User talk:Jdforrester (WMF)/Archive 1

Pending Changes implementation issues?
Hi James. If you wouldn't mind, could you take a look at this discussion and let us know what the situation is from the devs' perspective? Rumors abound that PC cannot be deployed by the end of this year, as the RfC closers had initially said. Some input from the devs on what's wrong, what needs to be done, and how long that is likely to take would be helpful at this point in the discussion. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 15:33, 21 August 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Will do. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:42, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Pending changes and GoogleBot
Hi James, you'll recall we spoke briefly offline about what version of an article on pending changes would be scooped up by GoogleBot (i.e., the last reviewed change or the last change whether or not reviewed). I know you were off-site at the time we spoke and were not in a position to research the question. Have you had a chance to look into this? Also, are you aware of any other major web crawlers or similar bots/software that might have a similar effect on search engine ranking? If so, would you be in a position to find out which version of a PC article that bot/crawler might pick up?

As the community is coming to the end of the second RFC on pending changes, and this information may have an impact on some decisions, it would be very helpful if you were able to respond before the end of the week if at all possible. You might want to respond directly on the talk page of the RFC. Thanks for your help. Risker (talk) 03:36, 10 October 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks; will reply there. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

December 2012
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. This is a message letting you know that one of your recent edits has been undone by an automated computer program called ClueBot NG.


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 * The following is the log entry regarding this message: 200 km/h in the Wrong Lane was changed by Jdforrester (WMF) (u) (t) ANN scored at 0.934752 on 2012-12-11T04:32:30+00:00 . Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 04:32, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Interesting. Issue with Parsoid. Investigating. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 04:34, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Please refrain from making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia, as you did at Islington. Your edits appear to constitute vandalism and have been automatically reverted.
 * If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. Note that human editors do monitor recent changes to Wikipedia articles, and administrators have the ability to block users from editing if they repeatedly engage in vandalism.
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 * The following is the log entry regarding this warning: Islington was changed by Jdforrester (WMF) (u) (t) ANN scored at 0.882019 on 2012-12-11T04:48:45+00:00 . Thank you. ClueBot NG (talk) 04:48, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

Possible issue with Visual Editor?
Hello! I noticed that these two recent edits removed significant content, which did not appear to be your intention. Possible interface issue? Cheers! --Tgeairn (talk) 04:55, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Yes, trying to use new software which has some bugs; ClueBot keeps reverting me before I can clean up after my edits, which is a bit irritating. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 05:05, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the page move at VisualEditor. Anyone feel free to share your wisdom/opinions/advice. Biosthmors (talk) 17:19, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * No problem; will put in some more content later today, if that's OK; feel free to re-write if you don't like it. :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 11 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Sounds great. =) Biosthmors (talk) 17:46, 11 December 2012 (UTC)

"South-East" or "south-east"
Further to my edit summary, my understanding is that, when referring to a specific place or entity, north/south/east/west etc. are capitalised, for example "the North" (ie the northern part of England; or one of the two combatants in the American Civil War; or North Korea etc. etc.). In this instance, "the South East" is commonly used to describe a part of England centred on London, but that is not what is being referred to in the passage in the Islington article. It is concerned with direction or orientation, ie in a south-easterly direction, so should not be capitalised. It's like saying "I'll be travelling south tonight" (not capitalised). See Manual_of_Style/Capital_letters. That would be my understanding of it anyway. Dubmill (talk) 11:00, 14 December 2012 (UTC)


 * Hmm. Yet another example where informality has won against the older style, I see. Very well; thanks. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:08, 14 December 2012 (UTC)

Hello again
This could relate to the Visual Editor, as you can see from my recent edit to WP:VE, but could you please comment at WP:WMFN about RTCE? Thanks so much! Biosthmors (talk) 19:42, 10 February 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks; I see that others have replied there already. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 11 February 2013 (UTC)


 * You're welcome, but I don't think my concern has been addressed. Would you mind addressing it there? Biosthmors (talk) 23:35, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:VisualEditor
Hey James,

