Although "Tech innovations which try to replace quality human editing are
not a good idea." Tech innovations which can adequately replace the need
for quality human editing when that editing is not sufficiently available
can be a very good idea, So can tech innovations which try can assist low
quality human editing to become of higher quality. So can tech innovations
which merely replicate what some people can do at a high quality, but most
people cannot. I saw little need to replace the wikitext editor because I
have worked enough in html for that to be as natural as using a keyboard,
but it is easy to forget the needs of those who have only worked through
WSIWYG interfaces. I find the talk page system quite intuitive, but I'm
aware that many others don't share this feeling.
The difficulty is in differentiating these situations, and I haver seen
here as in many situation elsewhere that the people who develop technology
are willing to use it even when imperfect and badly documented, and even
pride in their ability to do so. This was certainly true in my own
profession, where we librarians never understood why most of the public
found navigating our manual and early automated system so difficult.
I share in detail Risker's feeling about the visual editor in particular: I
use it now, and the key factor which improved it for me was the recent
addition of the ability to go back and forth between the two editing modes
without losing work, so I can use the strengths of each of the as needed.
(But I am aware of the pressure to release *something* to the public
after the very slow development; that original slow development was perhaps
the root problem.)
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 11:44 AM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you for flagging this for us, Andrew. I have
been unsuccessful in
accessing this page and have been told by others who tried to do so that
they were also getting various error messages. I will try again later
using different technology - the problem may be that the blog doesn't come
up well certain types of phones. Personally, I have always been a bit
heartbroken that I missed out on the chance for a "Magnus Manske has a
Posse" t-shirt a while back; his work has genuinely changed the course of
our project on more than one occasion, and his reputation is solidly
earned.
With that in mind - that I've not yet got the full context of Magnus's
comments, but that I believe anything Magnus says is worth listening to and
considering - I'm a bit concerned about any suggestion that "the
community"
rejected Visual Editor because it was "new".
The English Wikipedia community rejected it because it was really bad
software that was causing so much damage to the project that even editors
whose focus was on content writing and improvement wound up wasting their
time fixing the errors inserted into the text by VisualEditor. We went
from a somewhat-difficult-to-use text editor (wikitext) as the default to a
not-even-beta-level default editor that could not carry out even basic
editing functions and was actively damaging existing content - without even
a way for editors to select a "no VE" preference, which had to be written
after implementation. While it was available to IP editors, the community
wound up reverting almost 100% of their edits because the VE-generated
problems were so severe. This was not a failure of the community to accept
change. This was the failure of the WMF to understand what a minimal
viable product should be. The poorly thought out implementation of
VisualEditor has caused a huge amount of damage to the reputation of the
software - remember, the community had been asking for something along this
line as far back as 2003, so it wasn't that we didn't want this type of
editing interface - and it also caused an entirely predictable backlash
from the community of 2013. Remember, this was not the community of 2003
that understood almost everyone involved in software creation was a
volunteer too, and thus would tolerate less refined software releases. The
community of 2013 (quite correctly, I think) expected much higher quality
work from paid staff. Bluntly put, not even when almost all of the
software was being written by volunteers did we see such a problematic
"upgrade".
The Visual Editor of January 2016 bears little relationship to that which
was released on July 1, 2013 - it is dramatically better, easier to use,
and has some really great features that even experienced editors will find
useful. I hope more experienced users will give it another try.
I often find it ironic that the great concern about attracting new editors
and thus creating VisualEditor is then immediately dumped to the bottom of
the drawer when it comes to Wikidata. First we'll make it easy for them to
edit. Then we'll include a whole pile of data that they can't edit -or at
least can't edit on the website they logged into. They're pretty opposite
ideas, but of course that's considered luddite thinking.
Risker/Anne
On 18 January 2016 at 08:34, Andrew Lih <andrew.lih(a)gmail.com> wrote:
There’s an excellent profile of Magnus Manske in
the Wikimedia blog
today.
It’s hard to think of people more important to
the movement than Magnus
has
been since 2001.
Selected quotes: "...we have gone from slowdown to standstill; the
interface has changed little in the last ten years or so, and all the
recent changes have been fought teeth-and-claw by the communities,
especially the larger language editions. From the Media Viewer, the
Visual
Editor, to Wikidata transclusion, all have been
resisted by vocal groups
of
editors, not because they are a problem, but
because they represent
change... all websites, including Wikipedia must obey the Red Queen
hypothesis: you have to run just to stand still. This does not only
affect
Wikipedia itself, but the entire Wikimedia
ecosystem... if we wall our
garden against change, against new users, new technologies our work of 15
years is in danger of fading away... we are in an ideal position to try
new
things. We have nothing to lose, except a little
time.”
Link:
https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/01/18/fifteen-years-wikipedia-magnus-manske/
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines
New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Unsubscribe:
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l,
<mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>