[Wikimedia-l] Feedback for the Wikimedia Foundation

[Erik Moeller]

On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Tom Morris <tom at tommorris.org> wrote:

> 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?

That's a great question, Tom. :)

We're confident that in the long run, we'll be able to offer features
and capabilities that will give experienced community members
compelling reasons to use VisualEditor, so when people say things like
"I will never use VisualEditor", I can only note that never is a very
long time, and the bulk of our continued effort will go into making
VisualEditor the best possible editing experience it can be.

This is not a feature we're launching and forgetting about. This isn't
an effort that's scheduled to end. Enabling collaboration is part of
our core mission; it's at the heart of what we do. We've got our work
cut out for us for the next few months, and we also know what some of
the longer term objectives are (integration with discussions,
real-time collaboration). Beyond that - sky's the limit.

So, does it matter if people continue to use markup? Probably not -
but if you're a human, we'll aim to give you a much better tool to get
the job done. So even if you are, as you put it, a markup-loving dork,
we hope you'll come visit us in VisualEditor-land every once in a
while and mingle with us. We do have cookies, and tales of template
madness.

Erik
-- 
Erik Möller
VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation