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....@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@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
