I posted at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Visual_editor#Can_this_handle_templates_and_tables.3F asking if the visual editor can handle tables and templates, and giving examples of different types of tables. As I said there, either a template or a table (sometimes both) are seen on every English Wikipedia article that isn't a stub or something like that (all 3+ million of those article pages) and even on most stubs, since pages have infobox templates, stub-marking templates, etc. If this visual editor cannot handle either templates or tables, it's going to be fairly useless for anything except the lightest of editing. If it can handle those, then this is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
Banaticus
On 9 January 2012 20:02, Gorilla Warfare <gorillawarfarewikipedia@gmail.com> wrote:
> I believe this is what Asaf means:
> <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Visual_editor>. The demo is here:
> <http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Special:VisualEditorSandbox>.
>
> Pretty cool, if you ask me!
>
> - GW
>
>
> On Mon, Jan 9, 2012 at 10:18 PM, Bart <banaticus@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Which visual editor? I thought there was no true visual wikimedia
>> editor, since it would have to basically be its own server, what with
>> templates, etc.
>>
>> Banaticus
>>
>> On 20 December 2011 18:12, Asaf Bartov <abartov@wikimedia.org> wrote:
>> > Hi, Jan.
>> >
>> > Thanks for sharing this! It's very valuable to see the different models
>> > of
>> > engagement with educators around the world. I had been involved in some
>> > educational outreach myself in Wikimedia Israel, and they have been
>> > doing a
>> > lot more of that in the past few months, and I hope they could share
>> > their
>> > experiences and models (in English) soon too.
>> >
>> > Some comments in brief about your report:
>> >
>> > 1. the GEP operated by the WMF is certainly only _one_ model, and
>> > obviously
>> > neither the only nor the first model to successfully engage with
>> > education.
>> > It is very likely that the GEP model is not suitable for all
>> > geographies,
>> > and that we don't have the resources to engage in the GEP model
>> > everywhere.
>> > So it's great to collect models-that-work, for others to learn from and
>> > maybe try.
>> >
>> > 2. re the community's openness to technical features such as the visual
>> > editor: it's best to start a conversation about it sooner rather than
>> > later.
>> > Has the visual editor been discussed at all in the cswp community?
>> > Have
>> > people played with the demo?
>> >
>> > 3. Do you have thoughts about how to expand work in the Czech Republic
>> > without taking up so much of Chmee2's time? I.e. can this scale to
>> > support,
>> > say, 20 concurrent classes?
>> >
>> > Once again, thanks for sharing! It would be great to find a corner to
>> > record this more lastingly, perhaps on the Outreach wiki. Is there
>> > anyone
>> > on this list willing to curate this?
>> >
>> > Cheers,
>> >
>> > Asaf
>> >
>> > On Mon, Dec 19, 2011 at 1:46 AM, Juan de Vojníkov
>> > <juandevojnikov@gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> >>
>> >> This is a cross mail to educational-l and WMCZ board.
>> >>
>> >> Hi folks,
>> >>
>> >> on December 12, 2011 seven Czech Wikipedians (mostly scollars and
>> >> researchers) met in a tearoom in Prague, Czech Republic to disscuss
>> >> issues
>> >> relating cooperation between Wikipedia and an educational institutions.
>> >> At
>> >> first some of the projects were presented and participants had a
>> >> possibility
>> >> to ask details about these projects. Then broad discussion on different
>> >> topics continued.
>> >>
>> >> At the time, there is one project running by the cooperation between
>> >> Wikipedians and teacher and one project which is runnig just by teacher
>> >> iniciative. Other ambassador x educational institution projects are in
>> >> the
>> >> different stage of preparation (mostly attracting teacher and
>> >> training).
>> >> There is not just interest from the side of Wikipedians to start such
>> >> cooperation, but also teachers directly come to use Wikipedia in the
>> >> classroom by the means of edditing it.
>> >>
>> >> Seemingly the most successful project, running at this time on cs.wp,
>> >> from
>> >> which we may learn is the cooperation between user:Chmee2[1] and a
>> >> teacher
>> >> of ecology from the Institute for Environmental Studies from Faculty of
>> >> Science of the Charles University. Chmee2 was contacted at
>> >> Wikikonference
>> >> 2010 after presenting a project aiming to develop articles about
>> >> protected
>> >> areas (=ecology) by a Ph.D. student, who introduce him to the teacher.
