The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 12:08 am

Zoloft wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Here's Oliver Keyes, WMF Community Liaison, trying to hide damning information about the VisualEnema
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =564982316

And here
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =564981526

Jesus, you moron, you don't hide data that you don't like.
Clumsy and stupid is no way to go through life.

Sped.
Adam Cuerden is just gonna *love* having his comment censored.

You know, it's much worse than that.

Its corruption of scientific principles.
You don't hide data that make you unhappy.
That way lies Phlogiston_theory (T-H-L) and other scientific frauds.

I can't see how they can put up with a PR guy, especially one with Oliver Keyes' extensive track record of rudeness and misogyny, when he tries to hide valuable information from the customer base to protect insiders' feelings.

He needs to go.

DanMurphy · Unread post by **DanMurphy** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 12:10 am

Not a failure as in "not an improvement" but a failure as in counterproductive to their stated goals. Young Master Keyes is seeking to censor a reference to the Wikimedia Foundation's preliminary findings on the value of its new killer app.

The analysis seems to consistently suggest that newcomers with VisualEditor enabled performed less work than editors using the standard wikitext editor. Figures 1, 2 & 3 suggest that (1) the average number of article edits performed, (2) the average number of productive edits, and (3) the average amount of hours spent editing by newcomers in the test condition during their first three days was substantially lower than that of newcomers in the control condition.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 12:18 am

Browser compatibility

Browser support

Browser support during the test was handled via a blacklist and a whitelist.

* The whitelist consisted of “those browsers known to work” with the current version of the software: Firefox >= v11, Iceweasel >= 10, Safari >= 5, Chrome >= 19. Users with whitelisted browsers in the test group were displayed the regular VE interface when clicking on the Edit button.

* The blacklist consisted of those browsers that would, under no circumstances, work - Android, Blackberry, and all Opera and IE versions. Users with a blacklisted browser only saw the wikitext editor.

Consider this test matrix.
- Take out an additional axis on the test matrix for Operating System.
- Think about how many versions there are of Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS, etc.
Pull another axis for language
- think about non roman alphabets
- think about right to left scripts, vertical scripts
(I can't wait for errors to start being propagated back to the dev team from the Chinese languages.)

The amount of testing they need and expect the "community" to do is astronomical, yet they refuse to listen to anyone about the lack of readiness in the current release of the VisualEnema...
Does anyone think that the rest of these test matrix entries (browser, OS, language triplets) are going to go SMOOTHER than (Firefox22, Windows, English)?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 2:39 am

What's with this diff?
https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? ... id=5663903

Mistyped?

Hmmm.....

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 6:53 pm

Article about Visual Editor and Oliver Keyes is published now on Examiner.

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:08 pm

thekohser wrote:Article about Visual Editor and Oliver Keyes is published now on Examiner.

Very good, Greg. It's really hard to present the sordid convoluted mess that is Wikipedia in such a clear way. Giggled all the way through until the ending LOL. Thanks.

Mason · Unread post by **Mason** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 7:16 pm

thekohser wrote:Article about Visual Editor and Oliver Keyes is published now on Examiner.

Hilarious:

In their defense, the Wikimedia Foundation's senior leadership does plan "new participation vectors", and they are "looking for force multipliers on uploads". That will hopefully do the trick.

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:28 pm

I appreciate the positive, motivating comments. Please feel free to leave these comments on the Examiner page, too -- that helps show my editors that I'm writing engaging material.

Mancunium · Unread post by **Mancunium** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 9:45 pm

thekohser wrote:I appreciate the positive, motivating comments. Please feel free to leave these comments on the Examiner page, too -- that helps show my editors that I'm writing engaging material.

This is another positive, motivating comment.

In the past year or so, I have always posted your Examiner articles to my Facebook page, and they always receive approving comments, "likes" and "shares".

-Alex

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:23 pm

thekohser wrote:I appreciate the positive, motivating comments. Please feel free to leave these comments on the Examiner page, too -- that helps show my editors that I'm writing engaging material.

WTF, I created an account at the Examiner to leave a comment, and they still require another login from an external website, like Facebook.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:27 pm

Thanks, good work. I posted a comment.

TC: you HAVE to create a Disqus account. Those "login with Facebook" etc. things don't work reliably on some browsers,
especially Firefox.

