The Visual Editor is a huge failure

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Wed Jul 10, 2013 11:44 pm

New topic.

Here's an RFC for pissed off users

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... Editor/RFC

EricBarbour · Unread post by **EricBarbour** » Wed Jul 10, 2013 11:53 pm

Mostly the work of Adam Cuerden. He and Keyes will be at each others throats for months, maybe years, to come.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 12:06 am

This sentiment is echoed all over the project.

Too little too late? Look, I worked on releasing software for a number of years. But this was simply not ready for prime time. I would have fired anyone who proposed releasing this in the business world as pure incompetence. Beta testing is fine, but this would fail most everyone's beta! Why did the testing not reveal bugs? Simply put the software was too buggy to use. Vegaswikian (talk) 23:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

This project exposes the complete incompetence of the WMF's engineering staff.
Top to bottom.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 3:31 am

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... n_problems

I didn't count, but there's at least a hundred known bugs currently.
This is after a "beta" test last December and since the rollout of the "release" about 10 days ago.

It's incomprehensible that these guys would not have been fired from any real company in Silicon Valley.

dogbiscuit · Unread post by **dogbiscuit** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 7:55 am

Vigilant wrote:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... n_problems

I didn't count, but there's at least a hundred known bugs currently.
This is after a "beta" test last December and since the rollout of the "release" about 10 days ago.

It's incomprehensible that these guys would not have been fired from any real company in Silicon Valley.

Remember though that the "beta" was massively feature deficient. They did the classic development mistake of prototyping the basics (hey, we are nearly there, I can bold, italic AND do indentation) and decided to worry about the hard stuff later.

The basic editor is simply going to do what editors have been doing for 30 years and there is a massive code base out there to snaffle.

Classic issue is references which all the time it was in beta was on the to do list, yet that is the stuff that is going to be massively hard to get right with all the variations. So although it has been in beta, anything seriously worth testing hasn't been in beta. It would be interesting to see a list of features and when they made it into the release. I bet they spent their time getting the bolding and indenting perfect because they understood it and they could see what was going on and ignored the stuff that would really make a difference to the ease of creating articles to a high encyclopedic standard (e.g. the automatic ability to insert a reference to a section of a web page, or a link to an Amazon read online page).

Lukeno94 · Unread post by **Lukeno94** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:28 am

So basically the beta test in December was a pre-alpha test then. That explains why we're still in an almost-alpha state now...

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 9:28 am

OK so this was inspired from wikipedia circa 2006:
https://drupal.org/project/footnotes

Also integrates with this:
https://drupal.org/project/biblio/

all of which integrate with a TinyMice or CKEditor

So the biblio module allows you to create a database of books etc. Having done so you can do <bib>bibkey</bib> adds the [n] to the page and link to biblio entry to a footnotes section. Can also intersperse free form <fn>blah blah blah</fn> as well. The CKEditor extensions add a wysiwig front end so you don't have to do the <bib|fn> stuff yourself.

SB_Johnny · Unread post by **SB_Johnny** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 10:25 am

dogbiscuit wrote:They did the classic development mistake of prototyping the basics (hey, we are nearly there, I can bold, italic AND do indentation) and decided to worry about the hard stuff later.

Several months back (or was it years?), Jimbo was making a big hooplah about not having any of those confounding templates on his userpage, because he felt that templates themselves were a major barrier to new "editors". If the visual editor isn't addressing them, it's not really doing anything at all.

It's going to be doubly a failure if it can't at least make references easy to add and modify, because the culture has evolved in such a way that almost any addition of text without a reference will get reverted by one of the "gnomes" or perhaps even a bot, which might be even more frustrating to your average newb.

dogbiscuit · Unread post by **dogbiscuit** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 10:34 am

I did actually go and take a look at it and at least they have got the thing looking good - it does look like the finished page as you edit. That makes you understand why the powers that be would look at it and say "Wow! we should switch this on, it looks so much better than the old editor."

I wonder if in the beta test, the other problem would be that the serious editors would self-select out of the beta because they were comfortable with markup (and also couldn't edit what they needed to edit because of the lack of certain features). And again, how many people would try it, decide it was a heap of junk, go back to an old revision because that was an easy fix and never give feedback.

