Forum:Request disabling automatic use of VisualEditor

Although we are presently discussing a policy to prevent forced features, I feel we should also draft a separate request for Wikia Staff to disable use of the VisualEditor on this wiki by all people.

When VisualEditor was announced, I was optimistic that it would fix many of the nagging problems present in the Rich Text Editor (aka the WYSIWYG editor), such as the addition of blank lines, breaking of complicated templates, etc. Before VisualEditor, we could force people to edit in source mode by adding __NOWYSIWYG__ to especially sensitive pages, but VisualEditor simply ignores those tags.

Right now, the Visual Editor is disabled by default for registered users, but it can be enabled in each person's preferences. However, it is enabled by default for all unregistered users. This means that any page that an unregistered user can edit which has complex code can be broken by that user, even if they don't directly edit the "complex" feature; this is apparent on our Battles page, as well as many others. On top of that, we have no way to prevent use of the VisualEditor on these pages, as the software ignores the __NOWYSIWYG__ tags. The only way to prevent VisualEditor being used on these pages extensively is to limit access to the page. It would be highly detrimental to semi-protect that page and other pages simply because they contain complex text. So, our only options left are to appeal to Wikia Staff to disable default VisualEditor use for unregistered editors on the wiki, to semi-protect all "breakable" pages on the wiki, or get used to having to constantly clean up after the collateral damage of this latest experiment.

Therefore, I am requesting that we contact Wikia Staff and respectfully ask them to disable VisualEditor for anonymous users on the wiki. --  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 22:48, July 5, 2014 (UTC)

Discussion
Or at least not make it the "default" editor. Anonymous editors can go back to the old editor by clicking on the drop-down menu and selecting "Classic Editor", but who's honestly going to do that every single time? Therefore I support this proposal. VisualEditor, at least until 100% of its kinks are ironed out, should be completely optional. --k6ka (talk &#124; contribs) 22:50, July 5, 2014 (UTC)
 * Per the above, I support making VisualEditor optional for all users. Ѧüя◎ґ (talk) 22:53, July 5, 2014 (UTC)


 * Support - Sometimes the VisualEditor is making the users mistaking their edits.  .ThePeculiarMe  |  (talk to me)  |  (my mistakes)  01:04, July 6, 2014 (UTC)


 * Support - for reasons stated above. Dharden (talk) 02:21, July 6, 2014 (UTC)

Support - I agree with K6ka's opinion. --  C.Syde  ( talk &#124;  contribs ) 05:20, July 6, 2014 (UTC)


 * Support - Icemandeaf (talk) 05:29, July 6, 2014 (UTC)

Comment I suspect VisualEditor is responsible for unexplained removal of content, such as this one. If VisualEditor is this horribly broken, it must be disabled ASAP. I understand how difficult it was for Wikia to develop this editor, but at the same time, Wikitext is not an easy language to understand, and this should seriously be a "Beta" feature, not a "Beta feature but we'll pretend it's picture perfect." --k6ka (talk &#124; contribs) 14:19, July 8, 2014 (UTC)

Seeing as we have a unanimous consensus, I've gone ahead and contacted Wikia requesting that the VisualEditor is disabled by default for unregistered users. I'll keep this thread open until I receive a response. 23:09, July 10, 2014 (UTC)

Response from Wikia
Hello,

Thanks for contacting us about this. As we have tracking that shows the VisualEditor to be a more effective editor for anonymous users (http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Kirkburn/VisualEditor_-_the_past,_present_and_future), we're currently setting the bar fairly high for disabling it. The particular bug pointed out in that thread (http://sims.wikia.com/wiki/Teen?diff=prev&oldid=606861) should actually be fixed with this week's significant update (http://community.wikia.com/wiki/User_blog:Kirkburn/Technical_Update:_July_8,_2014).

In general, the VisualEditor is far less prone to dirty diffs than than the previous incarnation, and even less prone to causing changes that can break pages - and naturally we are aiming to get that to zero as we continue heavy development on the tool. If you are having continued issues with dirty diffs (particular since this Wednesday) please do let us know, and we'll be happy to investigate further and look at temporarily disabling the VisualEditor as the default for anons. It's just hard to justify doing so without seeing the kind of issues it's causing you.

Thanks again for sending this in - we really do appreciate it. Best regards,

George Marbulcanti (Kirkburn) Wikia Community Support

tl;dr, they're not turning it off without a very good reason. 11:33, July 13, 2014 (UTC)


 * Well, at least they are trying to iron out the kinks instead of saying "I see no problem here". However, they should at least note that it is under development. If they are going to draft anon editors as beta testers, they should at least acknowledge that they have done it. Dharden (talk) 13:45, July 13, 2014 (UTC)
 * I can't say I'm particularly surprised by their response. I guess we'll just have to be vigilant and record any problems that arise, in case we should decide to ask for them to disable it in the future. I wish they would at the very least address the disabling of __NOWYSIWYG__ tags, since they would be able to alleviate a lot of our problems. -  LostInRiverview talk ~ blog 18:50, July 13, 2014 (UTC)


 * Maybe we should focus on persuading them to re-enable __NOWYSIWYG__ . Dharden (talk) 19:18, July 13, 2014 (UTC)

Conclusion
VisualEditor will not be disabled for unregistered contributors. Ѧüя◎ґ (talk) 01:12, July 31, 2014 (UTC)