like camping? We go camping all the time. You gotta read the fine print.

But that statement also tells me a little something. They won't likely be hiring anyone that is active on Wikipedia. Because anyone that's editing knows that statement is bullshit.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Mon May 19, 2014 7:57 pm

This week I've started trying out VisualEditor for simple changes. It's just about tolerable. But boy, is it slow. I may have a venerable laptop here (7 years old soon!) but there are a lot of other JavaScript-heavy doodads out there that still run a lot faster on it. The actual experience of editing in terms of process is unquestionably far slower - so much clicking around. I can't see that it offers me any benefit at all over source editing.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Mon May 19, 2014 8:08 pm

No I agree back when I was looking at it last year it was even worse. I don't know how they think it makes editing easier. How hard is it to put a couple tickmarks around words or a couple tildes for a signature.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon May 19, 2014 8:45 pm

Hex wrote:This week I've started trying out VisualEditor for simple changes. It's just about tolerable. But boy, is it slow. I may have a venerable laptop here (7 years old soon!) but there are a lot of other JavaScript-heavy doodads out there that still run a lot faster on it. The actual experience of editing in terms of process is unquestionably far slower - so much clicking around. I can't see that it offers me any benefit at all over source editing.

For how many man years of effort?
At what cost in donor dollars?
To what effect?

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Mon May 19, 2014 9:21 pm

Highlights from today's IRC office hours on the VE:

[18:23:35] <Stryn> Hi, Is it possible to edit templates using VE in the future and if yes, any timetable yet?
[18:24:23] <James_F> Stryn: Do you mean edit template calls, or editing templates themselves? (I.e., editing Template: pages)?
[18:24:32] <Stryn> the lattert
[18:24:34] <Stryn> latter*
[18:24:42] * James_F nods.
[18:24:52] <James_F> We don't currently have a timeline for that, no.
[18:25:01] <James_F> Right now we're focussed on editing content pages more than anything else.
[18:25:12] <James_F> Template pages often have very odd, or broken, wikitext fragments.
[18:25:28] <James_F> This means that a Template page might not actually "work" as something you can edit.
[18:25:51] <James_F> For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:S-ttl
[18:26:07] <Stryn> Yeah, it's probably not easy to implement.
[18:26:14] <James_F> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... ction=edit shows a huge mass of hyper-complex wikitext.
[18:26:28] <James_F> So it'd be really great to let users fiddle with this in VisualEditor.
[18:26:46] <James_F> But the output of the template is effectively "| foo | bar" as wikitext.
[18:27:12] <James_F> And that's not an actual "document" â€“ it only works in the context of knowing that it's a table cell inside a larger table.
[18:27:26] <James_F> For VisualEditor to make it sane to edit that template, you'd need some way of "knowing" how it fits in.
[18:27:44] <James_F> Theoretically we could design and build such a system, but it's not even on our backlog right now, no.

[18:31:34] <Risker> I've been puttering now and then with VE, and am seeing lots of improvements. You're heading in the right direction.
[18:31:46] <James_F> Thanks, Risker.
[18:32:03] <James_F> Risker: Do you have any questions / concerns right now? Happy to answerâ€¦
[18:32:19] <Risker> I wonder, for some of these very complex templates, if perhaps we might just need to get realistic and say "editing this template requires advanced skills"
[18:32:54] <James_F> Risker: You mean, as a template namespace edit notice?
[18:32:58] <James_F> Risker: "Please remember that editing templates can break a lot of pages very quickly."
[18:33:00] <James_F> Or something.
[18:33:27] <Risker> well, even today editing templates is considered pretty much of an advanced skill
[18:33:29] <James_F> (Right now enwiki doesn't have such a message, just per-template notices.)
[18:33:30] <James_F> Yeah.
[18:34:26] <whatami> We're just past the halfway point in the office hour for VisualEditor with James F, the product manager. Â Feel free to ask him any questions or share any feedback you have for him.
[18:34:29] <Risker> I think it might actually be helpful for new editors to know that they're heading into an area where there be dragons
[18:34:54] <James_F> Risker: Sounds sensible.
[18:35:34] <whatami> So here's a question from outside IRC: "Is there a plan to re-launch VisualEditor on the largest Wikipedia project, English Wikipedia, in this fiscal year? If so, what is the launch plan?"
[18:37:21] <James_F> Rushing anything â€“ in particular, rushing to meet some arbitrary deadline â€“ is a really great way to make things worse, not better.
[18:37:48] <James_F> We spoke about this last Office Hours, but it bears repeating: There is no "official plan" at all with regard to the English Wikipedia.
[18:38:01] <James_F> I'd be interested in thoughts about whether it's something worth pursuing.
[18:38:33] <James_F> I know that a community member started writing an RfC on re-enablement a couple of months ago, but that seemed to be agreed to be premature at the time.
[18:38:39] <thedj> too much 'noise'. only if you NEED the feedback, is what I would say
[18:38:44] <James_F> Maybe that time is now more appropriate? That's obviously a community decision.
[18:38:49] <Risker> I think it might be time to get a Signpost article talking about what has been done in the past year.
[18:39:09] <Risker> and what "significant" things are still to be done
[18:39:33] <Risker> a lot of people have simply forgotten about VE in the last 6-8 months

