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Just starting to use the visual editor

Note: Please let's keep editorialization down to a minimum, and instead review the factual situation! Thanks!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Why is visual editor not on talk pages?

Why is it that when I edit an article, I get the visual editor, but when I edit my talk page, I get the wikitext editor?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh that's just the start of your issues, Jimmy. You wait until the need to edit a template. doktorb _words 08:22, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, but that's not an answer to my factual question. I don't see a huge issue with template editing at the moment - it's easy to click on 'Edit source' if I need to do that. Anyway, I just read at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor that "The VisualEditor is only enabled for the article and user namespaces (the latter allows editors to make changes in a personal sandbox). In time, VE will include the specialised editing tools needed for non-article pages, but the developer focus has been on articles." That sounds like it is probably the right answer, but I'm curious what 'specialised editing tools' in particular make it impossible to roll this out for talk pages as well.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Direct answer: I have no idea why it's not rolled out to talk pages. doktorb _words 08:34, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

another editor for discussions is in the pipeline. to get more confused: http://www.mediawiki.org/Flow_Portal

that would be three editors at one wiki. Just the beginning? --PigeonIP (talk) 08:47, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I thought WP:Flow was the technical reason but I rapidly got confused when reading the various discussions. - Sitush (talk) 09:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

VE is active for User: namespace, not for User talk. Diego (talk) 09:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, VE is active for User: name space and for articles, but not for talk pages. I'm not yet clear on why that is. One hypothesis, put forward by PigeonIP is that the longterm roadmap for talk pages will be Flow, but I'm not sure why that would preclude using the VE now for talk pages. The quote I pasted above suggested some "specialized editing tools needed for non-article pages" but I don't know what that means - that's what I'm trying to understand. (Maybe it's just me - when I edit talk pages, I just click edit and type, the same as with articles. Maybe there is a concern about breaking archiving bots?)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going to look up a link, but the official answer is that (1) making VE work properly on talk pages would involve significant extra work -- handling signatures is just a small part of it -- and (2) that extra work is thought to be not worth it, because talk pages will soon be converted to Flow, meaning that all the extra work would end up as a waste. Looie496 (talk) 18:07, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

FYI here is a nice 10,000-feet-view summary of the WMF plans for the new tools, and here my answer to that comment explaining the doubts that those plans cast on current usage of Talk pages. Diego (talk) 09:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you give me a concrete example of current functionality that you are afraid of losing under Flow? As a side note, Flow is a long way off so while it's good to be having conversations about it early, I'm this week mainly focussed on understanding the state of the world with respect to the visual editor.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

For the VE, surely the major concerns right now are with respect to templates; the VE design seems to have been centered around formatting, with little foresight on how creation of complex content would be used (it seems clear that they didn't create a single paper prototype for the templates dialog, or they would have found basic mistakes like the dialog obscuring the text in the article that one must read to populate the template).

With respect to both the VE and Flow I'm primarily concerned about how the community creates new backlog review processes (like the User:Snotbot/AfD's requiring attention, User:Wcquidditch/wikideletiontoday or the Misplaced Pages:Article Rescue Squadron/Rescue list) without the need to request developers' support. Those community tools heavily depend on the wiki support for semantic knowledge creation (tags, templates, categories, transclusion)... and there's nothing like that planned in the roadmap for the new tools.

This focus in the flexibility of the current existing platform seems to be completely lost in all WMF analysis, even though it's one of the project's main assets. That's why all editors are so rabidly focused on asking for guaranteed support of all current wikitext. I see Misplaced Pages as the major example of a semantic platform in the world (stronger and wealthier even than Google's Freebase), and the only successful deployment of a user-friendly semantic network in a massive scale. Forcing the community to rely on "Office"-level tools (simple word-processor editing and simple mailing support) is a disservice to what Wikipedians have built as an ecosystem for collaborative content creation.

The focus on specialized tools, fine-tuned for particular use cases, can't compete against the flexibility of the current semantic wiki tools. There seem to be some grand visions to support some workflow creation module in Flow, but frankly the prospect of depending on a yet-to-specify tool of uncertain possibilities and built from scratch is less appealing than using the existing, well tested mediawiki platform. Which is a shame, because at least the VisualEditor has potential to become the largest and user-friendliest semantic content creation tool in the world, if only its developers could see it that way instead of as a simple pretty printer for raw text. Diego (talk) 11:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

"it seems clear that they didn't create a single paper prototype" - seriously, the editorializing is insulting, demeaning, and unhelpful. Let's just focus on the facts and stop insulting good people who have worked hard to develop something new. It's just not helpful. If you believe it to be true that blame must be assigned, that's fine. Keep it to yourself, I don't want to hear it. NPOV.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:41, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry for making that comment and fully retract it. I didn't mean to insult the tool creators at all, and now I see how it was unfair to them. That comment was made without reflection, based on my current mood about the whole thing and my shallow first impressions of how the development teams are operating, which are based on the fragmented information that can be compiled from the various scattered documentation and talk pages. It's been a strange week of discussions in a rarefied atmosphere, enticing (or even teasing) developers to explain their design decisions beyond the simplest low level details, trying to gather enough information to make sense of the bigger picture of what the WMF is trying to achieve. The initial information provided was too specific and centered around the needs of new users, without clarifying how this would affect experienced editors, and this has caused too many points of friction between editors and the development team.

I wouldn't want that single sentence to obscure the rest of the points I've made, which are product of much deeper reflection and that I sincerely believe describe the more profound needs of the community, for which it's uncertain how the approach taken by the new tools will satisfy them. Diego (talk) 12:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! This is very meaningful to me. I just want to reduce some of the heat here so we can get to some light. :-)--Jimbo Wales (talk) 14:40, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for the outburst. It's likely that you will find it again these days in other editors that are just trying to help. Those come from this fear that, as you're building something new, you'll inadvertently take something away that is deeply cared for. Diego (talk) 14:51, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

To summarize, these were the points I intended to make:

• Misplaced Pages is an awesome, one-of-a-kind project.
• The community is an awesome asset, as it uses the flexible tools to create awesome things.
• The VisualEditor is a needed improvement with a lot of potential, but I believe it has and excessive focus on making it an easy tool to edit individual pages, which implies a risk that it will fall short to be an easy tool to build an encyclopedia. Diego (talk) 12:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Just in reply to the initial question, while I don't know the official reasoning, VE would be difficult for talk pages as things stand. It currently doesn't handle signatures, and by their nature talk pages require section editing, rather than full page editing - using a full page WYSIWYG editor on talk pages is asking for comments to be accidently refactored, with all the problems that would then emerge.

