James Forrester updates the Signpost on progress with the Visual Editor
The logo of the Visual Editor project, as uploaded in June 2012. In fact, the project is over a year older, and discussions over possible Foundation-sponsored WYSIWYG editors older still.
Since its inception in May 2011, the Foundation's Visual Editor (VE) project has grown to become one of its main focuses. Considering that a Wikimedia-deployable WYSIWYG wikitext editor has been one of the most requested features since the language was first used, the hype is perhaps unsurprising. As the project nears its two-year birthday, the Signpost caught up with Visual Editor project manager James Forrester to discuss the progress on the project.
Hi James. So to start with the obvious, 18 months in, where are we now?
The current Visual Editor interface. Areas shaded out in green and white are uneditable.Hi. The Visual Editor is currently deployed to the English Wikipedia as an opt-in test for all users to be able to edit all articles and user pages; it's also on MediaWiki.org as always-on for the VisualEditor: test namespace. Right now, it supports text, headings, preformatted text, basic annotations (bold, italics) and links (internal and external); other items, such as images and templates, are "alienated" - marked as not-able-to-be-edited and shaded out in green and white. As we add the ability to edit new components ("node handlers"), these green items will gradually disappear.
The Visual Editor currently works equally well in both Monobook and Vector and we'll look to keep it that way (though all our design cues are off Vector).
July has recently been given as a possible rollout date. What needs to happen before that, and what will be included?
We're aiming for the Visual Editor to become the "default" editor - that is, when you click the "edit" button, you get the Visual Editor. There'll still be the current text-based editor, of course, accessed via "Edit Source". In addition to the functionality already present, the aim is currently for us to also deliver all four of templates, references, categories and images (at least, basic abilities of each) before we roll-out.
One of the key items before July is to allow templates to be edited in a way that users aren't expected to memorise how they work. To help with that, there will be a new extension ("TemplateData") which will let users add hinting to templates on how they should be used. We'll be deploying that soon and making some initial example ones so that it's clear to community template writers how it will help.
In addition, I want to get us testing on non-English Wikipedias so that we know how much more we have to do on i18n/l10n support - we think we're reasonably far, but our users can tell us much more accurately than our pontificating from the ivory tower.
So in July it’ll be English Wikipedias and non-English as well?
That's the intent. Almost certainly not non-Wikipedias, sadly, as we've not yet had time to look at their specific needs (like integrating Wikisource's ProofreadPage extension).
Sounds great. And after July it'll be a case of incrementally adding whatever's still missing -- tables, for example? Are there some things that will never be implemented on the VE, do you think? Magic words, manual interwikis?
Yes, table structure editing and other things are on the backlog for 2013/14. It's quite possible that we'll never implement some things, but there are lots of things for us to work on before then. For example, yes, interwikis (individual and Wikidata) and page-setting magic words will both be supported and editable (but probably not for July).
Yes. So finally, the project will be two years old in May. If the WMF did it again, what would it do differently?
Well, actually we were talking about a rich-text editor in 2002. But yes, obviously we'd love to have made more progress, faster. I think we're confident that we are balancing the desire to get it out as fast as possible to the need to build the best possible editor that we can, so that editors have it easier (and especially for new editors).
Ultimately, both the Visual Editor and Parsoid are both research projects still - a good chunk of what we're doing has never been done before, or at best only been done a few times, and there's no settled way to do them. That's why it takes time, and the dead-ends we've encountered and the times we've chosen to change course have led to VE and Parsoid being higher quality and ultimately better for our users
Thank you.
In brief
Not all fixes may have gone live to WMF sites at the time of writing; some may not be scheduled to go live for several weeks.
MediaWiki 1.21 in the pipeline: Discussions have started regarding the branching and release of MediaWiki 1.21 to external sites (wikitech-l mailing list). Wikimedia wikis have already benefited from the same code, deployed in 12 batches (wmf1 through wmf12) over the last six months. The issue was complicated by the need to briefly rollback wmf12 from Wikimedia wikis this week after the deployment broke page move functionality on setups with multiple databases (bug #46397; also wikitech-l).
