Visual Editor? A Good Sign? #wikimania

Today I actually listened to some tech talks at the Hackathon (An overview and "phabricator for beginners") and suddenly I remembered Wikimanias long ago and almost forgotten.

Wikimania 2012 in Washington: the Visual Editor was the new hot cool stuff that was coming and revolutionizing Wikipedia and Mediawiki. T-H-E G-R-E-A-T N-E-W S-T-U-F-F

Than a lot happened between 2012 and 2013. Mostly a premature deployment of a seriously buggy product, a huge community backlash and a lot of bad Karma for the Visual Editor. And I remember Wikimania 2013. Visual Editor was everywhere: on T-Shirts, almost every second talk was aboit Visual Editor (and all of them by WMF staff telling how great the Vsual Editor will be), posters, transparents: no escape at all. Oh, and the same staff occupied the best of the "open rooms" for their 24/7 presentation. So the rooms weren't open anymore and nobody but the Visual Editor team else could use them. It felt like being steamrolled for a product - that still was seriously buggy.

And now: what is Visual Editor doing? Does it even still exist? I've heard there are a few tiny bugs left (but, really only a few - and it's coming from people who are not being paid for liking VE), it has gotten a lot faster and for almost all use cases it actually is usable.

And at Wikimania: I did find two talks - both seem to be matter-of-fact-style and actually being informative. It may be that this is just coincidence and the WMF has simply accepted that they won't win any hearts with Wikimania presentations for Visual Editor. But it also may that the product team has given up on communitymanagement by steamrolling and introduced a new style.

I surely hope so. 
 
A lot less bruhaha and more delivery? If this is actually the new WMF style I'm more than happy.