I recently noticed that the alpha changed so that we moved to Edit as VisualEditor, and adding an Edit source button. Congrats! It might be good to document that on the Wikipedia:VisualEditor page explicitly. :) Also, out of curiosity: are we thinking we'll support both edit/edit source as default actions available to all users post-launch? All the best, Steven Walling (WMF) &bull; talk   07:48, 21 April 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, this is documented on-wiki at VisualEditor, and was already here (and here) and here on the blog and other places I'm sure I've forgotten. :-) The Edit/Edit Source pairing will stay for at least the first few months. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:47, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Mail
I sent you an email earlier. Just a ping in case it got lost in a spamfilter. :) –Quiddity (talk) 21:52, 17 June 2013 (UTC)


 * @Quiddity - Thanks, just seen it, replying now. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 04:19, 18 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Replied at length (sorry for the length!). Hope you get a chance to read it before tomorrow. (No rest for the wicked!) I sleep now ;) –Quiddity (talk) 06:52, 18 June 2013 (UTC)

Happy June to you
I was curious if you could comment about the status of the VE project in regards to doing away with edit conflicts/being the mechanism to allow real time collaborative editing. A thread was started here. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 15:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Sure! Will reply there. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 15:48, 20 June 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks! That sounds great. Biosthmors (talk) 15:58, 20 June 2013 (UTC)

Inadvertent rollback
Re this edit - sorry about that, it was completely unintended. I think I shall have to disable rollback, a one-touch-and-no-confirmation facility is too dangerous with a rather trigger-happy touchpad. I wonder if there could be an option ot make it ask for confirmation, like the new Thank system, which I just used on you, confirming my belief that a second confirmation click is not a serious delay or distraction. Cheers, JohnCD (talk) 09:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)


 * No worries at all. :-) Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 09:00, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Please answer the communities concerns
[''Moved; mis-posted to User talk:Jdforrester and unseen. James F. (talk) 00:59, 26 July 2013 (UTC)'']

Would you like to comment to the communites concerns at VisualEditor/Feedback.--Salix (talk): 01:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Another question - concerning your mailing list post
I haven't dug out the original mailing list post but I'm going to AGF and assume that it has been reproduced accurately here. This statement - "Instead of endlessly arguing the point about this, I'd rather my team and I spending our time working to make our sites better." - reads to me as saying "instead of finding our what the users want I'm just going to get on with what I think will make the site better". This seems an awfully perverse way to develop software and I hope I've interpreted it wrongly. Failure to clearly communicate, and discuss, changes with editors seems to be a major cause of problems with may of the current software roll outs and statements like this hardly help make editors feel like they're being listened to whether that was the intent or not. Of course not replying to posts on this talk page (see above) only makes the problem worse.

