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:: [[User:Jdforrester (WMF)|Jdforrester (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Jdforrester (WMF)|talk]]) 18:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
:: [[User:Jdforrester (WMF)|Jdforrester (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Jdforrester (WMF)|talk]]) 18:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
:::I would say that every hit of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&wpSearchFilter=550 Filter 550] is evidence to the contrary, [[User:Jdforrester (WMF)|Jdforrester]].—[[User:Kww|Kww]]([[User talk:Kww|talk]]) 18:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
:::I would say that every hit of [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&wpSearchFilter=550 Filter 550] is evidence to the contrary, [[User:Jdforrester (WMF)|Jdforrester]].—[[User:Kww|Kww]]([[User talk:Kww|talk]]) 18:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
:::: {{ping|Kww}} I disagree. I see a lot of users mistakenly using wikitext in an inappropriate context, and VisualEditor/Parsoid rescuing those users from themselves to avoid breaking their edits. I don't see any corruptions at all any more - we squashed a number of them over the past two weeks. [[User:Jdforrester (WMF)|Jdforrester (WMF)]] ([[User talk:Jdforrester (WMF)|talk]]) 18:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)


== Shrinking images ==
== Shrinking images ==

Revision as of 18:57, 11 July 2013


Please participate in the VisualEditor Request for Comment. Thank you.

Attention Internet Explorer (IE) users: VisualEditor is temporarily disabled for IE9 and IE10 users, due to various issues that are being fixed. VisualEditor will not be made available for users of IE8 and earlier; such editors should switch to some other browser in order to use VisualEditor.

Share your feedback
Share your feedback
Report bugs
Report bugs
Your feedback about the VisualEditor beta release

This page is a place for you to tell the Wikimedia developers what issues you encounter when using the VisualEditor here on Wikipedia. It is still a test version and has a number of known issues and missing features. We do welcome your feedback and ideas, especially on some of the user interface decisions we're making and the priorities for adding new functions. All comments are read, but personal replies are not guaranteed.

A VisualEditor User Guide is at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User_guide.

Add a new comment – View known bugs – Report a new bug in Bugzilla – Join the IRC channel: #mediawiki-visualeditor connect

Archives (generated by MiszaBot II):

"Happy to announce"?

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.

"Wikipedia is happy to announce the live Beta of VisualEditor"? What announcement? Might I suggest an unambiguous notification in the new "edit this page" process that points out the new "edit source" tab for the old system? The first notice I got about VisualEditor (which I'd never heard of) was actually editing a page like always, only to find a visual editor (didn't see the name or a link to info) which wouldn't let me add and preview a citation, my most common WP work besides copyediting. I only found Wikipedia:VisualEditor by clicking on the mysterious "BETA" that appeared at the top of the page. ("BETA" what?) Yes, I eventually found "edit source", but given WP's recent proclivity for adding and moving around top-page tabs, I didn't notice it initially. Even without using VE yet, from my quick look, I suspect VisualEditor will be a tremendous help for all editors. But dropping it on everyone by default without warning is bad practice. (If there was a warning, I didn't notice it, which suggests it wasn't a very effective "notice".) ~ Jeff Q (talk) 04:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's been an opt-in beta since December 2012, and we sent out a centralnotice, but it looks like a cookie problem meant it didn't go to some users :(. The opt-out is pretty prominently displayed on the VE portal, which is both where the banner drops you and a single click away from where the current popup in the VE drops you; hopefully this will help. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I said the same thing, Jeff. --Paul McDonald (talk) 00:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the info, Okeyes, but an opt-out buried in a topic unknown to the entire affected audience is a catch-22 and isn't adequate. (Indeed, that's the kind of practice that gets companies excoriated, like putting a license agreement inside a box whose opening binds you to the license.) But I see that we've got a main-page banner now, so that addresses my concern. Shame it didn't show up a few days earlier. ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:27, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This issue is not answered. It has been ignored.--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:26, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To quote Douglas Adams:

