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Revision as of 13:40, 25 September 2013 editWidefox (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users, Page movers, IP block exemptions, New page reviewers, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers106,833 edits English only, more concise (only one event in rollout)← Previous edit Revision as of 08:03, 26 September 2013 edit undoJohn Vandenberg (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users68,507 edits +ref http://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-visualeditor-kww-patch/Next edit →
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'''VisualEditor''' ('''VE''') is a ] that provides a "]" (WYSIWYG) ] to ], developed by the ] in partnership with ].<ref name="TheVerge">{{cite web|work=]|url=http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/22/3110130/wikimedia-visual-editor-prototype |title=Wikimedia releases updated prototype for simplified visual editor |author= Andrew Webster |date=2012-06-22 |accessdate=2013-07-27}}</ref><ref name="WPproj"/> The opt-out ] was enabled by default in July 2013 for ] and several of the largest Wikipedias.<ref name="thenextweb">{{cite web|work=]|url=http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/07/02/wikimedia-rolls-out-its-wysiwyg-visual-editor-for-logged-in-users-accessing-wikipedia-articles-in-english/ |title=Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged-in users accessing Misplaced Pages articles in English |author=Emil Protalinski|date=2013-07-02 |accessdate=2013-07-06}}</ref><ref name="WPproj"/> On 24 September 2013 the English Misplaced Pages's VisualEditor was changed from "opt-out" to "opt-in". '''VisualEditor''' ('''VE''') is a ] that provides a "]" (WYSIWYG) ] to ], developed by the ] in partnership with ].<ref name="TheVerge">{{cite web|work=]|url=http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/22/3110130/wikimedia-visual-editor-prototype |title=Wikimedia releases updated prototype for simplified visual editor |author= Andrew Webster |date=2012-06-22 |accessdate=2013-07-27}}</ref><ref name="WPproj"/> The opt-out ] was enabled by default in July 2013 for ] and several of the largest Wikipedias.<ref name="thenextweb">{{cite web|work=]|url=http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/07/02/wikimedia-rolls-out-its-wysiwyg-visual-editor-for-logged-in-users-accessing-wikipedia-articles-in-english/ |title=Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged-in users accessing Misplaced Pages articles in English |author=Emil Protalinski|date=2013-07-02 |accessdate=2013-07-06}}</ref><ref name="WPproj"/> On 24 September 2013 the English Misplaced Pages's VisualEditor was changed from "opt-out" to "opt-in".<ref>http://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-visualeditor-kww-patch/</ref>


The Wikimedia Foundation considered it the most challenging technical project to date, while '']'' has called it Misplaced Pages's most significant change.<ref name="TheEconomist" /> According to the '']'', Wikimedia Foundation's pursuit of wider participation may risk alienating existing editors.<ref name="TheDailyDot" /> The Wikimedia Foundation considered it the most challenging technical project to date, while '']'' has called it Misplaced Pages's most significant change.<ref name="TheEconomist" /> According to the '']'', Wikimedia Foundation's pursuit of wider participation may risk alienating existing editors.<ref name="TheDailyDot" />

Revision as of 08:03, 26 September 2013

For the VisualEditor deployment on the English Misplaced Pages, see Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor. "Visual Editor" redirects here. For character mode editors, see Visual editor. For the journalism organization, see Visual Editors.
It has been suggested that this article be merged into MediaWiki. (Discuss) Proposed since August 2013.
VisualEditor
VisualEditor save dialog
Developer(s)Wikimedia Foundation and Wikia
Repository
Written inJavaScript, Node.js, PHP
Operating systemCross-platform
PlatformMediaWiki extension
TypeWiki
LicenseMIT
Websitewww.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor

VisualEditor (VE) is a MediaWiki extension that provides a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" (WYSIWYG) online rich-text editor to Misplaced Pages, developed by the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with Wikia. The opt-out beta was enabled by default in July 2013 for Mediawiki.org and several of the largest Wikipedias. On 24 September 2013 the English Misplaced Pages's VisualEditor was changed from "opt-out" to "opt-in".

The Wikimedia Foundation considered it the most challenging technical project to date, while The Economist has called it Misplaced Pages's most significant change. According to the The Daily Dot, Wikimedia Foundation's pursuit of wider participation may risk alienating existing editors.

Development

Main articles: MediaWiki § Editing interface, Misplaced Pages, and Wikia

The original web-based Misplaced Pages editor provided by MediaWiki is a plain browser based text editor where authors had to learn the wiki markup language to edit. A WYSIWYG editor for Misplaced Pages has been planned for years in order to remove the need to learn the wiki markup language, thus reducing the technical hurdle for would-be Wikipedians, enabling wider participation in editing, and subsequently reversing the decline in editor numbers of 50,000 in 2006 to 35,000 in 2011, having peaked in 2007. It was part a $1m project developing new features and making improvements. An aim of the project is to allow both the former wiki markup editing and editing with the WYSIWYG VisualEditor. According to Wikimedia Foundation's Jay Walsh, the hope is to redress under-represented contributions from Arabic, Portuguese, and Indic-language versions of the site.

According to Wikimedia "There are various reasons that lead existing and prospective contributors not to edit; among them, the complexity of wiki markup is a major issue. One of VisualEditor’s goals is to empower knowledgeable and good-faith users to edit and become valuable members of the community, even if they’re not wiki markup experts. We also hope that, with time, experienced editors will find VisualEditor useful for some of their editing tasks." In 2012, Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said "we don't think that the visual editor, in and of itself, is going to solve the challenge", and Misplaced Pages co-founder Jimmy Wales remarked “This is epically important”.

