VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive/2015/02

Movable table rows/columns

I've been playing with the table editor in VE - seeing what it can do. It's a GREAT improvement and has enabled me to do things I wouldn't have done before! It still has bugs (like how to activate a cell, keyboard shortcuts [e.g. tab, or arrows] don't work to navigate around, and double-clicking on links in cells cause the screen to jump around), but I'm very happy with how it's working so far.

For what it's worth: if I was able to vote on the next feature that would be super-useful to add, is to make it possible to "move" (drag) a column or row to a different place in the table. I consistently find this to be the thing that I keep expecting to be possible (even though it was not possible in the traditional editor) and frustrated when it's not possible.

Also, one tiny thing about merged cells:

• When I have a merged cell, and I go to "de-merge" it, the button still says "merge". When the highlighted cell is already merged, the text on the button should instead say "un-merge" or "de-merge" to indicate to the user what will happen. Wittylama (talk) 13:38, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Hey Liam,

Dragging columns and rows is definitely the thing we're looking to implement next with regards to tables; it's a particularly challenging thing to re-order a column in wikitext, so making it much easier would be a real value for users. However, we've decided that it's not as urgent as performance work, so it will have to take a back seat for a while, sorry.

On the labelling of controls, this is the standard that we use in VisualEditor to mirror other editors – when you select some text which is bold, the bold button is depressed to indicate it's "on" and clicking it will remove it; it isn't labelled "De-Bold". Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

You are quite correct about the "de-bold" example... Now that you explain it that way, I can indeed see that when my cursor is on a merged cell, the "merge" button is in a darker shaded background - in the same way that the "bold" button has a darker background when my cursor is on bold text. I suppose then, that my feedback is that this visual feedback was not sufficient to subconsciously indicate to me that there was a state change active. In short, the colouring change was too subtle for me to "get" it. Perhaps that's just me being dimwitted, but there you go... Is something more prounouced possible (for all the things - not just 'merge'), or would that go against some styleguide?

I understand that "dragging columns/rows" is but one feature request among many. It just surfaced very quickly in my editing Tables with the VisualEditor as the KEY missing thing that I kept trying to do and forgetting wasn't possible. I realise that it wasn't possible before (in the code editor), but that just goes to show how clearly it stood out as the obvious next big thing that the table editor needed. I'll try to come to the Wednesday IRC meeting where you're soliciting for "community priorities" and see if I can't get it prioritised there :-) Wittylama (talk) 17:45, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Update: Dragging table columns to rearrange, although widely agreed to be an awesome feature, is likely to be "not soon". The best guess is sometime later this year, but not the next couple of months. (Any dev reading this is welcome to pleasantly surprise me by deploying much sooner than expected.  :-) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:13, 6 April 2015 (UTC)

Announcing open weekly triage meetings starting next week

The Wikimedia Foundation has named its top priorities for this quarter (January to March). The first priority is making VisualEditor ready for deployment by default to all new users and logged-out users at the remaining large Wikipedias. There will be weekly triage meetings which will be open to volunteers beginning Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC). Tell Vice President of Engineering Damon Sicore, Product Manager James Forrester and other team members which bugs and features are most important to you. The decisions made at these meetings will determine what work is necessary for this quarter's goal of making VisualEditor ready for deployment to new users. You can help identify these requirements. The presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code is particularly appreciated. Information about how to join the meeting will be posted at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal shortly before the meeting begins. Hope to see you there, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Could you give some more information about the triage meetings, so that we can share the news (and I think it's more than only news, it's a shift in involving people into the development road) in our projects. Is it IRC, hangout? Is there an agenda? Lyzzy (talk) 21:09, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Lyzzy! So from what I know, what happens this week is that Damon and James will elaborate a bit about the criteria for triaging bugs which are now listed among the Measures of success - Prioritised functional and technical objectives here (that is, bearing in mind this quarter's goal of making sure VE is a good experience "for anonymous users and logged in users who have never edited"). Then they'll start evaluating VE tasks on Phabricator live, according to the criteria just discussed. This live evaluation is what the meetings will be about. (That's why we're looking for volunteer devs who might want to provide their angle and, hopefully and most importantly, try their hands at fixing some bugs.) I still have no information about how this will happen, partly because it depends on the kind of support we get from the IT team in San Francisco, partly because it's quite likely that the format will change in time based on participation - one thing is interacting with 10 people, another thing is interacting with 100 or 1000, and we really can't predict right now what the turnout will look like. What I do know is that the process of announcing the series of events is a work in progress - further notices will be sent to mailing lists, technical village pumps etc. in the next hours. I can't make any promise about when more information will appear on the Portal page linked above: shortly before the meeting begins is accurate, although we're doing everything we can to get most details fleshed out ASAP. Thanks for your note, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

User:Lyzzy, and others, please see Talk:VisualEditor/Portal#How_to_join_the_triage_meetings. Thank you! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

That page also has a link to an e-mail message with the results for each nominated bug, plus information on the next meeting (which is about 22 hours from now). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

The next bug triage meeting will be at midnight UTC on Thursday, which is 16:00 PST on Wednesday for West Coast folks. This one is timed to be easier for some people in Asia to attend. Information about how to join is at Talk:VisualEditor/Portal (if you've never used WebEx, then please plan some extra time to get it set up), but as of this message, the "follow this link" will take you to last week's meeting, which won't be very useful. I'm trying to track down the new link, and it will be posted there before the meeting starts.

