Editing team/Archive/Current priorities

Last updated: 2016-08-30.

Tranche 0: Interrupt
Maintaining the production service at a suitable quality level:
 * No loss/corruption of existing article data
 * No loss/corruption of the user's contribution
 * No security issues
 * No regression in performance
 * No regression in usability

Tranche 1: Release support
Support community-requested releases/deployments, and urgent key usability improvements as they arise
 * Goal: Provide a Beta Feature of a new wikitext editor, designed like the visual editor, integrated into its workflow, and with all its tools — T141149


 * Goal: Provide a single edit tab interface, and switch all WMF wikis over to using it (without any other change in configuration) — T102398
 * Goal: Run an A/B test of providing the visual editor by default rather than the wikitext editor on clicking 'edit' for a small proportion of anonymous users on the English Wikipedia — T119269
 * Goal: Enable by default for all users on all Wikisources – T138966 for bugs, then T138391 for deployment

Tranche 3: Language support
Expand VisualEditor's content language support
 * Goal: Enable by default for all users on the remaining "Phase 6" Wikipedias – T93387
 * ✅ Arabic scripts
 * ✅ Indic scripts
 * Others – Aramaic (arc), Khmer (km), Lao (lo), Burmese (my), Thai (th), Cherokee (chr), Dhivehi (dv), Gothic (got), Tetum (tet), Twi (tw) – T125234
 * Goal: Enable by default for all users on the "Phase 7" Wikipedias – T93388
 * Support for "language conversion" blocks in Parsoid – T43716
 * Design and provide an interface to editing "language conversion" blocks – T49411

Tranche 2: Mobile MVP
Improve VisualEditor for mobile tablets and phones to the point where it is credible to provide it by default
 * Goal: Support sub-documents inside the editor stack, and use this to support loading parts of the page asynchronously and only when needed — T76544
 * Goal: Load parts of the editor asynchronously and only when needed — T54365
 * Goal: Provide a way to edit parts of a page (paragraphs, tables, images) individually — T50429

Tranche 5: Rich media tools
Improve the editing of various 'rich' editing tools so that particularly-difficult tasks are simplified – specifically:
 * Images, including uploads (part of MediaWiki core),
 * Formulæ ("Math" extension),
 * Charts ("Graph" extension),
 * Galleries (part of MediaWiki core), and
 * Sheet music ("Score" extension).

Tranche 6: Visual diffs
Provide an alternative to wikitext two-column diffs for users, in case they are not fluent in wikitext, and where it would be more appropriate. This covers:
 * Letting users choose between visual and wikitext views in the "Review your changes" tab inside the visual and new wikitext editors, on desktop and mobile — T143350
 * Letting users choose between visual and wikitext views in MediaWiki's diff page, on desktop and mobile — T105173
 * Exploring letting users "play" over the history of a page, seeing a stack of visual changes animate

Decision tree
Priority issues: Rating: Features:
 * Functionality regression
 * Performance regression
 * Data corruption
 * Security issue
 * Crash of entire editor
 * Crash of bits of editor (e.g. copy & paste stops working)
 * Very common -> Unbreak now! if a priority issue, Normal if not
 * Common -> High if a priority issue, Normal if not
 * Sometimes -> Normal if a priority issue, Low if not
 * Rare / very rare -> Low if a priority issue, Lowest if not
 * On list for this quarter -> High
 * On list for this year -> Normal
 * On list for next year -> Low
 * Not on list -> Lowest

Former tranches, now complete
Note: Former goals in active and former tranches are not listed for brevity.

Tranche 4: Link editor tweaks
Improve the link editing experience

Active for "FY2016Q2" (completed in October–December 2015).