[Foundation-l] Visual Editor Prototype

[Liam Wyatt]

For those who've not seen the announcement, the WMF tech team have launched
the first prototype of the visual editor, "perhaps the most challenging
technical project ever undertaken in the history of MediaWiki
development.":
http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/13/help-test-the-first-visual-editor-developer-prototype/Congratulations
to everyone who's been working on this so far - more power
to you!

The Economist has already picked this up and called it "the most
significant change in Wikipedia’s short history."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/12/changes-wikipedia

You can play with the new system in the sandbox here:
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:VisualEditorSandbox
As mentioned in the announcement, it's by no-means fully featured (doesn't
yet allow editing of templates/tables, saving edits etc.) and they're
looking to June 2012 for first production use at scale. Feedback left via
that sandbox gets published on MediaWiki.org here
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Visual_editor/Feedback

[Sorry if this was already announced on this list! It's just such
significant and unambiguously good news that I wanted to shout it from the
rooftops.]

-Liam
Peace, love & metadata