My guess is that this is in the "too hard" basket, with Flow presumably making it viable when launched. - Bilby (talk) 11:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Bilby, that's very helpful feedback and it makes sense to me. Handling signatures seems easy enough to add quickly. Section editing is needed for talk pages for sure, yes.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 11:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Why it's not available on talk pages is a worthwhile question. Why we can't opt-out of it completely is a better one. --Onorem (talk) 14:53, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand this objection. Can you explain it? As I understand it, I can completely avoid the new editor trivially by clicking on 'edit source' rather than 'edit'. Why is that burdensome?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:06, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It's made the site noticeably slower with a good computer and connection. That's enough for me. I'm not going to rehash what was going on while you were on vacation. You can read up on all the discussions. Misplaced Pages:Village pump (technical)#"Opt out" of VE needed under preferences is one place to start. I'm done now, because I very much believe that nobody cares. Veteran users who care enough will learn to deal with it...and it might attract new users. That's all you care about, so nothing said now will change anything. --Onorem (talk) 15:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

(To clarify, the 'You' above doesn't mean you. It means the en.wiki and above developers who are working on 'upgrades' and get angry when people don't think they are upgrades.) OK. Now done. --Onorem (talk) 15:53, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Onorem, it's not true that nobody cares. I've read the available documentation of Parsoid, and those guys are taking great care and performing some deep magic tricks to make sure that (almost) all wikitext will be supported and all actual Misplaced Pages content will be available in the future; that overview and the project roadmap have given me confidence that there are people working for the Foundation with a thorough understanding of the technical complexities involved, and the value that wikitext brings to the party.

Sincerely, this situation looks to me as if there isn't a clear vision on how to bring to life the huge technological update they're planning for the next years, or at least not enough coordination to explain that vision in a meaningful way that the community can grasp; and that's the source of all the current bitterness and distrust. Diego (talk) 15:59, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It's burdensome because it's both inconsistent and involves more checking.

It's inconsistent because (in Monobook skin, anyway), the third tab from the left is always named "edit this page" but that name can have two different actions. The tab to get the non-VE editor might be fourth tab from the left and titled "edit source", or third tab from the left ("edit this page").

It involves more checking because you can't go for the same tab every time: you need to consciously check the names of the tabs, and then hover over the appropriate one, in order to check the bottom of the screen (where Firefox displays the link being hovered) to ensure that the link has action=edit not veaction=edit before you click. To make it worse, these tabs depend upon the loading of javascript: if that is slow, the tabs move about and change their names just as you're about to click on them. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:52, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I seem to remember falling on the history of that page when it was altered to state that Visual Editor would be for talk pages and I think the edit summary states something like that. Could that edit be located and simply ask the editor who changed it where the information comes from to get an understanding if VE will be made available for user talk pages and when? Or has that been ironed out already?--Amadscientist (talk) 20:34, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Just for the record, I would have no problems if the option to disable VisualEditor had its default state switched back to VisualEditor being on when VE left beta. But I would expect to keep the ability to turn it off. Adam Cuerden 23:34, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

What are the biggest issues with templates?

I'd love to have a single good example of a template issue to play with.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 08:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, here's one of the most challenging: {{convert}}. Try adding it to an article, and also try editing an existing invocation in a more complex way (e.g. changing a single value to a range of values). Of course, all this using VE - imagine you're a noob again :) — This, that and the other (talk) 09:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Ugh. I wouldn't have been able to use that template under the old system, either.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

See below: "#Convert/help shows help-box of options". -Wikid77 14:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Two examples for you to play with User:Jimbo Wales. First try to build (not amend, build) . Now try again with just about anything here. Completely impossible to build, almost impossible to amend anything doktorb _words 09:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I think something in the first article changed? There is no section 11 now.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 10:07, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I removed a misplaced pipe; try again. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I found adding a reference with a citation template to be problematic, so it might be worth giving it a shot. I've yet to see an IP add a reference with VE using a citation template. But even something like adding Infobox person shows the basic issues in a common case - for example, while it adds the "Name" parameter automatically, only a few other parameters are visible, and there is no means of scrolling down to see the rest. If you know the missing parameters you can type them in, but that makes for a complicated process - as it is, the time it takes to add an infobox in VE is considerably greater than what an experienced editor would take in the old editor, and an inexperienced editor needs to already know the names of the parameters in order to add much more than the subject's name. On the plus side, this is a big step forward from the initial version deployed a couple of weeks back. Hopefully, though, there will be some better suggestions for things to try. :) - Bilby (talk) 11:28, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

{{coord}} is also a tricky one to use. The TemplateData system does not work well with templates that use overloading like {{coord}} and {{convert}}. I've had to create three new templates to work around this. --Salix (talk): 04:22, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Another big problem with templates is that you can't easily add the documentation to redirected templates, like {{commons cat}}.--Salix (talk): 04:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The actual biggest issues with templates are the ones that don't follow the structure that Parsoid thought templates should follow. Template:Bugzilla prevents any table that uses {{won}}, {{nom}}, etc. from being able to display or edit properly. This means that pretty much any table of awards gets corrupted. {{singlechart}} and {{albumchart}} can't render properly, either, because of Template:Bugzilla. This combination means that most music articles can't even have the primitive level of table editing that VE was promised to support in its initial release.—Kww(talk) 04:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

• {{cite journal}} is perhaps the most important template for helping editors to cite the most reliable sources. Please give that one a try, to provide all of the information in a typical academic journal citation. Try to add a DOI or courtesy link, too. I dare you. 97.122.187.243 (talk) 08:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Convert/help shows help-box of options

Last month (June 2013), I created Template:Convert/help to briefly list the parameter options, so, when users cannot remember the option names or unit-codes, then they can put "help" as a parameter and see the condensed options. For example, a user might not remember miles is unit-code "mi" and instead use the option "help":

• {{convert|45|km|help}} → 45 kilometres ()

Because Template:Convert often supports engineering articles, then there are many options, so many that it becomes difficult to remember the option names or unit-codes (over 350 codes so far). The basic overview concept, of a "help-box" to show condensed options, provides a balance between listing many options but keeping the display short, inside a small box, to avoid overwhelming the user with diatribe about the options. I think the "help-box" concept could be extended into many hundreds of common templates, as a small box to show major parameter names, in mid-sentence. -Wikid77 14:12, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not just templates ...

Jimbo, there are a lot of other problems with VE. Many are irritations, though likely to disconcert new users. As an example (Template:Bug), adding {{italic title}} doesn't have instant visible effect, nor any effect when you save the page in VE, until you reload the page: so you wonder what's gone wrong, whether you messed up the edit, etc. There are lots of similar imperfections, non-intuitive icons to click, etc.

But there are some more serious problems, of which I'll mention a very few:

1. Template:Bug: Hidden messages and templates don't show up, so the editor doesn't see {{Use British English}} or the <!-- Please do not make significant changes to the lead without discussing them first on the article's talk page.--> at the start of London. So our long-established messages to editors are lost. And because they're invisible they can be accidentally deleted.
2. Template:Bug The dialog box for adding categories or templates completely hides the article text. So if I want to add birth and death date categories, or perhaps a geographical category with unfamiliar spelling, I have to try to remember them, write them down, or open the article in another window. It just makes routine wikignomish article improvements much harder work.
3. Various utlities which editors are accustomed to using are not available with VE and apparently won't be because the previous versions weren't part of the editor: Template:Bug autocompletion of commonly-used edit summaries (it's a browser feature for the old one-line edit summaries, and browsers don't do it for the new multiline box); the ability to hover the mouse to preview the first few lines of a linked article to check the link destination or fill out a dab page entry, rather than follow the link and wait for the article to load (WP:NAVPOPS is a gadget, so it's "not our job to replace it".) So it's harder to leave a routine, complex, edit summary; harder to quickly check the links in an article.

