The Visual Editor is a huge failure

We examine the less than successful stories of the Wikimedia Foundation to create and use technology. The poster boy for this forum is Visual Editor.
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Poetlister » Mon Dec 07, 2020 9:31 pm

No Ledge wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 8:47 pm
What namespaces can VisualEditor visually edit? Last I knew, it couldn't edit talk pages; FLOW was their solution for that.
I hadn't realised that. If it can only edit articles, then the percentage of article edits using it must be quite a bit higher than the proportion of all edits, which is what is usually quoted on here.
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Vigilant » Mon Dec 07, 2020 10:24 pm

4.2% of non-bot(human) article space edits on en.wp used Visual Edsel by my last count a week or so ago.
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Moral Hazard » Mon Dec 07, 2020 11:32 pm

Osborne wrote:
Mon Dec 07, 2020 2:53 am
At the same table with the former product manager of Visual Dream. Recognize?
Image
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Vigilant » Mon Jun 28, 2021 10:03 pm

Checking back in, Recent Changes shows that 7.2% of edits to article space on en.wp are Visual Editor.

Most are smaller edits.
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Ming » Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:19 pm


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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Vigilant » Tue Jul 20, 2021 3:53 pm

Ming wrote:
Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:19 pm
Ming came across this today: Category:Wikipedians who have turned off VisualEditor (T-H-L).
And the much smaller variant Category:Wikipedians_who_like_VisualEditor (T-H-L)
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Poetlister » Tue Jul 20, 2021 4:54 pm

Ming wrote:
Tue Jul 20, 2021 1:19 pm
Ming came across this today: Category:Wikipedians who have turned off VisualEditor (T-H-L).
This is probably very incomplete. I doubt that most editors who do it bother to announce the fact publicly. I certainly don't.
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Oct 21, 2022 1:58 am

ARISE!
The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Post by Vigilant » Wed Jul 10, 2013 3:44 pm
Visual Edsel has been underdevelopment for about a decade now.
In 'Recent Changes', it's being used on about 12% of total article changes.
These changes tend to be very small.

How much money has been spent on this boondoggle?
How much more will be spent?

How much longer for the Mo:leMan's fever dream of the Visual Cowpat being the only editor allowed on en.wp?

Why would anyone expect ANY engineering effort at the WeMakeFailures plant to be any better?

When will Teh Communitah notice that the WMF is no longer an engineering shop but an advocacy firm?
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Vigilant » Fri Oct 21, 2022 2:03 am

Vigilant wrote:
Thu Jul 11, 2013 5:57 pm
And here we are again in the morning with 30 more reported problems.

It's somewhat staggering that for such a smallish, straight forward project like VE that their bugzilla database has passed 50K reported issues.
They were issuing bugzilla entries at around 30K during the December pre-pre-alpha shitfest.

It would be interesting to see how many projects are included in that database, how many bugs are for VE and when they were reported.
I'd bet that the "dev team" and "test team" found and fixed almost no bugs outside of these editor based gulag tests in December and July.
Everything I see points to no formal test and/or regression infrastructure.

I'd go look, but I'm a lazy bastard.

Absolutely the case.
This might sound a bit snarky (and isn't meant as criticism of the devs who worked on this), but careful testing is only necessary when one actually expects to have a decision to make. As best I can tell, all the major decisions have already been made (VE is the way of the future!). I don't think there is any scenario that would lead to disabling this, hence deciding whether it is a success isn't actually very important. That said, I'm sure the WMF would like to be able to tell donors that they have accomplished X, Y, and Z during 2013. Those accomplishments could be phrased in terms of performance benchmarks (especially if they do get good numbers), but they could just as well be explained in terms of products created. Personally, I do hope that the WMF follows-up and studies the impact of this change, but I doubt there are any specific goals that they feel must be met. Dragons flight (talk) 05:16, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
The WMF seems to be an organization that is immune to learning.
It's not that they couldn't; it's that they prefer to be ignorant so as to avoid offending the people who are fucking up the hardest.

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.
Given their disdain for automated regression testing, I'll bet VE is a thorn in the side of the WMF for many, many years to come as new features are coded in by even newer programmers which break other features.

Editors on wikipedia, get ready to become permanent, unwilling regression testers every time you log in.
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Re: The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Unread post by Anroth » Fri Oct 21, 2022 7:11 am

Someone needs to have a chat with the WMF about effective change management and benefits realisation.

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