Randy from Boise · Unread post by **Randy from Boise** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 5:25 pm

dogbiscuit wrote:I did actually go and take a look at it and at least they have got the thing looking good - it does look like the finished page as you edit. That makes you understand why the powers that be would look at it and say "Wow! we should switch this on, it looks so much better than the old editor."

I wonder if in the beta test, the other problem would be that the serious editors would self-select out of the beta because they were comfortable with markup (and also couldn't edit what they needed to edit because of the lack of certain features). And again, how many people would try it, decide it was a heap of junk, go back to an old revision because that was an easy fix and never give feedback.

I've shut the mama down and might give it a look in about a year. Or two.

RfB

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » 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.

The Adversary · Unread post by **The Adversary** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 7:27 pm

This is really quite sad:

Given the scope of the problem (and just how horribly messed-up wikitext really is), it is actually very good, and easier for quick copyedits on complicated articles. And I know how damn hard everyone involved is working on it - David Gerard (T-C-L) 16:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

(My bolding)

If people are working "damn hard", and everyone (except their two friends) are unhappy with their work, then the conclusion is glaringly obvious: the developers do not have the competence for the job.

But there is nothing new here: there is a "culture" (inspired by Jimbo) among certain "insiders", that always preferred "loyalty" to competence. Just that now they threaten to chase away even more editors by defending "damn hardworking" .....nitwits.

eppur si muove · Unread post by **eppur si muove** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 7:37 pm

The Adversary wrote:This is really quite sad:

Given the scope of the problem (and just how horribly messed-up wikitext really is), it is actually very good, and easier for quick copyedits on complicated articles. And I know how damn hard everyone involved is working on it - David Gerard (T-C-L) 16:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
(My bolding)

If people are working "damn hard", and everyone (except their two friends) are unhappy with their work, then the conclusion is glaringly obvious: the developers do not have the competence for the job.

But there is nothing new here: there is a "culture" (inspired by Jimbo) among certain "insiders", that always preferred "loyalty" to competence. Just that now they threaten to chase away even more editors by defending "damn hardworking" .....nitwits.

There is another possibility. The developers might have said that it was not ready for release but senior management might have released it over their heads because it means that they have met the July 2013 release target.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 7:39 pm

eppur si muove wrote:
The Adversary wrote:This is really quite sad:

Given the scope of the problem (and just how horribly messed-up wikitext really is), it is actually very good, and easier for quick copyedits on complicated articles. And I know how damn hard everyone involved is working on it - David Gerard (T-C-L) 16:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
(My bolding)

If people are working "damn hard", and everyone (except their two friends) are unhappy with their work, then the conclusion is glaringly obvious: the developers do not have the competence for the job.

But there is nothing new here: there is a "culture" (inspired by Jimbo) among certain "insiders", that always preferred "loyalty" to competence. Just that now they threaten to chase away even more editors by defending "damn hardworking" .....nitwits.
There is another possibility. The developers might have said that it was not ready for release but senior management might have released it over their heads because it means that they have met the July 2013 release target.

Why not both?
It seems the most likely.

Show me an example of a situation where the WMF has not fumbled the ball.

The Adversary · Unread post by **The Adversary** » Thu Jul 11, 2013 8:00 pm

Vigilant wrote:
eppur si muove wrote:
The Adversary wrote:This is really quite sad:

Given the scope of the problem (and just how horribly messed-up wikitext really is), it is actually very good, and easier for quick copyedits on complicated articles. And I know how damn hard everyone involved is working on it - David Gerard (T-C-L) 16:32, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
(My bolding)

If people are working "damn hard", and everyone (except their two friends) are unhappy with their work, then the conclusion is glaringly obvious: the developers do not have the competence for the job.

But there is nothing new here: there is a "culture" (inspired by Jimbo) among certain "insiders", that always preferred "loyalty" to competence. Just that now they threaten to chase away even more editors by defending "damn hardworking" .....nitwits.
There is another possibility. The developers might have said that it was not ready for release but senior management might have released it over their heads because it means that they have met the July 2013 release target.
Why not both?
It seems the most likely.

Show me an example of a situation where the WMF has not fumbled the ball.

Eppur: I reacted against DG using the fact that someone is "working hard" as an excuse for us all to put up with their incompetence.
It isn´t.

That senior management might have pushed it through just makes it even more sad; (pushes up the incompetence level, so to speak). Any development team could have put their foot down (if they had a spine) -and refused to implement it.

