Submissions/Beyond VisualEditor

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2015.

Submission no.: 2061

Title of the submission: Beyond VisualEditor

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop): Presentation

Author of the submission: James D. Forrester

E-mail address: jforresterwikimedia.org

Username: Jdforrester (WMF)

Country of origin: UK

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): WMF

Personal homepage or blog: –

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal): In the past few years, we've spent a lot of effort to make VisualEditor a great editor for new and existing editors alike. We're now four full years into our journey to letting users create, fix and improve articles without having to learn wikitext, in a rich, browser-based editor that guides them to do the right things whilst still having the same power and flexibility that wikitext users enjoy, and we're making huge strides.; Just in the time since last year's Wikimania, we have implemented, iterated and improved many key workflows. You can now edit the structure of tables. Citations can now be automatically filled in. Finding and correcting links is now simpler and more intuitive. Searching for images is now easier and more visual. Using templates has become more powerful and resilient. Our design has evolved to mirror changes across the site, leading to a more harmonious, consistent, and intuitive interface, making for a more understandable site. The system is much faster to load and save,; But even after all this work, the real question we should keep asking is "so what?". So what if editing is faster? So what if creating a page that provides citations and so doesn't get deleted is easier for new people? So what if it's now harder to accidentally break a page, like making an edit missing a single "}" character? So what if people can now spend more time focussing on what they want to write rather than how to make it? What does it mean for the Wikimedia mission? What's beyond VisualEditor? What kinds of readers, content, and users do we need to start supporting next? What's next for us?; We will talk about and show off the work we've done over the past year, the decisions we made and the issues we worry about. We will outline our current priorities for making editing our wikis better, and ask you to tell us what you think, what your issues or concerns are for you and your communities, and what more we need to do to making editing all our wikis truly open to everyone.

Track: WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long): 30 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes

Slides or further information (optional): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimania 2015 – Editing Department – Beyond Editing.pdf

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--Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 23 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 00:33, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 00:30, 26 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
--Jcornelius (talk) 20:58, 27 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yarl (talk) 00:23, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Tpt (talk) 20:17, 28 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ocaasi (talk) 23:52, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Erik Moeller (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
guillom (talk) 23:52, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Varnent (talk) 22:00, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Tar Lócesilion (talk) 23:45, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
CT Cooper · talk 00:06, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
eranroz (talk) 08:15, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
MRG90 (talk) 14:44, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Darafsh Kaviyani (Talk) 15:02, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]