The Wikimedia Foundation considered it the most challenging technical project to date, while The Economist has called it Wikipedia's "most significant change".[5] According to The Daily Dot, Wikimedia Foundation's pursuit of wider participation may risk alienating existing editors.[6] In September 2013, English Wikipedia's VisualEditor was changed from opt-out to opt-in, following user complaints,[7][8] but it was returned to being available by default (for new registered users only) in October 2015 after further development.[9] A 2015 study by the Wikimedia Foundation found that VisualEditor failed to provide the anticipated benefits for new editors.[10]
'Editing makes me feel stupid' - user tests commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation from 2009 which demonstrate the difficulty that ordinary users were having with editing MediaWiki code.
In a presentation from Wikimania 2013, the team developing the software presented it to attendees
The original web-based Wikipedia editor provided by MediaWiki is a plain browser-based text editor, also called 'Source editor', where authors have to learn the wiki markup language to edit.[11] A WYSIWYG editor for Wikipedia had been planned for years in order to remove the need to learn the wiki markup language. It was hoped this would reduce the technical hurdle for would-be Wikipedians, enabling wider participation in editing, and was an attempt to reverse the decline in editor numbers of 50,000 in 2006 to 35,000 in 2011, having peaked in 2007.[5][6] It was part of a $1m project aimed at developing new features and making improvements.[5] A goal of the project is to allow both the former wiki markup editing and editing with the WYSIWYG VisualEditor.[12] According to Wikimedia Foundation's Jay Walsh, the hope is to redress under-represented contributions from Arabic, Portuguese, and Indic-language versions of the site.[6][note 1]
According to Wikimedia Foundation, "There are various reasons that lead existing and prospective contributors not to edit; among them, the complexity of wiki markup is a major issue. One of VisualEditor's goals is to empower knowledgeable and good-faith users to edit and become valuable members of the community, even if they’re not wiki markup experts. We also hope that, with time, experienced editors will find VisualEditor useful for some of their editing tasks."[4] In 2012, Sue Gardner, the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said "we don't think that the visual editor, in and of itself, is going to solve the challenge",[13] and Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales remarked "This is epically important".[14]
Rollout
MediaWiki is used by numerous wikis, with smaller sites originally conceived as being rolled out first.[15] VisualEditor was planned to be rolled out on the English-language Wikipedia for editors with registered accounts, and then for anonymous editors.[16] The alpha version was made available to select users in December 2012, widened to all registered users in April.[17] It was default editor for users logged-into the English-language Wikipedia in July 2013.[4][6] It was subsequently made opt-in on the English-language Wikipedia in September 2013 due to community complaints over its stability and implementation was buggy and had limitations[7][8] (though it remained active for most non-English Wikipedias).[18] In 2015 it completed its beta development phase and was again made available on English Wikipedia.[9][19]
The Wikimedia Foundation joined forces with Wikia to work on the project.[20] The implementation encountered challenges with the wiki markup language (the basis for Wikipedia articles), due to it being continuously extended over 12 years to include seldom-used rich and complex features making reproduction of the final article appearance dependent on many factors that were not easy to reproduce.[21] The technical implementation required improvements to MediaWiki in parsing, wiki markup language, the DOM and final HTML conversion.[22] A necessary component is a parser server called Parsoid[note 2] which was created to convert in both directions between wikitext and a format suitable for VisualEditor.[21] The Wikimedia Foundation considered VisualEditor its most challenging technical project to date.[5]
The VisualEditor MediaWiki extension is available for download by server operators and typically requires the latest version of MediaWiki, it is bundled since MediaWiki 1.35.[23]
Online rich-text editor
According to the VisualEditor team, the aim is "to create a reliable rich-text editor for MediaWiki",[24] a "visual editor" which is "WYSIWYG-like".[25] The implementation is split into a "core" online rich-text editor which can run independently of MediaWiki,[26] and a MediaWiki extension.[27]
Response
Responses to the introduction of the VisualEditor have greatly varied, with The Economist's L.M. calling it "the most significant change in Wikipedia's short history."[5]
Opposition
Some editors expressed concerns about the rollout and bugs, with the German Wikipedia community deciding to use an opt-in model instead of an opt-out one.[6][28]Irish Wikipedia administrator Oliver Moran, echoing concerns of other editors, said that users may feel belittled by the implication that "certain people" are confused by wiki markup and therefore need the VisualEditor, comparing the learning of wikitext favorably to Twitter's hashtag and @ (at sign) mention syntax.[29]
Three months after the rollout of the VisualEditor to the English Wikipedia, The Daily Dot reported that the Wikimedia Foundation had experienced backlash from long-time editors who deemed the editor "buggy and untested". Following discourse between the community and the foundation, Wikipedia administratorKww overrode the foundation's rollout, making it opt-in, instead of opt-out. The Foundation did not revert the change, instead committing to further improving VisualEditor.[7][8]
Support
Softpedia ran an article titled "Wikipedia's New VisualEditor Is the Best Update in Years and You Can Make It Better".[30]The Register said that the update brings the foundation "a little closer to its goal of making it easier for anyone to create and edit Wikipedia articles."[17]
Aaron Halfaker, a research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation, ran a controlled study on the effects of VisualEditor in May 2015. The study found that VisualEditor did not increase editor productivity, however reducing the burden upon existing editors. Editing took 18 seconds longer with VisualEditor before hitting save, and new editors were less likely to save their work. Halfaker however did ascribe these negative results as from editors testing the new system, not any real struggle.[10] A previous June 2013 controlled test — when VisualEditor was less mature — showed similar neutral and negative results.[31]
^Andrew Webster (2012-06-22). "Wikimedia releases updated prototype for simplified visual editor". The Verge. from the original on 2013-09-27. Retrieved 2013-07-27.