So yeah; I´m with Vigilant here.

crypt.net · Unread post by **crypt.net** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:50 am

dogbiscuit wrote:I wonder if in the beta test, the other problem would be that the serious editors would self-select out of the beta because they were comfortable with markup (and also couldn't edit what they needed to edit because of the lack of certain features). And again, how many people would try it, decide it was a heap of junk, go back to an old revision because that was an easy fix and never give feedback.

A related issue is this: machine generated code tends to be unreadable/unmaintainable by people. Has the WMF investigated how usable the output of this "visual editor" is to people who will simply refuse to use it for whatever reason?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 3:33 pm

crypt.net wrote:
dogbiscuit wrote:I wonder if in the beta test, the other problem would be that the serious editors would self-select out of the beta because they were comfortable with markup (and also couldn't edit what they needed to edit because of the lack of certain features). And again, how many people would try it, decide it was a heap of junk, go back to an old revision because that was an easy fix and never give feedback.
A related issue is this: machine generated code tends to be unreadable/unmaintainable by people. Has the WMF investigated how usable the output of this "visual editor" is to people who will simply refuse to use it for whatever reason?

Why would they do that?
They've already decided that this is going to be the only editor in use by this December.
What reason would they have to test stuff and get metrics, etc if they don't plan to use any data to make decisions.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:29 pm

Was Someone Simply Bored?
The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.

What is the point of this "new" tool again? Or is there actually no real reason for it other than the fact that someone created a "tool" with the hope that it would be used because they had nothing else to do that day, and there was nothing on TV and the "new" video game they were awaiting had not been released yet. Otherwise, aren't "new" technology tools supposed to offer some advantage to their old counterparts - not reduce functionality or reduce the capacity for productivity. Why was this rolled out? Isn't there some means or process of Quality Assurance for application development on Wikipedia? Stevenmitchell (talk) 10:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

There's a new habit of marking things answered by hatting them and pointing people at the perma collapsed FAQ (that answers nothing, really) at the top of the page.

Way to ignore unwanted criticism WMF!

A simple table gets doubled after an unrelated edit of plain text
The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.

I edited All-Ireland Senior Camogie Championship 1992 to fix a simple typo, and VE duplicated a simple table way down the page. I saved it to demonstrate the bug, then undid the edit. Chris the speller yack 04:05, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the report. Part of the problem is that the table in question has content (the entire MATCH RULES and the list that follows) that is moved out of the table leaving the table empty (this is true for the existing output as well -- take a look at the source HTML for that page in your browser). So, when the page is saved, Parsoid sees that foster-parented content ("foster parenting" is a technical term) as new content and duplicates it. We implement lots of tricks to detect bad wikitext like this and gracefully recover from it without introducing dirty diffs while keeping it editable, but obviously that didn't quite work here. We'll use this as a test case for fixing this, but for now, a simple fix would be to simply remove the table around MATCH RULES and the list since it does nothing useful there (creates an invisible empty table in the browser). If you make that fix to the source and re-edit the page in VE, you shouldn't see the problem. Feel free to ask for any clarifications. Hope this helps. Ssastry (talk) 04:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

"Mr. McKittrick, after very careful consideration, sir, I've come to the conclusion that your new defense system sucks." - General Beringer, WarGames. I think it's clear that Visual Editor is not ready.--Paul McDonald (talk) 13:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

DanMurphy · Unread post by **DanMurphy** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:39 pm

I reverted a bit of slander today. When I looked at the revisions it gave me an option to "thank" the slanderer I was reverting (next to the "edit" and "undo" buttons). How fresh is this new horror? First I noticed it. Is it part of this "visual editor" stuff.

Also, Vigilant: The plan is to force the visual editor on their entire userbase whether they like it or not in December? I assumed they would preserve the option (because no one could be that stupid).

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:48 pm

DanMurphy wrote:I reverted a bit of slander today. When I looked at the revisions it gave me an option to "thank" the slanderer I was reverting (next to the "edit" and "undo" buttons). How fresh is this new horror? First I noticed it. Is it part of this "visual editor" stuff.

Also, Vigilant: The plan is to force the visual editor on their entire userbase whether they like it or not in December? I assumed they would preserve the option (because no one could be that stupid).