[18:48:59] <whatami> Here's another question from outside IRC: VisualEditor isn't working in Firefox this weekÂ on Mediawiki.org. Â What's going on?
[18:49:13] <James_F> Aha, yeah, that.
[18:49:30] <James_F> So, first things first: it will be fixed today, before it affects any other wikis.
[18:50:07] <James_F> Detail: VisualEditor was doing things a little oddly, which worked in most browsers but silently did nothing much in Firefox.
[18:50:47] <James_F> Last Thursday, MediaWiki upgraded its version of jQuery. This meant that this "little odd" thing (for RTL support, as it happens) now works differently.
[18:51:09] <James_F> Unfortunately, in Firefox, this "differently" means "horribly, completely broken to the level of crashing the browser".
[18:52:00] <James_F> This meant that any use of VisualEditor with Firefox would crash the browser process whenever you opened a dialog â€“ to edit a template, insert an image, or save the page.
[18:52:05] <James_F> I.e., completely useless.
[18:52:26] <James_F> Sadly the MediaWiki change happened just before release so we didn't get any time to test breakage, and, well, it broke. :-(
[18:52:40] <James_F> We've been working since Thursday to right this wrong, and it will be fixed later today.
[18:52:45] <James_F> Sorry for any disruption.
[18:53:09] <James_F> (Also, obviously, this is a bug in Firefox that we're going to report to Mozilla so that they can fix it, but users don't really care whose fault it is, just that it works.)
[18:53:25] <whatami> Thanks for that explanation, James.

Bielle · Unread post by **Bielle** » Mon May 19, 2014 9:37 pm

HRIP7 wrote:Highlights from today's IRC office hours on the VE:

I wonder if WMF pays Risker for her VE cheerleading job.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Mon May 19, 2014 9:39 pm

Bielle wrote:I wonder if WMF pays Risker for her VE cheerleading job.

To be fair, as far as I recall, she had been rather critical of it so far.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon May 19, 2014 9:41 pm

Such stupidity.

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Mon May 19, 2014 10:10 pm

Vigilant wrote:Such stupidity.

I wish I would be paid big money just to say "Well, the thingy broke because the one thing didn't do what it was supposed to do."

Do they even know what in the jQuery library caused the malfunction?

Anroth · Unread post by **Anroth** » Mon May 19, 2014 10:37 pm

The Joy wrote: Do they even know what in the jQuery library caused the malfunction?

I like the 'obviously this is a bug in firefox'.... Oh reaaaallllyyyy?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon May 19, 2014 10:40 pm

The Joy wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Such stupidity.
I wish I would be paid big money just to say "Well, the thingy broke because the one thing didn't do what it was supposed to do."

Do they even know what in the jQuery library caused the malfunction?

More to the point, they can't be so stupid as to think that JQuery won't get updated.
Automated tests? Anyone? Anyone?

They surely are in contact with the IT people who did the upgrade.
Surely, they could have installed a separate VM with the updated JQuery and run their end to end tests.

The development environment is so awful and broken that I see no way forward except to clean house and start over.

Kelly Martin · Unread post by **Kelly Martin** » Tue May 20, 2014 12:57 am

The Joy wrote:An M.S. in Computer Science? Wouldn't that outrank most of the engineering team?

Typically, a MS in computer science means "I flunked out of the PhD program". Is that really what you want on your engineering team?

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue May 20, 2014 3:51 am

Vigilant wrote:
The Joy wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Such stupidity.
I wish I would be paid big money just to say "Well, the thingy broke because the one thing didn't do what it was supposed to do."

Do they even know what in the jQuery library caused the malfunction?
More to the point, they can't be so stupid as to think that JQuery won't get updated.
Automated tests? Anyone? Anyone?

They surely are in contact with the IT people who did the upgrade.
Surely, they could have installed a separate VM with the updated JQuery and run their end to end tests.

The development environment is so awful and broken that I see no way forward except to clean house and start over.