^"Wikipedia:VisualEditor". Wikipedia. Retrieved 15 September 2013.
^ abcEmil Protalinski (2013-07-02). "Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged-in users accessing Wikipedia articles in English". The Next Web. from the original on 2013-07-05. Retrieved 2013-07-06.
^ abcdeL.M. (2011-12-13). "Changes at Wikipedia: Seeing things". The Economist. from the original on 2013-06-09. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
^ abcdeTim Sampson (2012-07-04). "Will Wikipedia's pretty new editing software solve its recruitment crisis?". The Daily Dot. from the original on 2013-09-27. Retrieved 2013-07-27.
^ abcAndrew Orlowski (2013-09-25). "Revolting peasants force Wikipedia to cut'n'paste Visual Editor into the bin". The Register. from the original on 2013-10-01. Retrieved 2013-10-06.
^ abcTim Sampson (2013-09-24). "Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor". The Daily Dot. from the original on 2013-09-25. Retrieved 2013-09-25.
^ abForrester, James (2015-09-01). "Gradual availability of VisualEditor for new users is now complete". Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
^Martin Brinkmann (2012-02-24). "Wikipedia Visual Editor Coming Soon". ghacks. from the original on 2013-09-27. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
^ehe (2011-12-14). "Wikimedia testing visual editor". h-online. from the original on 2013-07-27. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
^Megan Garber (2012-07-12). "On the Ugliness of Wikipedia". The Atlantic. from the original on 2013-07-03. Retrieved 2013-07-29.
^Gene Ryan Briones (2012-06-21). "Wikimedia launches new prototype "visual editor" for Wikipedia". ubergizmo.com. from the original on 2013-09-29. Retrieved 2013-07-29.
^Jamie Keene (2011-12-15). "Wikimedia Foundation previews simplified visual editor". The Verge. from the original on 2013-09-28. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
^Gabriela Vatu (2013-06-06). "Wikipedia's Visual Editor to Be Rolled Out". Softpedia. from the original on 2013-06-15. Retrieved 2013-07-06.
^ abSimon Sharwood (2013-06-07). "Wikimedia edges closer to banishing Wikitext". The Register. from the original on 2013-07-28. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
^"VisualEditor". Archived from the original on 2013-09-27.
^"VisualEditor - the past, present and future". Wikia Community Central. from the original on 2015-12-08. Retrieved 2015-12-02.
^ abdjwm (2012-12-13). "VisualEditor launched in Wikipedia". h-online. from the original on 2013-07-27. Retrieved 2013-07-28.
^Sumana Harihareswara, Guillaume Paumier. "The Architecture of Open Source Applications (Volume 2) : MediaWiki". aosabook.org. from the original on 2013-09-24. Retrieved 2013-07-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
^"wikimedia/VisualEditor". GitHub. 11 January 2022.
^"wikimedia/mediawiki-extensions-VisualEditor". GitHub. 11 January 2022.
^Andrew Orlowski (2013-08-01). "Wikipedians say no to Jimmy's 'buggy' WYSIWYG editor". The Register. from the original on 2013-08-04. Retrieved 2013-08-05.
^Simonite, Tom (October 22, 2013). "The Decline of Wikipedia: Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It, Fewer People Create It". MIT Technology Review. Archived from the original on October 23, 2013. Retrieved January 17, 2014.
