User blog:Sci100/Ben 10 Fan Fiction's Review on Visual Editor

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Hello Wikians, thank you for clicking this blog! My name is Sci100, and I am an administrator on | Ben 10 Fan Fiction wiki. Now, as part of the job of being an administrator, I actively try to seek new ways to improve my home wiki. One of these ways was the newest program my Wiki is going through, | 2014 - A Year of Change, the latest push to clean up the wiki, update different pages, help new users, and make things in general, a better experience for all users. As decided by the wiki, we decided to test Project Darwin's new Visual Editor for one week. During this week (and after), users gave their opinion on Visual Editor. For the sake of privacy, I have named them by User-# instead of their actual usernames. Here are some of the things they had to say:

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"Eh... I could get used to it, but templates are really buggy and annoying, although I guess they'll fix it when it comes out. The whole "stay on the page while editing" is also slightly annoying, but we'll get used to it. After all, we'll eventually get forced to use it by wikia. For now, just keep using the classic editor until Wikia forces it."

- User #1

"I disagree with keeping it personally. Reason: The Visual Editor was not quite as conveniant as I thought. I honestly was most disturbed by the fact that Visual Editor does not accept Wikitext. The less prominent reason was because, although the Visual Editor was made for quick editing, its tools were quite perplexing, and certain simple jobs such as linking have become way harder and take more time."

- User #2

"I agree with what the user above said. Especially for wikitest, I think it should be accessible in RTE. On top of that, if you write your episodes in Notepad or Word like myself, and then you copy paste them into Darwin, instead of showing up normally, it shows up as one huge paragraph which messes things up. And despite me not liking it, I voted yes to keep it because Wikia will eventually force it on us and I think we need to get used to it. On a side note, if Wikia does force it, then in Preferences, I think we should be able to select out default editor (Visual or Classical) so when you click edit, it makes that one show up, because after a whole week, I still haven't gotten used to changing to classical."

- User #3

"Darwin drove me mad with coding stuff earlier. I tried to fix a coding error with Darwin and it just never worked. Then, I went into classic editor and it messed up the whole page, putting it all in one paragraph. I had to fix all the page and then I had to put the template. Oh, and the template isn't that complex... it's a heading. I hope Wikia doesn't force Darwin on us and keeps it optional because it's honestly just plain frustrating."

- User #3, again

"I chose it needs some work because I like the fact that it shows your errors so you don't have to switch to source mode and how it shows you what it looks like when you hit publish (which also allows you to see comments and activity without opening other tab). It needs to stop saying this wikitext thing, show templates as the stub thing like before and maybe when you hover over it, it enlarges like it was in the visual editor. Linking systems to be improved as well as the template editor."

- User #4

"My first reaction to the new layout was: "This is weird... ._." I mean it has some advantages like you don't have to switch to source mode to see your typing mistakes and it shows you what it looks like once you save it but the linking system is hard to navigate and a summary seems mandatory (even though I know its not). I'd like to test out this "Visual Editor" once they refine it. Other then that, I perfer the old one."

- User #4, again

"If one copies and pastes onto the new editor from something like Word (which is how I put up all of my stuff up) it doesn't retain the spacing already done, or bold or italics, etc. That is a major problem because that makes the effort actually take longer. You also can't copy and paste regular links that are already on the site, and the adding link thing isn't as convieniant as it was. Currently, I am a No for this new system."

- User #5

In Conclusion, we decided that the following things needed to be fixed:
 * Being able to edit Tabs you have to edit in Classic editor to do it at all
 * Being able to edit Templates easier (the current form is a lot harder)
 * the linking system needs to become easier (the current form is still hard)
 * Copy and pasting bolded/italicized text onto RTE needs to be fixed, as stated by User #5
 * Visual Editor needs to allow Wikitext
 * The buttons are a lot harder
 * The photo adding process is very unclear and difficult, you have to edit in Classic editor to do it properly

So, have your communities tried out Visual Editor yet? What do you think? Do you agree with these uses needing to be fixed? --Sci100.