Well, who knows what the fuck they'll do now. This abortion of a software project has generated so much antipathy for WMF that they will likely revisit their plans.

Visual Editor:
• By end of December 2013, after additional stability improvements and bug fixes, Visual Editor will
be deployed as the default editor for most Wikimedia wikis, beyond the July Wikipedia rollout. By
end of June 2014, opt-in experimental real-time collaboration and chat will be deployed to
production, leading to full build-out in the default mode in 2014-15.

They may even leave the "edit source" tab in place, but they were sure ready to move the EditorEnema into place on en.wp without an optout when this first launched.

Visual Editor
As per the 2012-13 plan, we will deploy the Visual Editor as the default editing environment (invoked when
clicking the “Edit” button) to all/most Wikipedias (some language-related blockers may remain) by July
2013. Provided we achieve that goal, by July 2013 we’ll have an editing environment that will be of
sufficient quality for new contributors and for at least routine edits by experienced contributors.

Sure you will...

To increase usage and to support rollouts to remaining wikis, we expect that significant time in 2013-14 will
need to be spent on the following:
• implementing required features;
• fixing bugs and improving language compatibility;
• improving performance.
As Visual Editor becomes a robust, stable, and performing default editing environment, we will shift our
attention to a new frontier: real-time collaboration and chat. Collaborative editing environments (Google
Docs, Etherpad, etc.) have proven that this combination is very powerful.

Hope springs eternal

The 2012 Editor Survey found the community believes the WMF is doing a good job; when asked about
seven specific activity areas of the Foundation, its general performance and the direction in which it is
going, the overwhelming majority of opinions given by our users were positive. Reactions to the release of
prototype versions of Visual Editor have been positive, suggesting that many community members
appreciate such editor retention initiatives.

Now you're just smoking crack.

With the staggering and bewildering number and severity of errors showing up during this forced alpha test, I CANNOT WAIT to see what will happen with non-roman alphabets.
This is an epic disaster waiting to get worse.
Should be fun when they add Internet Explorer support too.

Ming · Unread post by **Ming** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:50 pm

Of course the difference between "the default editor" and "the only editor" is, well, what we have already...

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 4:56 pm

Ming wrote:Of course the difference between "the default editor" and "the only editor" is, well, what we have already...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that at the rollout of VE, there was no "edit source' tab available and that much screaming and gnashing of teeth resulted in it being added back fairly quickly.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 5:45 pm

I'm sure it was just a big mistake

All the older VisualEditor tags have vanished

Please read: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#VisualEditor tag not working correctly

It appears that that "Tag: VisualEditor" label on revisions made with Visual Editor has been (accidentally?) deleted from all older edits. As a result, we presently have no way of tracking most of the VisualEditor edits made during the first week of deployment. Dragons flight (talk) 17:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Good luck reconstructing and finding all those *broken* edits.

@Eloquence, Fram: WTF! I can see what appears to have happened. Recently (within the last day, and possibly within the last few hours) the devs altered the VisualEditor tag (including slightly changing its appearance). As what I can only hope was an unexpected side effect of their change, all of the VisualEditor tags added up to that point are now gone. Looking at the history of Asiana Airlines 214 [41], a current event where I know some people were using Visual Editor, there are now no tagged revisions older than four hours ago (despite multiple edit summaries mentioning cleaning up after VE). My own test space, also shows all the tags related to edits from previous days have vanished [42]. Reviewing a selection of articles where Fram was doing cleanup similarly shows all the older VisualEditor Tags seem to have vanished. So it appears we have completely lost the records of how VE was used during that first week. I daresay that if that information still exists in the database then figuring out how to retrieve it should be a priority, as not having those edits flagged will make it considerably harder to identify corruption created by VE and also much harder to measure statistics related to the deployment. Dragons flight (talk) 17:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

AHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAHAHHAAHHAHHAHAHAHHAHA

Who cares when the plan has been all along to make VE the default (read only) editor?

How long until Dragons Flight is indeffed for "incivility"?

Ming · Unread post by **Ming** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 6:24 pm

They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 6:35 pm

Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.

Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.

Unread post by **Zoloft** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 8:12 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.
Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.

Conversely, NOT using VE when you first create an account will be reason to accuse you of being a 'returned experienced editor.'

