Wikimedia Bugzilla is closed!

From bug 49998 comment 7:

---
the German wikipedia just started a quick poll over the weekend to at least
postpone this activation for anonymous users on monday:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Umfragen/VisualEditor_Opt-in

the poll has currently also a option for the previous state where VE was Opt-in
for users instead of Opt-out if this is still possible.

It would be appreciated to take the outcome on monday into account and postpone
this activation for dewiki if desired.
---

From bug 49998 comment 8:

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In the quick poll (see #7) the results at the moment are as following:

1) enabeling VE as default for all users: 21 votes
2) VE as default for logged-in users: 6 votes
3) VE to be opt-in only until all bugs are fixed: 430 votes (!)
4) enabeling VE under another link name (suggestion was "Visual Editor (beta)"
instead of "Bearbeiten" ("edit")): 31 votes

According to this large majority of users who oppose defaulting VE by tomorrow,
I hereby ask you to put VE back to opt-in for logged-in users until the most
important bugs are fixed. Thank you.
---

VisualEditor's configuration variables are a bit confusing to me, but it seems like the German Wikipedia would like to reverse part of this change: <https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/75543/4/wmf-config/InitialiseSettings.php,unified>.

wmgVisualEditorDefault would be set to false for dewiki.

wmgVisualEditorDisableForAnons would be left as true for dewiki.

Is this correct?

Change 76199 had a related patch set uploaded by MZMcBride:
Enable anonymous use of VisualEditor on es/fr/he/it/pl/ru/sv

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/76199

Change 76468 had a related patch set uploaded by MZMcBride:
Explicitly disabled VisualEditor by default on dewiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/76468

In response to community feedback, VisualEditor will be temporarily switched back into opt-in mode on the German Wikipedia. We don’t intend to otherwise alter the near-term VisualEditor deployment schedule, except in case of emergencies.

As we did in the case of Dutch Wikipedia, for instance, which was exempted from the phase 2 rollout, we try to accommodate community concern in the process of this rollout. VisualEditor is the single largest and most disruptive change to the user experience in the history of our projects. Not only is it still beta software, it also depends on us working together in partnership to update documentation, add template metadata (which is used by VisualEditor to make templates more user-friendly), and deal with unexpected issues. We appreciate your patience and feedback, and we have no intent of taking your partnership for granted.

We also recognize that there are still significant areas for improvement (e.g. performance, handling of tables, insertion of special characters) as well as work we can do to reduce the incidence rate of problematic markup changes. As we continue to support the beta where it is deployed, we’ll also update the German Wikipedia community on progress in these areas, and prepare for re-enabling VisualEditor later in the calendar year.

As a reminder, VisualEditor has always been optional to use, and can now also be completely hidden from the user experience (as an individual preference) in wikis where it is enabled by default.

-- James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor team

----

Als Reaktion auf die Rückmeldungen der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia-Gemeinschaft werden wir den VisualEditor dort temporär wieder nur per Opt-In verfügbar machen. Darüber hinaus beabsichtigen wir nicht, die unmittelbare Planung für andere Sprachversionen zu verändern, es sei denn, es treten schwerwiegende Probleme auf.

Wie auch z.B. im Fall der niederländischen Wikipedia, die von Phase 2 der Beta ausgenommen wurde, versuchen wir, bei der weiteren Aktivierung des VisualEditor mit den Sprachversionen zusammen zu arbeiten und nehmen Bedenken ernst. VisualEditor ist die weitgehendste Änderung an der Benutzeroberfläche in der Geschichte unserer Projekte. VisualEditor ist aber noch Beta-Software, und der Erfolg des Projekts hängt sehr davon ab, dass wir ein einer positiven Partnerschaft zusammen arbeiten, um z.B. Vorlagen-Metadaten (TemplateData) hinzuzufügen (die von VisualEditor verwendet werden, um die Benutzeroberfläche für Vorlagen zu verbessern) und Dokumentation zu aktualisieren, und um mit Software-Problemen umzugehen. Wir schätzen die Geduld und das ehrliche Feedback der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia-Gemeinschaft, und gehen nicht davon aus, dass eine Kooperation ohne gegenseitiges Entgegenkommen funktionieren kann.