Wikidata phase 2 coming to a wiki near you: Phase 2 of Wikidata – allowing data points to be replicated from Wikidata.org to client wikis – will go live to ten wikis including the Italian and Russian Wikipedias on 27 March (wikitech-l, blog post) following a successful deployment to a testwiki on Monday. The wikis included collectively account for some 10% of all Wikimedia pageviews.
Pick of the blogs: The Wikimedia blog this week carried a round-up of the Foundation's improvements to the translation process for interface messages and other documentation, while former Localisation Team member and serial commentator Gerard Meijssen blogged about the interesting case of trying to create a Wikipedia written almost entirely in sign language. Elsewhere, WMF-mentored Outreach program for Women (OPW) intern Mariya Miteva wrapped up her experience over the last three months. "If you need anything from anyone, ask as early as possible, let them know you will need their help and when, and poke them if you are not hearing back", Miteva advised future interns.
Executive director Sue Gardner will leave the Wikimedia Foundation
Sue Gardner in 2010
On Wednesday 27 March, Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation since December 2007, announced that she plans to leave the position when a successor is recruited. Ranked as one of the most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine, and one of only two women running a top-10 internet player, Sue Gardner is widely associated with the rise of the Wikimedia movement as a major custodian of human knowledge and cultural products.
Shortly after her announcement, Foundation board deputy chair Jan-Bart de Vreede wrote: "As a board member I will forever be grateful that she was willing to bet on a small organization with a lot of potential [and built on that potential] to make it one of the most powerful examples in the space of open knowledge and learning." Gardner's departure will not be immediate: the recruitment and transition are expected to take some six months, and she says she will be fully engaged in the job until a new person is in place.
Under her leadership, the WMF has undergone fundamental changes. In 2007, it spent only $3.5 million. By 2012, this had risen to an annual $22.3 million, the year in which a five-country fundraiser netted $25 million in just nine days. Over the same period, the Foundation has expanded beyond a simple server-supporting organization, funding programs from education to GLAM opportunities. The WMF itself was transplanted from St. Petersburg, Florida to San Francisco and has expanded from fewer than 10 employees to 160—of these, 100 have arrived over the past two years.
The ex-CBC producer cites two reasons for her decision. "First, the movement and the Wikimedia Foundation are in a strong place now. ... If that wasn't the case, I wouldn't feel okay to leave. In that sense, my leaving is a vote of confidence in our Board and executive team and staff." Her second reason may give the movement pause: "although we’re in good shape, ... the same isn’t true for the internet itself. Increasingly, I’m finding myself uncomfortable about how the internet’s developing, who’s influencing its development, and who is not." She says, "Wikipedia has experienced censorship at the hands of industry groups and governments", and that increasingly we are "seeing important decisions made by unaccountable non-transparent corporate players, a shift from the open web to mobile walled gardens".
When I joined, the Foundation was tiny and not yet able to
reliably support the projects. Today it's healthy, thriving, and a
competent partner to the global network of Wikimedia volunteers
— Sue Gardner
Gardner warns that while many organisations and individuals advocate for the public interest online ("what’s good for ordinary people"), other interests are more numerous and powerful. "I want that to change. And that’s what I want to do next."
This is driving her towards a new role—"one very much aligned with Wikimedia values and informed by my experiences here, and with the purpose of amplifying the voices of people advocating for the free and open internet." While Gardner has not yet decided the exact trajectory of her next career phase, she "feels strongly that this is what I need to do."
"Until then, nothing changes. The Wikimedia Foundation has lots of work to do, and you can expect me to focus fully on it until we have a new Executive Director in place."
The Foundation board, which will be ultimately responsible for appointing the new executive director, has established a transition team consisting of board member Jan-Bart de Vreede (who will chair the team); chair of the board and community-elected trustee Kat Walsh; chapter-selected trustee Alice Wiegand (also a member of the HR Committee); Sue Gardner; her deputy, Erik Moeller; WMF General Counsel Geoff Brigham; and Chief Talent and Culture Officer, Gayle Karen Young. An outside recruitment firm will be engaged to assist in the task.