Rollout

MediaWiki is used by a large number of wikis, with smaller sites originally conceived as being rolled out first. VisualEditor was planned to be rolled out on the English-language Misplaced Pages for editors with registered accounts, and then for anonymous editors. The alpha version was made available to select users in December 2012, widened to all registered users in April. The beta became the default editor for users logged-into the English-language Misplaced Pages in July 2013. Most of the other language services were planned to follow in the weeks after that. As of July 2013, the VisualEditor does not support the broad range of functionality that the classic editor provides using wiki markup. Despite that, and Wikimedia being aware that some editors prefer the classic editor, it hopes most editors will use VisualEditor.

Technical

Parsoid HTML-RDFa content model
Main article: MediaWiki

The first attempt at developing the VisualEditor failed, after which the Wikimedia Foundation joined forces with Wikia to complete the project. The implementation encountered challenges with the wiki markup language (the basis for Misplaced Pages articles), due to it being continuously extended over 12 years to include seldom-used rich and complex features making reproduction of the final article appearance dependent on many factors that were not easy to reproduce. The technical implementation required improvements to MediaWiki in parsing, wiki markup language, the DOM and final HTML conversion. A necessary component is a parser server called Parsoid which is written in Node.js as was created to convert in both directions between wikitext and a format suitable for VisualEditor. Misplaced Pages considered it the most challenging technical project to date.

Supported web browsers include recent versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Safari, with currently no support for Internet Explorer, or mention of Opera. As of September 2013, the Misplaced Pages project page states that VisualEditor is temporarily disabled for users of Internet Explorer 9 and 10, with no plans to support Internet Explorer 8 and earlier.

Reception

According to the The Daily Dot, Wikimedia Foundation's pursuit of more users may be at the risk of alienating the existing editors. Some experienced editors have expressed concerns about the roll out and bugs, with the German Misplaced Pages community voting overwhelmingly against making the VisualEditor the new default, and expressing a preference for making it an "opt-in" feature instead. Despite these complaints, the Wikimedia Foundation continued with the rollout. According to The Register "Our brief exploration suggests it certainly removes any need to so much as remember what kind of parenthesis belongs where." According to The Economist's L.M., it is "the most significant change in Misplaced Pages's short history." Softpedia ran an article titled "Misplaced Pages's New VisualEditor Is the Best Update in Years and You Can Make It Better".

The Daily Dot reported on 24 September 2013 that the Wikimedia Foundation had experienced a mounting backlash from the English Misplaced Pages community, which criticised the VisualEditor as slow, poorly implemented and prone to break articles' existing text formatting. In the resulting "test of wills" between the community and the Foundation, a volunteer administrator overrode the Wikimedia Foundation's settings to change the VisualEditor's "opt-out" setting to "opt-in". The change stuck.

See also

Notes

  1. other text editors are supported; see Misplaced Pages:Text editor support
  2. Respective Misplaced Pages websites: Arabic, Portuguese and Indic languages' Urdu, Hindi, Bihari, Gujarati
  3. www.mediawiki.org/Parsoid

References

  1. LICENSE.txt, VisualEditor source code repository, git.wikimedia.org
  2. Andrew Webster (2012-06-22). "Wikimedia releases updated prototype for simplified visual editor". The Verge. Retrieved 2013-07-27.
  3. ^ "Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor". Misplaced Pages. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
  4. ^ Emil Protalinski (2013-07-02). "Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged-in users accessing Misplaced Pages articles in English". The Next Web. Retrieved 2013-07-06.
  5. http://www.dailydot.com/news/wikipedia-visualeditor-kww-patch/
  6. ^ L.M. (2011-12-13). "Changes at Misplaced Pages: Seeing things". The Economist. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  7. ^ Tim Sampson (2012-07-04). "Will Misplaced Pages's pretty new editing software solve its recruitment crisis?". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2013-07-27.
  8. Martin Brinkmann (2012-02-24). "Misplaced Pages Visual Editor Coming Soon". ghacks. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  9. ehe (2011-12-14). "Wikimedia testing visual editor". h-online. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  10. Megan Garber (2012-07-12). "On the Ugliness of Misplaced Pages". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2013-07-29.
  11. Gene Ryan Briones (2012-06-21). "Wikimedia launches new prototype "visual editor" for Misplaced Pages". ubergizmo.com. Retrieved 2013-07-29.
  12. Jamie Keene (2011-12-15). "Wikimedia Foundation previews simplified visual editor". The Verge. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  13. Gabriela Vatu (2013-06-06). "Misplaced Pages's Visual Editor to Be Rolled Out". Softpedia. Retrieved 2013-07-06.
  14. ^ Simon Sharwood (2013-06-07). "Wikimedia edges closer to banishing Wikitext". The Register. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  15. Terence Huynh (2013-07-01). "Misplaced Pages finally gets a WYSIWYG visual editor". techgeek.com.au. Retrieved 2013-07-29.
  16. ^ djwm (2012-12-13). "VisualEditor launched in Misplaced Pages". h-online. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
  17. "The Architecture of Open Source Applications (Volume 2) : MediaWiki". aosabook.org. Retrieved 2013-07-27. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |authors= ignored (help)
  18. Andrew Orlowski (2013-08-01). "Wikipedians say no to Jimmy's 'buggy' WYSIWYG editor". The Register. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
  19. Lucian Parfeni (2013-07-02). "Misplaced Pages's New VisualEditor Is the Best Update in Years and You Can Make It Better". Softpedia. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
  20. Tim Sampson (2013-09-24). "Misplaced Pages faces revolt over VisualEditor". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 2013-09-25.

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