Wir erkennen auch an, dass es im VisualEditor noch viel Raum für Verbesserungen gibt. Das beinhaltet z.B. Performance, bessere Unterstützung für Tabellen und einen Dialog für das Einfügen von Sonderzeichen. In einigen Fällen können wir auch das Verhalten des Editors optimieren, um unerwünschte Änderungen am Wikitext zu reduzieren. Auch auf der deutschsprachigen Wikipedia werden Verbesserungen selbstverständlich für Opt-In-Nutzer kontinuierlich zur Verfügung stehen, und wir werden regelmäßige Ankündigungen über Neuerungen veröffentlichen. Unser Ziel ist eine Wiederaktivierung des VisualEditor in der Beta-Konfiguration später im Kalenderjahr.

Die Verwendung von Wikitext wird selbstverständlich auch nach der Wiederaktivierung des VisualEditor möglich sein. Der VisualEditor ist und bleibt optional, und kann während der Beta-Phase auch komplett aus der Benutzeroberfläche entfernt werden.

-- James Forrester, Produktmanager, VisualEditor-Team

(In reply to comment #6)
>... VisualEditor will be temporarily switched back into opt-in mode on
> the German Wikipedia. We don’t intend to otherwise alter the near-term
> VisualEditor deployment schedule

Does that mean opt-in for everyone or just registered users?

Change 76516 had a related patch set uploaded by Jforrester:
Switch VisualEditor back to alpha (opt-in) mode on dewiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/76516

Change 76516 merged by jenkins-bot:
Switch VisualEditor back to alpha (opt-in) mode on dewiki

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/76516

This is now done.

(In reply to comment #7)
> (In reply to comment #6)
> >... VisualEditor will be temporarily switched back into opt-in mode on
> > the German Wikipedia. We don’t intend to otherwise alter the near-term
> > VisualEditor deployment schedule
> 
> Does that mean opt-in for everyone or just registered users?
Opt-in for everyone, that is to say it's off unless you turn it on in your preferences. In practice, anonymous users won't be able to opt in unless they create an account, because anons can't change their preferences.

Change 76468 abandoned by MZMcBride:
Explicitly disable VisualEditor by default on dewiki

Reason:
I feel like a Wikipedia user who finally makes his first edit only to have it reverted. ;-)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/76468

It seems that some IPs can use VE, see e.g. 
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medien_%28Land%29&curid=132736&diff=121014468&oldid=120989155
(tagged as Visual editor), see also the talk on the village pump
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fragen_zur_Wikipedia#VE_f.C3.BCr_IP_funktioniert.3F

Closing this bug now as the issue in c13 should be resolved by bug 52232. The intention of this bug report is done.

So De Wikipedia holds a quick poll and their deployment is changed to opt-in, but on En Wikipedia, despite weeks of complaints, we are still stuck with opt-out? How does that work?

(In reply to comment #15)
> So De Wikipedia holds a quick poll and their deployment is changed to opt-in,
> but on En Wikipedia, despite weeks of complaints, we are still stuck with
> opt-out? How does that work?

If you can hold a coordinated vote on the English Wikipedia and get over 400 participants to agree to switch to opt-in, I imagine you can get the same result. :-)

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > So De Wikipedia holds a quick poll and their deployment is changed to opt-in,
> > but on En Wikipedia, despite weeks of complaints, we are still stuck with
> > opt-out? How does that work?
> 
> If you can hold a coordinated vote on the English Wikipedia and get over 400
> participants to agree to switch to opt-in, I imagine you can get the same
> result. :-)

I think a quick look at the feedback and other related pages would show a consensus for a switch to opt-in, but in any event there is now an RFC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Default_State_RFC