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:34 pm

EricBarbour wrote:Thanks, good work. I posted a comment.

TC: you HAVE to create a Disqus account. Those "login with Facebook" etc. things don't work reliably on some browsers,
especially Firefox.

meh, couldn't do it through tor.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:35 pm

TungstenCarbide wrote:
EricBarbour wrote:Thanks, good work. I posted a comment.

TC: you HAVE to create a Disqus account. Those "login with Facebook" etc. things don't work reliably on some browsers,
especially Firefox.
meh, couldn't do it through tor.

I think the Disqus interface in configurable.
Some sites do not require a login and you can check a box that says post as guest and give a name for the post and some bogus email address.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 11:32 pm

This isn't getting any better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... Editor/FAQ
Allow me to paraphrase

This is how it's going to be. Fuck y'all.

Thank god there's great documentation to help ease this transition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... User_guide
:snicker:

P.S. We need a snicker smiley.

From one of the crowd.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... disgusting

Nothing remains to be said.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 11:40 pm

I'm digging this guy's comment from the examiner piece.

Excellent and surprisingly restrained piece considering the WMF's utter fuckwittery and sheer contempt for editors exhibited throughout this omnishambles.

Unread post by **Smiley** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 11:46 pm

Vigilant wrote:I'm digging this guy's comment from the examiner piece.
Excellent and surprisingly restrained piece considering the WMF's utter fuckwittery and sheer contempt for editors exhibited throughout this omnishambles.

Thanks, Vigilant. What do you think of the haircut?

(Some further thoughts..)

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 11:52 pm

thekohser wrote:I appreciate the positive, motivating comments. Please feel free to leave these comments on the Examiner page, too -- that helps show my editors that I'm writing engaging material.

Excellent, excellent piece with an outstanding choice for the quoted material!
I don't think you could have done better in choosing a subject matter expert. So eloquent!

Couple his obvious intellect with his magnificent physique and pearly whites and you've got a knockout piece of work worthy of a prize of some sort.

Too bad you didn't get a picture of your lead witness...

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 20, 2013 11:59 pm

Ow!
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?ti ... =565118326

Per AFBorchert, Sandstein, and others above and below, we don't need a new gadget that completely changes how Wikipedia had worked for the previous 10 or so years, this tool is just going to attract a certain crowd of editors who we don't need in this project. Secret account 23:45, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

That'd be a hate boner for newbie editors!!
Good luck on that editor retention goal!

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 2:28 am

Holy moly. The results for VE are bad, bad, bad...
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Researc ... rs/Results

Slowness

One of the reasons why those of us who tested it thought it wasn't ready for this sort of deployment was that it is so much slower - several times slower in my experience. It won't be the only reason why the current slow buggy version of v/e is so much less popular with new editors than the existing software. But it is something to test for. Would it be possible to reanalyse your test groups by geography? Ideally we'd do it by connection speed, but I'm assuming you don't have that data and that geography would have to do as a substitute. One of the risks of v/e is that slowing down the software is much more noticable to those on slow connections than to people on fast connections, but the developers will mostly have commercial grade US Internet connections. My fear is that even if enough bugs were fixed that the average level of editing was to get back to previous levels, if we could analyse by edits from the global south v the parts of the world with fast internet connections we'd see that slowing down the editing experience undermines our efforts to globalise the movement. WereSpielChequers (talk) 01:42, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Blocking rates

If I read this correctly, the editors using the visual editor on average made 43% fewer edits, but somehow the same proportion of those editors got blocked. Which on the surface of it implies that the 43% loss in editing came entirely from goodfaith newbies and any vandals or spammers who were driven away by v/e's slowness and bugs were entirely offset by goodfaith newbies being blocked for edits that looked like vandalism but actually were just v/e bugs. If so, unless I've misread that it sounds like a pretty good proof of the theory that extra barriers to editing are a deterrent to goodfaith editors and a challenge to badfaith ones. After all the vandals expect us to be a little challenging for them to vandalise. The goodfaith editors are offering to help - if we make it difficult for them then they will go away.

