Good idea: but post it on-wiki? Tony
On 03/07/2013, at 7:04 PM, G. White wrote: > The team working on the VE needs this feedback and is asking for it. > Can we collate it and send it to them? > > Whiteghost.ink > > > On 3 July 2013 18:19, Adam Jenkins <[email protected]> wrote: > I've been curious about it, but hadn't tried it before now. I kind-of wish I > hadn't. I took a basic article and tried to do a couple of things that a > typical new editor would try. > > First, I tried adding a reference to a web page for an unsourced claim. This > is particularly important to me, as I was rewriting my "how to edit > Wikipedia" materials to trim it back to five rules, one of which was to > "reference everything". So, looking at the VE, it isn't obvious to a new > editor which button is for adding a reference. All of them use icons rather > than words, so only a mouseover could help. One proved to be "insert > reference", so I clicked on that. (There is also "References list", but that > is for another job). Clicking it brings up a search box saying "what do you > want to reference". I wanted to reference this article, so that was a bit > odd. Then I thought it might have meant what kind of thing I wanted to > reference, so I added "web page" and pressed return. Nothing happened. So I > added a url and clicked pressed return. Still nothing. I tried pressing > "Insert reference". Nothing. So I clicked on "create new source", which > doesn't make a lot of sense, as the source was already online, and that let > me click on "insert reference". Yay! > > Except that it didn't insert the reference. Instead it brought up a new > editing window that had something called "use this group" below a box called > "reference content" with some basic buttons and my url. One of the buttons > was "transclusion", so I thought it might bring up some referencing options, > but it didn't. Instead it opened a new window that made no sense at all. It > seems I'm expected to both know how to format a reference and do it myself, > with no hints, instructions, or any form of assistance. Anyway, I got that to > work, but there was no warning or hint that it wouldn't appear due to the > lack of a references list at the end. Until. of course, I saved it, and was > presented with a red message saying "Cite error: There are <ref> tags on this > page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template", none > of which makes any sense in terms of the VE, which neither shows ref tags nor > reflist templates as options. > > I tried to fix this by clicking on "edit" again, but this came up with a > warning saying that I was editing an old revision of the page. I was > surprised, because I didn't think anyone would have had time to make any > changes, so I checked the history. No, mine was the most recent edit. It > seems that the warning appears if I try to edit twice without physically > clicking on the reload button in my browser. Anyway, after doing that I fixed > it by going to the bottom of the page and clicking on "References list", > which opened a new window with a "use this group" option - something rarely > used on articles that would make no sense to new editors. But clicking on > "Apply changes" made it work. > > For the second job I thought I'd tidy up an existing image that was > incorrectly formatted. My first thought was to add an infobox. That was an > absolutely lost cause - there was no way in the VE that I could see that > would do this, unless it was something to do with the weird "Transclusion" > button the made no sense at all when I clicked on it. So I selected the image > and clicked on "media". This opened a new window showing the photo and a > search box, with the subject's name in it and one photo. So I clicked on the > photo and it made the old one disappear and the new one appear in the right > spot. Except a) it wasn't the picture that was already there, b) the caption > didn't go with it, and the only way to add a caption was to click on it again > once it was there, and c) there was no option to add alt or descriptive text > for people with disabilities. The original picture didn't even appear as an > option, possibly because it had been uploaded to Wikipedia rather than > Commons. > > These weren't hard tasks. But not being able to easily reference is a deal > killer for me. The problem with the "editing an old revision" notice was > serious, especially for a new user, as was the lack of image tags is a major > issue for accessibility. This is a surprise - it would have taken only a > little bit of work with new user focus groups to have worked out that this > wasn't ready to go live. > > So, summary: > > * Most of the options only make sense for experienced editors. But it is > lacking core functions that experienced editors need, so they'll be sticking > with the source option. > * New users are faced with options that make no sense, no assistance (even > though there is a lot of room to add help), and a poor method of adding > references, increasing the likelihood of their work being reverted. > * It is buggy, with that "editing an old version" message very confusing, and > problems showing up after adding an image that I didn't cover. > * Images were added at a non-standard size, without prompts for captions or a > means of adding alt text. > > I honestly don't understand why this is live. > > Adam. > > > On 3 July 2013 15:33, Kerry Raymond <[email protected]> wrote: > For those of you who have taken the Visual Editor for a test drive, what did > you think? > > > > We have seen Gnangarra’s thoughts already and so I thought I’d share mine. > > > > To start, I should say that I sincerely believe that having a visual editor > should make editing Wikipedia much more accessible to those folk who are used > to Microsoft Word etc and not accustomed to seeing markup. I am all in favour > of this initiative. I have worked for many years using WYSIWYG tools like > Word (so-so) and FrameMaker (much better) and SeaMonkey (beats raw HTML any > day), so I don’t come into this discussion with a mindset that “markup = > good”, quite the opposite. As they say in The Matrix, “why send a man to do a > machine’s job?”