Issue tracker: #Editing-team

Editing team

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For the status of current Editing projects, see Visual-based mobile editing.
Wikimedia Foundation project
Editing
Extending and improving the editing tools used at Wikimedia
Group: Contributors
Start: 2011
Team members: Bartosz Dziewoński, David Chan, David Lynch, Marielle Volz, Rummana Yasmeen, Jess Klein, Sherry Snyder
Lead: Ed Sanders
Management: Leza Zaman (program), Peter Pelberg (product), Valerie Puffet-Michel (engineering)
Updates:  
Progress: We post data analysis updates from time to time.

Objective

The Editing team was formed in 2011. The team is a part of the Contributors Team who work on tools for editing – generally across MediaWiki, and the suite of editors including WikiEditor, VisualEditor and CodeEditor, plus specific tools like Cite, and many smaller tools like TemplateData and Citoid.

Strategically, the Editing Team supports the Audiences department's "New Content" program, and, in turn, the Wikimedia Foundation's long-term goal of "Knowledge Equity". Those initiatives are about building strong communities that bring broad and deep content to people all over the world. One way to accomplish this is by improving the mobile editing experience to make it easier for someone to contribute productively to Wikimedia projects on a mobile device from a browser. The goal of this work (as mentioned in the Annual Plan) is to increase mobile edits and improve retention of new contributors. One way in which we will track our progress is by monitoring the:

  • edit success rate per period for mobile visual edits,
  • number of edits per period via mobile visual editing by newer editors (within their first 6 months after registration), and
  • number of editors per period using mobile visual editing feature(s).

As we track our progress, we encourage a two-way dialogue with the community.

People

Projects

  • On-wiki collaboration: From September 2019 to 2020-2021, the Editing team's priority will be to help improve how contributors collaborate on-wiki by evolving existing talk pages to be more intuitive.
  • Visual-based mobile editing: From July 2018 to September 2019 the Editing team's priority will be improving the mobile editing experience to make it easier for someone to contribute productively to Wikimedia projects on a mobile device from a browser. The goal of this work (as mentioned in the Annual Plan) is to increase mobile edits and retention.

What does it mean to "retain new contributors"?

For the purposes of this team, "new contributors" are people who have had a registered account on a wiki project for less than six months. To "retain" them means that they make a first edit, and then continue to make additional edits over time.

As we work, the Editing team will determine which types of retention are most important to track and to increase.

Background

The WikiEditor extension provides an improved interface for editing wikitext. It is the wikitext editing interface that Wikipedia started using in 2010 for desktop users, so it is sometimes called the 2010 wikitext editor. The extension used to provide "Labs" features for "publication" and "preview" steps, but these are removed from REL1_31 onwards.

VisualEditor was built with the goal of removing avoidable technical impediments associated with Wikimedia's editing interface, as a necessary pre-condition for increasing the number of Wikimedia contributors. In addition to its word-processor-like visual editing mode, VisualEditor has a built-in wikitext mode, which is sometimes called the 2017 wikitext editor. Our latest research on the current state of VisualEditor usage will be shared by the end of November 2018.

The CodeEditor extension extends the WikiEditor advanced editing toolbar with an embedded Ace editor widget, providing some handy features for user/site JS, CSS pages, and when Extension:Scribunto is also installed, for pages in Module. Currently the extension is under development, and details of activation and functionality are subject to change.

The TemplateData extension introduces a <templatedata> tag and an API which together allow editors to specify how templates should be invoked. This information is available as a nicely-formatted table for end-users, and as a JSON API, which enables other systems (e.g. VisualEditor) to build interfaces for working with templates and their parameters.

The citoid node.js service generates citation data given a URL, DOI, ISBN, PMID, or PMCID. It has a companion extension, Citoid, which aims to provide use of the citoid service to VisualEditor. Bugs, issues, and suggestions for improvement can be added to the Citoid phabricator project.

How to work with us

Although the main focus area for 2018–2019 is improving the mobile editing experience for mid-sized Wikipedias that already have a significant number of people editing from the mobile site, we are looking for information from every community. Here are some ways you can help us.

How to write the code

Software developers and those aspiring to become ones can work on the source code of VisualEditor. The software overview, How to become a MediaWiki hacker and the API documentation are helpful guides to get started. If you're active on Wikimedia projects, you might find it more convenient to develop gadgets or user scripts that extend VisualEditor.

(Pre-university students can also participate in the Google Code-in contest in fall/winter.)

VisualEditor developers on IRC via #mediawiki-visualeditor connect.

Need a place to start? Check out:

How we work

Main Phabricator Board

Kanban Board

Quarterly check-ins

Quarterly check-in notes and slides
Fiscal year Jul–Sep

"Q1"

Oct–Dec

"Q2"

Jan–Mar

"Q3"

Apr–Jun

"Q4"

FY2016–17 Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides To come
FY2015–16 Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides
FY2014–15 Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides
FY2013–14 Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides
FY2012–13 — — Minutes; Slides Minutes; Slides

References

We will update this section with links and research that underpin the background, principles, challenges, and solutions above, and that continue to shape our team’s thinking.

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