I wish I could pick out one problem but really its their whole process from top to bottom. What were their requirements when they started building it and where did they get them, they certainly never asked the community for any meaningful input. Once the requirements were screwed up it was destined to fail. Then add to that mediocre to poor programmers, no oversight, no project plan, mediocre to poor testing, etc, etc. Anyone with more than a class in Software design and development could have seen the VE was going to fail long before it was first released.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Tue May 20, 2014 8:34 am

I wrote:I can't see that it offers me any benefit at all over source editing.

And now re-reading this I remind myself that I, and other experienced editors, are not the target market for this thing. Putting myself in the shoes of a newbie, it's a more pleasant experience than being faced by a wall of markup - but as someone who frequently spends a lot of time teaching IT skills to people who are eager to learn, I find it difficult imagining myself being in that position and not wanting to learn any markup at all. However, I am probably highly biased in that regard.

On thing I will say is that the autocomplete feature for making links is definitely a good start.

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Tue May 20, 2014 8:39 am

Kumioko wrote:No I agree back when I was looking at it last year it was even worse. I don't know how they think it makes editing easier. How hard is it to put a couple tickmarks around words or a couple tildes for a signature.

I noticed that if you do start typing [[Whatever... out of force of habit, the thing will pop up a message telling you not to do it. Why can't they translate the input on the fly? Or offer a mode setting to say "ignore anything that looks like wiki markup", which would be on by default for new editors? In fact, to expand on the comment in the post above, I would LOVE IT if typing [[ triggered an in-place link autocomplete widget. So you just start typing and the link forms itself right there without popping up a dialog box. How modern and cool would that be? That's the grade of experience I want from VisualEditor.

Mason · Unread post by **Mason** » Tue May 20, 2014 3:14 pm

Hex wrote:I noticed that if you do start typing [[Whatever... out of force of habit, the thing will pop up a message telling you not to do it. Why can't they translate the input on the fly? Or offer a mode setting to say "ignore anything that looks like wiki markup", which would be on by default for new editors? In fact, to expand on the comment in the post above, I would LOVE IT if typing [[ triggered an in-place link autocomplete widget. So you just start typing and the link forms itself right there without popping up a dialog box. How modern and cool would that be? That's the grade of experience I want from VisualEditor.

Even Jimbo thought it ought to do that, back in 2013. You can see from that thread what the VE team thought of that idea.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue May 20, 2014 3:24 pm

From a programming perspective I think it would be hard to do. The application has no real way of knowing if ''is meant to be a quote or wikisyntax for italics. I do think they could programmatically add a button for Wikisyntax or something that lets the user decide if they want to use the Wikisyntax or not. But again, to me, using visual editor is supposed to be easier to use than learning Wikisyntax (which really isn't that hard). I just cannot see any benefit from Visual editor. Its harder to use, causes problems and is slow as hell.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Tue May 20, 2014 7:29 pm

Kumioko wrote:From a programming perspective I think it would be hard to do. The application has no real way of knowing if ''is meant to be a quote or wikisyntax for italics. I do think they could programmatically add a button for Wikisyntax or something that lets the user decide if they want to use the Wikisyntax or not. But again, to me, using visual editor is supposed to be easier to use than learning Wikisyntax (which really isn't that hard). I just cannot see any benefit from Visual editor. Its harder to use, causes problems and is slow as hell.

No. Two single quotes is the mark-up for italics; you'd never use that for a quote. But an asterisk at the start of a line might be trickier.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue May 20, 2014 8:37 pm

Ok, your right I gave a bad example. But I think you see my point

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Tue May 20, 2014 8:38 pm

Mason wrote: Even Jimbo thought it ought to do that, back in 2013. You can see from that thread what the VE team thought of that idea.

And on Bugzilla.

I'm going to reserve expressing my honest feelings after having read that.

Kumioko · Unread post by **Kumioko** » Tue May 20, 2014 8:41 pm

I think the comment on comment 5 stating:

(2) it requires the use of a mouse to add a link. :-(

is very telling. Since when did using a mouse become a big deal to add a link. How else should we do it? A flux capacitor?

And then you have James marking as Won't fix

Marking as WONTFIX per my earlier comments and Erik's.

Nice job guys, nice job. That's why they turned it off, because you guys have no clue or care what the users want or need.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue May 20, 2014 10:55 pm

Hex wrote:
Mason wrote: Even Jimbo thought it ought to do that, back in 2013. You can see from that thread what the VE team thought of that idea.
And on Bugzilla.

I'm going to reserve expressing my honest feelings after having read that.

Let me paraphrase, "Fuck off tosser! We know how YOU should edit!" :brogramer fistbump:

Hex · Unread post by **Hex** » Wed May 21, 2014 9:17 am

Kumioko wrote:I think the comment on comment 5 stating:
(2) it requires the use of a mouse to add a link. :-(
is very telling. Since when did using a mouse become a big deal to add a link.