"But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months."
"Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn't exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them, had you? I mean, like actually telling anybody or anything."
"But the plans were on display ..."
"On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them."
"That's the display department."
"With a flashlight."
"Ah, well the lights had probably gone."
"So had the stairs."
"But look, you found the notice didn't you?"
"Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

Hairy Dude (talk) 00:16, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The issue was answered. Until 2-3 days ago we had a centralnotice up; clicking on it sent you directly to the page that contained the big notice. "unknown to the entire affected audience" is a misnomer. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not a very good answer. What's missing is why wasn't it handled correctly in the first place?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:18, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One click disable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540

It's realy slow and annoying. Just like every new introduced feature, there should be an easy way to disable it, for example on click on the information box above the page that shows enabling this tool. Qtguy00 (talk) 14:17, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't believe that one click disabling is in the plan at this point, although you can hide the feature. To quote a few points from the FAQ
Why does no standard user preference to disable VisualEditor exist?

VisualEditor is the new default experience for all users. We recognize that it still in beta and has issues, including lack of support for some aspects of wikitext. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. Developing VisualEditor into a tool that can meet the needs of all our users will take time. Therefore, we encourage all users (including power users) to regularly check in VisualEditor's progress, and we're running VisualEditor in parallel to the traditional Wikitext editor.

Power users will find ways to disable VisualEditor completely, e.g. by means of user scripts and gadgets. However, to encourage continued testing of VisualEditor as it develops, completely hiding it from the user experience will remain a non-trivial task.

The current experience is designed to be minimally intrusive for users who want to continue to use wikitext indefinitely. Both at the page and section-level, editing as wikitext should require no additional action other than selecting the "edit source" option. We would rather make VisualEditor's availability through the UI interfere less with the experience of power users rather than introduce a new preference: For example, resolving bug 50542 could make the integration of VisualEditor less noticeable. Please let us know about similar issues.

We hope to hear from users who could never imagine using VisualEditor as their default editing environment. Fixing bugs aside, we want VisualEditor to be as efficient and powerful as wikitext while being discoverable and easy to use, and we highly appreciate your feedback on what improvements could make it so.

and
How do I disable VisualEditor?

To continue to edit the wikitext directly, simply click the "Edit source" button instead of "Edit". On section edit links, you can open the classic wikitext editor for that section by clicking "edit source" instead of the regular "edit" link. If you would like to remove VisualEditor from the user interface, then you can go to the Gadgets tab of your Preferences page, check the option "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" in the "Editing" section, and click the Save button near the bottom of the page. (Note that gadgets are community-developed and not supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.)

I hope that these will help you. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:25, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but I am not talking about myself only. I am talking about giving editors easy way to choose the way they want to edit wikipedia. What prevents Wikimedia from adding a simple shortcut on the info panel to disable visual editor at least temporarily? I should mention that creating better content is the main goal of wikipedia, and creating useful visual editor is not the main goal, so let's not compromise the main goal of having better articles for having a visualy compelling editor that is bloated, slow and counter productive. And yes, Linus' law works, but he is talking about volunteers, nobody is forced to edit, compile and debug Linux kernel by default when using an Android phone. --Qtguy00 (talk) 11:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Nobody is forced to assist with testing. The easy way to choose the way they want to edit is simply to pick which button to click (although labeling might be more clear on those - there's a feature request for that. :)) The goal is to have a VisualEditor that is not bloated, slow or counter productive, and having yesterday had the opportunity to talk to developers, I am very aware that they are reading bug reports and feature requests in order to refine VE into the tool that the community wants. This is the way our collaborative process works. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If nobody was forced to assist with testing, why were we forced by default to use the VE utility to test it? Why is it the default setting now?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Qtguy00 wrote: "I am talking about giving editors easy way to choose the way they want to edit wikipedia." This is a common request. This is one solution: bugzilla:50540: VisualEditor: Display both "edit" and "edit source" links for sections without hover. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:15, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Put an "edit source" link on the help box, or lose copy editing of short sections of long articles from occasional users. These users expect to fix a comma or awkward wording in a short section by clicking on "edit" and finding an edit box right there after a page load. They don't expect to have to wait for "edit source" to appear after hover. They don't expect to find very sluggish scrolling and failure to reach the bottom of page in one try and failure of the "End" keyboard key and absence of an edit box at the bottom of page. They might keep trying long enough to find the help box. At least, the help box should mention the fact that "edit source" will appear after hover, and at least, that "edit source" should be linked to edit the section in an edit box. — Pifvyubjwm (talk) 21:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