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 9:22 pm

Vigilant wrote:
crypt.net wrote:
dogbiscuit wrote:I wonder if in the beta test, the other problem would be that the serious editors would self-select out of the beta because they were comfortable with markup (and also couldn't edit what they needed to edit because of the lack of certain features). And again, how many people would try it, decide it was a heap of junk, go back to an old revision because that was an easy fix and never give feedback.
A related issue is this: machine generated code tends to be unreadable/unmaintainable by people. Has the WMF investigated how usable the output of this "visual editor" is to people who will simply refuse to use it for whatever reason?
Why would they do that?
They've already decided that this is going to be the only editor in use by this December.
What reason would they have to test stuff and get metrics, etc if they don't plan to use any data to make decisions.

When have they ever used data to help with decision making?

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 9:23 pm

Zoloft wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.
Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.
Conversely, NOT using VE when you first create an account will be reason to accuse you of being a 'returned experienced editor.'

It will indeed.

Wer900 · Unread post by **Wer900** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 10:41 pm

Malleus wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
crypt.net wrote:
dogbiscuit wrote:I wonder if in the beta test, the other problem would be that the serious editors would self-select out of the beta because they were comfortable with markup (and also couldn't edit what they needed to edit because of the lack of certain features). And again, how many people would try it, decide it was a heap of junk, go back to an old revision because that was an easy fix and never give feedback.
A related issue is this: machine generated code tends to be unreadable/unmaintainable by people. Has the WMF investigated how usable the output of this "visual editor" is to people who will simply refuse to use it for whatever reason?
Why would they do that?
They've already decided that this is going to be the only editor in use by this December.
What reason would they have to test stuff and get metrics, etc if they don't plan to use any data to make decisions.
When have they ever used data to help with decision making?

When have they even collected all important metrics themselves, rather than relying on scripts from the Toolserver?

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Fri Jul 12, 2013 10:48 pm

Wer900 wrote:When have they even collected all important metrics themselves, rather than relying on scripts from the Toolserver?

My point was, it doesn't matter where or how or even if they capture the data if the outcome is forgone conclusion.

The WMF has decided that EVERYONE will use the EditorEnema and that's that.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 12:02 am

More satisfied customers

Seems obvious that it doesn't work, yet, and that experienced editors are spending more time fixing the buggy edits than the value of the edits made. I'm not sure I agree with the "never again", but this editor needs to be unreleased until the hundreds of bugs which actively damage articles without (apparently by design) notifying the editor of potential problems are fixed. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 21:26, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Obviously, only "never again" should things be released in this way - a poorly planned, poorly tested, unfinished, and known-to-be-buggy release is forced onto everyone, without an opt-out at launch, and followed by stonewalling when faced with criticism. Adam Cuerden (talk) 21:53, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Hard to disagree.

Even better, they were explicitly warned by their pre-alpha testers not to release the project
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... r/A/B_test

This is not a good idea.

In my opinion, this is not a good idea. There are too many bugs, too much uneditable stuff, too much inconsistency between the preview and the actual page, and just too soon. CSS and HTML elements are a disaster, and by disaster, I really mean disaster. See the article Chloroplast as normal, and then under the visual editor. Even without HTML, tables are problematic and do not display right, any image format other than a thumbnail utterly fails, {{reflist}} is buggy and ineditable, z-index bugs make a lot of buttons and content physically inaccessible, and the disappearing table of contents can be misleading when trying to align images to their corresponding text. Fix the bugs, then release it to the newcomers who will probably be more scared off by a broken, misaligned, malrendered, misleading, frustrating visual editor then the trusty wikimarkup. By all means, keep improving Visual editor—it's a step in the right direction. Just don't unleash it until it's ready, and for pete's sake, put a bright red button at the top of the toolbar that new users can use to turn the thing off, without having to go dig around in the preferences.—Kelvinsong (talk) 19:20, 17 June 2013 (UTC)

Good to know the WMF is always thoughtfully listening to feedback.

As long as it doesn't interfere with their stated goals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... r/A/B_test

Why we are doing it

The primary goal of the deployment is to get an estimate for what kind of conversion rate we can expect. At the moment, we know that very few people who create an account, and indeed not all of those who hit the 'edit' button, ever complete an edit or become members of the community. One of the reasons for this is that Wikipedia, unlike almost everywhere else on the Internet in 2013, expects users to learn a markup language to properly contribute. Accordingly we suspect that the VisualEditor will lead to far more new users being able to edit, which is undoubtedly a good thing. It'll increase the number of people editing Wikipedia.