Jan-Bart de Vreede says the team will meet informally over the next few weeks, and will conduct its first first physical meeting in mid-April in Milan as part of the Wikimedia Conference, after which he will release a status report. Members of the movement are welcome to attend office hours on Saturday 30 March at 18:00 UTC, and Jan-Bart de Vreede can also talk about the matter on the list. He will set up corresponding pages on Meta over the next few days and community members are strongly encouraged to share their views there in due course.
The Signpost invites its readers' views on what talents should be looked for in a new executive director on the talk page, on Facebook, or through tweeting @wikisignpost.
Wikinews debate
German-language Wikipedians are in the vanguard of an effort to close down Wikimedia sister project Wikinews, the latest in a series of closure movements over the past few years.
The current discussion, which is currently being debated on Meta—the coordinating website for the Wikimedia movement—began from a discussion on the talk page of the Signpost's German-language cousin, the Kurier, which has been published since 2003; its motto is "not necessarily neutral [and] not encyclopedic". The newsletter recently ran a story on the future of Wikiversity, the site that is "devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university." In comments on the talk page, discussion quickly turned to Wikinews; a day later, the debate moved to Meta.
Wikinews has had a controversial history within the Wikimedia movement. Various language versions have been proposed for closure over the last several years, including in 2011, in 2012—where the English-language Wikinews was contentiously kept open—and in 2013. Additionally, several individuals have argued that Wikipedia covers recent news better than Wikinews—essentially stating that it beats its sister project at its own mission—including the Nieman Journalism Lab in 2010.
The English-language Wikinews has seen perhaps the greatest amount of controversy despite its small number of editors. A Signpost report documenting a fork of Wikinews in 2011 put the number at just two dozen active editors, not all of whom published articles. This number is most likely not aided by the project's editorial atmosphere, which has been described as "hostile". The fork, named OpenGlobe, was a direct result of this and Wikinews' complicated publishing process; it took nine of Wikinews' two dozen editors. Over time, OpenGlobe lost editors due to real life issues, leading to its end in August of last year.
Today, the English Wikinews still ranks as among the top language Wikinews sites. The report card reveals that the site has just 17 active editors, with four being "highly active", correlating to five or more and 100 or more edits per month, respectively. The number of new articles per month, a key barometer in a news-geared site, has slowly declined from a high of over 400 in April 2005 to below 50 today.
In contrast, the Russian Wikinews has seen recent success, with over 250 new articles being created in January 2013. However, the Russian and French Wikinews sites are the only ones with over 100 articles created in a single month in 2013; the Serbian Wikinews may also fall in this category, but the report card does not cover it.
The Meta debate has included many of these arguments and has a statistical analysis of all active or semi-active Wikinews projects. In a related discussion, Liliana stated:
“
Wikinews is flawed by its very definition. Normally, the wiki principle dictates that content with time grows and becomes better by gathering information from secondary sources (or, in the case of Wikibooks, first-hand knowledge). However, this principle doesn't work for Wikinews. News by definition are current and their value diminishes with time. There is no reason why anyone would want to use Wikinews when the big news portals are much more up-to-date and have much more content. Given that we have no correspondents across the world who are able to directly write reports on what's happening, we are forced to copy from the other news portals, which makes us pretty much useless. ...
Wikinews across the board has failed completely as a WMF project. It may be relaunched at a later date, but then there would need to be a proper plan on how to get a constant stream of news going so we can establish ourselves as a useful news source. I fail to see anything like that in our current Wikinews projects.
”
Those in support of Wikinews, such as odder, have focused on a perceived lack of Wikimedia Foundation support for Wikinews:
“
Let me also just point out that the costs of keeping Wikinews — all its language versions — alive, as compared to the English Wikipedia, are negligible. No current WMF employee works with the Wikinews community, and the number of page views, the size of the database, etc. of all Wikinews language editions is much smaller than of the English Wikipedia alone. Seeing that the Foundation focuses the vast majority of its resources on that single wiki — especially employee time, which is the most expensive of all — the financial argument being brought up above doesn't seem in touch with the reality.
”
Still, as Gestumblindi says in the Meta debate, "A small random selection of (mostly) retold news is not a news site." Should the various-language Wikinews sites be closed? The Signpost encourages our readers to post their thoughts on the talk page.