The upside of this if true is that if we can get v/e right (Ed note: AHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA) then the additional edits that would bring would be disproportionately goodfaith ones. But unless it goes back into opt in Beta test mode very soon then I suspect it will go the way of the image filter. Remember the objective of WYSIWYG software was to increase editing levels, if it is doing the opposite then it has to be considered a failure. WereSpielChequers (talk) 02:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

WMF has spent a huge amount of money on weak-assed devs to build an unwanted product that drives away and gets new editors blocked.

I wonder if WO has a guy on the inside.
Some days, I truly do.

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:14 am

Per AFBorchert, Sandstein, and others above and below, we don't need a new gadget that completely changes how Wikipedia had worked for the previous 10 or so years, this tool is just going to attract a certain crowd of editors who we don't need in this project. Secret account 23:45, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I am not surprised. Obviously there are hundreds of editors and admins who want to completely control every
bit and byte of the damn thing, obsessively and 24/7. Wikipedia equals mental illness (in some cases).

If I read this correctly, the editors using the visual editor on average made 43% fewer edits, but somehow the same proportion of those editors got blocked. Which on the surface of it implies that the 43% loss in editing came entirely from goodfaith newbies and any vandals or spammers who were driven away by v/e's slowness and bugs were entirely offset by goodfaith newbies being blocked for edits that looked like vandalism but actually were just v/e bugs.

I would not be surprised if he finds himself being desysopped and kicked out. Probably with little or no warning.
He already wrote a report showing that editing was declining, a report that was completely ignored. He could easily
be right about VE users being blocked improperly at a very high rate, and the nabobs will not want to hear it.

It'll take months to know for certain that the VE is harming actual editing traffic, so August is going to be very "interesting".

Mason · Unread post by **Mason** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:31 am

WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT (T-H-L) is commonly linked to on the noticeboards whenever some clod is insistent that he's right and will absolutely not listen to other people explaining why he ain't. Here's the text (highlighting mine):

Failure or refusal to "get the point"

In some cases, editors have perpetuated disputes by sticking to an allegation or viewpoint long after the consensus of the community has decided that moving on to other topics would be more productive. Such behavior is disruptive to Wikipedia. Believing that you have a valid point does not confer upon you the right to act as though your point must be accepted by the community when you have been told that it is not accepted.

Do not confuse "hearing" with "agreeing with": The community's rejection of your idea is not proof that they have failed to hear you. One option to consider in these situations is to stop, listen, and consider what the other editors are telling you, see if you can see their side of the debate, and work on finding points of agreement.

Sometimes, even when editors act in good faith, their contributions may continue to be disruptive and time wasting, because they don't understand what the problem is. Although editors should be encouraged to be bold and just do things if they think they're right, sometimes a lack of competence can get in the way. If the community spends more time cleaning up editors' mistakes and educating them about policies and guidelines than it considers necessary, sanctions may have to be imposed.

Does that not perfectly capture the attitude of the Visual Editor team?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:46 am

Mason wrote:WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT (T-H-L) is commonly linked to on the noticeboards whenever some clod is insistent that he's right and will absolutely not listen to other people explaining why he ain't.

Does that not perfectly capture the attitude of the Visual Editor team?

Silly boy, those rules are for the tiny, inconsequential editors, not the all knowing, benevolent devs and WMF godlings.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 8:17 am

Somebody needs to update List_of_Wikipedia_controversies (T-H-L) with the VisualEditor and Flow controversies.

Also, this looks odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =562830417

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 9:18 am

Vigilant wrote:Also, this looks odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =562830417

Rjanag (T-C-L), an admin who has a real thing for Gunnerkrigg Court (T-H-L). College boy perhaps.
This is charming.

Triptych · Unread post by **Triptych** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 11:44 am

thekohser wrote:Article about Visual Editor and Oliver Keyes is published now on Examiner.

It is in fact an engaging article, Kohser. Jeez, you're really pounding this guy, though I can't say he doesn't deserve it:

Examiner article 20 Jul. 2013 wrote:in what has to be one of the most disturbing thoughts ever to emerge on a Wikipedia-related site, Oliver Keyes once had this to say about a woman:

[19:58] <Ironholds> You should however have instead taken your pen, punched a hole in her windpipe and looked on as her attempts to wave for help got increasingly feeble.

Mr. Keyes did not respond to Examiner's request to interview him; however, he has said that these IRC quotes need to be judged "in context".