Minutes from the last one can be read on wikitech-l here. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:21, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Howdy. This is your reminder that the upcoming VE triage meeting will be held on Wednesday, 4 March at 08:00 PST (16:00 UTC). Full information about how to join the Webex call or the IRC channel, and the links to the IRC logs and minutes for the last appointment, live as usual at mw:Talk:VisualEditor/Portal. I'm looking forward to seeing you there! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Hi again. This week's triage meeting will happen on Wednesday, 11 March 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC). We hope to see you there, but in case you can't make it, please remember you can still nominate "blocker" tasks in advance on Phabricator, or you can read the IRC logs and minutes which are usually published shortly after the end of the meeting to see what was discussed. So see Talk:VisualEditor/Portal for details (notice the new format, a Google Hangout). Thank you, and talk to you soon, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:28, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Hello again, as you guessed I'm here to announce that the VE team will conduct the next triage meeting on Google Hangouts and IRC this Wednesday 18 March at 4pm PDT, that is 11pm UTC. As usual, you'll find other info about how to participate at mediawiki.org, and we hope to meet you there. Best, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 17 March 2015 (UTC)

No community members attended this week's meeting. If you want to attend but had problems, please let us know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

This is the last chance in this quarter to inform the developers about VisualEditor's bugs they need to prioritize now. Show up on Google Hangout this Wednesday, 25 March 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PDT (19:00 UTC), and read the page at mediawiki.org for details or to nominate a task for review even if you're not planning to attend the meeting. Talk to you later this week, then!

PS: Related to VE, this Friday 27 March at 15:00 UTC an office hour about VE will be held on IRC. Previous logs and other information, including how to participate, can be found at Meta. It will be the last office hour in this format, but we'd like to discuss alternative formulas which are more useful for everybody. Therefore, please see and comment the related Phabricator task, or just come and discuss the future of these conversations with us on Friday. Best, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Can you give me some more details as to how should I attend these meetings , though Google Hangouts? Leaderboard (talk) 20:23, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

I edited my message to point that details (that is, the actual link) is on the triage meetings'page. Does that answer your question? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Onboarding?

Perhaps this question is too broad for this page, but I would like to know if there is plans for an interactive "onboarding" process for first-time users of the Visual Editor?
Currently, when you first hit "edit" in the visual editor, there is a popup box that says welcome, and some info about the VE. After you dismiss that, you're on your own. I recently came across this blogpost which explains the the onboarding process for Duolingo, it also reminded me of the similar, and very very good, onboarding process I experienced when using the new OpenStreetMap editor for the first time. Both seamlessly took me through a little training exercise before letting me loose on the real project.

So... I know it's not in the scope of the VE team's work to improve the software, but is there plans to create a seamless, interactive (i.e. not "go read the documentation first then come back and try again") onboarding system for the Visual Editor - that a first-time editor is presented with? There are obvious questions to answer about "would this interfere with the 'immediate satisfaction of seeing your changes' that gets many anon's to start editing in the first place?" and "would this be presented to existing users who are using the VE for the first time, or only to newly registered users?". But, as a general idea, is this on the drawing board? Wittylama (talk) 18:07, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Liam,

so I think that what you want is something like this. I'd +1 your idea so badly. Unfortunately, as you can see, there's code writing involved (not exactly my "piatto forte" ;) ) and there may be blockers behind the initiative (like this one) on which I have no control either. Maybe James will come up with an even better idea! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

I'd also look at what Jack Herrick at WikiHow has done in this regard, as they did lots of testing and tweaking to find out what the first edit experience would be like for WikiHow. He's done Wikimania talks about this in the past, but I'm sure he'd be happy to share this verbally too. Fuzheado (talk) 16:04, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Andrew! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Actually, I just learned that [1] exists :) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that is a good idea!