Triple TFA: The English Wikipedia's Bugle, the newsletter of the Military history project, has published an article by Prioryman on the first-ever triple "Today's featured article", which included Blockhaus d'Éperlecques, La Coupole and Fortress of Mimoyecques. They were on the main page on 25 March, which marked the 70th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's approval to construct them. Prioryman, who was the author of the three articles, noted that all three were "secret German bases in north-eastern France which were intended to house the V-2 rocket and the V-3 cannon." The entire process took Prioryman two years and included a trip to the sites in 2011, visits to the British Library and UK National Archives, and figuring out how to use the major source on these sites, which happened to be written by noted Holocaust denier David Irving, who was later cited by an English court as having "persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" for ideological reasons.
Quarterly review: The minutes of the quarterly review with the WMF's mobile team have been published. WMF executive director Sue Gardner positively remarked on the team's work, though she noted that it was "partly luck and circumstances" alongside "good management [and a] skilled team."
History of WMF grants: The WMF has published a retrospective of its grantmaking from the fiscal years 2009 to 2012. Outside contractor Kevin Gorman, an English Wikipedia editor since 2011, was commissioned to write the report.
New Armenian chapter: The newest Wikimedia chapter, Wikimedia Armenia, has been approved by the Affiliations Committee and recognized by the Wikimedia Foundation. The addition of Wikimedia Armenia brings the total number of global chapters to thirty-nine, most being nation-based (the two exceptions being the American New York City and DC).
Adminship developments: The third and final round of the adminship reform request for comment is open for voting. Ymblanter has been granted adminship rights on the English Wikipedia. One request for adminship and one request for bureaucratship are open for comments.
Wikimedia hackathon scholarships: A Wikimedia-related hackathon will be held from 24 to 26 May. To request a scholarship to attend, please register for the event and request a scholarship by 20 April on Mediawiki.
Core Contest: Another edition of the Core Contest—a "short intensive contest ... [focusing] on improving Wikipedia's most important articles, particularly those in the worst state of disrepair"—will begin on 15 April and end on 13 May. Contest entries will be submitted at Wikipedia:The Core Contest/Entries. £250 in Amazon vouchers will be given out to the winners, who will be determined by contest judges Casliber, Brianboulton, Steven Walling, and Binksternet.
This case, brought by Mark Arsten, was opened over a dispute about transgenderism topics that began off-wiki. The evidence phase was scheduled to close March 7, 2013, with a proposed decision due to be posted by March 29.
This case was brought to the Committee by KillerChihuahua, who alleges the discussion over this American political group has degenerated into incivility. Evidence for the case was due by March 20, 2013, and a decision is scheduled for April 3, 2013.
Other requests and committee action
Amendment request: Rich Farmbrough: An amendment request was made by Rich Farmbrough to amend a motion in an arbitration case involving automated edits. While the request was still in progress, the requester was blocked for one year after an arbitration enforcement request.
Request for amendment: GoodDay: An amendment request was made by GoodDay to lift an editing restriction related to diacritics.
The arbitration committee had previously issued a call for applications for three vacancies for non-arbitrator members to the subcommittee, to be submitted before April 1, 2013. However, during a discussion on the noticeboard talk page, a statement from the foundation's legal team indicated that "...we require an RFA or RFA-identical process for access to deleted revisions." Several followup questions regarding various election processes, as well as the role of administrators and non-administrators in arbitration roles were posed to the foundation, and are awaiting a response.
Procedural issues at WP:Arbitration Enforcement: A request for clarification has been brought by Gatoclass regarding whether an administrator can "act in a request" involving 1RR restrictions, whether an administrator can act when an editor has not received a formal warning, whether an administrator can adjudicate in an appeal if they adjudicated in the decision that lead to the appeal, and whether an administrator can issue a warning before consensus on a request has been reached.
Monty Hall problem: An amendment request has been made to the committee by Martin Hogbin for amendment of the remedies, including removal of discretionary sanctions.
Clarification request: Climate change: A clarification request of the climate change case was filed by NewsAndEventsGuy, who requests clarification of who can post arbitration enforcement notices to talk pages and add to the notifications, blocks, bans, and sanctions log.
Clarification request: Discretionary sanctions appeals procedure: A request to clarify the appeal process for discretionary sanctions warnings was filed by Sandstein
