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Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Larger suggestions/Make it simple and usable again

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Make it simple and usable again

  • Problem: The thing is too bloated, complex, slow, and buggy, hard to use, and impossible to maintain (evidence).
  • Proposed solution: Restrict adding of new features, instead optimize. Remove the VisualEditor (or at least make it non-default), reduce number of open Phabricator tasks, dare to question existing features.
  • Who would benefit: All users, particularly the older ones, as well as those unable or refusing to buy a new computer every 3 months, those with slow or unreliable internet connections, and those who prefer to see the truth (ie wikitext) instead of illusions. Developers having more time to fix real bugs. Our environment because of reduced consumption of material and energy.
  • More comments:
    • Remove features that are blatantly obsolete.
    • I question the assumption that the VisualEditor attracts new good contributors. In order to contribute to a wiki (wiktionary, wikipedia, wikidata, ...), skills are required. Language skills, science skills, knowledge of policies (no plagiarism, notability, verifiability, ...), skills to write good definitions (for wiktionary), ... . People with zero skills unfortunately cannot contribute, without or with the VisualEditor. In fact the VisualEditor attracts mostly vandals, and wastes time of those not using it, as well as various other resources.
    • The simple namespace list with checkboxes on the screen ca 10 years ago worked well. The current list flashing down runs out of the screen and is unusable.
    • The old design of wikis was usable. The new one with an empty column on the left eating away ca 1/3 of the width of the screen is nonsense.
    • The old design of interlanguage links in the lower part of the left column was simple and usable irrespective of the number of links. The new layout with the links hidden, access button that can be anywhere (top right on some wikis), and the links finally placed over page content with a eurocentristic grouping, not fitting on the screen, and vanishing when one tries to scroll, is nonsense.
    • The "new" upload form on Commons is a nightmare. The old one was much better.
    • Are explicit interwiki links still useful given that WikiData is used?
    • Remove text encodings other than UTF8.
    • Encourage more the switch to HTML5, then remove support for "cellpadding=" and similar stuff.
    • Search preferably for stuff that the user asks for. Do not search for "Simmering" if the user asked for "simmer". Do not aggressively replace user's text by "suggestions" unrelated to the search intent.
    • Keep LUA (2013) and WikiData (2013), they are the 2 real and good innovations, as well as Cognate (2017). Most other changes probably could be reverted to year 2010 or 2005. Less is sometimes more.
  • Phabricator tickets: all that have been open for an unreasonably long time, all about subsequent trouble of the VisualEditor
  • Proposer: Taylor 49 (talk) 12:10, 6 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

Oh my goodness, I am ready to subscribe under every single word of yours! —2dk (talk) 19:47, 10 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I suspect that the Visual Editor should be treated as an instance of w:The_Mythical_Man-Month#The pilot system, "a team will design a throw-away system (whether it intends to or not)". The basic idea is sound & putting a small team to work on a better version would be fine idea. The current system can be made available in the meanwhile but should not be the default for anyone & should not get large maintenance effort. Pashley (talk) 14:24, 18 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting