VisualEditor on mobile/VE mobile default

This page talks about the Editing Team's trial with making the VisualEditor the default mobile editor on limited number of wikis.

This initiative is a part of our team's larger effort to simplify contributing on mobile, described in the Foundation's 2018-2019 annual plan. And more specifically, to increase the likelihood contributors will have success making quick edits on-the-go, by presenting contributors on mobile with a simpler and visual editing interface.

We will use this page to, among other things;


 * Think through how onboarding might change on wikis where VE becomes the default mobile editor
 * Share what we are striving to learn from this experiment
 * Share how we will measure the success of this experiment
 * Announce deployment details

Watching this page is a good way to stay up-to-date about the above in real-time.

Background
We're striving to make editing on mobile web simpler. Research leads us to think contributors will have more success editing on mobile using the VisualEditor given it offers a more structured and visual experience than wikitext. Attributes contributors have said are especially important in a context where screen space is limited and touch is the primary way people interact with their devices.

The trouble is the VisualEditor is not the default on mobile, this has meant the overwhelming majority of mobile editors do not interact with it. [2] This makes improving the experience difficult when the majority of mobile contributors are not represented in the quantitative data we have been using to inform our product decisions.

By making the VE the default editing experience we intend to:


 * 1) Increase our understanding of the expectations and needs of a broader range of contributors editing on mobile
 * 2) Learn whether VE, in its current state, is a "better" [3] mobile editing experience than wikitext
 * 3) Learn how turning on VE as the default mobile editing interface impacts overall edit completion rate

" They commonly used descriptors such as ‘computer stuff’, ‘technical stuff’, ‘programming language’, ‘syntax’, etc.; in other words, something that is ‘not for me’, but for someone who has been trained in this professionally. " [https://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience_Study#Where_do_I_edit? source]

"Users mentioned as they tried to edit that they would need ‘more time’ to learn how to do what it was they were attempting, because they didn’t understand Wiki-markup, and it wasn’t immediately obvious what they needed to do." [https://usability.wikimedia.org/wiki/Usability_and_Experience_Study#Where_do_I_edit? source]

Glossary

 * Editing toolbar: the part of the editing interface where the tools to affect content within articles live.