>> >> Half
>> >> a year later around 30 students were instructed how to edit Wikipedia.
>> >> If
>> >> they create NPOV, good article with references and images, they will
>> >> recive
>> >> a credit. User Chmee2 periodically reads students work, repair it and
>> >> offer
>> >> them a feedback. Thus the teacher doesn't have extra work with that. To
>> >> the
>> >> end of the semester students present chosen protected area (e.g. via MS
>> >> PowerPoint) in class. Teacher and Chmee2 give them a feedback and
>> >> together
>> >> with the teacher and other students they give them questions to push
>> >> them to
>> >> think about the topic. Thus it gives students 2 values: a) they study
>> >> and
>> >> understand the topic, b) they got variegation in education and good
>> >> feeling
>> >> that their work will be useful. Chmee2 says: "The ambassador must have
>> >> a
>> >> time for such project. While in U.S. people are proud of having an
>> >> editing
>> >> experience with Wikipedia and they can have it in CV, in the Czech
>> >> Republic
>> >> that is nothing special and there is a luck of motivation. Thus
>> >> ambassadors
>> >> are old Wikipedians themselves."
>> >>
>> >> So it seems, that this might be one of the models which may work in the
>> >> environment of the Czech Republic, while to see if other ambassador
>> >> like
>> >> programs will work we have to wait some time.
>> >>
>> >> Thus we spent quite a lot off time in discussing the motivation factor
>> >> for
>> >> students, teacher and/or ambassadors. It seems in it there would be a
>> >> need
>> >> of some credit system supporting ambassadors and/or teacher to become a
>> >> valuable part of such cooperation. But this encounter legal issue of
>> >> schools
>> >> – you have to negotiate it with school functionaries. User:Hawkzn
>> >> things it
>> >> might be possible, while User:JirkaDI sees it like structural problem.
>> >>
>> >> Other "problems" comes when newbies coming to the Czech Wikipedia.
>> >> There
>> >> is a luck of mentors for them and they have to face both technical
>> >> (wikisyntax, templates, standards) and social problems (unpleasant
>> >> users,
>> >> lack of social interaction, just templates on their discussion page).
>> >> Thus
>> >> we have agreed to focus on setting up some features from en.wp such
>> >> gadget
>> >> Cite[2] or Wikilove. At this time User:Vojtech.dostal comes up with the
>> >> information that Wikimedia Foundation's (WMF) developers is close to
>> >> WYSIWYG
>> >> editor for Wikipedia, but user Chmee2 is afraid that most of the good
>> >> tools
>> >> from WMF might be reject by the local community.
>> >>
>> >> The group is not just aware how to motivate more people to get into the
>> >> cooperation and how to create friendlier environment for newcomers, but
>> >> also
>> >> comes up with questions how to communicate an offer to a teacher to
>> >> start
>> >> participate and how to motivate her/him to start up with the project.
>> >> Thus
>> >> participants will share their experience via Wikipedia on WikiProject
>> >> EDU.[3]
>> >>
>> >> Finally could be assumed that this first meeting and hopefully not
>> >> last,
>> >> come up with a lot of answers and positive mood to continue with such
>> >> work
>> >> and overstep problems which will come up. There is a common will to
>> >> continue
>> >> in such work. Participants understand they should be slow in getting
>> >> more
>> >> work and work together, but as every participant has some amount of
>> >> internal
>> >> pride, they will probably work separately developing and testing new
>> >> models.
>> >> Some of them call to go to younger leaners (high school, elementary),
>> >> others
>> >> disagree and call to join seniors (via lifelong learning courses).
>> >>
>> >> If you understand Czech you can joint us via Ambassadors's page[4] and
>> >> see
>> >> there also our projects and their state.
>> >>
>> >> Best regards,
>> >> Juandev
>> >> Chmee2
>> >>
>> >> [1] http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedista:Chmee2
>> >> [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_expander
>> >> [3] http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:WikiProjekt_EDU
>> >> [4] http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:Ambasadorstv%C3%AD
>> >>
>> >> _______________________________________________
>> >> Education mailing list
>> >> Education@lists.wikimedia.org
>> >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>> >>
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Asaf Bartov
>> > Wikimedia Foundation
>> >
>> >
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>> > Education@lists.wikimedia.org
>> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/education
>> >
>>
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