font too small

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52058

I just did this edit, it actually worked and let me fix a typo. But before I saved it when I tried to preview the change it came up in an uncomfortably small font, barely readable. I'm testing this on a decent sized screen, and my glasses are a fairly recent prescription. With the greying of the pedia we should be getting more conscious of access issues like this. The normal editor doesn't have this problem - so it would be perverse to implement an editor that is in at least this respect less user friendly than we were before. ϢereSpielChequers 06:45, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Monobook? - David Gerard (talk) 06:46, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect so. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes of course I use Monobook, do you think I would have stayed on this site so long if I used Vector? I'm tempted to suggest that we simply disable V/E for Monobook but of course that would make it more difficult to upgrade new editors from Vector to Monobook when they start becoming serious editors as it would be a double transition. ϢereSpielChequers 19:52, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same problem. Not only the preview, but also in order to read the edit summary, I have to enlarge the font three times, and then of course reset the font size when I'm done. I don't have to do this for any other purpose, and certainly not when using the standard editor. —Anomalocaris (talk) 05:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed; this is tracked and being worked on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, this was NOT answered and the bug was not correctly assigned.

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52797

See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#No_way_to_edit_templates_in_Visual_Editor. That bug, Bug 50797, was incorrectly called a duplicate of but 47790. 47790 deals with blank lines that aren't really there but that show in the VE. But the bug is that blank lines that are in fact actually there are impossible to remove in Visual Editor. See this diff. Please do look at that again and update the bug status or add a new one. I am not at all familiar with bugzilla's inner workings and feel quite incapable of doing it myself. I appreciate your time and effort. Red Slash 06:43, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are right, reopened. Thanks for paying attention. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:28, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, TheDJ. But the link placed on the bugzilla is not the permanent link to the messed-up version. If someone deletes that white space using the source editor, the link will no longer illustrate the problem. Please, I ask you or whoever else is watching this, please put exactly the following into the bugzilla comments: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel&oldid=561095260 Thank you very much. Red Slash 19:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've added the permanent link to the bug report for you. Thryduulf (talk) 21:13, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Red Slash; your attention on the problem is much appreciated :). I think communications problems are always going to happen - we have editor translated into Oliver translated into Developer - but as long as people are willing to chase it up, we can solve for the issue. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
+1. The {{answered}} template does stand the risk of irritating people, I know, and I apologize for that, but it has two valuable uses that I hope outweigh that - first, it lets us know that a section has been handled, so we can easily spot sections that have not. This is very important high on the page, since the tendency is to look at the most recent. Second, it lets you know that we think we've done all that needs doing in a section, so you don't wait for further response and so you can let us know if we're wrong. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Changing link text often results in bad code, wrong links and unmatched </nowki>s

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53173

Following from my report above I've done some more testing in my userspace [1]

That link contains details, but some "highlights" include:

  • Changing a link from Egypt to Ecuador: [[Egypt|<nowiki/>]][[Ecuador|E]][[Ecuador|cuador]]
  • Changing a link from Zachary Taylor to Zoe Ball: [[Zachary Taylor|<nowiki/>]][[Zoe Ball|Zoe]] Ball

and some links simply not being changed. Thryduulf (talk) 11:59, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I want to understand what you're doing here, @Thryduulf:. It looks like you were attempting to see what would happen if you changed some links by backspacing and retyping rather than using the link editor - is that correct? I can't find any other way to get the results you did at Afghanistan, for instance. :) Were you using the link editor at any point? I want to be sure to report this correctly. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Every time I added, set or changed a link I used ctrl+k. When I was deleting or backspacing the link it was to remove the existing link in order to replace it with a new one. Setting the link and then altering the text was to see what happens when someone does that, because the displayed text does not change when you change a link using the link editor. Does that explain things or should I try again? Thryduulf (talk) 14:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Afghanistan test was very much a "what happens if". I remember now that I've seen a result like this in the wild [2]. I don't know what exactly Kinda Stolen was attempting to do with that edit but the effect was the same. Thryduulf (talk) 14:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"What happens if" makes a sense to me. It seems like a natural thing for somebody to try to do. :) I can report the issue with backspacing and its outcome, certainly. The control+k issue seems like the one we've been talking about above, unless I'm missing some nuance, so I've essentially just reported that one. Just let me know, @Thryduulf:! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was changing some of the old text on the page using the Visual Editor after I moved the page to reflect the moons new name. When I was changing the text from P5 to Kerberos, I had to relink it but for some reason the visual editor only made the "k" of "Kerberos" form the link. Not sure what went wrong there but it was noticed and fixed sometime afterwards. Kinda Stolen (talk) 19:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll come back to this in the morning (UK time) when I should be more awake, but I think there are several issues here. One is as above, one or two when you partially replace a link to modifiy it and one where you (attempt to) completely remove a link to modify it. Thryduulf (talk) 21:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've managed to utterly confuse myself with this, sorry. When I work it out again I'll get back to you about it if someone doesn't get there first! Thryduulf (talk) 09:00, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A nice example of this was this pair of VE edits to Smile (The Beach Boys album). In the first[3] the user tries to link to The Elements: Fire but it gets mangled instead we get "[[The Elements: Fire|<nowiki/>]][[Fire]]" . In the second[4] it looks like VE tries to correct itself and changes "[[The Elements: Fire|<nowiki/>]][[Fire]]" into "<nowiki/>[[Fire]]". The end result is that VE has managed to not link to the intended page and link to an unintended page! There is a considerable time diference between the two edits, 3rd July and 9th July so VE might have been patched between the two.--Salix (talk): 06:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)?[reply]
My example: [[diesel generator]]<nowiki>s Why would I want to nowiki the plural? Is this the default behavior or a random flaw? Rmhermen (talk) 14:54, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Rmhermen:, can you tell me what you did to get that result? I'm trying to figure out how best to report it, and I find the issue somewhat confusing. :) Did that just pop up when you used the wikilink editor? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that I highlighted the words "diesel generators" and chose the first suggestion "diesel generator" which when saved showed as diesel generators. Rmhermen (talk) 15:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Reported. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52943
Image of the issue

I tried adding a reference to an article, and it seemed I stuffed it up a bit, although with care it could be fixed. However, I think this is probably worth looking at because of the process. I don't use cite templates, so I tried manually formatting a reference in VE. The first part went ok, and then we're taken to the window for formatting the reference. I typed in the reference details, (author, title, etc), then highlighted the title to provide an external link to the source. When I did so, a pop-up list of options appeared as possible wikilinks. There were a lot, and due to the window size this almost fully covered the text box. It also was a bit too long, so under Safari at least the text box for the group name appears as part of the list in some odd way. To add the URL I had to blindly paste it into the box, as I couldn't make the list of wikilink suggestions disappear in order to edit text. (If I click anywhere to make the suggestion list disappear, I can't enter text, and if I click on the text box again the list reappears and prevents me from entering the URL). When I do paste the URL, it shows up in the list again as options for both an internal link and a newpage. Here I gather I should click on the external link option, but the new page option overlies the text box. Thus I tended to accidentally click on the new page option when trying to get back into the text box. Unfortunately, that made the options list disappear, so I missed that it had changed to an internal link. And although it is technically a redlink, it now appeared as a blue link in the box, so there is no indication that it is a wikilink instead of an external link.