One unknown with this increase is the impact it will have on existing workflows. All of these, both negative (handling vandalism) and positive (handling user requests for help, for example) are set up around the current conversion rate. As a community, we're not used to having a flood of newcomers, and there may be negative side effects of bringing a large number of newcomers in at once, even if it's ultimately a net positive. This test will help give us an idea of how many users we can expect with the VisualEditor, whether any increase causes problems, and if there's anything we can do to help mitigate those problems.

A secondary (but very much secondary) goal is to see what bugs come out with more sustained use of the VisualEditor so that we can implement necessary fixes before further rollout.

Good luck, bucko.

I'm struggling to come up with ways that would have made this cowpat of a product launch any worse...
Perhaps having a bobble headed Jimmy Wales animation pop up and ask them for money?

Timely

Slow to scroll, even on a pretty good computer with a fast internet connection.

I'm on a relatively good computer (the one I use for all my Feature Pictures work) with a good internet connection (BT Broadband).

I thought I'd see if VisualEditor had improved at all. Just scrolling down a largish page was jumpy, awkward, and laggy, even now, after supposed improvements.

Jumpy, awkward, and laggy are just going to put users off. When's the A/B survey results due? And do you really think they're going to show VE well? You launched buggy software, that slows good computers to a crawl when scrolling after several rounds of bugfixing, and think it'll have higher retention? Adam Cuerden (talk) 23:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

My magic eight ball says .... "Absolutely not!"

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 12:17 am

Oh Phillipe, I think we know this is a lie now.
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/06/06/pr ... ikipedias/

Your early testing means that we can ensure a better VisualEditor and a smoother deployment for everyone.

Of course, everything is relative.

Imagine if they'd hired a qualified director of software and let them pick their own team.
Perhaps we wouldn't be here

But then, the WMF has never really had a knack for hiring people who were competent.
C'est la vie.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:09 am

Once again, showing they have no regression capability in place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... lEditor.29

Restoring a missing user preference (VisualEditor)

According to bugzilla:
“

> Can you explain what the code in this area looks like? There _was_ a user
> preference previously, it's just gone missing. Is this simply a matter of
> setting a configuration variable?

Yes, it's just a matter of removing "$wgHiddenPrefs[] = 'visualeditor-enable';"
in CommonSettings.php.
”

Can't we do that? We were literally promised this setting would remain in place before launch, and, at the moment, the only instructions to find the well-hidden hack in the gadgets are at WP:VisualEditor, which I really doubt anyone who missed the banner is going to see. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:07, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Every fix they make seems to break something else.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:14 am

Vigilant wrote:Once again, showing they have no regression capability in place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia ... lEditor.29
Restoring a missing user preference (VisualEditor)

According to bugzilla:
“

> Can you explain what the code in this area looks like? There _was_ a user
> preference previously, it's just gone missing. Is this simply a matter of
> setting a configuration variable?

Yes, it's just a matter of removing "$wgHiddenPrefs[] = 'visualeditor-enable';"
in CommonSettings.php.
”

Can't we do that? We were literally promised this setting would remain in place before launch, and, at the moment, the only instructions to find the well-hidden hack in the gadgets are at WP:VisualEditor, which I really doubt anyone who missed the banner is going to see. Adam Cuerden (talk) 01:07, 13 July 2013 (UTC)
Every fix they make seems to break something else.

A sure sign of incompetence, if another were needed.

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:22 am

Zoloft wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.
Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.
Conversely, NOT using VE when you first create an account will be reason to accuse you of being a 'returned experienced editor.'

From now on, all my socks will use Internet Explorer, then.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 2:28 am

mac wrote:
Zoloft wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.
Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.
Conversely, NOT using VE when you first create an account will be reason to accuse you of being a 'returned experienced editor.'
From now on, all my socks will use Internet Explorer, then.

Browser spoofing is pretty commonplace these days, so you can pretend to be using any browser you like, but why are you creating socks in the first place? To do what?

mac · Unread post by **mac** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 9:39 am

Malleus wrote:
mac wrote:
Zoloft wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.
Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.
Conversely, NOT using VE when you first create an account will be reason to accuse you of being a 'returned experienced editor.'
From now on, all my socks will use Internet Explorer, then.
Browser spoofing is pretty commonplace these days, so you can pretend to be using any browser you like, but why are you creating socks in the first place? To do what?

