[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year Presentation to the Board, esp. Visual Editor

[En Pine]

Clarification: I see that https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Mid-Year_Review_February_2012.pdf&page=51 says in the text, “First opt-in user-facing production usage by December 2011, and first small wiki default deployment by June 2012”. However, https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Mid-Year_Review_February_2012.pdf&page=46 doesn’t include those caveats. As someone who’s accustomed to reading highly colorful charts and audit reports with carefully chosen visual flags, I find it disturbing to have green checks by an item that’s still a work in progress and months away from completion. I would like to suggest that a more cautionary visual symbol such as the words “in progress” would have been more appropriate.


From: En Pine 
Sent: Saturday, 03 March, 2012 21:42
To: foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org 
Subject: Re: Wikimedia Foundation Mid-Year Presentation to the Board, esp. Visual Editor

I appreciated this presentation. It raised many good points about successes and challenges. However, I’d like to know why the visual editor appears to be checked as a finished item in this presentation, in the slides https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Mid-Year_Review_February_2012.pdf&page=46 and https://wikimediafoundation.org/w/index.php?title=File:Wikimedia_Foundation_Mid-Year_Review_February_2012.pdf&page=51. This is inconsistent with the latest information that I’m able to find about the visual editor. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Visual_editor#Status says that the visual editor isn't scheduled for an initial rollout until June. Sorry to be critical, but I get the impression that this presentation counted the chickens several months before they've hatched. 

Pine