I realised after my initial suggestion that the two distinct user-groups (new wikimedians vs. existing Wikimedians using the VE for the first time) have quite different needs... The former group would probably benefit most from a guided tour that focused more on the "rules of wikipedia" but the latter group would benefit most from a technical tour specifically designed to highlight the "new ways to do x, y and z". Not only are these different things, these require different wording.

e.g. for a guided tour about external links. We would want to tell:

• Newbie editors about what kinds of links are appropriate (referring to "reliable source" policies).
• Existing editors to place the text they want linked first and thento highlight those words and click the "link" icon - not the other way around which they are used to. Wittylama (talk) 15:46, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi, i made a similar proposal some time ago, aimed specifically at giving references with VisualEditor:

The ref icon (insert reference). It is very unintuitive. This has been pointed out over and over and over again.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Icons_are_incomprehensible

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#Reference_Issues:_Omnibus_Edition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#Mystery_meat_navigation

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#Attempting_to_add_a_reference

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#User_experience

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#Refs_and_templates

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_8#Icons_are_incomprehensible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_12#Editing_a_footnote

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Toolbar#Icon_for_Reference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2014_1#The_new_reference_dialogue

There is even a bugreport for the ref icon, which was "provisionally closed". And we're still stuck with the incomprehensible brick factory icon, which some WMF designers seem to prefer. I think the "ref [1]" is a lot better to understand. And yes, make [1] blue if this gets us better references, damn the design guidelines! But, who decides this?

How about this: Let's make a survey with 3 alternatives. Or not really a survey, rather a banner with user test, for potential new users, aka readers and editors. Show them the editbar full of icons (including the 3 ref icon options) and ask them to insert a reference, count which icon they click. Bonus: This test/survey would also work as a tutorial / invitation to edit (some time, not immediately) / participation tool / VE announcement. Win-win? (en:Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive_117#Conduct_a_new_.22new_editors.22_test_of_VE)

The proposal was pretty much shot down by whatamidoing (WMF). Atlasowa (talk) 17:21, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Wittylama, there's a discussion in e-mail on the education list that might interest you. Amir says that there are some educational materials in Hebrew, but I'm not sure that's what you want. Also, I have a fuzzy recollection that GettingStarted (or a similar program) might have created a guided tour using VisualEditor, for use at projects where VisualEditor is available by default. However, I don't remember what happened to it, or exactly who was working on it, which I'm afraid won't be very helpful to you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:36, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Issues with Cite from URL

[Reposting from the English Wikipedia; no response there in over a week.]

The option, under the Cite menu, to paste or type a URL and have VE (via Citoid) build a citation is great. But:

• Right now, after the URL is put into the dialog, and the user clicks "Insert", the dialog closes. This makes no sense. The dialog box should remain open, showing the citation that has been built. If Citoid were perfect, then of course it would be fine to close the dialog. But it's not perfect. For example in the MSNBC article whose URL I used (http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/obamas-real-record-poverty ), VE/Citoid didn't add a date (though it did create an accessdate), it put "|MSNBC" in the title, it didn't list a publisher, and it didn't create first and last fields for the author's name. So the dialog should stay open so that a user can fix Citoid errors and incompleteness.

• The Cite from URL dialog retains the last URL used when opening. It should not. First, it's unlikely that the user is going to want to use the same URL twice. Second, it's contrary to Wikipedia procedures to create two distinct but identical citations. That's why "Re-use" is an item in the Cite menu. So, can we nix the retained URL thing, please? John Broughton (talk) 17:20, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Just in case anyone else reads this: this was long since fixed in production, but won't be fixed in the temporary script that John has been using. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:40, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Table editing capabilities available in VisualEditor extension to MediaWiki 1.23?

The table editing functionality is very much wanted. Will this be available with MediaWiki 1.23? Paugul (talk) 14:42, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

It's very unlikely. Back-porting that much code would be perilous and complicated, and it's not something we're planning to work on at WMF. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 02:17, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply.

May I ask for an advice?

We are finishing an upgrade of our wiki from MW 1.16 with FCEditor extension.

We decided to use MW 1.23. The reason is: MW 1.23 is a LTS version.

We want to use VisualEditor, but without table editor it seems like we will offer our editors poorer functionality with VisualEditor than the existing functionallity they experience with FCEditor.

Will VisualEditor in combination with MW 1.24 (latest stable) give us table editor?

Will MW 1.25 be a better choice?

We are not in a position where we can use much resources on keeping MediaWiki and extensions up to date. That is why we wanted a LTS version.

Paugul 153.110.241.230 12:53, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

It looks like LTS versions are only released once every two years, and the last one (1.23) was in 2014. Unless you're willing to wait until 2016 for this, then I think you'll have to go with the current version. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 20 March 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor

It is a very good way of editing. I can't see what I am editing when normal editing, and I make mistakes on edits. but the visual editor solves all that. I wish it becomes a permanent thing on wiki. Miner1212 (talk) 00:32, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! We're working to make it available. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Table: switch cell while in edit mode.

While editing a cell, would be nice if one could switch the cell using tab or the arrow keys. User:2A02:810A:8FC0:1CD0:F0AD:B735:BAE1:9FF7 16:53, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

The team plans to do this. Users will be able to navigate between cells with the Tab key. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The John Lennon Wall

Hello, I have been visiting Prague with my company and our professional photographer... I uploaded some 2015 photos from The John Lennon Wall... Maybe you want to use them, to show little more from the John Lennon Wall in Prague.

Thanks Aworldofdifference (talk) 19:21, 28 February 2015 (UTC)