Ban evasion, strictly because I do not feel my ban was fair, so owning a drawer full of socks makes me feel better about being banned.

Poetlister · Unread post by **Poetlister** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:21 pm

DanMurphy wrote:I reverted a bit of slander today. When I looked at the revisions it gave me an option to "thank" the slanderer I was reverting (next to the "edit" and "undo" buttons). How fresh is this new horror? First I noticed it. Is it part of this "visual editor" stuff.

Also, Vigilant: The plan is to force the visual editor on their entire userbase whether they like it or not in December? I assumed they would preserve the option (because no one could be that stupid).

At one time, I used a system that insisted that every piece of vandalism and nonsense I reverted was a "good faith" edit. I soon got sick of that!

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:25 pm

mac wrote:
Malleus wrote:
mac wrote:
Zoloft wrote:
Vigilant wrote:
Ming wrote:They will never get rid of the source editor; there will always be a way to get at the source and edit it directly. Maybe its use will eventually be restricted to admins, though I doubt that, considering how much flack they took over the Orange Bar of Notification. the idea that they'll get everyone to use the WYSIWYG interface is just somebody's wishful utopian thinking. What's more likely to happen is that using the Visual Editor will be taken as a sign of being a newbie/outsider.
Exactly.
It'll be the noobtube.
Conversely, NOT using VE when you first create an account will be reason to accuse you of being a 'returned experienced editor.'
From now on, all my socks will use Internet Explorer, then.
Browser spoofing is pretty commonplace these days, so you can pretend to be using any browser you like, but why are you creating socks in the first place? To do what?
Ban evasion, strictly because I do not feel my ban was fair, so owning a drawer full of socks makes me feel better about being banned.

Many bans and blocks aren't fair, and nor are they intended to be. They're simply intended to suppress the masses, leading to a quiet life for the overlords.

Lukeno94 · Unread post by **Lukeno94** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:29 pm

The thank button has been there for a month or two I think, and I actually quite like it - it's easier than going and posting on someone's talk page.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:31 pm

Lukeno94 wrote:The thank button has been there for a month or two I think, and I actually quite like it - it's easier than going and posting on someone's talk page.

I quite liked it too, as I could switch it off and ignore it and it didn't clutter up my talk page.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 5:50 pm

Malleus wrote:
Lukeno94 wrote:The thank button has been there for a month or two I think, and I actually quite like it - it's easier than going and posting on someone's talk page.
I quite liked it too, as I could switch it off and ignore it and it didn't clutter up my talk page.

Don't worry Luke, the devs will break that switch and Malleus will be back here shortly, swearing in disbelief with the rest of us.

Malleus · Unread post by **Malleus** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 6:16 pm

Vigilant wrote:
Malleus wrote:
Lukeno94 wrote:The thank button has been there for a month or two I think, and I actually quite like it - it's easier than going and posting on someone's talk page.
I quite liked it too, as I could switch it off and ignore it and it didn't clutter up my talk page.
Don't worry Luke, the devs will break that switch and Malleus will be back here shortly, swearing in disbelief with the rest of us.

I won't be swearing in disbelief at anything the devs do. What they've already done defies belief.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 9:54 pm

More goodness from the Feedback page

Confusing and erratic

This is all very confusing and counter-intuitive, and it doesn't even seem to work the same way twice. I can't help but think that something isn't working correctly! There doesn't seem to be a way to add new references, for example. Yes, there's a "create new reference" tab, but all it does is create a blank reference that can't be edited - presumably it isn't meant to do this!

Templates sometimes let you add new parameters, and sometimes don't, and the ones I've tried to use (convert and cite journal, so far) either output gooblidigook or nothing at all. It doesn't even behave the same way with the same template on repeated attempts. Obviously, I haven't saved any of the edits I've produced so far with VisEd, because nothing I've tried to write with it was functional.

Something is clearly screwy (and possibly at my end, not yours), but I can't figure out what. I get that wikimarkup isn't intuitive for new users, but I can't help thinking that neither is this.