For those of us accustomed to operating at maximum personal speed by keyboard only, switching a hand out to a mouse and then moving the cursor to a button and then clicking it is a major slowdown.

Note that Forrester then makes the technically correct point that it doesn't require a mouse as a keyboard accelerator is present. However, I dislike this attitude intensely:

James Forrester wrote: If users are sufficiently new-school that they can't remember Ctrl+K I don't think there's much hope for them. :-)

Please fuck off. The sooner the better.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 8:57 pm

I didn't notice this when it happened, but it's still funny at this late date.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia: ... r#Timeline

12 February 2014 Spanish Wikipedia reverted to opt-in Spanish Wikipedia (es) Yes check.svg Done

Zero of the last 5000 recent changes on es.wp were from VE.
Purged completely from a major language wiki. Expunged.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jun 07, 2014 3:27 pm

Ah look, a new attempt to sneak the VisualCowpat back onto en.wp...

I think having a two part RfC with the first part discussing the minimum conditions the community would like VE to meet before having a discussion about more widely enabling VE in the second portion of the RfC makes sense. This raises the possibility that as VE becomes more and more functional that the community will incrementally approve of wider default use over time and different presentations of VE to editors.

There are a lot of options for how extensively VE could be enabled and how it can be presented to users with the community's consent, which we can discuss in the second portion of the RfC. I have a draft for that portion off-wiki that I will tweak depending on how the first portion looks before I put it on-wiki for other editors to review.

Risker, would you like to set up the first portion of this, if this arrangement sounds good to you?

Pine

Pine sure is someone's cat's paw.

Nice to see them canvassing off of en.wp to avoid the enraged masses.

Edit: And the RFC itself
Wikipedia:VisualEditor/2014_RFC (T-H-L)

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 5:28 pm

Yay! Still fuxx0r3d!!

Bug report VisualEditor
Description VE times-out if internet connection refreshes
Intention: I was trying to make a major edit to an article, including copy-pasting references
Steps to Reproduce: I do not know how to reproduce this, since it involved my internet connection refreshing
Results: I was working on a major edit to Tunnel Rats (album) for about an hour-and-a-half, when my internet connection broke. I attempted to continue editing offline, as I can in the wiki-text editor, but I could not copy paste references from the Tunnel Rats (music group) article (which was also in editing mode at this point). I figured that I could just save the content I had and then re-open either VE or the wiki-text editor and add the few references which still needed to be cited. But I could no longer save my session. Ultimately, I had to copy the text I had in VE and paste into another open VE session of the same article, which resulted in this mess, where the references were transformed into superscript test and many of the wikilinks disappeared. I then opened up the article in WTE to fix the reference and wikilink problems.

Not like this problem was hard to foresee when they started...

Kiefer.Wolfowitz · Unread post by **Kiefer.Wolfowitz** » Mon Jun 09, 2014 6:40 pm

Vigilant wrote:Yay! Still fuxx0r3d!!
Bug report VisualEditor
Description VE times-out if internet connection refreshes
Intention: I was trying to make a major edit to an article, including copy-pasting references
Steps to Reproduce: I do not know how to reproduce this, since it involved my internet connection refreshing
Results: I was working on a major edit to Tunnel Rats (album) for about an hour-and-a-half, when my internet connection broke. I attempted to continue editing offline, as I can in the wiki-text editor, but I could not copy paste references from the Tunnel Rats (music group) article (which was also in editing mode at this point). I figured that I could just save the content I had and then re-open either VE or the wiki-text editor and add the few references which still needed to be cited. But I could no longer save my session. Ultimately, I had to copy the text I had in VE and paste into another open VE session of the same article, which resulted in this mess, where the references were transformed into superscript test and many of the wikilinks disappeared. I then opened up the article in WTE to fix the reference and wikilink problems.
Not like this problem was hard to foresee when they started...

Erik Moeller brings Wikipedia to the user!

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jun 21, 2014 2:36 pm

James Forrester takes a turn in the barrel.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_off ... 2014-06-19

Russavia heckles and jayvdb tries, in vain, to get some straight answers while Maggie Dennis and Elitre babble inanely.

TL;DR - VE is used by very few people even two years after deployment.

Some interesting pages fall out of the discussion:
Charts, charts and more charts about VE
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:VisualEditor

A list of victims
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Rollouts

Note that the Dutch, English, German and Spanish wikis do not have VE enabled "by default".
What percentage of total edits and total article count are those four against the rest of the pile of little wikis?