You also state "As others have explained better than I, we think that users will be ill-served by this opt-out." Nope, I've yet to see a good argument for that. The arguments being given seem to very good arguments as to why VE should be the default option, and even possibly why it should require a little bit of searching to opt out. But if an editor definitely decides to not use VE I've yet to see a single good argument as to why VE should still be loaded - you're still not going to get any ore VE feedback etc of them if they have to load VE, you're just going to annoy them. If the opt-out option didn't already exist then maybe I could see a reason but as the code etc. already exists I've yet to see a good reason not to offer it. I'm not a die hard on this, I can see possible reasons why you would want to remove the opt out (for example keeping the opt out would require a lot of work in future) but as yet no such reason has been given. Dpmuk (talk) 17:07, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * And another ping of your other account. Dpmuk (talk) 17:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Hey.
 * You are right, the comment you're accusing me of intending to make would be a really terrible way to develop systems for users. Thankfully, that's not what I said, and not what I meant. I said that "endlessly arguing the point about [whether or not providing a built-in user opt-out which we will later take away], I'd rather my team and I spending our time working to make our sites better [by working on all of the usability improvements, new features, performance improvements and bug fixes for which a great many people are asking, and which our user testing supports]". If you think that actually I should ignore the ~ 1,000 other items around VisualEditor in favour of this one issue, then we're going to have to disagree.
 * When quoting mailing list posts, you should probably read the entire thread before saying you've yet to see arguments. :-) The thread starts here and includes my post re-hashing the arguments made elsewhere. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:24, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you for taking the time to reply - it is somewhat reassuring that WMF staff are at least doing that. You are of course quite correct in that I should have read the mailing list post, and I would have done if it had been easy to find.  And therein lies what is, at least in my mind, one of the biggest problem - the fragmentary way information, of use to users, is disseminated to us, often using means that most users will never read.  Inevitably this leads to incorrect information when the message is passed on second hand to somewhere where it is actually read by users.  Taking that mailing list as an example, I picked a random message near one of the ones you link to - namely this one.  In it there's mention of PHP, dependencies, a whole bunch of acronyms that I have no idea what are (and I am a computer programmer so I assume they're wikimedia specific) - is it any wonder that the average user doesn't subscribe to lists like this.  The bug tracking software has similar issues being full of technical bugs and the occasional one that will make a real difference to users.  Maybe there are other places more user friendly descriptions are given but the fact that I, and I think it's safe to assume many others, don't know where shows there is still a communication problem.
 * As it happens I'd seen many of the arguments in that post elsewhere. Your post is full of statements that aren't backed up or explained.  For example "It would imply that this is a preference​ that Wikimedia thinks is appropriate. This would be a lie.".  Why does wikimedia think this isn't appropriate - where was the discussion?  Why even if "wikimedia" doesn't think it's appropriate are you then still ignoring your user base which very clearly thinks it is?  You may have good reasons for ignoring us but these need explaining.  Most editors are reasonable people and if you make a good argument we'll accept it even if we don't like it.  "We have always intended for VisualEditor to be a wiki-level preference, and for this user-level preference to disappear once the need for an opt-in (i.e., the beta roll-out to production wikis) is over."  Again why, where was this decision made, were user's consulted.
 * The recurring theme here is that many users feel like they're being ignored. I hope this isn't your intent, and don't think it is, but it's undeniably happening and the way communications are being handled are only adding to this.  I think many users, myself included, hold the view that is isn't a case of "endless arguing the point" but rather you being stubborn, ignoring users and not trying to explain your position.  Whether that's right or wrong that's the impression I have and that's a problem.  You can argue all you like that that's not the case but if that's how it comes across it's still a problem.
 * You're putting words into my mouth about ignoring the ~1000 other items (although the fact that there is that many does beg the question whether it was ready for release - although that's another issue entirely). No I don't you should ignore those issues.  Similarly I don't think you should ignore the communication issues which this particular case is a very good example of.  Otherwise you're going to keep on annoying editors, and so keep on losing senior editors from the project.
 * My concern here isn't so much the specifics of this problem, or indeed even VE, but rather how WMF / developers communicate with editors and the growing trend I'm seeing among editors that they feel ignored. Dpmuk (talk) 19:29, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Question
You don't generally seem to respond when pinged, so I'm going to ask directly on your talk page. You've received profound and consistent negative feedback about VE. WMF's own research showed that editors were 43% less likely to complete a single edit with VE than with the traditional editor. Right now, Visual Editor has been widely rejected by the community, who are using it for approximately 10% of all edits. Even new accounts, which would be expected to be VE's stronghold, prefer the traditional editor by a 2:1 margin. Filter 550 continues to show that the editors that are using VE are struggling with it, and the feedback page continues to fill with more and more bug reports. Polling of the English Wikipedia community shows that a majority believes the editor should be removed from the default interface, and rejects the concept that VE is a useful tool by a 7:1 margin. This is despite the fact that most editors embrace the concept and think that WMF should continue to work on VE.

That's a strong and consistent message. It's not a knee-jerk rejection of VE, and most of us have been polite about it (there have been exceptions to that, certainly). That message is that VE is not yet ready to roll out.

Yet, you continue to roll it out. You delayed rollout to anonymous editors by a mere week when there were months of bugs left to fix. The feedback page is now getting comments about its performance on Czech Wikipedia, so it appears that you have deployed it on a subset of foreign Wikipedias now.