I hope that makes some sense. :) Short version - the pop-list of suggested wikilinks was malformed if it was long enough to cover the group name box, and prevents the user from seeing the text box when pasting a URL. When a URL is blindly pasted, it is easy to accidentally click on the wikilink option, but there is no indicator that this has occurred once the pop-up list disappears. - Bilby (talk) 12:54, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense, although I'm never 100% sure that I'm catching all the nuances. :) I've tracked it at bugzilla and created a screenshot to illustrate. Please let me know if I've missed or messed up on something. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:51, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You've pretty much got it. Thanks! To clarify a couple of points (your screenshot is great):

  • Right down the bottom of the popup list you can see a textbox overlaying the last option. That is the group name text box, which appears as an element in the option list if it is long enough to overlie it. If you had one more item in the list, that box would appear between the last item and the second to last one.
  • Once you have a URL in the box, another pop up list of two options is displayed to ask whether it is an external link or an internal one. The internal link option overlaps the text box.
  • If you accidently click on the internal option, which is easy to do because of its position, the two options disappear, but your link will no longer work as it will be turned into a wikilink instead of an external link. As it appears as a blue link, there is no indicator that it is internal rather than external.

When wikilinks to non-existing pages are red there will be a better indicator of the problem, so that will help with the last issue. - Bilby (talk) 16:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Save dialog

  • The save button should make clear that it leads to a dialog rather than saving directly. E.g. change the label from 'Save page' to 'Save...'. bugzilla:42138
  • The edit summary should carry that name, so people know what others are talking about. E.g. write 'Edit summary' just above the text box. bugzilla:50900
  • The font size in the dialog and in the diff is too tiny, nearly unreadable. Icons for closing those boxes are not shown completely, which makes it even harder to guess what they do (how about tooltips?). Observed using Firefox 22.0 on Ubuntu 12.04, MonoBook skin. bugzilla:50058
  • The number showing how many characters are left could also use a tooltip explaining what it is. bugzilla:50902
  • Cursor keys, backspace and delete sometimes don't work in the summary (can't reproduce it now).
  • The button label "Review your changes" is weird. Usually buttons are labeled as a command from the user to the computer ('Show changes'), not the other way around. Similarly, using commands to the user as headings of pop-ups ('Review your changes', 'Save your changes') seems weird.
  • The save dialog should be modal. Right now it's possible to select text in the main window while the save dialog is open. bugzilla:50903
  • Why is the text about licensing grayed out? That looks like the license is disabled. bugzilla:50904