I don't know what context can explain that remark. 17-year-old heavy metal fan on the ninth of a shoplifted 12-pack? Rewatched some Joe Pesci movies, it was late, got carried away? I wonder who the fine lady in question was. Great and welcoming environment if she was a Wikipedia editor. The slimy efforts of the administrative participants to cast the Wikipedia IRC channels as "private" are so transparent, most of the arbs are on there, a great number of administrators generally. Those channels are official and totally so. Big props to Chatson de Channel who's paving the way, as well to the loggers that follow him. The protests about "the Wikipedia IRC channels are private and you are untrustworthy to post logs" are the protests of cockroaches scurrying from the flashlight beam.

And nice use of the picture. Let me guess, he public-domained it, or applied some other generous license.

I also do not forget that Ironholds is the disciplinary ANI-head who called for "thwapping" those administrators who commit the unpardonable sin: unblocking an editor.

Sure, I will go and attempt to leave some positive article feedback at Examiner.com.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 12:44 pm

Vigilant wrote:Somebody needs to update List_of_Wikipedia_controversies (T-H-L) with the VisualEditor and Flow controversies.

Also, this looks odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =562830417

The RfC was five in favour of retaining the Sarkeesian vandalism in the List of Wikipedia controversies article, and five against, with one "not fussed". Closed as "Consensus to delete".

How is five for and five against consensus? And whatever happened to "No consensus defaults to Keep"?

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 1:52 pm

TungstenCarbide wrote:
thekohser wrote:I appreciate the positive, motivating comments. Please feel free to leave these comments on the Examiner page, too -- that helps show my editors that I'm writing engaging material.
WTF, I created an account at the Examiner to leave a comment, and they still require another login from an external website, like Facebook.

It is insane, isn't it? In the time I've been with Examiner, they have gone through an internally-managed comments system, to outsourcing to a botched Facebook comments system, to now a Disqus comments system.

The Joy · Unread post by **The Joy** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 1:54 pm

HRIP7 wrote:
Vigilant wrote:Somebody needs to update List_of_Wikipedia_controversies (T-H-L) with the VisualEditor and Flow controversies.

Also, this looks odd.
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?tit ... =562830417
The RfC was five in favour of retaining the Sarkeesian vandalism in the List of Wikipedia controversies article, and five against, with one "not fussed". Closed as "Consensus to delete".

How is five for and five against consensus? And whatever happened to "No consensus defaults to Keep"?

If the subject is related to a WP:BLP (T-H-L), I think "no consensus" defaults to "Delete."

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 2:36 pm

Vigilant wrote:This isn't getting any better
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... Editor/FAQ

From the FAQ:

29 July: Deployment of the VisualEditor to all other Wikipedia wikis, available for all users, minus a few wikis (such as the Chinese Wikipedia) where the VisualEditor does not yet work.

Why do the Chinese get so lucky? I mean, the Visual Editor "does not yet work" on any language wiki, so why do the Chinese get a break?

thekohser · Unread post by **thekohser** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 3:21 pm

Wikipedia editing session for journalism students at Sophia Polytechnic
-- by Rohini Lakshané, a Wikimedian from Mumbai

For the live editing session, the students split into groups of four. After spending a bit of time dealing with connectivity issues and finding out that the Visual Editor doesn’t function on mobile devices and Internet Explorer, everyone started rolling on the demo-cum-live editing session.

...

All the groups got stuck at using the reference/ citations templates on the Visual Editor, so we switched back to wiki syntax. But they found the process of adding references difficult both ways.

Wikimedia Foundation: Bringing you new ways of difficulty.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 3:44 pm

The Joy wrote:If the subject is related to a WP:BLP (T-H-L), I think "no consensus" defaults to "Delete."

Only if the subject has expressed a wish for deletion.

Cyclopia · Unread post by **Cyclopia** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 4:47 pm

Does anybody know if and where the raw data of the usage study can be downloaded, in case I wanted to analyze them myself?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:02 pm

Texts included through template parameters

I have some troubles at the Czech Wikipedia when trying to edit articles like this list of cultural heritage monuments. When the content is included through formating templates as their parameters, the text seems to be not editable through VisualEditor (or it is too difficult). However, directly included tables are OK. Maybe, some similar problem can be also with infoboxes etc.? --ŠJů (talk) 14:14, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

They went ahead with the deployment to the other language projects?!
Even with 500+ bugs outstanding?!