Many of us can see that VE has potential to offer a great improvement in editing, but at the moment it makes life very difficult for those of us who persist in using it, reporting bugs and quirks as we go along. And we worry that in its present state it's been rolled out to a lot of new editors who will unintentionally damage articles, leaving messes for other editors to clean up after them (and who will be flummoxed if they then try to contribute to any talk page, as they'll have a new editing system to learn there). There's been a lot of good stuff at WP:VE/F, in between the unconstructive yells of "I don't like it, take it away". PamD 13:32, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

To summarize some of the main deficiencies: you cannot do maths, you cannot do code samples, you cannot insert special characters, you cannot use tables, you cannot easily edit list articles which make heavy uses of {{div col}}. To my mind it is still in alpha, as beta generally begins when the software is feature complete. Not being able to edit a good percentage articles does not count a feature complete to me. I've made a more extensive list of problems at Misplaced Pages:visualEditor/Known problems.--Salix (talk): 04:29, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Some workflows

Jimbo, might I suggest some simple tests. Each of these is possible, though the workflow may not be very intuitive. There is also a long list of editor actions that are not presently possible in VE (e.g. creating tables, copy & pasting text that includes templates, adding accented characters, math, etc.); however, I am only going to focus on workflows that presently exist.

• Add the equivalent of to an article.
• Add the equivalent of {{see also | Page 1 | Page 2 }}. (This is an example of a template that doesn't currently have TemplateData set up. {{main}} is somewhat easier to use, if you want an example with TemplateData as well.)
• Reposition an existing right-aligned image to a new section of an article.
• Add a new copy of File:Wm2007_press_002.jpg to an existing article with the caption "I am Jimbo Wales".
• Duplicate a reference in an existing article so it appears elsewhere in the article.
• For an article without a "see also" section, add the equivalent of:

== See also ==
* Former ] ] from Texas
* Current president ]

• Add a category to a page
• Attempt to edit any really large article

There are some simple things that VE already does well. On the other hand, there are many present tasks that VE either can't handle at all or where VE tends to do things in a way that is awkward and/or hard to discover. Dragons flight (talk) 16:24, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

There are some simple things that VE already does well ist just to little. Making mistakes is not that bad, but introducing this amount of problems to one of the most frequented websites in the world is vandalism. Frankly spoken, in a company ruled by me, everybody responsible for implementing a buggy feature like VE would get a kick, i.e. all contracts would be terminated immidiately. I am so disappointed how we throw fundraised money out of the window for nothing more than rubbish. --Matthiasb (talk) 22:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

June editors edged to 7-year low but strong

The June editor-activity data (in http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm) still shows strong levels of editing, similar to recent months, so any major change in July levels would be surprising (such as the impact of VisualEditor). However, it is sad to see the June levels continue to erode, slightly, as now the lowest in about 7 years (since July 2006), but still wondering if editors are doing more in fewer edits. I plan on doing more to encourage the power users to keep going, and try to focus more MediaWiki software updates (+templates or Lua modules) on their concerns, with the developers in WMF platform engineering. Here are the June 2013 editor-activity levels:

Edits ≥	1	3	5	10	25	100	250	1000	2500	10000
Jun 2013	104,758	46,106	30,978	18,206	9143	3233	1366	225	50	6
May 2013	114,333	50,140	33,193	19,164	9513	3322	1453	246	52	3
Apr 2013	114,142	50,326	33,494	19,430	9583	3301	1446	240	53	4
Jun 2012	108,492	48,845	32,407	18,711	9307	3249	1375	220	53	3
May 2012	112,531	50,846	33,585	19,387	9622	3358	1484	237	54	2

Adjusted for the 30/31-day difference, the June 2013 levels are mostly ~1%-4% lower than May 2013, so it's not like a 10% drop or such. I guess we should also compare the June editor-activity levels for the other target languages of VE, when released today: German (de), Spanish (es), French (fr), Hebrew (he), Italian (it), Dutch (nl), Polish (pl), Russian (ru) and Swedish (sv). The Bugzilla entry for non-English Misplaced Pages issues with VisualEditor is: Template:Bugzilla. Anyway, the June 2013 data for enwiki still shows strong editor activity among the power users, although the new-editor group, of 5,654 users reaching 10 edits (down 14% since May), was the lowest in 7 years, since November 2005 gained only 3,567 new editors. -Wikid77 (talk) 14:08, 24 July, 05:11, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm a big believer in comparing things to previous year rather than previous month and the metric that I care most about is the 100+ edits/month group, so-called "very active editors" in the official jargon. June 2012 showed 3249 very active editors in English-Misplaced Pages, compared to 3233 in June 2013. That drop is 0.5%, which we can call "more or less flat." The same stats for May are 3358 and 3322, respectively, which is a drop of 1.1%, which we would call a "slight drop." New article creation is off about 10% for June 2013 vs. June 2012, which is more concerning. Carrite (talk) 02:43, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Almost all editor-activity levels are lower for June 2013, and the lowest in 7 years, even though only slightly below prior years for 100+ edits/month. I have added June/May 2012 into the above table, to compare the lower counts at the other edit-levels, such as 25+ edits/month. There are concerns now at almost every level. -Wikid77 (talk) 05:11, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree year-on-year is more useful - June is a big exam/holiday month and the start of the usual summer vacation fall-off. All levels above 100 epm show tiny declines yoy, or rises. A fall off in new article creation a) is probably explained by the forest of barbed wire AFC now represents and b) doesn't bother me at all as (sweeping generalization) we have far too many new articles & should be concentrating on improving the old ones. Maybe we've finally run out of Kentucky politicians, US naval transport ships etc. Johnbod (talk) 11:21, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

There is strong evidence that more than than half of anonymous IP editors are as sophisticated and prolific as "active" registered editors. Therefore, trying to count people is foolish and we should start concentrating on bytes added to articlespace per time period instead. 97.122.187.243 (talk) 08:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

If there is any evidence whatsoever (let alone strong evidence) that "more than than half of anonymous IP editors are as sophisticated and prolific as 'active' registered editors," I certainly am not aware of it. Can you point me to such evidence? I believe that quite the contrary is true, that "more than than half of Misplaced Pages vandalism and problematic edits are the product of anonymous IP editors," but I admit that this is an impressionistic observation based on perusal of various edit histories over time. I'm sure vandal fighters would have a more definite opinion on this. There are certainly many anonymous IP editors who are as productive and sophisticated as is typical for (mostly anonymous) named accounts, don't get me wrong, but "more than half?" That I doubt. How many? That's a question resolvable by empirical evidence... If we toss aside the count of (mostly anonymous) named accounts contributing content, the count of new articles is way off from the previous year's pace, which may be considered a cause for grave concern. I'm not really all that stressed about that metric myself, since this would be a natural tendency of a maturing encyclopedia. Topics get "taken." Carrite (talk) 15:34, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes there is, but don't take my word for it. Click recent changes and do your own tally. Count how many IPs are adding templates or whatever measure of sophistication you prefer. It's an easy script. 97.124.165.149 (talk) 16:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