^Lucian Parfeni (2013-07-02). "Wikipedia's New VisualEditor Is the Best Update in Years and You Can Make It Better". Softpedia. from the original on 2013-10-03. Retrieved 2013-07-30.
^"Research:VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors/June 2013 study". Wikimedia.org. Wikimedia Foundation. Archived from the original on 10 September 2016. Retrieved 10 August 2016.
Further reading
Roth, Amy; Davis, Rochelle; Carver, Brian (2013). "Assigning Wikipedia editing: Triangulation toward understanding university student engagement". First Monday. 18 (6). doi:10.5210/fm.v18i6.4340.
Florian Leander Mayer. "Erfolgsfaktoren von Social Media: Wie "funktionieren" Wikis?: Eine vergleichende Analyse kollaborativer Kommunikationssysteme im Internet, in Organisationen und in Gruppen" (2013) Lit Verlag, pp. 30–32. ISBN978-3643122100
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to VisualEditor.
visualeditor, character, mode, editors, general, visual, editor, wikipedia, project, page, about, feature, wikipedia, online, rich, text, editor, mediawiki, powered, wikis, that, provides, direct, visual, edit, pages, based, what, what, principle, developed, w. For character mode editors in general see Visual editor For the Wikipedia project page about the VisualEditor feature see Wikipedia VisualEditor VisualEditor VE is an online rich text editor for MediaWiki powered wikis that provides a direct visual way to edit pages based on the what you see is what you get principle It was developed by the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with Fandom 2 In July 2013 it was enabled by default on several of the largest Wikipedia projects 3 4 VisualEditorVisualEditor logo set in Gill SansVisualEditor s text formatting menuDeveloper s Wikimedia Foundation and Fandom Inc Written inJavaScript Node js PHPOperating systemCross platformPlatformMediaWiki extensionTypeWikiLicenseMIT 1 Websitewww wbr mediawiki wbr org wbr wiki wbr VisualEditorThe Wikimedia Foundation considered it the most challenging technical project to date while The Economist has called it Wikipedia s most significant change 5 According to The Daily Dot Wikimedia Foundation s pursuit of wider participation may risk alienating existing editors 6 In September 2013 English Wikipedia s VisualEditor was changed from opt out to opt in following user complaints 7 8 but it was returned to being available by default for new registered users only in October 2015 after further development 9 A 2015 study by the Wikimedia Foundation found that VisualEditor failed to provide the anticipated benefits for new editors 10 Contents 1 Development 1 1 Rollout 1 2 Technical 1 2 1 Online rich text editor 2 Response 2 1 Opposition 2 2 Support 2 3 Research results 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External linksDevelopment EditMain article MediaWiki Editing interface source source source source source source source source source source source source Editing makes me feel stupid user tests commissioned by the Wikimedia Foundation from 2009 which demonstrate the difficulty that ordinary users were having with editing MediaWiki code source source source source source source source source source source source source source source In a presentation from Wikimania 2013 the team developing the software presented it to attendees The original web based Wikipedia editor provided by MediaWiki is a plain browser based text editor also called Source editor where authors have to learn the wiki markup language to edit 11 A WYSIWYG editor for Wikipedia had been planned for years in order to remove the need to learn the wiki markup language It was hoped this would reduce the technical hurdle for would be Wikipedians enabling wider participation in editing and was an attempt to reverse the decline in editor numbers of 50 000 in 2006 to 35 000 in 2011 having peaked in 2007 5 6 It was part of a 1m project aimed at developing new features and making improvements 5 A goal of the project is to allow both the former wiki markup editing and editing with the WYSIWYG VisualEditor 12 According to Wikimedia Foundation s Jay Walsh the hope is to redress under represented contributions from Arabic Portuguese and Indic language versions of the site 6 note 1 According to Wikimedia Foundation There are various reasons that lead existing and prospective contributors not to edit among them the complexity of wiki markup is a major issue One of VisualEditor s goals is to empower knowledgeable and good faith users to edit and become valuable members of the community even if they re not wiki markup experts We also hope that with time experienced editors will find VisualEditor useful for some of their editing tasks 4 In 2012 Sue Gardner the executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation said we don t think that the visual editor in and of itself is going to solve the challenge 13 and Wikipedia co founder Jimmy Wales remarked This is epically important 14 Rollout Edit MediaWiki is