[Wikimedia-l] Let's have the courage to sit down and talk about VisualEditor

[Tomasz W. Kozlowski]

Hi,
there is a famous quote on courage by Winston Churchill, a British Prime 
Minister, who once wisely said: "Courage is what it takes to stand up 
and speak. Courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."

Over the weekend, more than 440 editors of the German Wikipedia took 
part in an RfC-like process ("Umfragen") at 
<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/VisualEditor_Opt-in> 
and voted against the activation of the VisualEditor for anonymous 
users, asking the WMF to revert to an opt-in phase instead of the 
currently existing opt-out.

This is yet another signal coming from the community that there is 
something very broken about the process in which VisualEditor is being 
rolled out. Most of the criticism has been ignored so far, but on the 
other hand, we haven't yet seen such an enormous community objection 
against the VisualEditor anywhere.

Let us therefore use this opportunity, and have the courage to sit down 
and listen. Or, perhaps, in the wiki spirit, let's edit this quote, and 
let us sit down and talk.

And, together, let's learn a lesson from this, and correct the errors so 
that they don't become mistakes.

           Tomasz