If you don't mind, I'll wait to take you up on that. Other "regular editors" might be doing what I did and playing with VE logged out as an IP, having shut it down for their account. I'll keep my eyes open watching edit histories... Carrite (talk) 20:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• @Wikid77. Do the "active editing" stats include IPs or just logged in edits? Carrite (talk) 20:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Those are username-only stats in TablesWikipediaEN.htm, while the Bot edits are in separate columns (see German: http://stats.wikimedia.org/DE/TablesWikipediaDE.htm, "Mai" is May), and so-called "new" users must reach 10 edits, but the IP users are estimated at 2/3 (67%) of the general username activity levels. However, while usernames might include a few wp:SOCK#Legit alternate usernames, the IP users are often rotating as dynamic IP addresses (often 255 numbers, or more for large ISP companies, among billions of IP numbers). The IP user who created articles "Édith Piaf" and "Maria Callas" was over 100 other IPs, looking like "100 newcomers" in general. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Is commons broken? It was...but now it is fixed...I hope

Hey Jimbo, while you were away, commons broke for real for a tiny bit. LOL! I mean broke in that no uploads were able to be made for a small period of time. I never got an answer about what happened. Any chance you know?--Amadscientist (talk) 04:32, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't heard anything about it until just now. :-) --Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:48, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

It probably isn't anything to worry about as it appears to have been fixed quickly but that was the first time that has ever happened. I'll keep checking at the Commons discussion to see if anyone mentions what the cause was. It was during one of my first attempts to upload multiple images and perhaps that still has some bugs to be worked out. Thanks for the reply.--Amadscientist (talk) 16:29, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Personal and Moral Rights?

Sorry; if I’m trying to bring your attention again to Commons.

We have a discussion on the moral rights of the photographers and the personal rights of the subjects; two different topics and rarely come together as in the case of your portrait where you are the subject and original author as per the work for hire contract. And, that video is showcasing the original Jimmy Wales portrait several times from the beginning to end and finally attributes to it with courtesy notes. So it is derivative work per http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/101, "a derogatory action in relation to the Original Work which would be prejudicial to the Original Author's honor or reputation" (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/legalcode 4d); a clear violation of moral rights of the Original Author.

Further, : "Creative Commons licenses do not waive or otherwise affect rights of privacy or publicity to the extent they apply. If you have created a work or wish to use a work that might in some way implicate these rights, you may need to obtain permission from the individuals whose rights may be affected." So that video is a clear violation of the privacy/personal rights of the subject too.

While discussing these matters as a generic concern that seriously affects the photographic community in Commons; we found the current policies of Commons are desperately inadequate for our safety and to protect our reputation. At Commons:Commons:Non-copyright_restrictions, Commons is trying to impose "the reusers of Commons-hosted media to ensure that they do not violate any non-copyright restrictions that apply to the media." It’s OK; Commons can’t take the responsibility of the damages, the reusers make outside it. But it is not good if Commons itself allow and encourage hosting of such works infringing the Non-copyright-restrictions (like moral rights of the authors and personal rights of the subjects).

While looking for a solution, some people suggested that "I strongly agree with you on Commons defending people's dignity through policy but think this must come first through a stronger statement from the WMF. They are legally prevented from direct editorial control (that would make them responsible and so liable to be sued for what content we have) but they can be much more specific about what they want wrt scope and moral issues."

We noticed the resolution http://wikimediafoundation.org/Resolution:Images_of_identifiable_people; but it seems only related to privacy rights; we can’t see any resolution related to photographers' moral rights. There is some discussion is going on at commons:Commons_talk:Photographs_of_identifiable_people/Update_2013/Moral_issues under commons:Commons_talk:Project_scope/Update_2013/Stage_2 on the base of it; but I can’t see much developments.

Could you express your stand on these matters; and do you promise us that you make any attempt to protect our rights. I/We feel it is dangerous to make further media contributions in a community which encourages making and hosting derivative works of our own works to humiliate us. JKadavoor Jee 08:54, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

My first comment is that it is absolutely untrue that the WMF is "legally prevented from direct editorial control (that would mke them responsible and so liable to be sued for what content we have)". This is a frequent and unfortunate misunderstanding of the law. Section 230 is explicitly designed to allow for direct editorial control without undue risk. The Foundation can exercise direct editorial control without thereby becoming liable for what other people do. This is important.

Second, I think that the commons community has gone down a very sad and disappointing path with respect to ethical matters. My views on this are not new, and are well known. Our project is a grand humanitarian effort. That it has been hijacked by people who do not share our values is something that needs to be fixed.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:53, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Jimmy for your reply. "I think that the commons community has gone down a very sad and disappointing path with respect to ethical matters. My views on this are not new, and are well known. Our project is a grand humanitarian effort. That it has been hijacked by people who do not share our values is something that needs to be fixed." So Jimmy; can we expect a WMF attempt to ‘’fix’’ Commons? If so; I request you to do it immediately. Otherwise Commons will end up as a cemetery of some people you mentioned above and their bot-transferred xxx contents from Flickr or similar sites.

Or you mean, that it is the responsibility of the common community is to fix their issue? If so; I've little hope. We already discussed this matter with Russavia in detail; but he refused to take any responsibility for his rude behaviour. In that discussion, Slaunger (one who started the commons:COM:VI projects) finally offered him three solutions: "If you do not agree with the resolution, you have three options. 1) Work with the WMF and try to make them change their minds, or introduce some notability exceptions in their resolution, which it appears you think would be reasonable. 2) Pretend you love it and be loyal to it, although you really do not entirely agree. This is an entirely normal and pragmatic decision for many individuals being a member of an organization, to bend a little to adapt to the norms, because, overall, you can see that in the big picture values of the organization are aligned with your own. 3) You can come to the conclusion that your own view on the resolution differs so much, that you cannot see yourself as part of it - and resign from a current role."

So I request you to once again to bring this matter to the attention of WMF, make a resolution or something to force Commons make enough policies to protect our rights as a photographer and our commitments to our subjects. I’ve not much knowledge about the WMF hierarchies; don’t know whether this is the right place to make such a request. (I’m living in the opposite side of the world, in a remote place with frequent electricity and Internet connectivity problems; so this late response. Sorry.) JKadavoor Jee 05:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I am just one board member on this issue. I will continue to call this to the attention of the board and staff, but I need help from the community to illustrate that this is a problem that concerns many of us.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:37, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Jimmy; we’ll try our best from our side, because it is a real concern for us as socially committed photographers. JKadavoor Jee 07:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for my erroneous remark concerning editorial control. My limited non-lawyer understanding is perhaps more influenced by UK/EU law see paragraphs 42-47. To me this means (if Commons was based in the EU) that staff could not participate in deletion discussions (especially voting keep) without making themselves liable for the content. Indeed, I am concerned myself about participating in deletion discussions in case that makes me liable for any content I say should be kept. Am I misreading the EU law or is the US law quite different?