What a bunch of morons!!

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:09 pm

Vigilant wrote:What a bunch of morons!!

I think you rather understate the case, and "morons" is being far too generous.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:14 pm

thekohser wrote:Wikipedia editing session for journalism students at Sophia Polytechnic
-- by Rohini Lakshané, a Wikimedian from Mumbai

For the live editing session, the students split into groups of four. After spending a bit of time dealing with connectivity issues and finding out that the Visual Editor doesn’t function on mobile devices and Internet Explorer, everyone started rolling on the demo-cum-live editing session.

...

All the groups got stuck at using the reference/ citations templates on the Visual Editor, so we switched back to wiki syntax. But they found the process of adding references difficult both ways.
Wikimedia Foundation: Bringing you new ways of difficulty.

I can't think of a single Wikimedia software "update" that's not either been completely misguided and pointless or made editing more of a PITA. Were I a conspiracy theorist I might see dark undertones in driving editors away from a project that makes Jimbo no money towards one that does.

Wer900 · Unread post by **Wer900** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:15 pm

Malleus wrote:
Vigilant wrote:What a bunch of morons!!
I think you rather understate the case, and "morons" is being far too generous.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:17 pm

Malleus wrote:
Vigilant wrote:What a bunch of morons!!
I think you rather understate the case, and "morons" is being far too generous.

I had a late night and am not yet up to speed this morning.
Apologies for my embarrassing lack of morning vitriol. It won't happen again, sir.

That snippet was from the Feedback page for VE.
They have now saddled some number of additional projects with the VE.
They are about to start receiving "feedback" from people for whom English is not their native language.

...

There are still over 500 outstanding bugs and who knows how many, as yet, undiscovered ones since large portions of the final feature set are disabled and/or yet to be coded.

And you're widening the distribution of that "product"?

How many of the new project specific bugs simply won't be reported since the dev team is on en.wp and relatively unavailable to someone who speaks Czech?
How many of the new project specific bugs will, when fixed, break something else due to the utter lack of regression testing within the VE team?

They might have had a chance if they got the VE stable prior to wider distribution.
They're truly fucked now.

This is SO stupid and completely avoidable.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:18 pm

Wer900 wrote:
Malleus wrote:
Vigilant wrote:What a bunch of morons!!
I think you rather understate the case, and "morons" is being far too generous.

Maybe "Morans" is his name, and the moron was just signing his placard? As the punctuation would imply?

TungstenCarbide · Unread post by **TungstenCarbide** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 5:25 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Malleus wrote:
Vigilant wrote:What a bunch of morons!!
I think you rather understate the case, and "morons" is being far too generous.
I had a late night and am not yet up to speed this morning.
Apologies for my embarrassing lack of morning vitriol. It won't happen again, sir.

That snippet was from the Feedback page for VE.
They have now saddled some number of additional projects with the VE.
They are about to start receiving "feedback" from people for whom English is not their native language.

...

There are still over 500 outstanding bugs and who knows how many, as yet, undiscovered ones since large portions of the final feature set are disabled and/or yet to be coded.

And you're widening the distribution of that "product"?

How many of the new project specific bugs simply won't be reported since the dev team is on en.wp and relatively unavailable to someone who speaks Czech?
How many of the new project specific bugs will, when fixed, break something else due to the utter lack of regression testing within the VE team?

They might have had a chance if they got the VE stable prior to wider distribution.
They're truly fucked now.

This is SO stupid and completely avoidable.

Perhaps it's open-source blind faith driving them; "Release soon, release often", "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".

Cedric · Unread post by **Cedric** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 7:52 pm

It would seem that sufficient data is now in and that the time has come:

For inasmuch as Brandon Harris and Oliver Keyes have rendered inestimable "services" to Teh Wiki in relation to the introduction and cram-down of the Visual Editor omnishambles upon Wikimedia websites, they are hereby each awarded The Hasten The Day! Barnstar, along with all demerits and disesteem appertaining thereto.

Fail, utterly complete
Come aboard. We're expecting you.
Fail, life's bitterest curse.
Let it flow, it floats back to you.

Fail Boat soon will be making another run
The Fail Boat threatens something for everyone
Set a course for disaster,
Your mind on catastrophe.

