On 3 June 2014 09:05, Risker <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> On 3 June 2014 03:02, ENWP Pine <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Because VE has repeatedly been mentioned in this list as something that
>> is improving and may help us with acquisition of editors and their
>> knowledge, I have started to draft an RfC about re-enabling VE on English
>> Wikipedia.
>>
>> I am not proposing any specific outcome in the RfC. My goal is to set up
>> a framework which the community can use to decide which of several paths we
>> would like to take.
>>
>> This is not my personal RfC, I just happen to think that with recent
>> discussions trending positively about VE's improvement over the past
>> several months and with the comments in this list about its possible value
>> to acquiring new editors, I'm willing to put in some time to draft a
>> framework for a discussion on-wiki. I am providing this note to let the
>> community know that someone (me) is drafting a framework for on-wiki
>> discussion. If someone else wants to start an RfC before I get around to
>> starting one, that's completely ok.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Pine
>>
>
>
> Without denigrating your considerable contributions to the project, Pine,
> I'd suggest that anyone setting up an RFC on this issue should have more
> recent experience with the product than you have, and I'd also suggest that
> an RFC is premature until there is an indication from the WMF that *they*
> feel the product might be ready for broader access. I don't think that a
> fair discussion can be had when it is happening without, for example, a
> clear understanding of what issues existed before and whether or not they
> have been resolved. I hope you will reconsider - or perhaps actually test
> the product for a couple of weeks before proceeding, so that the RFC can be
> based on factual information rather than "well, some people think it should
> be enabled". There have always been some people who thought it should be
> enabled. There have always been some people who think it is a waste of
> engineering time and energy. But factual information about the current
> status of the tool, complete with intelligent assessment of its features,
> is what is really needed for the community to make a considered decision.
>
> Risker/Anne
>
Okay, further to what I've said above....I think that before having an RFC,
we should seek community assistance to carry out a small-scale study so
that there is some evidence on which people can base their decisions. This
is what I would suggest.
- Create a "sample article" that includes an infobox, an image or two,
some references, a template or two, and at least three editable sections.
Editors will be asked to copy/paste this page into a personal sandbox to
carry out the experiment, so that their individual results can be observed
through the page history, and problems can be more easily identified.
- Identify about 15-20 *basic* editing tasks that an inexperienced
editor would be likely to try. Some that come to mind:
- Remove a word
- Add a word
- change spelling of a word
- add a link to another article
- remove a link to another article
- move a sentence within a section
- move a sentence across sections
- add a [new] reference (multiple tests for website, newspaper, book
references)
- edit an existing reference
- re-use an existing reference
- edit existing information in the infobox
- add a reference to the infobox
- add a new parameter to the infobox
- add an image
- remove an image
- add an image description
- modify an image description
- add a commonly used template (such as {{fact}})
- remove a template
- add several symbols and accented characters that are not available
on their standard keyboard (e.g., Euro and GBP symbols for US keyboards,
accented characters commonly used in German or French)
- Ask the "testers" to complete a chart outlining their results for each
of the editing tasks being tested, and any comments they have about each of
these editing features.
If we can persuade even 25 people to work through these basic tasks, and
the results are aggregated well, the community will have some useful data
on which to base next-steps decisions. It will also provide the
VisualEditor team with comparatively unbiased information about their
progress. The key emphasis in the experiment is that it should focus on
straightforward, elementary editing activities rather than complex tasks,
and the purpose is to see whether or not these features work in an expected
way or not.
Thoughts?
Risker/Anne
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