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Wikipedia:VisualEditor/2014 RFC

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Background

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On July 8, 2013, VisualEditor was enabled for all users on the English Wikipedia. There was significant backlash, as the software had many big problems, limitations, and bugs, including innocuous edits often wrecking up the wikitext. In a subsequent request for comments, begun on July 30, the Wikipedia community strongly supported disabling VisualEditor for non-logged-in users, and making registered users opt in before using the feature.

Over the months since then, the developers have done much work in improving VisualEditor. Major bugs were fixed, new features were added, and the pages load significantly faster. Meanwhile, the feature was enabled on the majority of all languages of Wikipedia. In particular, the following improvements were made:

  • It is possible to switch from VisualEditor to wikitext without losing your changes.
  • You can change an image's size by either choosing the exact height and width, or by dragging. You can also edit an image's position, alt-text, and caption.
  • Many page settings are now configurable, like whether to show a table of contents.
  • The template editor was redesigned, with a much easier-to-use layout.
  • Numerous bugs have been fixed, including the occasional appearance of random characters, and abundance of useless <nowiki>s.
  • Pages load much faster.

The first RFC opened 11 years ago. Hence, it may be time to re-evaluate consensus on whether to enable VisualEditor for all users.

Questions

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Question 1: What features and bugfixes are necessary before VisualEditor should be enabled for all users?

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Question 2: In VE's current state, when a new account is created, should the preference be set to disable VE ("opt-in") or to enable VE ("opt-out")?

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Opt-in

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Opt-out

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Discussion of new account default state

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Question 3: Should VisualEditor (in its current state) be an option for anonymous editors now? If so, how visible should this option be?

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VE should be an option for anonymous users, visible at the top of the page

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VE should be an option for anonymous users, but not visible at the top of the page

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VE should not be an option for anonymous users at all

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Discussion of anonymous editors' ability to use VE

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Question 4: Should VisualEditor be enabled for all existing accounts?

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VE should be enabled for all existing accounts

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VE should not be enabled for all existing accounts

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Discussion of enabling VE for all existing accounts

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General discussions

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