Fail will hurt evermore
It's an snarling scowl on a hostile shore.
Yes FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL! It's FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL! (hey-ah!)

Fail Boat soon will be making another run
The Fail Boat threatens something for everyone
Set a course for disaster,
Your mind on catastrophe.

Fail will hurt evermore
It's an snarling scowl on a hostile shore.
It's FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL! It's FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!
It's FAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIL!
It's the Fail Boat-ah! It's the Fail Boat-ah!

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 9:32 pm

HRIP7 wrote:How is five for and five against consensus? And whatever happened to "No consensus defaults to Keep"?

That's why it's so hard to become a Wikipedia admin. You have to be able to convince people that you can accurately discern the consensus in difficult cases like that. :irony:

Kiefer.Wolfowitz · Unread post by **Kiefer.Wolfowitz** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 9:53 pm

Malleus wrote:
thekohser wrote:Wikipedia editing session for journalism students at Sophia Polytechnic
-- by Rohini Lakshané, a Wikimedian from Mumbai

For the live editing session, the students split into groups of four. After spending a bit of time dealing with connectivity issues and finding out that the Visual Editor doesn’t function on mobile devices and Internet Explorer, everyone started rolling on the demo-cum-live editing session.

...

All the groups got stuck at using the reference/ citations templates on the Visual Editor, so we switched back to wiki syntax. But they found the process of adding references difficult both ways.
Wikimedia Foundation: Bringing you new ways of difficulty.
I can't think of a single Wikimedia software "update" that's not either been completely misguided and pointless or made editing more of a PITA. Were I a conspiracy theorist I might see dark undertones in driving editors away from a project that makes Jimbo no money towards one that does.

It is disturbing that Wikia and WMF co-developed the editor. Did Wikia deploy it yet? Or are Wikipedia editors the lab rats for Wikia's projects?

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sun Jul 21, 2013 10:22 pm

Kiefer.Wolfowitz wrote:
Malleus wrote:
thekohser wrote:Wikipedia editing session for journalism students at Sophia Polytechnic
-- by Rohini Lakshané, a Wikimedian from Mumbai

For the live editing session, the students split into groups of four. After spending a bit of time dealing with connectivity issues and finding out that the Visual Editor doesn’t function on mobile devices and Internet Explorer, everyone started rolling on the demo-cum-live editing session.

...

All the groups got stuck at using the reference/ citations templates on the Visual Editor, so we switched back to wiki syntax. But they found the process of adding references difficult both ways.
Wikimedia Foundation: Bringing you new ways of difficulty.
I can't think of a single Wikimedia software "update" that's not either been completely misguided and pointless or made editing more of a PITA. Were I a conspiracy theorist I might see dark undertones in driving editors away from a project that makes Jimbo no money towards one that does.
It is disturbing that Wikia and WMF co-developed the editor. Did Wikia deploy it yet? Or are Wikipedia editors the lab rats for Wikia's projects?

What's disturbing is that they made some fundamentally bad choices, among them the choice of this crappy visual editor written by kids who had no idea what a decently written WP article ought to look like. Still, kids, what can do you legally do except sack them?

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 2:31 am

Malleus wrote:Still, kids, what can do you legally do except sack them?

No one will be sacked for this. The WMF is profoundly, insanely dysfunctional. They are more likely to fire people for "saying something nasty about Ironholds in a private message" than they are for actual demonstrated incompetence.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 2:51 am

EricBarbour wrote:
Malleus wrote:Still, kids, what can do you legally do except sack them?
No one will be sacked for this. The WMF is profoundly, insanely dysfunctional. They are more likely to fire people for "saying something nasty about Ironholds in a private message" than they are for actual demonstrated incompetence.

True.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 3:19 am

Malleus wrote:
Kiefer.Wolfowitz wrote:
Malleus wrote:
thekohser wrote:Wikipedia editing session for journalism students at Sophia Polytechnic
-- by Rohini Lakshané, a Wikimedian from Mumbai

For the live editing session, the students split into groups of four. After spending a bit of time dealing with connectivity issues and finding out that the Visual Editor doesn’t function on mobile devices and Internet Explorer, everyone started rolling on the demo-cum-live editing session.

...