Why? What is it that makes you continue to roll this out when every precept of good product and project management call for you to either delay or revert?&mdash;Kww(talk) 16:05, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll ping your other account on the chance that you haven't seen this question.&mdash;Kww(talk) 19:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I hope you don't wonder why people complain that WMF isn't listening. You're received notification of this message on two separate accounts and have edited on both accounts since the message was placed. It's difficult to carry on a conversation when one side doesn't talk.&mdash;Kww(talk) 16:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Hey. My apologies for answering late; I'm answering pings in chronological order.
 * I'm saddened that you are not happy, but I disagree with your comments above, and in other places. However, I don't think there's much value in re-hashing the discussions you've already had with my colleagues, compared with the work I would otherwise be doing to make VisualEditor better for you and others. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm saddened that you think keeping VE in place is responsible behaviour, and I think that you are completely aware that this is not a response to my question.&mdash;Kww(talk) 19:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Stop changing my preferences
I opted out of VE because it is a piece of junk and have said so. Also, I have said I don't like it that WP changed editor's preferences without notifying us. This morning I found it turned back on. Don't ever change a editor's preferences without their prior permission again....William 11:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but your comment is based on confusion. We didn't change anyone's preferences. The gadget (which we said was fragile and would break, and discouraged people from using) broke. Gadgets aren't supported by Wikimedia Engineering for precisely this reason. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Stop blaming the gadgets. Who created the gadgets? People working for wikipedia. Your own message here is 'While we realise that many users would prefer that VisualEditor be a user preference that users have to specifically turn on in order for it to appear in the interface, we don't feel that it will be possible to develop VisualEditor effectively with only a small pool of users who have chosen to activate it by means of a preference' makes you into a mad scientist who feels people can be used against their will as guinea pigs. That's exactly what you are. Stop deciding for others because we didn't give you the right to do so....William 15:19, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Not true. Gadgets are created by fellow editors - see Gadget. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * William. That's over the top, in my opinion. There's legitimate disappointment with VE features/rollout, sure. But ascribing malevolent intent to another individual with certainty and without evidence isn't helpful. Please see Assume good faith. Jdforrester could easily have qualms over inconveniencing editors, but was following a decision made by a superior, for example. Biosthmors (talk) 15:37, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * His repeated use of the word 'we' on the update page makes him a part of this bs, not a somebody following the orders of a superior. If he was following the orders of a superior, does he have a conscience for allowing people to be used against their will? No we're lab rats not human beings to the people who pulled this off. He's said so as much with "we don't feel that it will be possible to develop VisualEditor effectively with only a small pool of users who have chosen to activate it by means of a preference'"...William 13:34, 3 August 2013 (UTC)


 * User:WilliamJE, please consider taking a break from Wikipedia or at least from hurling wild accusations around the place. You've already had two threads at AN/I closed down with no action (latest one last night), and now you turn you wrath on Jdforrester.  It seems you're both confused and angry, and your approach in both this thread and at AN/I is not appropriate, in fact it's borderline disruptive.  The Rambling Man (talk) 16:47, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia_Signpost/2013-08-21/Technology_report
Can you review this, and remove anything you'd prefer not be publicly discussed just yet? I'm not sure how much of what I heard at Wikimedia is private, and, whilst I've certainly tried not to put anything that seemed too private up, I wouldn't mind having someone check.

Also, sorry this is a bit late to get to you: I accidentally posted this at User talk:Jdforrester. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:54, 19 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Hey! Yes, that's all fine (except the section header, which I've fixed - "VisualEditor" not "Visual Editor"). There are no secrets in the VisualEditor team. :-) Clearly I need to find time to check my personal account more frequently. :-( Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 19 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Excellent. And, wow, I made far more typos in there than I thought. Stupid sinus infection. Anyway, thanks for the help!
 * By the way, just because you may find it interesting: I mentioned the arbitrary wikicode snippet issue in a bit of detail because I remembered there was a controversy over "Parsoid might not fully support Templates! OMG!". Explaining rather pathological Template code and why it's difficult to support is my effort to educate people on the background to such discussions, and why there's no need to panic. =) Adam Cuerden (talk) 19:33, 19 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Happy to help. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Tracking bugs
I've just realised that the see also links for "VisualEditor: Review link input widget behaviour" are being used almost like the bug was a tracker (I admit this is partly, or possibly even mostly, my doing). That bug itself could probably do with splitting as comment 0 refers to a few issues and comment 5 relates to a different part of it than comments 3 and 4. Specifically there should be I think separate bugs for (a) clarity in what buttons do what, (B) the need for a clear "cancel" button (which is ), and (c) the need for separate boxes for link target and display text.

