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

[Robert Rohde]

I don't speak German, but with the aid of Google Translate, I think
one can get a decent gist of the results.


Firstly, let me note that this German "Umfragen" process is structured
largely as a vote.  Some participants added short explanatory
statements, but it is not a discussion forum so one shouldn't expect
detailed explanations.

Participants were asked their opinion about how VE should be deployed
on dewiki.  The vote is still ongoing, but so far the results are:

22 individuals (4.4%) feel that VE should be deployed for anonymous
users as scheduled.

7 users (1.4%) feel that VE should stay at its present status, i.e.
deployed for registered users but not anons.

442 users (87.7%) feel that the VE deployment should be rolled back so
that it is only available to users who explicitly opt-in at this time.

33 users (6.5%) chose a fourth opinion, the meaning of which is
somewhat unclear to me using Google Translate, but which appears to
express the opinion that VE should continue to be active in the
interface but that it should be assigned a new button and not take
over the "edit" functions.


Some of the people voting for the fourth option also supported one of
the other three options as an alternative / supplemental preference.

Rather than continuing with the deployment to anons (scheduled for
tomorrow), it appears that most of the contributors in this poll would
prefer that VE be rolled back and only delivered as an opt-in process
at this time.

Among the users choosing to offer an explanatory statement, the most
common opinions offered in support of rollback (in no particular
order) were perceptions that:

VE is too buggy / error-prone.
VE is missing too many essential features.
The current performance of VE is too slow.
Various complaints about UI ("edit" section animation, button labels, etc.)
Creates more work than benefits.
Poor experience will deter rather than encourage new editors.
Not intuitive.


The overarching theme of the comments is that VE was perceived as too
immature/incomplete to justify any form of wide-scale deployment at
this time.  It should also be acknowledged that many participants
agreed with the idea of a visual editor, in principle, but felt that
the current implementation wasn't yet adequate.

-Robert Rohde


On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 5:43 PM, Bence Damokos <bdamokos at gmail.com> wrote:
> Can somebody summarize the concerns raised in that RfC?
>
> Best regards,
> Bence
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 2:36 AM, Tomasz W. Kozlowski <tomasz at twkozlowski.net
>> wrote:
>
>> 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<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
>>
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