used by numerous wikis with smaller sites originally conceived as being rolled out first 15 VisualEditor was planned to be rolled out on the English language Wikipedia for editors with registered accounts and then for anonymous editors 16 The alpha version was made available to select users in December 2012 widened to all registered users in April 17 It was default editor for users logged into the English language Wikipedia in July 2013 4 6 It was subsequently made opt in on the English language Wikipedia in September 2013 due to community complaints over its stability and implementation was buggy and had limitations 7 8 though it remained active for most non English Wikipedias 18 In 2015 it completed its beta development phase and was again made available on English Wikipedia 9 19 Technical Edit This section relies excessively on references to primary sources Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources Find sources VisualEditor news newspapers books scholar JSTOR January 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message The Wikimedia Foundation joined forces with Wikia to work on the project 20 The implementation encountered challenges with the wiki markup language the basis for Wikipedia articles due to it being continuously extended over 12 years to include seldom used rich and complex features making reproduction of the final article appearance dependent on many factors that were not easy to reproduce 21 The technical implementation required improvements to MediaWiki in parsing wiki markup language the DOM and final HTML conversion 22 A necessary component is a parser server called Parsoid note 2 which was created to convert in both directions between wikitext and a format suitable for VisualEditor 21 The Wikimedia Foundation considered VisualEditor its most challenging technical project to date 5 As of January 2021 update supported web browsers include modern versions of Chromium Chrome Edge Opera Firefox Midori and Safari citation needed The VisualEditor MediaWiki extension is available for download by server operators and typically requires the latest version of MediaWiki it is bundled since MediaWiki 1 35 23 Online rich text editor Edit According to the VisualEditor team the aim is to create a reliable rich text editor for MediaWiki 24 a visual editor which is WYSIWYG like 25 The implementation is split into a core online rich text editor which can run independently of MediaWiki 26 and a MediaWiki extension 27 Response EditResponses to the introduction of the VisualEditor have greatly varied with The Economist s L M calling it the most significant change in Wikipedia s short history 5 Opposition Edit Some editors expressed concerns about the rollout and bugs with the German Wikipedia community deciding to use an opt in model instead of an opt out one 6 28 Irish Wikipedia administrator Oliver Moran echoing concerns of other editors said that users may feel belittled by the implication that certain people are confused by wiki markup and therefore need the VisualEditor comparing the learning of wikitext favorably to Twitter s hashtag and at sign mention syntax 29 Three months after the rollout of the VisualEditor to the English Wikipedia The Daily Dot reported that the Wikimedia Foundation had experienced backlash from long time editors who deemed the editor buggy and untested Following discourse between the community and the foundation Wikipedia administrator Kww overrode the foundation s rollout making it opt in instead of opt out The Foundation did not revert the change instead committing to further improving VisualEditor 7 8 Support Edit Softpedia ran an article titled Wikipedia s New VisualEditor Is the Best Update in Years and You Can Make It Better 30 The Register said that the update brings the foundation a little closer to its goal of making it easier for anyone to create and edit Wikipedia articles 17 Research results Edit This section relies excessively on references to primary sources Please improve this section by adding secondary or tertiary sources Find sources VisualEditor news newspapers books scholar JSTOR January 2022 Learn how and when to remove this template message Aaron Halfaker a research scientist at the Wikimedia Foundation ran a controlled study on the effects of VisualEditor in May 2015 The study found that VisualEditor did not increase editor productivity however reducing the burden upon existing editors Editing took 18 seconds longer with VisualEditor before hitting save and new editors were less likely to save their work Halfaker however did ascribe these negative results as from editors testing the new system not any real struggle 10 A previous June 2013 controlled test when VisualEditor was less mature showed similar neutral and negative results 31 See also EditList of HTML editors WYSIWYG editorsNotes Edit Respective Wikipedia websites Arabic Portuguese and Indic languages Urdu Hindi Bihari Gujarati Parsoid Archived from the original on 2014 11 25 