. > > > > However, in its current state, I don’t think the VisualEditor (VE) achieves > its goal. There’s a few reasons: > > > > It doesn’t run on Internet Explorer, which is the out-of-the-box browser when > you have a Windows PC. The less tech-savvy a person is, the more likely I > think they are to have a Windows PC with IE. So, the very people being > targeted with the VE probably can’t use it because they have the wrong > browser. > > > The functionality of the VE seems very limited. Yes, I can type text. Yes, I > make text bold/italic. Yes, I can make a heading. Yes I can make a link if > the name of the link will suffice as the text, e.g. [[dog]] but not if I want > [[dog|puppy]]. Or, at least, I could not work out how to do it. Although the > toolbar seems to suggest there is a way of working with images, references > and transclusions, I failed to be able to do anything at all with them. Now, > it may be that I am too conditioned by the existing editor to be able to > think in the new paradigm of the VE; perhaps what should be done will be > obvious to the less-conditioned newbie editor. Although I am a bit uncertain > that the newbie will know what “transclusion” means; indeed I think if they > do know what it means, then they would already be familiar with markup. > > > The VE cannot always be used. If you try to change the content of an article > with the VE, you will often get green-diagonal-stripes appearing across the > chunk you are trying to edit with a message that the Visual Editor cannot > edit that sort of material. You have to switch into Edit Source (aka the > existing markup editor) to work with it. > > > I can see that if a newbie comes along (with the right brand of browser) and > clicks Edit for the first time because they’ve seen a spelling error or want > to add an extra sentence, then the VE should work for them, unless of course > they want to do it in a photo caption or inside a table or …. But, as it > stands, there is no real growth path for them to develop their editing skills > beyond such very simple changes. They either have to stay locked into a world > of very limited functionality or they have to click Edit Source for the first > time and deal with markup for the first time. I guess the question that only > time will be able to answer is whether the transition to the markup editor is > made in any way easier by the initial VE experience as opposed to the > previous situation where you were dropped straight into editing markup. > However, for even a mildly experienced editor (and I certainly don’t rate > myself as any kind of expert editor), I cannot see what benefit the VE gives > you. All of things you can do with the VE appear to be just as easily > achievable with the toolbar in the existing editor – the difference is that > you can see the markup produced in the existing editor but not in the VE. I > cannot see a reason an existing editor would shift to the VE; the loss of > functionality would frustrate you very quickly. > > > > Now it’s a fair thing to say “hey, the VE has just been released – it will be > further developed and greater functionality will be available through it”. > This is indeed true, but I can’t see the VE ever developing to the point > where we can throw away the markup editor. Part of the challenge (perhaps > “most of the challenge”) of further extending the VE is that Wikipedia > markup and its templates etc have grown like topsy. There is a lot of > ad-hoc-ery and not a lot of coherence to many existing features. I don’t know > if there is any easy answer to providing a “simple visual” tool for working > with templates and other exotic features. The task of building the VE would > have been made easier if they could have first removed some existing features > out of the current editor and then out of the articles that used them, but no > doubt there would have been howls of outrage if that had occurred. If the > goal is an easy-to-use WYSIWYG editor, then I think some existing > functionality will have to be discarded or revised to achieve it. > > > > How are other people finding the Visual Editor? > > > > Kerry > > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaau-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimediaau-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l ___________________ Tony Souter *Fixed-line phone: +612 42633401 *Mobile: 0450 717627 (+61450 717627), but usually not switched on *Skype: tonysouter *Street address: 1/29 Tarrant Ave, Kiama Downs 2533, Australia
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