Wikimedia Rolls Out Its WYSIWYG Visual Editor For Logged-in Wikipedia Users

An anonymous reader writes "The Wikimedia Foundation has finally enabled its long-awaited VisualEditor for all logged-in users on the English-language version of Wikipedia. The classic Wikitext source editor will remain available to edit both pages and page sections, and the organization stressed there are currently no plans to remove it. This is because VisualEditor doesn't yet support the broad range of functionality that Wikitext allows, and Wikimedia further notes it is aware some editors may prefer it. Nevertheless, the organization is hoping to the majority of editors will transition to VisualEditor, which is why it is slowly becoming the default." In other Wikipedia news, reader GerardM writes "Today the 'Universal Language Selector' premiered on the English Wikipedia. There is a ton of functionality in there and it has a lot of potential. The one thing that may prove to be a game changer for people with dyslexia is the inclusion of the OpenDyslexic font. Once people with dyslexia start to adopt this font, chances are that they can actually read/use Wikipedia. A lot of people are dyslexic; to quote the en.wp article on the subject: 'It is believed the prevalence of dyslexia is around 5-10 percent of a given population although there have been no studies to indicate an accurate percentage.'"

Comments

Re:Useless

[wallsg]

There's probably only a hundred or so people that are able to successfully edit Wikipedia pages, and they're ok with the code. Everyone else gets their edits rolled back without a glance.

I didn't realize that I was so special. I've made a dozen edits to Wikipedia entries, including one that wasn't trivial...

Re:Will it have a button...

[imsabbel]

Of course, if it was YOUR fringe theory that people want deleted, you would be the one crying about deletionism and relevance criteria.

Not the biggest problem

[evilviper]

I'm reasonably impressed with what they've got, except that the performance blows, and slows editing way down... It at least allows using existing references (which most people don't know how to do), and will try to auto-complete links to other articles, but that's about it.

With references in particular, it only inserts the <ref> tags, leaving you complete freedom to type anything, or nothing, in there. Compare this to ANY of Wiki reference templates, where references are named, and there's a strong syntax enforced for dates, names, titles, publisher, and tons, tons more. eg.

<ref name=ebu_surround_test_2007<{{Citation | last = B/MAE Project Group | title = EBU evaluations of multichannel audio codecs | pages = | date=September, 2007 | publisher = [[European Broadcasting Union]] | url = http://www.ebu.ch/CMSimages/en/tec_doc_t3324-2007_tcm6-53801.pdf |format=PDF| accessdate = 2008-04-09 }}

The big problem with Wikipedia is the HUGE number of tags, templates, categories, etc., and the editor does nothing to introduce you to them when you don't know about them, nor help you find and insert the one you're looking for.

When editing, I'd be constantly doing free-form searches, to find useful tags, syntax, and just exploring around similar pages to find good categories.

Rather than WYSIWYG, they'd do far better just to have a few hierarchical menus, that'll insert the proper wiki code for you, rather than constant copy/paste from template pages... For example, the ref button is pretty useless... But a ref drop-down, with sub-options like "Book" "Web" "Magazine" etc., would be far more useful. Of course if they could make a pop-up form, with fields for all those values, and automagically guessing which type of ref you've input, and which template is best, would be far better still.

Re:Time will tell

[similar_name]

At least in the U.S. pictures of copyrighted work can be considered violations of copyright. An obvious example is a cam copy of a movie in a theater violates copyright law. Even if it's not for monetary gain. Your picture clearly shows a copyright and date that shows it is still under copyright. Why would Wikipedia risk any problems?

Re:Time will tell

[kpmlrtx]

This is a copyright issue. It's stupid, no doubt about that, but the outdated copyright laws are to blame in this case, not Wikipedia.

Commons:Copyright rules by subject matter: "If the original artwork remains in copyright a license from the artist is nearly always needed. Mere physical ownership of an original artwork such as a sculpture does not confer ownership of the copyright: that remains with the artist.
In some countries a 3D artwork that is permanently located in a public place can be photographed and the image uploaded without the artist's permission: See Commons:Freedom of panorama."

Commons:Freedom of panorama#United States: "Artworks and sculptures: not OK."