2013/7/23 Tom Morris <[email protected]>: > Should that even be a concern? I mean, if lots of newbies and technophobes > start using the Visual Editor and a bunch of us dorks who love writing markup > don't, would that matter?
I saw the following more than once on editing workshops and similar events: An experienced user is teaching newbies about editing and shows it with his own account... with Monobook. This is already a problem, because it's different from what the newbies will see. Then he tells the newbies to start editing, and starts walking around and helping them one-by-one and *he* is confused by their interface, which is obviously Vector. A *real* spoken quote from such an occurrence: "Huh? A 'Read' tab? What is it? When did They add it?" Yes, it happened in 2013. (And I hope that my use of capitalization on "They" conveys the right message.) It doesn't have to happen in a workshop - it can happen in technical village pumps, too; I still occasionally see techies advise people who ask for support to switch to Monobook. And obviously, the gap between Monobook and Vector is negligible compared to the gap between WikiEditor and VisualEditor. This creates a Paradox: The people that are the most capable to teach the newbies how to edit are not able to help the newbies because they are using different interface. There is no other way to overcome this paradox than to dog-food.[1] People who really don't want to dog-food will have "Edit source" for the foreseeable future. But encouraging others to use VE is very much desirable, and has good reasons. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food -- Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי http://aharoni.wordpress.com “We're living in pieces, I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe>
