Contributors/Projects/Editing performance 2

Report publication date: ???

Contact: Dan Garry

In order to better understand the performance of the 2017 wikitext editor relative to the 2010 wikitext editor, the Editing team has collected performance metrics for these editing environments. Definition of the metrics, explanations of how the data was collected, and an analysis of the data to recommend a course of action, is documented in Contributors/Projects/Editing performance. This page documents improvements that were made to the 2017 wikitext editor to reduce the amount of time it takes for it to become interactive.

Definitions
"Time to interactive" and "time to fully loaded", the two metrics used here, are defined in Contributors/Projects/Editing performance.

Methods
The data collection methods are defined in Contributors/Projects/Editing performance. The same data collection method is used here.

The time to interactive was mostly improved by implementing T184614, which shows a temporary plain wikitext editor to the user while the rest of the toolbar code is still loading.

Results
No two real-world edits are exactly identical, and a single average provides very little information. To compare performance, the data set has been sorted by speed. This allows us to compare the faster (or slower) edits in each editing environment against the faster (or slower) edits in the other editing environments. Results are given below for particular percentiles. The number given at the 50th percentile (median) means that 50% of the edits using that editing environment were faster than the number given, and 50% were slower. Similarly, the number given at the 90th percentile means that 90% of edits in that editing environment were faster than this, and 10% were slower.

Caveats
Assignment between conditions in this observational experiment is not completely random. Most users of the 2017 wikitext editor have made a deliberate choice to use that editing environment. We expect that users who experienced significant performance problems, within their personal computing environment, would normally stop using the 2017 wikitext editor. Similarly, we expect people who perceived the 2017 wikitext editor to be the faster option, within their personal computing environment, would normally be less likely to return to the 2010 wikitext editor.