On the ethical issues I think have a situation where Commons admins think they own the site and a crowdsourced editorial policy and decision-making fails when not given enough direction from above. Too often the deletion discussions rely on an mechanical interpretation of what freedoms are allowed by law or existing policy (which is generous) rather than any consideration of ethics or of not being a jerk or a creep (see Autumn leaf discussion below). -- Colin° 07:39, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

• I think that the commons community has gone down a very sad and disappointing path with respect to ethical matters. I fully agree, but the real question is: what do you plan to do about it? Saying that commons should change is all good and dandy, but it changes nothing. It's become overly clear that we mere editors can't do anything about it, because the porn brigade has managed to get some of its members elected to positions of power (which means that they, basically, get to close deletion discussions and may even restrict those who try to interfere with their porn stash). This means that it's time you and the foundation put your money where your collective mouth is and start doing something other than simply repeating commons is broken. Otherwise, nothing will ever change. Salvio 11:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Jimmy already offered "I will continue to call this to the attention of the board and staff" and requested moral support "from the community". I think this includes the other matter you mentioned too. :) JKadavoor Jee 12:25, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Bring it on, guys. And Jimbo, thanks for your concerns with the matter as well. ✉→Arctic Kangaroo←✎ 14:12, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Commons:Deletion requests/File:Doleschallia bisaltide bisaltide (Autumn Leaf) - male, January 2013, Singapore.jpg

Hey Jimmy, I hope you can empathise with me on this. Jkadavoor's talking about this because of me. I'm getting irritated and very disturbed with my image being used, and Commons as well as Commoners' lack of respect (especially to contributors) and morals. I will be sending an email to you within the next 2 hours. Please keep your inbox checked. Cheers. ✉→Arctic Kangaroo←✎ 13:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, Arctic Kangaroo; my comments here are no way related to your issue; it is only a simple matter that can be resolved with sympathy and empathy, considering your younger age. I too have younger brothers. (My/our topic is well described here and somewhat here.) JKadavoor Jee 05:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Talking about poor morals, and no respect towards fellow contributors, I'm very disappointed to say that Geo Swan is a fellow en.wiki contributor who is part of that group on Commons. He's also carried his very good values with him when he works on en.wiki. Perhaps, you also want to read the discussion conversation argument that I had with him. diff ✉→Arctic Kangaroo←✎ 14:02, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

About User:Arctic Kangaroo above, Jimbo don't be swayed too much by that.If you have a look you find that s/he's just complaining because s/he suddenly changed mind about the copyright of some pictures of butterflies. That is obviously an impossible-to-honour request -if it was, I could revoke my contributions from Misplaced Pages at any moment, and WP should be obliged to comply. The whole point of free licences is that of giving up some of your intellectual "property" rights on a work. If the creator still holds the power to revoke, then s/he holds all power on the work, and thus it is not free anymore. We've banned users that refused to comply with license requirements, and rightly so. -- cyclopia 14:26, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

It's all related. And Cyclopia, I haven't sent the email. Inside there will be whatever reasons I have to say. Cheers. ✉→Arctic Kangaroo←✎ 14:27, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• In the interests of permanence I added a diff after Arctic Kangaroo's link to my talk page. Geo Swan (talk) 15:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

✉→Arctic Kangaroo←✎ 15:42, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• I've noted here that Arctic Kangaroo asked in all good faith about how to upload the image without others using it, he was given very very bad advice here on Misplaced Pages as part of a formal adoption process, and appears to have followed that advice in good faith. I'm seeing this issue as being largely the result of that very very bad advice, not a result of any bad faith or incompetence on Arctic Kangaroo or Geo Swan's part. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 17:01, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this is very relevant. Cyclopedia, your concern that if we allow one user to delete a file based on a change of heart, we have to do so in all cases, is simply not true. We can and should make exceptions for a wide variety of reasons. In the vast majority of cases, one picture is worth being jerks about it.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 06:41, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

If there is evidence he followed bad advice, a case could be made for him not having actually understood the CC requirements, thus invalidating it for his pictures. This is fine by me: he simply did not consent to a contract, de facto. So no exceptions to be made. Then I apologize, and this makes it clear we have to be clearer on what releasing with CC means during upload.

However what I worry is exactly the "make exceptions" issue. If you summarily understand the CC license, then there cannot be turning back, because to do so means the author has full power on the work: and that undermines the whole concept of a free license. -- cyclopia 09:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That the CC licence is irrevocable does to compel us to irrevocably host the image or irrevocably use it on Misplaced Pages projects. We can choose to remove the file from our servers as a result of community discussion. Too often the slippery slope fallacy is used to justify taking a hard-line position. This makes it very hard to remove material because it is the right thing to do rather than because some law or policy absolutely requires it. That attitude needs to change. Commons is not compelled to host anything. An example of a user taking a hard-line principles-first approach is Geo Swan's discussion with AK (linked above). Geo Swan's uploading of AK's picture to his Flickr account not only breaks Flickr's terms and conditions but is a really nasty way of proving one's point. Colin° 10:44, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not a slippery slope argument, because one case where we guarantee this is enough to formally dismantle the whole concept of a free license. Free license = you do NOT have anymore full rights on the work, only those preserved by the license. There is no turning back. This case may be an exception only because the uploader did not actually know about what the license meant really in advance, and it perhaps can be proven by the discussion linked by Demiurge1000 above. But if there is no sound proof of that, going back is a no-no. Even doing it once would immediately make all free licensing moot: it would show they have no bearing whatsoever anymore, even if nobody else asks to revoke them again. Which, however, will most likely happen, if we create precedents. This may look like a one-time mistakes-happen let's-do-the-decent-thing occurrence, but it is instead deeply ruinous. It threatens the very foundation of the concept of a free licence. Don't underestimate that. -- cyclopia 12:37, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Where is the requirement or policy on Commons that says that because the image has a CC licence, Commons must host it. Too many admins and others have got deletion review upside down when they assume that because there is no policy that says we have to delete it it follows that we have to keep it. Time and again you see deletion closures saying that if the image has a valid licence and is in use then and doesn't clearly break COM:IDENT then there is no valid argument to delete. This is wrong. While the consensus at a deletion discussion shouldn't be allowed to decided to keep an image that is illegal or against policy, it must surely be allowed to decide to delete an image that is legal and complies with policy. -- Colin° 13:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)There may be remote edge cases in which a deletion may be required despite policy compliance. In any other case, yes, it does follow that we have to keep it, otherwise policies etc. are just nonsense. For sure "uploader changed her mind" cannot be a reason to do so, because it would imply the uploader maintains more control on the image than the one allowed by the CC license. If an image is free once, is free forever. This must be as crystal clear and iron strong as possible. -- cyclopia 13:29, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

• Deletion from Commons does not change the license. It changes how easily the image spreads (which is still desirable for many editors) — Crisco 1492 (talk) 13:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

