VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive/2012/01

Footnotes - Where are You?
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 * In the edit-box is a footnote "citation needed" which is not shown in the wikitext-view. But there are no footnotes in the end of the document and no way to insert them.

Where are the footnotes? An editor without footnotes makes articles without sources i.e. nonsense.

The Markup for bold and italics, headers and other styles is not so complicated and easy to learn. Difficult are footnotes, templates and tables. E.g for books it should be sufficient just to insert isbn and page number to get a complete footnote (with help of the appropriate template). 19.326.31.145 12:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

{ } - Templates
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If pressing { } I would expect to get the chance to insert templates, because in Wikimarkup is used for templates tratditionally. There should be a wizard to choose the right template dependent on the categories the article is sorted in and des section which is edited:

1. Footnotes: sources 2. Top: infoboxes 3. Text: Area: sources, pictures and tables 4. Bottom: navigation bars, biographic data 29.246.31.145 12:27, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Toolbar
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I would strongly recommend you reconsider some of the labels on the toolbar if you aim to make accessible to the general public. I love what you have done so far! 205.254.147.8 17:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

references / citations
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needs a button to insert references and citations 123465421jhytwretpo98721654 04:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

inserting images
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needs a button to insert images 123465421jhytwretpo98721654 04:01, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Bullet and numbered list behavior
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In most interfaces when you want to end your bullet list you hit return twice. The first return will create an empty bullet and the second return will drop you out of bullet mode. I think it would be best to mimic that behavior in this editor too. The same should be true for numbered lists as well. 107.1.76.62 15:00, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Help expose capabilities users want but don't know how to
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Wikipedians have created an amazing array of specialized templates to help control the visual layout of a wiki article. These are in addition to the existing MAGIC WORDS built into MediaWiki. A few examples include:

,, , , , and. While I see that it is a requirement for the visual editor to be able to interpret and act on this code, I think it is also important for the visual editor to help users employ these tools even when they didn't know that it existed. There should be additional toolbars just like in Word, OO, Google Docs, etc that allow users to find more advanced functionality. Tools like Excel even help you find the functions you need via simple and advanced query techniques. 107.1.76.62 15:07, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Linking actions
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There is currently only one link icon. Is it intended that this link icon will be used for both internal and external links? In my experience, inexperienced users have a great deal of difficulty conceptualizing the difference between and internal link and an external link. Anything the visual editor can do to help users not have to worry about that should be explored. Personally, I believe we should just integrate intelligence into the linking tool. Examples:

If an editor uses a full external URL to link to another wiki page, the tools should just automatically convert it to an appropriate internal link. Ideally, the tool would even be able to do this for interwiki links as well.

If an editor has highlight a word(s) to be linked, the editor should automatically try to find the correct page and prepopulate it.

I also think the editor should try to identify internal links automatically and just populate the those for the user. We know the core guidelines (only link once, link first use but not others). The tool would be generous with linking and a user should be able to just click on a link and easily remove it if the link is extraneous to the article.

In short, the visual linking tools should eliminate the need for most users from having to know the complexities of linking and just help them connect their article to other articles and information. Theflyer 15:26, 8 January 2012 (UTC)