[Wikimedia-l] Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation

[Amir E. Aharoni]

2013/7/23 Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org>:
> Should that even be a concern? I mean, if lots of newbies and technophobes start using the Visual Editor and a bunch of us dorks who love writing markup don't, would that matter?

I saw the following more than once on editing workshops and similar
events: An experienced user is teaching newbies about editing and
shows it with his own account... with Monobook. This is already a
problem, because it's different from what the newbies will see. Then
he tells the newbies to start editing, and starts walking around and
helping them one-by-one and *he* is confused by their interface, which
is obviously Vector. A *real* spoken quote from such an occurrence:
"Huh? A 'Read' tab? What is it? When did They add it?"

Yes, it happened in 2013. (And I hope that my use of capitalization on
"They" conveys the right message.)

It doesn't have to happen in a workshop - it can happen in technical
village pumps, too; I still occasionally see techies advise people who
ask for support to switch to Monobook.

And obviously, the gap between Monobook and Vector is negligible
compared to the gap between WikiEditor and VisualEditor. This creates
a Paradox: The people that are the most capable to teach the newbies
how to edit are not able to help the newbies because they are using
different interface. There is no other way to overcome this paradox
than to dog-food.[1]

People who really don't want to dog-food will have "Edit source" for
the foreseeable future. But encouraging others to use VE is very much
desirable, and has good reasons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food

--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore‬