References Edit LICENSE txt VisualEditor source code repository Andrew Webster 2012 06 22 Wikimedia releases updated prototype for simplified visual editor The Verge Archived from the original on 2013 09 27 Retrieved 2013 07 27 Wikipedia VisualEditor Wikipedia Retrieved 15 September 2013 a b c Emil Protalinski 2013 07 02 Wikimedia rolls out WYSIWYG visual editor for logged in users accessing Wikipedia articles in English The Next Web Archived from the original on 2013 07 05 Retrieved 2013 07 06 a b c d e L M 2011 12 13 Changes at Wikipedia Seeing things The Economist Archived from the original on 2013 06 09 Retrieved 2013 07 28 a b c d e Tim Sampson 2012 07 04 Will Wikipedia s pretty new editing software solve its recruitment crisis The Daily Dot Archived from the original on 2013 09 27 Retrieved 2013 07 27 a b c Andrew Orlowski 2013 09 25 Revolting peasants force Wikipedia to cut n paste Visual Editor into the bin The Register Archived from the original on 2013 10 01 Retrieved 2013 10 06 a b c Tim Sampson 2013 09 24 Wikipedia faces revolt over VisualEditor The Daily Dot Archived from the original on 2013 09 25 Retrieved 2013 09 25 a b Forrester James 2015 09 01 Gradual availability of VisualEditor for new users is now complete Wikipedia the free encyclopedia a b VisualEditor s effect on newly registered editors May 2015 study Wikimedia org Wikimedia Foundation Retrieved 2 August 2016 Martin Brinkmann 2012 02 24 Wikipedia Visual Editor Coming Soon ghacks Archived from the original on 2013 09 27 Retrieved 2013 07 28 ehe 2011 12 14 Wikimedia testing visual editor h online Archived from the original on 2013 07 27 Retrieved 2013 07 28 Megan Garber 2012 07 12 On the Ugliness of Wikipedia The Atlantic Archived from the original on 2013 07 03 Retrieved 2013 07 29 Gene Ryan Briones 2012 06 21 Wikimedia launches new prototype visual editor for Wikipedia ubergizmo com Archived from the original on 2013 09 29 Retrieved 2013 07 29 Jamie Keene 2011 12 15 Wikimedia Foundation previews simplified visual editor The Verge Archived from the original on 2013 09 28 Retrieved 2013 07 28 Gabriela Vatu 2013 06 06 Wikipedia s Visual Editor to Be Rolled Out Softpedia Archived from the original on 2013 06 15 Retrieved 2013 07 06 a b Simon Sharwood 2013 06 07 Wikimedia edges closer to banishing Wikitext The Register Archived from the original on 2013 07 28 Retrieved 2013 07 28 VisualEditor Archived from the original on 2013 09 27 Wikimedia Engineering 2015 Q1 Goals mediawiki org Retrieved 2018 10 24 VisualEditor the past present and future Wikia Community Central Archived from the original on 2015 12 08 Retrieved 2015 12 02 a b djwm 2012 12 13 VisualEditor launched in Wikipedia h online Archived from the original on 2013 07 27 Retrieved 2013 07 28 Sumana Harihareswara Guillaume Paumier The Architecture of Open Source Applications Volume 2 MediaWiki aosabook org Archived from the original on 2013 09 24 Retrieved 2013 07 27 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint uses authors parameter link MediaWiki 1 35 MediaWiki Retrieved 2021 03 16 a href Template Cite web html title Template Cite web cite web a CS1 maint url status link VisualEditor Archived from the original on 2013 09 27 Project VisualEditor testing Welcome wikimedia VisualEditor GitHub 11 January 2022 wikimedia mediawiki extensions VisualEditor GitHub 11 January 2022 Andrew Orlowski 2013 08 01 Wikipedians say no to Jimmy s buggy WYSIWYG editor The Register Archived from the original on 2013 08 04 Retrieved 2013 08 05 Simonite Tom October 22 2013 The Decline of Wikipedia Even As More People Than Ever Rely on It Fewer People Create It MIT Technology Review Archived from the original on October 23 2013 Retrieved January 17 2014 Lucian Parfeni 2013 07 02 Wikipedia s New VisualEditor Is the Best Update in Years and You Can Make It Better Softpedia Archived from the original on 2013 10 03 Retrieved 2013 07 30 Research VisualEditor s effect on newly registered editors June 2013 study Wikimedia org Wikimedia Foundation Archived from the original on 10 September 2016 Retrieved 10 August 2016 Further reading EditRoth Amy Davis Rochelle Carver Brian 2013 Assigning Wikipedia editing Triangulation toward understanding university student engagement First Monday 18 6 doi 10 5210 fm v18i6 4340 Florian Leander Mayer Erfolgsfaktoren von Social Media Wie funktionieren Wikis Eine vergleichende Analyse kollaborativer Kommunikationssysteme im Internet in Organisationen und in Gruppen 2013 Lit Verlag pp 30 32 ISBN 978 3643122100External links Edit Wikimedia Commons has media related to VisualEditor MediaWiki VisualEditor MediaWiki Extension VisualEditor Help VisualEditor Community Central What you see is Wiki Questioning WYSIWYG in the Internet Age MediaWiki alternative parsers Building a Visual Editor for Wikipedia Wired Wikipedia s WYSIWYG Dilemma Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title VisualEditor amp oldid 1124062362, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