There isn't currently a tracking bug for improvements to link inputting comprable to for transclusion dialogs, and there also doesn't seem to be one for requested improvements to the media settings or image insertion dialogs and there definitely isn't one for bugs related to multiple dialogs (e.g. requests for cancel buttons and dragability).

I don't know if there is any protocol or anything for setting up tracking bugs, but I was wondering if there would be benefit to one for improvements to dialogs in general (holding things like the cancel buttons and context-sensitive help requests) that had dependencies of trackers for improvements to specific dialogs? Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 9 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Sounds good; will do so now. There's no real protocol to making tracking bugs, but they're generally for use on things that take a long time and have lots of complex parts which can be split off as their own bugs. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 22:27, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Just a note
Hi James. I just wanted to take a moment to leave a note here for you, and please feel free to pass this on to your team, since it applies to them as well. So here goes: Thank you for working on VisualEditor. Thank you for putting in what I assume are incredible amounts of man- and woman-hours, and for taking a real step toward deploying something that's been essentially vapourware for years. Whether this deployment was perfect or not, you guys have put in the time to try to get a usable visual editor up and running, and it's unfair of the community to treat you as if you spent all that time cackling evilly over how to break things as badly as possible. Disagreement is one thing, but calling for heads and spewing insults is another, and on behalf of what I expect is most of the community, I'd like to apologize for the gratuitous nastiness you've been subjected to by some users. Please don't be too discouraged by or afraid of the loudest angry voices; for every one person shouting incoherently, there are many who just want to help move past what went wrong here and toward a workable deployment of VE, and we need you guys to work alongside us without fearing us (or resenting us) to accomplish that. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 17:25, 24 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:08, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Fluffernutter, feel free to give your own opinion, but please don't try to speak "on behalf of what I expect is most of the community". We have here a person whose job description is "My job is to help make sure the VisualEditor team understands what the community wants and needs, is focussed on the things that matter, and is engaging with and understood by the community." It is clear that he failed at that job quite spectularly the last few months, and comments like (among many others) "we cannot justify continuing to exhaust staff time (read: donors' funds) to this issue" only stress the gap between his job description and his actual actions. Someone who beliefs donor's funds are more important than the opinion of the largest Wikipedia version (shared apparently by the second largest one, the German Wikipedia) and gives that as the main or only reason to finally implement the solution this community wanted (and had implemented already anyway without the WMF), is not even trying to be "understood by the community", and clearly doesn't care about "what the community wants and needs". Donors give money because they like Wikipedia and want it to continue; they don't give money to support devs against the wishes of the editors. That you seem to value money and donors more than volunteer time and efforts is not compatible with your function or with the fundamental principles behind Wikipedia and Wikimedia. Fram (talk) 07:47, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Fram, I was apologizing because I think it's been highly inappropriate of some community members to call staffers (or anyone, come to think of it) names or treat them as though the VE debacle is something they did to troll us rather than something they spent genuine time and effort on because they thought it would be useful. I'm not apologizing for there being community discussion or controversy over the WMF's actions, and I don't think anyone on the WMF end would expect apologies for that; I'm just apologizing for the fact that some people veered away from discussing the issues to instead personally attack staffers and their motivations. A fluffernutter is a sandwich! (talk) 14:43, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Sentences like "it's unfair of the community to treat you [...]" gave a distinctly different impression. Or things like "for every one person shouting incoherently, there are many who just want to help move past what went wrong here and toward a workable deployment of VE"; it gives an "either you are shouting incoherently, or you are willing to work with the WMF" division, while I believe that most critics don't belong to either camp at the moment (I mean here that many are not willing to work with the WMF if things don't change drastically, not that they don't want to work with the WMF ever). I have no problem with you indicating that the people simply insulting WMF staffers for the sake of it are a tiny minority though, and that they shouldn't keep WMF and others away from discussions. Fram (talk) 14:50, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Fluff. I've just read the thread on AN; it was by the same user who took down Anobody, so I suppose one shouldn't be too surprised they were able to powerplay the Foundation. Still rather shocking though. VE was a really promising start. Thanks for all the work you and your team put into it. I hope you'll be able to return it to us soon. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:02, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * FeydHuxtable, it's still being worked on and it is available as an option for you to edit and report bugs on/make feature requests on as well. See WP:WMF for more details about reporting bugs/requesting feature improvements. See Special:Preferences to turn it on. That link is at the top of WP:VE/F. Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. ) while signing a reply, thx 21:07, 25 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Feyd, please don't rewrite history. Anyone who was around at the time will know that the only person who "took down" ANobody was ANobody himself.  Persistently disrupting Wikipedia, refusing to answer community concerns about his editing (remember the RFC/U?) and then socking is generally going to get you blocked, whoever you are. Black Kite (talk) 18:16, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Edit summaries in VE
You said in Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor/Default State RFC, as an example of where VE showed an improvement over wikitext editing:

"One thing we have noticed, which we feel is beneficial, is that users are 6 times more likely to use edit summaries than with the markup editor – though earlier in VisualEditor's development it was more than 10 times more likely, and we're investigating what led to the shift."

You have been asked repeatedly, at different venues, to explain this statement and to back it up with some evidence, as it seems highly unlikely to be true. As far as I have seen, you haven't given any response to this. Could you point me to your response or provide one here please? Fram (talk) 07:09, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi! Sorry, not seen the requests for this data. Will go and dig it out again (this was noted in July, but we've been a bit busy since then). Off the top of my head (cn ;-)) it was roughly a 7% -> 85% change if you include section links, and 7% -> 45% when you take out section edit links' auto-summaries where nothing other than the auto-summary has been added. This fell to ~25% when we started describing the edit summary box as such, rather than just leaving it unlabelled, hence my particular interest (i.e., that removing items that the community expects for totally reasonable causes to be in the interface can actually drive up desired behaviours, not down). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Seems like wrong data in your statistics though, every test I have seen (samples made by different people) had the edit summary rate more like at least 20% without VE and excluding all automated and section ones, and a bit more with VE. That something is wrong with those data is clear when you notice that for wikitext, you get the same 7% no matter if you include automatic ones or not. E.g. from the latest 100 edits in article space, only 20 have no edit summary whatsoever, so 80% has some edit summary, either automated or not. The chance that once again, my sample has found a statistical anomaly is minimal... Next time, when you include such figures in the justification for something the WMF wants, at least include some link to where you got those figures from. And perhaps also include numbers that point in the other direction, like the one from the WMF that shows that for new editors, 80% used wikitext and only 20% VE (before it became opt-in of course). Fram (talk) 15:15, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Any link to the data you used to get these numbers? Fram (talk) 08:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)


 * No. I'll ask a colleague in Analytics if we can re-run those numbers for you, but it's not a priority, sorry. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:12, 8 October 2013 (UTC)


 * OK. I don't get why numbers which are used to justify something controversial like VE (even as an example only) are not kept somewhere. It gives the impression that they are invented to impress us (even if the save mechanism of VE could be included in wikitext editing anyway, if that was the major improvement the WMF saw), which rather backfired since they seem to be wrong. If the WMF wants us to trust them again, they will have to do better than this. Fram (talk) 07:01, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

SUL Finalisation
Hi James. Hope all is well with you. Just checking in regarding SUL finalisation. Any idea when that's now likely to happen? Best, Will - WJBscribe (talk) 16:35, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hey WJB; that's now mostly 's role, though I'll be helping him. Hopefully we'll be able to make some progress soon. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 27 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Hi WJBscribe. To expand on this a bit, the finalisation is is on my list things to do. It's quite high priority as it's been hanging around in limbo for a while. That said, Howie, Rob and I decided that for the immediate future (the next few weeks or so) it would be best if I focussed on a single task (Auth systems) so I could build up some experience. I'll try to get to this as soon as I can. --Dan Garry, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor / Status
I notice that you have updated the VisualEDitor / Status page at MediaWiki. Any reason that you haven't changed the V19 status to more accurately reflect what actually works and what doesn't in it? I have left feedback at the two pages where you requested it (WP:VPT and WP:VEF), pinged you, and tried unsucesfully to change the status page myself, only to be met with extreme hostility and a very un-wikilike environment. Any reason why the status shouldn't reflect the current knowledge about what works and what doesn't, certainly when the version still needs to be rolled out to most wikis? Fram (talk) 08:23, 1 October 2013 (UTC)


 * (replied there Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 01:32, 5 October 2013 (UTC))