• Technically correct. But a deletion from Commons on request (with perhaps the exception of a "dammit, I uploaded the wrong image, sorry" request a few minutes after upload, or similar obvious mistakes) still acknowledges exceptional control by the uploader. This makes the image "free", but on a leash. Which is not very free. -- cyclopia 13:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Cyclopia, I agree with your arguments; which are part of the free concepts. But I don’t think raising them on every courtesy deletion request is very helpful. This is not a case like a long time established user who wants all his files get deleted; when he changed his mind. He has only a few media contributions so far, all are very recent, and all uploaded through en:wiki upload wizard. He may not even notice that they are uploaded to Commons; not to Misplaced Pages. His first visit to Commons (other than a few POY votes) was when I made a notice on his talk page regarding the FPC nomination. JKadavoor Jee 13:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Cyclopia, you are confusing the requirement to relicense the work under the same CC terms when copying, modification, or redistribution occur, with the fictitious notion that the CC license compels Commons to redistribute the work in perpetuity. Commons is not obligated to continue publishing works; it is only compelled to publish them under the same license terms if it does publish them at all. The decision whether or not to publish a work licensed under CC can be made for any number of reasons (one of which might be that the author does not want the work to be published at Commons), and that decision can be changed anytime; what cannot be done is revocation of downstream users' rights to continue to copy, modify, and redistribute under CC terms once they received the work from Commons. alanyst 13:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I am perfectly aware of this distinction. This doesn't change that, de facto, complying to such a request implies that, practically, we give the uploader a level of control that is not present in the license. We may well decide to delete something free from Commons, but setting a precedent where such a decision is made only because of a request of the uploader without extremly good reasons is noxious, because of what it implies -namely, that the uploader has a special level of control on the work. That's exactly the opposite of free content, regardless of how technically it still complies. -- cyclopia 14:09, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Absurd. Imagine that when the person uploaded the file to Commons, they also gave a copy to a friend under the same CC terms, and when they asked Commons to delete it, they also asked their friend to do so. Commons and the friend are equally free to accede to the uploader's request or to ignore it, and enjoy the exact same degree of control in their decisions. Commons does not need to be bound by precedent any more than the friend does the next time someone gives them a CC-licensed file. alanyst 14:28, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

What seems absurd to me is your analogy. A personal friend is not a public, open website hosting thousands of images that makes a point of being a repository of informative free content, run by a consensus-driven community, where anybody can see what happened before and what precedents have been set. -- cyclopia 14:45, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. And you believe we should place the free-content crusade before all else. Some of us believe there are other things equally important, such as editorial and publishing discretion, and moral concerns, even. I'd rather 'anybody' could see that we did the common sense, human, decent thing after due consideration. You never know, that might encourage more people to donate more content to a responsible host. I doubt the two points of view will ever mesh easily, so it seems tedious for us to repeat it all again, no? We can does not mean we must. Begoon  15:01, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, no, it's not matter of a crusade. Nor it is a matter of "we can therefore we must". It's a matter of what does free content mean. In other words, things have to be clear for users of Commons. In the moment I see an image on Commons, and it is obviously compliant with policies, I expect to be able to use it in any way that is compliant with the requirements of the license. That's what free content means: it is something that we can relink, share, reuse, rebuild upon, while keeping only a minimum of clear obligations, because the author explicitly relinquished (most of) her/his rights on the image, and cannot complain if it happens that he does not like what I do with it. If, instead, in any moment the copyright owner can decide to change his mind, then it has never been free: it was only "on loan", something like "hey, I'll give it to you to play until I decide it's fine". And so we jeopardize the whole concept of free content. It's not matter of crusade, I am not a free-culture-Taliban, frankly (heh, I worked for closed-source companies). But if we say that is free, then it has to be free, not "free unless uploader has a change of mind". And it has also nothing to do with "decency" and "common sense". Apart from the fact that there is no such thing as "common sense", because what is "common" in my culture can be far from common in yours, there is nothing in the notion of "decency" that requires us to abide to every whim of uploaders. If there is some serious privacy or real-life complain, then decency may play a part. It doesn't with contributors that want to pick up the ball and suddenly decide that we can't play anymore - it's not their ball anymore, once under CC. I hope I made myself more clear. -- cyclopia 15:33, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

More clear, no. But you used a lot of words. I already knew where you stood. I disagree. Begoon  15:42, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Given that you said that I "believe we should place the free-content crusade before all else" -which is nonsense- I'd say that no, you know really nothing of where I stand. So you're disagreeing with some figment of your imagination, not with me. -- cyclopia 15:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know much about Commons. You say we should not delete a file from our collection if the uploader has simply changed their mind. But is there a WMF directive or Commons policy that forbids it (that says we may not)? If I add a page to Misplaced Pages that no one else has added to and ask that it be removed, that will usually happen without any fuss. I'm fairly sure the licensing and ethical issues are much the same, so I'd be curious to know if the two projects' written policies are different on this issue. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:13, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

To clear up, Commons has a policy that we may delete images whose uploaders have requested deletion. We do it fairly frequently actually. But we generally draw the line if the image is used on other projects. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Verifiability and WebCite?

WebCite which is used for dead links required by Misplaced Pages:Verifiability is going to close.

without saving dead links Misplaced Pages:Verifiability is completely meanless!

when we got any offical solution for http://meta.wikimedia.org/WebCite ? (Idot (talk) 12:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC))

Making loud noises does not prove an argument! The closure of webcite does not make WP:V any more meaningless than it was before webcite existed. Linkrot is a problem we will always have, and will always have to deal with. Resolute 14:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

what we will do with dead links as do not have any alternative ways for verification of dead links?
shall we cancel WP:V as meanless rule or what?
or you just going to wait until all dead links will really die, then say "sorry guys..."? (Idot (talk) 16:07, 25 July 2013 (UTC))

Also it should be noted that the vast majority of voters supported acquisition. I was among them. We donate and we should be able to determine how Wikimedia spends our money. — kf8 17:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

How much more do they need to raise and by when? 97.124.165.149 (talk) 16:24, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

They need $30k by the end of year, of which 10k is already raised. Personally, I'm very disappointed by WMF spending large amounts for meaningless activities and not supporting service which stores over 300k pages for verifiability purposes. WMF could acquire WebCite or make similar service of our own, but the Foundation is occupied with its own petty projects like VE, it's a shame! --Akim Dubrow (talk) 10:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Future of undergraduate education

Hi Jimmy, it was amazing to hear you on BBC World Service last night. What do you think of and ? Too many MOOCs seem to achieve their "economies of scale" by removing opportunities for Q&A and other interactions which are encouraged strongly in brick and mortar situations. Many MOOCs tell the students to not email the instructor so that others can handle questions with template answers like we handle OTRS inquires. Can you imagine a brick and mortar college doing that, or telling students they weren't allowed to go to office hours? 97.124.165.149 (talk) 16:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I think you're approaching the problem without sufficient nuance. There is great promise in MOOCs and good reason to think that they will be a major part of education going forward. I welcome that. At the same time, yes, of course, a badly done MOOC is badly done. That's not even close to a valid reason to reject the entire concept, nor even to have skepticism about the entire concept.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

As a related question, you had mentioned in that discussion that there were technologies that were starting to get into place to facilitate guidance and advising services that are typically available at higher ed. institutions. What sort of technologies were you referring to? I, Jethrobot (note: not a bot!) 16:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, without an exact quote of what I said, I'm not sure what I might have meant. That interview was done quite a little while ago. But answering the question as best I understand it, I refer back to a particularly disastrous math course I had many years ago in which the instructor was incredibly boring and had very poor English language skills. All the the supposed benefits of in-person education were lost in that case, and to pass the course I ended up watching videotapes of an award-winning teaching professor at the same university. That was many many years ago. I think a very interesting model is to have the very best (most engaging, most effective) teachers doing highly technology-enhanced lectures, with very high quality 1-1 support as needed. The ultimate question here is an empirical one: how do we stop wasting the time of students and professors? How can we increase the effectiveness and decrease the cost of education? Technology is clearly going to be a very strong component of that.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Jimbo, I totally agree with your above assessment, especially being a math teacher. I love this site, obviously, but have to admit that I find math related articles absolutely, err, what word I am I looking for, confusing?? Its a whole other discussion, but I find articles that are "controlled" by so called "experts" in their fields to be very hard to grasp and understand because they are so over the top technical. I never edit math articles but really like bios and topics I have very little knowledge about. Cheers! --Malerooster (talk) 14:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages copyright policy verses Commons FOP policy

