User blog comment:Sarah Manley/New Editor Scheduled for Sitewide Release/@comment-188432-20110909003040/@comment-188432-20110909145044

I'm glad to know that Staff are not considering this "the way it's supposed to be now". That relieves my mind quite a bit. As for specific thoughts, I actually like the iconic nature of the new interface. I think it'll be good for new users to see a picture of a picture, click on it, and add a pic from their hard disk directly to the page. That's actually a much better workflow than creating a redlink, clicking on the redlink and adding a new pic through Special:Upload.

So I guess I would say I'm fine with the basic conceit of the new editor.

The problem is simply this licensing thing. Just add the MediaWiki:Licenses drop-down to the lightbox directly underneath the filename. Put a a little message to the left of the "upload/publish" button reminding users to add a license.

All you need to do is just bring the licensing dropdown with you into the brave new world.

So that's the big issue, and really, I need that changed within the week. We're in the current run of Doctor Who AND Torchwood simultaneously — which means we've got a ton of new pictures coming in. We need to stop the tide of un-licensed images immediately, if not sooner. To me, this is the number one issue about the new editor — though admittedly, I wouldn't feel that way if our main subject were off season.

A very, very distant second on the media tool is that admin should be able to easily change the pictures used as icons. I guess I could do it now by digging around in the code, but as a point for way down later in the development track, it should be as easy to change those "add media" icons as it is to change the favicon or achievements badges. The glassy blue "hi I'm windows trying to look like a Mac" icons really don't fit our "Tardis blue" design at all. But again that's cosmetic and I'm totally happy to wait quite a while on that one.

Licenses though — please make that job one.