All the groups got stuck at using the reference/ citations templates on the Visual Editor, so we switched back to wiki syntax. But they found the process of adding references difficult both ways.
Wikimedia Foundation: Bringing you new ways of difficulty.
I can't think of a single Wikimedia software "update" that's not either been completely misguided and pointless or made editing more of a PITA. Were I a conspiracy theorist I might see dark undertones in driving editors away from a project that makes Jimbo no money towards one that does.
It is disturbing that Wikia and WMF co-developed the editor. Did Wikia deploy it yet? Or are Wikipedia editors the lab rats for Wikia's projects?
What's disturbing is that they made some fundamentally bad choices, among them the choice of this crappy visual editor written by kids who had no idea what a decently written WP article ought to look like. Still, kids, what can do you legally do except sack them?

I think you're underestimating, badly, the effect that having a highly publicized disaster project in the Silicon Valley will have on the future employability of anyone on this team. They better hope these are cradle-to-grave jobs at the WMF.

Mason · Unread post by **Mason** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 3:41 am

Vigilant wrote:I think you're underestimating, badly, the effect that having a highly publicized disaster project in the Silicon Valley will have on the future employability of anyone on this team. They better hope these are cradle-to-grave jobs at the WMF.

It is interesting that Keyes has implied more than once that the pay is shitty and he could easily earn more elsewhere.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:16 am

Mason wrote:
Vigilant wrote:I think you're underestimating, badly, the effect that having a highly publicized disaster project in the Silicon Valley will have on the future employability of anyone on this team. They better hope these are cradle-to-grave jobs at the WMF.
It is interesting that Keyes has implied more than once that the pay is shitty and he could easily earn more elsewhere.

I doubt that the incompetent Keyes would be able to earn anything like his WMF salary elsewhere. Has he ever had a real job? And maybe it's more fun for him to be able to threaten women and unpopular editors in the firm's time than it is to serve burgers.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:23 am

Vigilant wrote:I think you're underestimating, badly, the effect that having a highly publicized disaster project in the Silicon Valley will have on the future employability of anyone on this team. They better hope these are cradle-to-grave jobs at the WMF.

Perhaps, but Microsoft developers seem to have got away with it for years. The visual editor is obviously a good idea, but I wonder why it is that none of the developers seem able to recognise that they're currently on a death march.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Mon Jul 22, 2013 4:52 am

Malleus wrote:
Vigilant wrote:I think you're underestimating, badly, the effect that having a highly publicized disaster project in the Silicon Valley will have on the future employability of anyone on this team. They better hope these are cradle-to-grave jobs at the WMF.
Perhaps, but Microsoft developers seem to have got away with it for years. The visual editor is obviously a good idea, but I wonder why it is that none of the developers seem able to recognise that they're currently on a death march.

Microsoft survives.
The people who run failed Microsoft projects do not usually continue as Microsoft employees.

Further, Microsoft is not really a part of Silicon Valley and they're dying.

The WMF are building a "visual" editor. It might be the 500th time this has been done in computing history.

Let's take a look at the advantages that the WMF has when writing the Visual Editor:
They started from a completely known situation. Nothing to discover.
Their customers were enthusiastically waiting for the product.
They have ample money to fund this project.
They control all the inputs, they have historical information on the platform they are replacing.
They have a captive audience that will not march in exodus to a new platform.
They have no real external delivery pressure. Wikipediots can just wait.
There are multitudes of existing examples of WYSIWYG editors in GPL space to use as examples.
There are real development methodologies that they could have adopted when they started.

What they did wrong:

They hired weak developers without proven deliveries.
They set an arbitrary schedule that they would not slip to any appreciable degree.
They appear to have adopted the worst parts of Agile as their methodology and scrapped the good stuff.
They have alienated their customer base to the point that the number one question on the feedback page is, "How can I turn this shit off?"
They went Not Invented Here (NIH) for architecture.
They ignored system level testing and automated build and regression suites.
They hired a guy with Asperger's Syndrome and Bipolar Disorder to be the Customer Face of the project
They routinely denigrated and ignored customer complaints and bug reports.
They rolled out the broken editor (500+ bugs still outstanding, not including miscategorized "missing feature") to wiki projects that they do not have native speakers for?!?!

There are kids fresh out of college who would not have made this much of a hash of it.

It may work out in a couple of months, but they have burned so many bridges that they didn't have to due to rank incompetence at all levels.