I wonder, as it seems clear that commons is taking their own route and allowing non free content now (yes, they are allowing non free Freedom of Panorama images from countries with a FOP of artwork). In the US we do not have a freedom of Panorama for artwork...so, do we still delete images that violate the US FOP or do we allow it because commons allows it? We can't allow non free use of the image without a full rational, but if Commons is allowing it, how do we counter that here...or do we even try?--Amadscientist (talk) 04:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

And it really does seem that commons is broken. The Upload help page was vandalized 3 hours ago and nobody even noticed or cared. Don't worry about this Jimbo, I have lost interest and no longer care about this particular issue. I am a little disappointed by commons and how even we here at Misplaced Pages don't seem to have a consistent and clear non free use guideline. That I am not giving up on, we need to work on that here in my opinion and I am trying to look into the matter to get the best understanding of our policies. Where are the servers for commons by the way?--Amadscientist (talk) 05:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

"Tying wikitext into VisualEditor would be moving backwards": Why VisualEditor is fundamentally flawed.

I can't use VisualEditor at this time. It slows my computer to a crawl (and this is the computer I use for editing giant image files for WP:Featured pictures.) However, I'm also aware that the devs really want it to be the new way to edit Misplaced Pages, so, if they ever actually manage to make the thing work right, I'd like to have sufficient functionality and legacy support included that I could at least consider it. However, even suggestions that the most basic wikimarkup - '''bold''', ''italic'', ] be included was rejected by J.D. Forrester, changing the bugzilla request to "WONTFIX", a.k.a. this will never be done.

VE appears to be based solely on tests of reactions of people who had never edited Misplaced Pages before, on good computers, with good connections, on test wikis, doing a short list of commands the VE team knew VE could support in both VE and wikimarkup. When actual tests were done in the real world, they showed that VisualEditor, at least in the state it was in at the time, was a disaster for new editors.

And, remember, this was, so far as can be told, the same VisualEditor that was apparently doing so well in the artificial tests of new editors.

But that's the big problem. So far as any documentation shows, not a single attempt was made to find out what would help older editors. Even if VisualEditor improved the experience for new editors in the first five minutes, or even five days, we're playing a long game here. It takes time to learn enough to become a quality contributor, and, as such, the user experience a few months on matters as well.

And that's the problem: The WMF seems determined not to study more established editors, and what would help them. VisualEditor launched to all of En-wiki without any real functional ability to add references, a core necessity for the project, but not something one notices in the first five minutes of editing.

And now, we learn that the VE team are determined to make sure VE excludes even the most basic Wikimarkup.

I'm convinced VisualEditor is doomed, because the views of the community don't matter to the VE team. Adam Cuerden 08:21, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid I have to agree with Adam's analysis. The WMF has made enormous efforts to device a plan to improve Misplaced Pages's infrastructure, nobody denies that. But all the evidence found when reading about the WMF's plans has lead me to think there's a blind spot in the way they're approaching the design of the visual editor. Every time someone in a the Foundation says how wikitext is obsolete or hard to use, I die a little death inside. The Foundation is seeing only the drawbacks of using wikitext, but they're missing all the advantages that it provides, and we're terrified that many of them will be discarded in the transition. Following a cell phone metaphor introduced by User:Whatamidoing, it's like being used to a dumbphone device with a battery that lasts several days without recharge, and suddenly being forced to use a shiny smartphone that is depleted in a few hours.

The difficulties faced by new editors are not solely because of wikitext syntax, which is terse and easy to touch-type; most problems are created by the complex layer of templates, categories, and community guidelines that one must fulfill, and those are not going away. By the time the VE is able to support all tasks that wikicode support today, it will be nearly as complex as wikitext, and much less welcoming in many ways (some complex tasks are made more discoverable by the VE, true, but also much less efficient by the new interface).

The interfaces for templates and references (the very first improvements that the community requested as indispensable) are a good first step towards what should be a tool that editors can use to the achieve the most complex tasks. But more effort needs to be placed on providing the same efficiency that a veteran can achieve by writing code directly; and the final tool should resemble how editors write code with raw text, only enhanced by (optional) user-friendly wizards. A solution for veterans should provide ways to make editing semantic code friendlier to newcomers (with autocompletion, easy discovery of features, self-documenting interfaces...) as well as quick to use by experienced editors, and this requires not completely shielding them from code by hiding all the semantics existing behind Misplaced Pages articles. How can we get the WMF to listen to these requirements, when they have a strong vision of their own that looks incompatible with them? Diego (talk) 10:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The title of this section of my talk page includes a quote, but a quote from where? I think, although a good argument could persuade me otherwise, that the visual editor should always include support for double-bracket linking. The reason is that double brackets only very very very rarely could possibly mean anything else, and it's a very very fast way to do linking. I'm open to alternative perspectives, but I'd like to see a discussion of those perspectives - without a lot of hand-wringing and philosophizing about consumers and elitism and so on. :-) Let's just stay very very practical and say what we want and explain it clearly and without a lot of rhetorical flourishes. What are the best arguments against allowing double-bracket linking in the VE?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, here's another couple of quotes, from Erik Moeller:

• " Sorry, but this is not something we'll ever do, as I explained in comment 9. It's not simply a matter of prioritization - it's a matter of ensuring we can provide a user experience that's not modeled on markup, but on best user experience practices. As James said, we provide keyboard shortcuts, and will provide other user interfaces optimized for markup. But parsing markup within the visual editing context is completely off the table."
• "We're listening, but in this case we're saying no, and that decision is final. We can elaborate a bit more on the why if that helps, but parsing wikitext in VisualEditor is absolutely not going to happen. If accidental insertion of wikitext is still an issue, we should focus on other ways to mitigate that issue."

- Bug 49686 - VisualEditor: automagically convert wikitext (e.g. link) to VE-compatible elements. (that's the 'bugzilla page' Adam linked above)

So I guess we could be forgiven for thinking the

@Jimbo: The reason is that double brackets only very very very rarely could possibly mean anything else, and it's a very very fast way to do linking. You have just described the essence of wikitext, what makes it a very good way to create wiki content. That example is not an exception, ALL wiki markup achieves the same effect of being unambiguous and fast to type. There should not be arguments against double-bracket linking in the VE, because that is the most efficient possible way to insert (and maintain!) links.

A good Visual Editor would treat all the page content as a stream of text decorated with semantic tags (either inline of peripheral), with tools that allow easy discovery and auto-completion. Inserting semantic tags in articles, moving them around and transforming them through copy-paste and search-and-replace operations should be as easy in the new tools as it's easy to do in wikitext.

