On 3 June 2014 09:05, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote: English paths we Okay, further to what I've said above....I think that before having an RFC, we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions. This is what I would suggest. - Create a "sample article" that includes an infobox, an image or two, some references, a template or two, and at least three editable sections. Editors will be asked to copy/paste this page into a personal sandbox to carry out the experiment, so that their individual results can be observed through the page history, and problems can be more easily identified. - Identify about 15-20 *basic* editing tasks that an inexperienced editor would be likely to try. Some that come to mind: - Remove a word - Add a word - change spelling of a word - add a link to another article - remove a link to another article - move a sentence within a section - move a sentence across sections - add a [new] reference (multiple tests for website, newspaper, book references) - edit an existing reference - re-use an existing reference - edit existing information in the infobox - add a reference to the infobox - add a new parameter to the infobox - add an image - remove an image - add an image description - modify an image description - add a commonly used template (such as {{fact}}) - remove a template - add several symbols and accented characters that are not available on their standard keyboard (e.g., Euro and GBP symbols for US keyboards, accented characters commonly used in German or French) - Ask the "testers" to complete a chart outlining their results for each of the editing tasks being tested, and any comments they have about each of these editing features. If we can persuade even 25 people to work through these basic tasks, and the results are aggregated well, the community will have some useful data on which to base next-steps decisions. It will also provide the VisualEditor team with comparatively unbiased information about their progress. The key emphasis in the experiment is that it should focus on straightforward, elementary editing activities rather than complex tasks, and the purpose is to see whether or not these features work in an expected way or not. Thoughts? Risker/Anne

Okay, further to what I've said above....I think that before having an RFC, we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions. This is what I would suggest.

On 3 June 2014 12:25, David Gerard <dgerard(a)gmail.com> wrote: David, one of the most important features of this proposed test is that people who *know* what the results ought to look like are carrying out the testing. It is probably a good idea to have parallel testing with new or inexperienced users, but at the end of the day, it's experienced Wikipedians who are going to make the decision whether or not to open up availability of VisualEditor to an expanded user group, and they are the ones who have to believe that it is fit for purpose, at least for basic editing skills required by new users. I suspect that most Wikipedians will give much more regard to the documented experiences of editors whose reputations they know as compared to those who are brand new - and I include myself in that group. I've seen ringers sent in too often in different kinds of user tests (not necessarily Wikimedia-specific) to fully assume good faith. Risker/Anne