Talk:Community Wishlist/Wishes/Make the visual editor a real-time editor

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Interesting

Interesting wish @Oscar .. I have never tried Google Docs, in fact I never progressed to VisualEditor although its importance for new users can't be underestimated. Could you give some examples of how Google Docs features could be applied to Wikipedia? I can imagine it would be used to update sports scores in real time, and maybe Help desk questions. I think the most critical areas of Wikipedia are the ones suffering systemic bias where there is little activity, can real-time help that area? Maybe it could help with featured article review, I am not sure how that would work. Commander Keane (talk) 06:42, 24 October 2024 (UTC)

To answer my own question somewhat, could the real-time editor encourage drafting with notes? Eg at w:Mike Tyson I would like to draft up a new first paragraph roughly, without screwing up the article, and get input on the changes. I can see notes being useful for Good article review also, it is a pain to make review notes on the Talk page. Commander Keane (talk) 02:30, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't know why people use Google Docs as example. Please check out the free and open source CryptPad. I think the main use case is when multiple people collaborate on an article, such as during an edit-a-thon or some article-for-improvement event. Another use-case may be for articles that get updated very quickly (mainly current events) to prevent edit conflict merge issues. I don't think this would be very useful and people can already do that by just pasting the wikitext into a cryptpad and editing there (however no preview or wiki-text support). Prototyperspective (talk) 09:57, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

It's not just about making "quickly" edits, it's about creating a more powerful platform for collaboration. Integrating features like notes (as Commander Keane mentions) and connecting them to the talk page would allow users to see, in real time, which sections are actively being discussed or need improvement. I would say this approach fosters a more dynamic workflow. And, while I reference Google Docs as a familiar example, any real-time editor could serve as a model, the goal is a collaborative environment that goes beyond traditional editing tools, Oscar_. (talk) 16:17, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

I never suggested that if you are indeed replying to me. I said that such a more powerful platform for collaboration would be useful for (especially) pages that are updated quickly as it would better able to deal with parallel editing and avoid edit conflict issues.

With features like notes you maybe mean this kind of thing: c:Category:Annotated comments for documents on the Web. Consider that most articles are not edited so quickly that more than one editor edits it at the same time. I had also thought about somehow adding indicators that a section is under discussion on the talk page to the article. I don't know if there are issues like skewed discussions if that was implemented for signed-in contributors to see. However, it doesn't seem to be part of or related to this wish. I think it would be better to describe what the use-cases and need for a real-time editor would be compared to just the current wikitext & VE editors. Prototyperspective (talk) 17:08, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps the wish title could be generalised to "Creare a collaborative editing environment" with suggestions including VE enhancement, real-time editing, notes and talk page integration. It is easy to get hung up on "real-time" (which might be better described as dynamic or interactive), there is so much more potential.

This is a general pronlem with the scope of wishes, I suggested a brainstorming discussion phase before a wish is created here. Commander Keane (talk) 18:17, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The current editors are also dynamic and interactive. They are collaborative editing environments. I don't think the wish as of now is broader in actuality than what its title is suggesting now. Prototyperspective (talk) 18:22, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

"Create more collaborative editing software environment" then? I get your point about already being dynamic and interactive, but the VE is already real-time too. Commander Keane (talk) 18:32, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

What is referred to with real-time is that other users can see your changes in real-time and you see their changes in real-time that is the words as they type them (usually letter by letter but it may be a bit slower). VE is not real-time and this is the point of the proposal which has this simultaneous editing capacity in its title according to current description. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:06, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you

Hello @Oscar, thank you for sharing a problem with the Community Wishlist. We will get back to you with further questions if need be. –– STei (WMF) (talk) 14:07, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Attribution

The traditional blocker for this has always been 'how do we preserve attribution'. But now with temporary accounts, we could create a temporary user that represents a 'group' of people in the edithistory. There would still be quite a few things to figure out with some of all that, especially wrt to checkuser logs etc, but I think it's much more realistic now than in the last 10 years. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:14, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

I think in some etherpads the lines of text are attributed to users (sometimes differently colored per user) and one could maybe preserve this some way. Prototyperspective (talk) 22:03, 4 November 2024 (UTC)