At the very least, the instructions on the Help page need to be greatly improved. Half the time, I can't figure out what they mean. "Add parameters", for instance, isn't really sufficient as the entire description of a particular step. Add parameters how, exactly? Anaxial (talk) 17:03, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Nothing says quality like confusing and erratic.
Makes you wonder if he's not describing the staff as well.

Follifoot

The village of Follifoot is approximately 4 miles from Harrogate not 2 miles as stated in the article. My attempts to edit and save the alteration have been unsuccessful. Perhaps someone with more knowledge could correct the article for me. Janebly (talk) 11:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Tricky stuff in the EditorEnema, apparently.
Please note: this is more than two weeks post launch!
Good work, WMF devs! Way to empower the surfacing of editor retention metrics agile scrum *beep*... *beep* ....

Problem Adding web link

I seem to be having difficult in addin a web link so going back to normal editor Glh54 (talk) 08:40, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Clearly a tricky task, but they left with another satisfied customer!

Table editting

I am unable to edit tables and the background colors used in it. Saha.rj (talk) 05:24, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Table editing is most certainly a "power user only" task.
No editor for you!

Template display error: Template:Discogs master

When I edit the External links section of Bossalinis & Fooliyones, the {{Discogs master|523614}} template vanishes from view. It's still there and I could even get VE to edit that template, but it's not displayed. Huon (talk) 00:02, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

When even your RfA candates can't use the damn thing, maybe it's time to pull it and regroup.
Nawwww, we're verbalizing nouns with our scrummy agileness. We don't need any advice from people with vastly more experience than we have.

Unread post by **Zoloft** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 10:17 pm

I prefer the pronunciation 'VisualEnema.'

Time to pull the plug.

Vigilant · Unread post by **Vigilant** » Sat Jul 13, 2013 11:55 pm

Zoloft wrote:I prefer the pronunciation 'VisualEnema.'

Time to pull the plug.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 7:39 am

Vigilant wrote:
Malleus wrote:
Lukeno94 wrote:The thank button has been there for a month or two I think, and I actually quite like it - it's easier than going and posting on someone's talk page.
I quite liked it too, as I could switch it off and ignore it and it didn't clutter up my talk page.
Don't worry Luke, the devs will break that switch and Malleus will be back here shortly, swearing in disbelief with the rest of us.

As it is mostly annoying the 'old guard', perhaps the WMF are using this as a way of driving them away. In any case they all have far too much invested in WP to leave of their own volition. The changes to flickr the other month had 1000s complaining and leaving, and 6 weeks on they are still complaining, but NOT leaving. Same thing when they add video to the site, same when they add content filters. Same on facebook, etc. The gross errors in the VE will be fixed, and the complainers will just suck it up.

The experience may give the WMF the backbone to address stuff like porn images, and BLP issues.

Lukeno94 · Unread post by **Lukeno94** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 8:47 am

I don't think the thank button is worth complaining about - if you don't like it, disable it. Otherwise, it's not broken, unlike the Visual Editor, and leaving Wikipedia over the thank button, and solely that, would be retarded.

lilburne · Unread post by **lilburne** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 8:56 am

Lukeno94 wrote:I don't think the thank button is worth complaining about - if you don't like it, disable it. Otherwise, it's not broken, unlike the Visual Editor, and leaving Wikipedia over the thank button, and solely that, would be retarded.

Given what is known about it, and what the chances of fixing any of the problems are, isn't any reason to stay there retarded?

PS: I noticed in the 'Decline' talk that every thing was about increasing editor numbers, nothing about content quality.

Unread post by **HRIP7** » Sun Jul 14, 2013 2:25 pm

lilburne wrote:
Lukeno94 wrote:I don't think the thank button is worth complaining about - if you don't like it, disable it. Otherwise, it's not broken, unlike the Visual Editor, and leaving Wikipedia over the thank button, and solely that, would be retarded.
Given what is known about it, and what the chances of fixing any of the problems are, isn't any reason to stay there retarded?

PS: I noticed in the 'Decline' talk that every thing was about increasing editor numbers, nothing about content quality.

That's because there is no bad press about content quality ... which is partly a reflection of Kozierok's first law:

"The apparent accuracy of a Wikipedia article is inversely proportional to the depth of the reader's knowledge of the topic."

Leveson sure thought the article about the Independent looked alright. Same with Glucojasinogen, now actually mentioned in three journals.

Another content quality study would be useful, focusing in particular on human sciences.