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[Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding

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jsalsman at gmail

Jul 24, 2013, 10:29 PM

Post #1 of 6 (38 views)
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[Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding

Why not make the visual editor the default with opt-out for 5% of
newly registered editors and anonymous IP page loads, and opt-in for
everyone else until there is evidence that it is not decreasing the
number of edits?

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andrew.gray at dunelm

Aug 3, 2013, 6:58 AM

Post #2 of 6 (23 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding [In reply to]

On 25 July 2013 06:29, James Salsman <jsalsman [at] gmail> wrote:
> Why not make the visual editor the default with opt-out for 5% of
> newly registered editors and anonymous IP page loads, and opt-in for
> everyone else until there is evidence that it is not decreasing the
> number of edits?

Meant to reply to this earlier and it got lost:

I think there's a problem with any kind of A/B testing on the main
site interface for more than small changes - it's that we only have
one set of documentation. Wikipedia's help pages (certainly on enwiki)
aren't amazing, but they are used, and people will fall back to them
if they have problems using the site.

Having a substantially different editing interface for a fraction of
users means that there's now one more layer of confusion before (some
or all) people can get help, probably leading to more abandoned edits
*compared to all-in VE with documentation*. So the results would be
skewed downwards; it might be a small effect, but if we're looking for
a statistical difference on 5% of new edits, it might be enough to
give a spurious negative result.

Again, I don't think A/B testing is inherently bad, but we'd need to
test an integrated environment. Where people aren't going to consult
help pages (say, the login page) it's much simpler.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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kwwilliams at kwwilliams

Aug 3, 2013, 9:51 AM

Post #3 of 6 (22 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding [In reply to]

Op 2013/08/03 6:58, Andrew Gray schreef:

I think there's a problem with any kind of A/B testing on the main
site interface for more than small changes - it's that we only have
one set of documentation. Wikipedia's help pages (certainly on enwiki)
aren't amazing, but they are used, and people will fall back to them
if they have problems using the site.

That's one of the biggest chicken-and-egg problems in this whole
deployment: those help pages are exclusively maintained by editors.
Until there's a substantial body of volunteers that believe that
updating the help pages to match VE is a worthwhile endeavour, the pages
will remain at the current version, which means that all new editors can
only get help if they don't use VE. That makes it hard to ever find a
group of people that thinks updating the documentation is worth the effort.

KWW

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andrew.gray at dunelm

Aug 3, 2013, 10:46 AM

Post #4 of 6 (22 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding [In reply to]

On 3 August 2013 17:51, Kevin Wayne Williams <kwwilliams [at] kwwilliams> wrote:

> That's one of the biggest chicken-and-egg problems in this whole deployment:
> those help pages are exclusively maintained by editors. Until there's a
> substantial body of volunteers that believe that updating the help pages to
> match VE is a worthwhile endeavour, the pages will remain at the current
> version, which means that all new editors can only get help if they don't
> use VE. That makes it hard to ever find a group of people that thinks
> updating the documentation is worth the effort.

At the moment we seem to have a marvellous inconsistency (perhaps this
is A/B testing help pages...)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Tutorial/Editing - "new
environment", noting both and recommending VE, but only updated 9th
July

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:Editing - old style, with 135 word
(!) notice at the top about VE

I wonder sometimes if maintaining help/documentation pages would be a
sensible thing for WMF to have a (part?) time staffer working on, but
I guess this gets into the muddy area of "paying people for volunteer
tasks"

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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dgerard at gmail

Aug 3, 2013, 10:50 AM

Post #5 of 6 (22 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding [In reply to]

On 3 August 2013 18:46, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray [at] dunelm> wrote:

> I wonder sometimes if maintaining help/documentation pages would be a
> sensible thing for WMF to have a (part?) time staffer working on, but
> I guess this gets into the muddy area of "paying people for volunteer
> tasks"

The trouble is (1) there's ten years' volunteer effort in the old
how-to pages, (2) the VE interface isn't even finished yet (I
certainly hope it isn't, anyway) (3) to the extent the VE needs a
manual, it's not a good interface.

- d.

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andrew.gray at dunelm

Aug 3, 2013, 10:58 AM

Post #6 of 6 (22 views)
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Re: [Wikimedia-l] a compromise proposal for visual editor dogfooding [In reply to]

On 3 August 2013 18:50, David Gerard <dgerard [at] gmail> wrote:
> On 3 August 2013 18:46, Andrew Gray <andrew.gray [at] dunelm> wrote:
>
>> I wonder sometimes if maintaining help/documentation pages would be a
>> sensible thing for WMF to have a (part?) time staffer working on, but
>> I guess this gets into the muddy area of "paying people for volunteer
>> tasks"
>
> The trouble is (1) there's ten years' volunteer effort in the old
> how-to pages, (2) the VE interface isn't even finished yet (I
> certainly hope it isn't, anyway) (3) to the extent the VE needs a
> manual, it's not a good interface.

Yes and no. *Wikipedia* needs an interface manual. The standard page
has twenty visible interface links, another sixteen or so in
collapsible sidebar sections, ten in the footer, however many language
links, and goodness knows what else from sitenotices or boxes on the
page itself.

The actual mechanism you use to edit is almost secondary to this
problem, but if you've gone back to a manual in order to find "so, how
do I do this", you're going to get really thrown if there's two
buttons where it says there's one, or if you don't get the wall of
weird text it's told you the editing page looks like... etc etc.

--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray [at] dunelm

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