[Wikimedia-l] Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation

[MZMcBride]

Lodewijk wrote:
>To be totally clear: the poll is to make the visual editor *invisible*,
>with an opt-in for testing purposes. I am assuming this was to be
>achieved through either not rolling it out on nlwiki, or through js/css.

It's incredibly frustrating and upsetting that VisualEditor already has
this functionality built in to it.

When VisualEditor was first introduced on the English Wikipedia, this was
the behavior: it was completely opt-in based on a user preference in
Special:Preferences. This user preference was subsequently hidden in
order to force users to either try VisualEditor or add additional
JavaScript via an unsupported JavaScript gadget to disable VisualEditor
altogether. This has further eroded both community support for
VisualEditor and trust between the Wikimedia Foundation and editors.

There's an active discussion on wikitech-l about this.

MZMcBride