Help:VisualEditor/FAQ

What's VisualEditor?

VisualEditor is a software development initiative by the Wikimedia Foundation that will allow people to edit pages in MediaWiki without needing to learn wikitext syntax. With VisualEditor, formatting pages will work very similarly to a word processor. While editing, the page will look very similar to what the page will look like after it is saved.

Why is this change being made?

The complex wiki markup syntax used by the old editing window is the biggest barrier to making the first edit, and therefore the biggest barrier to beginning the path that could lead to someone's becoming a productive, experienced member of the editing community. To increase the number of successful first attempts at editing, we need a better editing system. Please read our longer explanation for more details.

Where do I go to learn more about using VisualEditor?

Please see the VisualEditor User guide.

When will VisualEditor be enabled on my wiki?

The current schedule for future rollouts is posted at VisualEditor/Rollouts. More than half of Wikipedias received VisualEditor as an option for all users during 2013. VisualEditor is available as an opt-in Beta Feature to almost all logged-in users at all Wikimedia Foundation projects.

Why are you deploying the software even though development is not finished?

The software has features to be added and issues to be resolved. Ultimately, the best way to detect bugs and identify missing features is to have as many people as possible using the software and playing with it. While we know that bugs are disruptive in the short term, they will be fixed, and the current use is what lets us identify things that need fixing.

I found an issue with VisualEditor. How can I tell you to fix it?

If you're willing and able, please report the issue in Phabricator in the "VisualEditor" product. Most large Wikipedias also have a wiki page dedicated to feedback about VisualEditor; see the list on Wikidata. There is also a central feedback page on mediawiki.org.

How do I disable VisualEditor?

To continue to edit the wikitext directly, simply click the "Edit source" button instead of "Edit". On section edit links, you can open the classic wikitext editor for that section by clicking "edit source" instead of the regular "edit" link. On wikis where VisualEditor is still a Beta Feature, you can simply uncheck its box in the Beta tab of your Preferences; on the other wikis, you can check the Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta box from the Editing tab instead.

A feature is missing in VisualEditor. How do I ask you to add it?

Some features are currently being developed or planned. The Roadmap, the Wikimedia Engineering goals pages for 2015–2016 and the Phabricator workboard provide some additional information as well. If you can't find any reference to the new feature you'd like to suggest, please submit it using the same process used to report an issue.

Will it still be possible to edit using wikitext after VisualEditor becomes the primary editing interface?

Yes. While VisualEditor will eventually be offered to all users by default, a method for editing the underlying “source” text will continue to exist. There are no plans to remove wikitext editing.

Can I use familiar wikimarkup like [[ ]] and {{ }} in VisualEditor?

No. Currently, those shortcuts will trigger the link and the template tool respectively. If you use wikimarkup in the article, a warning message will appear. See VisualEditor User guide for more about how to use VisualEditor.

Why is my browser not supported?

Building a modern editing interface for Wikipedia and its sister wiki is a technical challenge, but it's possible using modern web technologies and standards. Unfortunately, some browsers don't support many of the features we need for VisualEditor. We're doing our best to support the most common browsers: VisualEditor works well with recent versions of the most popular web browsers: Firefox 15 and up; Iceweasel 10 and up; Safari 7 and up; Chrome 19 and up; Opera 15 and up; Microsoft Internet Explorer 10 and up; Edge 12 and up. In some browsers, such as Internet Explorer 9, a warning message will still show up, but users shouldn't experience any major problems editing. Trying to work around the limitations of older browsers would divert resources from improvements that would benefit the majority of users. We encourage you to upgrade to a supported browser and, if you can't, to continue to edit using the source wikitext editor. (See target browser matrix for specific details.)

Does VisualEditor work with Wikisource's ProofreadPage, or Wiktionary's templates, and other features that Wikipedia doesn't have?

VisualEditor is flexible enough to be adapted to all Wikimedia sites. However, Wiktionary's heavy reliance on templates will require significant work by community members to provide TemplateData to their users, and Wikisource's ProofreadPage tool will require some additional work to integrate VisualEditor smoothly.

Can I install VisualEditor on my personal wiki outside Wikimedia?

Yes, at your own risk. VisualEditor and Parsoid extensions are available for download but they're still experimental; note that Parsoid requires nodeJS. If you do install and use them, please let us know what worked and what didn't in Phabricator.

Does VisualEditor make automatic fixes to pages?

In most cases, VisualEditor will not make changes to formatting on lines that are not being directly edited. In cases where markup already on the page is handled incorrectly (for example, with tables that are not closed), it may attempt to correct these.

Will the visual editor be enabled on talk pages?

​No. This question comes up quite often.

• The visual editor is designed to edit content, plain pages of text.^[1]
  • Talk pages aren't content. Many of the tools and design patterns that make VE nice to use to edit content make it poor to use for discussions.
  • To make it usable for discussions, we would have to remove or break many of those patterns in VE. We have spent a lot of time researching with users what works best there.
• VE can't deal with structured discussions and plain-text discussions are not structured discussions.
  • Discussions like they are on traditional talk pages are not structured discussions from a technical perspective, despite the fact there is a certain number of colons or bullet points added to each answer to provide a pseudo-structure. With the current design of classical discussions, a piece of software can't know who has replied to whom – only humans can. There is no real connection between posts (which post is the parent/child of which), which is the definition of a structured discussion.

DiscussionTools is the default talk page system provided with MediaWiki. It is the default discussion system at all Wikimedia wikis. It is available on the desktop and mobile web site, but not in Wikimedia Apps . DiscussionTools provide a set of tools to participate to discussions, with visual and wikitext editing modes.

Will the visual editor be enabled on namespaces that also host discussions?

This is the case of a good number of community boards, like village pumps, hosted under the Wikipedia: namespace.

The visual editor has not been designed to edit discussions.

With the deployment of DiscussionTools , it is possible to deploy the visual editor to Wikipedia namespace and to namespaces where conversations happen. However, editing or participating into discussions using the "edit" button will trigger limitations, like breaking indentations or page setup.

It is possible to deploy the visual editor to these namespaces, only if communities acknowledge of these limitations, and accept that the editing team will not be prioritizing any issues that emerge as a result of people using the visual editor in namespace it hasn't been designed for.

DiscussionTools will be available on any page where signatures are present and either:

• The __NEWSECTIONLINK__ magic word is present
• The page exists in a namespace that project has declared as a signature namespace

Where can I read more about what communities can do to adapt the visual editor to their sites?

You can find a sort of "checklist" here on mediawiki.org.

Where can I find people experienced in this kind of effort?

There is a list of names at Community Taskforce.

My question isn't here. Where do I ask?

You can ask on the VisualEditor feedback page on your wiki (see the list on Wikidata) or on the central feedback page on mediawiki.org.