Hello,
It's been years since VisualEditor is available, but it's still in Beta at many wikis. Why is that? If a wiki wants VE to grow out of beta, can that happen?
Thanks, Martin
hi Martin – I work as the product manager for the team at the Foundation [i] that is responsible for building and maintaining the visual editor.
You can expect answers to the two questions you posed before Wednesday is over (PST)...I'm wanting to share the most up-to-date and exhaustive answers which require getting input from others people here.
In the meantime, two questions for you:
1. Are there particular wikis you had in mind when you asked this question? 2. By "Beta" are you referring specifically to projects where the visual editor exists as a feature within Beta Features [ii]? Were you referring to projects where the visual editor is not as widely available as you think it could/should be? Something else?
--- i. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Editing_team ii. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:BetaFeatures
Hello Peter,
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.
1) Czech Wikiversity, which started to look for technical improvements (gadgets, tools etc) the Czech Wikipedia has, but they don't.
2) Yes. I think testing VisualEditor in smaller wikis when it's available at any Wikipedia (by far the biggest project we run) doesn't make sense. Obviously, I might be missing something important.
Let me know if you need any more information from me.
Martin
On Tue, May 12, 2020, 3:06 AM Peter Pelberg ppelberg@wikimedia.org wrote:
hi Martin – I work as the product manager for the team at the Foundation [i] that is responsible for building and maintaining the visual editor.
You can expect answers to the two questions you posed before Wednesday is over (PST)...I'm wanting to share the most up-to-date and exhaustive answers which require getting input from others people here.
In the meantime, two questions for you:
- Are there particular wikis you had in mind when you asked this
question? 2. By "Beta" are you referring specifically to projects where the visual editor exists as a feature within Beta Features [ii]? Were you referring to projects where the visual editor is not as widely available as you think it could/should be? Something else?
i. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Editing_team ii. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:BetaFeatures
-- Peter Pelberg (he/him) Product Manager, Editing Team Wikimedia Foundation
On Sat, May 9, 2020 at 4:29 PM Martin Urbanec <martin.urbanec@wikimedia.cz
wrote:
Hello,
It's been years since VisualEditor is available, but it's still in Beta
at
many wikis. Why is that? If a wiki wants VE to grow out of beta, can that happen?
Thanks, Martin _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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You bet. And thank you for this additional context – it's helpful.
Hopefully the information below answers the questions you posed. Although if it doesn't, please say so!
*If a wiki wants the visual editor (VE) to be moved out of Beta Features [1], can that happen?*
Yes. In fact, < 2 weeks ago, the Serbian Wikipedia did just that.[2]
*You can find information about the process for how wikis can have the visual editor moved out of Beta Features below.*
*Why is VE a Beta Feature on some wikis?*
Right now, there are 7 Wikipedias where the visual editor is a Beta Feature: Chinese, Gan, Inuktitut, Kazakh, Kurdish, Tajik and Uzbek.[3]
These are all Phase 7 wikis. Where "Phase 7 wiki" means they are wikis that require LanguageConverter. LanguageConverter is a system VE depends on to enable editors to switch between scripts.[4] Some additional work needs to be done on the LanguageConverter before the visual editor can be moved out of Beta Features at these projects.
*You can find more information about the plan for this LanguageConverter work here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/LanguageConverter#Current_Status https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/LanguageConverter#Current_Status*
There are also sister projects where VE is a Beta Feature.
This is typically because these projects depend heavily on extensions [5] and/or templates, the contents of which can currently only be edited using wikitext. You can see a full list of these projects here: https://noc.wikimedia.org/conf/highlight.php?file=dblists/visualeditor-nonde.... Work to support these sister projects is not yet complete.
Process for moving VE out of Beta Features
Generally, there are two processes for having the visual editor moved out of Beta Features:
1.
A process for "Phase 7 wikis" 2.
A process for all other projects
For a Phase 7 wiki to have VE moved out of Beta Features, we ask they take these steps:
1.
Start a discussion on your wiki to determine these three things: 1.
Is the visual editor working well enough in your language? 2.
Would your community like this to be turned on for everyone? 3.
If yes, how would you like the visual editor to be made available? A single edit tab? [6] Two edit tabs? 2.
Once consensus on the above is reached at your local wiki, file a Phabricator task asking to have VE moved out of Beta Features, and include a link to the discussion where this consensus was reached.
To see an example of this process, you can review the Serbian community's conversation and the resulting Phabricator ticket here:
-
Community consensus: https://w.wiki/QU5 -
Deployment ticket: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T250878
For other projects, like Czech Wikiversity, to have VE moved out of Beta Features, please file a Phabricator task requesting this happen and be sure to tag #VisualEditor.
Please note: it may take our team a few weeks to respond to requests as our capacity is limited due to COVID-19.
--- 1. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:BetaFeatures 2. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T250878 3. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Rollouts#Wikipedias 4. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Parsoid/LanguageConverter 5. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Proofread_Page. 6. https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Single_edit_tab
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