The main problem with the current interface is that it's based on forms and modal dialogs, and every time you need to insert semantic tags (links, infoboxes, categories...), those dialogs get in the way of adding content; these insertion tools that are less efficient than just typing. Turning the page into a 1980's style WYSIWYG editor is sub-optimal, as it hides the semantics that keep Misplaced Pages articles interlinked and classified, which should be visible in a user-friendly way, not hidden from view. WYSIWYG is good for rich-formatted text (bold, italics, sections...) but not for editing semantic tags. There should be a "semantic mode" for people who know what they're doing and want to add anything more complex than format. Here are several ways to make a semantic editor that is both efficient and user-friendly:

• Show the semantic tag of the element that has focus, without requiring the user to press any key nor open any dialog.
• Tools that facilitate insertion should be non-modal, attached to the sides of the window. This way, a novice doesn't need to remember all possible parameters, but an expert user can interleave using the tool and inserting semantic content directly.
• Copying text should retain all the semantic info attached to the part of the text being copied. (The VE developers are working on this one).
• If a complex element (table, infobox...) is composed of several tags, it should be possible to edit only parts of the structure (copy, paste or delete rows, fields)... without the need to insert data in forms.

You should try to explain Erik that the best user experience practices for editing semantic content is to make markup visible but not scary. Diego (talk) 13:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree very much with Adam that having support for some basic wikitext would be incredibly helpful. I love the idea of VE but the couple of features missing make it very hard for me to use. Linking is very slow and frustrating when I want to create piped links, and not being able to name my references is also frustrating when I'm switching from VE to source editing and back. That said, I'm glad to hear the devs are working on things like template parsing and special characters. Just thought I'd throw in my 2 cents here. Keilana| 13:11, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, having read the bug report now, and the full response, I see that what is being suggested is that control-k (or command-k on mac) is the new double square brackets. Why is that not a valid response? At this moment, I went into an article to write some new text. (Hypothetical text.) I typed: "I really like <cmd-k>Thomas Jefferson<enter><enter> as a President." It was reasonably fast. I'd change a couple of things about the experience - first, it seems to have forced the popup dialog with the autocomplete... I think it should only do that if I hesitate for a couple of seconds, not every time. If it didn't pop up that box, but instead just let me quickly power type ahead, then cmd-k whatever enter enter is at least as fast as double brackets, no? If that's right, then yes there's a user education issue (who knows command-k? not me) and there's also some work to be done on the UI (but not philosophically difficult work, just some nice polishing).

An alternate view is that if it is philosophically ok for the 'trigger' for hyperlinking to be cmd-k, then why can't it also be bracket-bracket?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Note how you and the people from the WMF are only reviewing use cases for inserting content. Nobody seems to care for how difficult it is to modify previous links, or to copy one link several times with small tweaks at each copy. (Also, time-based interfaces like waiting for a pop-up are terrible for people with disabilities). Diego (talk) 15:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. The thing with wikimarkup is it was specifically designed to be things that were never used in language. About the only use of double brackets or more than one apostrophe that an encyclopedia might need are in articles about Wikitext itself, which makes them ideal keyboard hortcuts that maintain our identity. If the VisualEditor team wishes to include alternatives as well, such as, say, Cntrl-K, that would be one thing, but the only argument being provided is that it would be a "step backwards", which is a pointless rejection of something so successful that it made an entirely new and incredibly popular class of websites.

The WMF seems absolutely blind to its own success, and to how far Wikimarkup has spread beyond Misplaced Pages, based on its quality and ease of use. Since Misplaced Pages launched, I'm pretty sure it's fair to say it has become one of the - if not just the - best-known text-markup tools in existence. And that says a lot to its quality.

Further, offering some basic wikitext support has no drawback to the user. Wikitext was created specifically to not conflict with user activities. However, not offering the support makes VisualEditor have a very high opportunity cost to switch to. Particularly at the moment, the lack of support means that editors have to learn all new codes and shortcuts for basic functions - or be stuck into an inefficient keyboard-and-mouse interface - all whilst using an editor that still lacks a lot of basic functionality.

Quantitative data:
First of all, let's look at the most up-to-date stats:

• According to http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/graphs/enwiki_ve_hourly_perc far, far more edits are made in Wikitext than in VisualEditor.
• Looking at editors themselves, http://ee-dashboard.wmflabs.org/graphs/enwiki_ve_daily_editors editors appear to be rejecting VisualEditor in favour of Wikitext by a wide margin.

These support the results of meta:Research:VisualEditor's_effect_on_newly_registered_editors/Results, "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."

We can expand that to the present day using the stats we have. Looking at daily edits by newly-registered editors (newly-registered being defined as ones that registered after VE launched), there's a slight preference for Wikitext (979 VE vs. 1.01K Wikitext), but not as strong as in other groups. However - looking at the most recent stats at time of writing, 2.85 per hour for VE, vs. 4.24 for Wikitext (I presume that's thousands). That implies that the results are holding steady.

So, basically, editors are still preferring Wikitext, even the new users this was meant to attract.

VisualEditor's interface apparently attempts to sabotage the ability for users to find Wikitext editing

VisualEditor has been set as the default for all users, and the interface for VisualEditor is designed to make Wikitext editing less attractive. "Edit source" is a confusing and off-putting term, as opposed to the safe-sounding plain "Edit". Editing a section in Wikitext requires you to hover over the "edit" button and then move to Edit source. As such, if anything, one would presume that the interface would actively bias users against Wikitext at present.

Conclusion

• Not supporting basic wikimarkup in VisualEditor adds a high opportunity cost for existing editors.
• All classes of editors still prefer Wikimarkup. Older editors and IPs reject it by huge margins; a majority of new editors still reject it, although by smaller margins.
• Those using VisualEditor are less productive.
• Wikitext is designed not to interfere with other editing, making it ideal for shortcuts.
• All this despite VisualEditor being the default, and VisualEditor's interface attempting to discouage Wikitext editing.
• The only argument given, so far, for the idea that VisualEditor should not support basic Wikimarkup is that this would be a "step backwards". This is not an argument

Adam Cuerden 15:24, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The design is indeed fundamentally flawed, due in no small part to its reliance on Parsoid and javascript. What I want is a split-screen editor, in which I can edit either in wysiwyg mode or the wikitext directly and switch between the two effortlessly. In other words, the WMF ought to have spent the time and money in developing a proper downloadable editor. Eric Corbett 15:48, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

RfA

Whatever happened to all the talk about how you had some ideas for saving the RfX process? AutomaticStrikeout  ?  16:28, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Tables with VE

You said somewhere above that you thought it was acceptable to have left tables out of VE because they were hard. I think it's actually the worst deficiency of VE. Any examination of the hundreds of thousands of pop culture articles on Misplaced Pages will reveal that they are built around tables: tables of episodes, tables of release dates, filmographies, discographies, videographies, bibliographies, more -ographies than you can shake a stick at.

Go take a look at List of awards and nominations received by Demi Lovato, probably the poster-child article for something a new young editor is likely to go edit. Hit that edit button and ask yourself whether you would dare touch the result (please don't actually touch it with VE by the way: the results are highly unpredictable and rarely good).

Efforts by newbies to edit them can result in disasters like this edit. No editor really wanted to replace every episode description with the ♙ character.

No newbie can add the fact that a song charted in his country using VE, probably the single most common edit to pop song articles. The release of VE has saved me some time: newbies can't figure out how to even try to add a chart entry, so I don't have to spend as much of my time fixing them as I used to. That's certainly not your goal.

This thing really needs to get rolled back until it has the basic capabilities required to edit all of our articles, and that includes table editing, including tables of templates that don't meet Parsoid's definition of how we should have built templates.—Kww(talk) 16:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)