Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Updates/August 1, 2013

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This is an important update to the integration of VisualEditor into the user-experience here on the English Wikipedia whilst it's in beta:

  • We're making the "Edit source" tab the primary (first) edit tab across all namespaces.
  • We're making VisualEditor the second edit tab across all namespaces where it is available, labeled "Editbeta"
  • We're displaying to users a first-time modal message (users cannot interact with editor before they dismiss it) to users after clicking the "Editbeta" tab, informing them that they're using VisualEditor, warning them that issues may occur, and thanking them for any help with testing and reports.
  • We're disabling the section editing animation (progressive disclosure), which many users found annoying and confusing.
  • Consistent with the change to the tabs, we're changing the section edit link order to say "[edit source | editbeta]".
  • We're changing "Edit" to "Edit source" in namespaces where VisualEditor is not enabled, for consistency.
  • None of these changes will affect users who have disabled VisualEditor in the "editing" section of their preferences. These users will get the same experience as they did prior to the VisualEditor beta.

Rationale:

  • Users have expressed understandable concerns that the small "BETA" label inside VisualEditor, which (when clicked) informs them of the beta status of the software and asks them to report issues, is not sufficient to inform users that they're participating in the beta period, given remaining issues that we're working through.
  • While we realise that many users would prefer that VisualEditor be a user preference that users have to specifically turn on in order for it to appear in the interface, we don't feel that it will be possible to develop VisualEditor effectively with only a small pool of users who have chosen to activate it by means of a preference. In order to prevent self-selection bias and have an appropriate set of users from all groups (users identified only by IP address, new users, and experienced users alike) giving us guidance and feedback, it is necessary to make VisualEditor visible to all these groups, with appropriate caveats. Moreover, we believe it's appropriate to begin setting the expectation that there are two modes of editing, source editing and visual editing, for all users.
  • While we've considered other labels for "Edit source" and "Edit", we feel this is the most future-proof approach, and allows us to apply the change consistently across languages, including those where communities have not asked us to make the change. All tabs to the right use verbs to describe actions ("Read", "Edit", "View history"), and a label like "VisualEditorbeta" would be just the name of a software component, rather than providing an appropriate affordance to the user.
  • Users have already suggested making the tab labels consistent. We agree that for users who are comfortable retaining VisualEditor in their interface during the beta period, this will support training muscle memory irrespective of the availability of VisualEditor in different namespaces.

We appreciate the community's patience. VisualEditor is the most dramatic change to Wikipedia's user experience in the history of our projects. It will take us some time to make it a truly awesome editing experience, and we can only do it in partnership with you! Users have been giving us an enormous amount of feedback on both VisualEditor and Parsoid (VisualEditor bug stats, Parsoid bug stats). We've done our best to address serious problems with high urgency. We are grateful for your support during the beta period, which we anticipate will continue for several months at least. We'll continue to listen carefully to your feedback and try to find reasonable approaches to address community concerns.

-- James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor
1 August 2013