Users struggled to understand the wikimarkup found in a moderately-sized article; when they managed to identify bits, it was almost entirely from comparing their memory of the rendered page to individual words, and looking at the formatting around those words (for example, noting that all of the headers had equals signs, and thus determining that equals signs made headers work). With one exception, every user found the source editor intimidating and would opt not to use it.
==Using the VisualEditor==
<div style="font-size: 15px; margin-bottom:5px; line-height:120%" align="center">''"I've given up in the past because it seemed too confusing. With [the VisualEditor] it seemed like anyone can figure it out."<br> "[The VisualEditor] feels more like editing a word document and isn't as intimidating as the [source editor] which feels more like editing code."''</div>
Several problems were raised with the VisualEditor. Many users found adding links to be confusing, something we have noted and are evaluating, and (as known) the VisualEditor was slow to load for some testers. Several other (now fixed) bugs, such as problems with saving the page, also frustrated users. However, all but one of the testers concluded that they preferred using the VisualEditor to using the source editor, one of them noting that "[with the VisualEditor] I would be more likely to make edits. That interface was a lot easier to understand and I had more confidence that the changes I was making were the changes that I wanted to make. I also like that I had an opportunity to review the changes and note them."