P.S.: You're archiving unanswered questions. — HHHIPPO 17:52, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Where has User:Okeyes (WMF) and the other crew gone when we need them most? Insulam Simia (talk/contribs) 19:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not everyone works weekends. Whether any of them are working this particular weekend, I don't know. Dragons flight (talk) 19:21, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've filed and/or linked most of the issues you reported and placed links to them inside your report. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:34, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey; yeah, we've been working pretty much non-stop for the last 2-3 weeks, and I was basically ordered to take a couple of days off for my own sanity :). Unfortunately that includes today (so don't tell anyone I'm here. shhhh.) but Maggie will be by in a couple of hours when she awakes, I predict. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Insulam Simia, Oliver and I were both off for the weekend (although I see neither of us completely resisted pitching in :P), but the archival time was adjusted to help compensate for that. We've got extra staffing assigned to this page at key points, but it's worth noting that many of the things that need doing here can be done by anyone. :) I'm very grateful for people like @TheDJ: for helping to file all these bugs and requests for developer attention. With several hundred Wikipedias receiving VisualEditor over the next several weeks, we wouldn't stand a chance without this kind of collaboration. So, thanks, TheDJ. :D @Hhhippo:, I wanted especially to ask you about the unanswered questions - we're hoping to avoid this, obviously. Is there a question that you asked that was archived prematurely? Or can you point me to something that needs handling? It's rather difficult to keep up here, but beyond the excellent volunteer assistance, we've got multiple staff members assigned to try. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@TheDJ: thanks indeed! @Mdennis (WMF): it's nothing urgent, just saw that my first post was archived and wanted to make sure it's not lost. About weekends: please do take them off! Burning out the staff won't help anybody, and I'm sure the other Wikipedias won't mind waiting a bit longer if they get a better result. P.S.: This page is a good demonstration of why we need something like Flow. — HHHIPPO 18:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Re:Flow, I eagerly await the day. :) I love {{ping}}. It's already a huge help. I'm afraid that the change management doesn't set the schedule for deployment, but happy that I am not coming back after the weekend to full deployment here. Extra bug fixing time is a good idea, in my opinion, before we put this out to IPs. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You mean there's people who decide when things get deployed, and they don't ask the devs if the code is ready for deployment? That sounds weird. — HHHIPPO 19:50, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, no. :) I just mean we don't - we are neither the devs nor the people who decide stuff. The change management team is here to help with the rollout by doing things like triaging feedback pages and making sure that FAQs are translated into the billions of languages that are scheduled for rollout. Certainly, we pass along feedback, though - that's part of what we're here to do. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've resurrected your post here, @Hhhippo:. I'm afraid we don't have the excuse of the weekend for overlooking that one. :/ It was probably because of the complexity. We've been processing things at breakneck speed, and I know not being techie myself, I at least tend to leave the ones that seem to require some tech knowledge for somebody else. This is one of the reasons why I started using {{answered}}, though - to make sure that people can see what needs (or seems to need) input higher on the page. But let me see if I can come up with any answers and maybe other people can help with the ones I can't/don't/run away in terror from. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

First impression

(I hope you don't mind, but I'm refactoring you to make this easier to read. No offense intended, but I tried the "interrupted" template, and it just made things even more confusing to sort through. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC))[reply]

No problem. I'm trying to expand my original post in a usable way. Don't show this thread to Jorm unless you give him a lot of Aspirin ;-) — HHHIPPO 19:50, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unanswered

Here's some things I noticed on my first try on using VE. I purposely didn't read the User Guide yet, to see how far I get just with intuition. I didn't have time to go through the existing feedback, so apologies for any redundancy.

I'm having difficulty answering these, in part because I do not know. :) I can find out (or try to) if others do not know (but want to give them a chance if they do) and file bug or feature requests as needed, but I'm also wondering if some of these have resolved. The box seems wide enough to fit the default sortkey, for instance, to me. Has this changed since the 3rd, or does it still seem too small to you? I do not see the "Leave Feedback" request. Is anyone aware if the disambiguation page thing is an issue? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Hhhippo: Some are answered by me now. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Answered

  • I'm missing Show preview and even more Show changes (with a diff of the source code), especially while we're still in beta. — Hhhippo 22:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]
Yes, found it. And then suggested to redesign the "Save page" button such that it's obvious there's more than just saving hidden behind it. — HHHIPPO 19:50, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Editing links:
    • Marking a whole link and typing new text unexpectedly leaves only the first letter linked.
    • A single linked character can't be expanded to a longer linked text (or only by typing the new text un-linked and then defining a new link) — Hhhippo 22:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]
  • When clicking cancel, I get a question "Are you sure?" with possible answers Cancel and OK.
    • These are not answers to the question (that would be Yes and No)
    • It's not immediately obvious if Cancel is confirming or negating the original request, which was Cancel. — Hhhippo 22:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC) — continues after insertion below[reply]


That's it for now, hope it helps. Have to leave now, but I'm happy to explain points I described all too short here if needed. — HHHIPPO 22:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cannot edit section 0

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.

The [edit] link for the lead section has been altered to edit using VE (I've informed VPT). It also loads the whole page (why? I only want to edit one section) and after taking ages to load, takes me to the first section after the lead, which is not the section that I want to edit. Finding that every section is editable, I scroll up, only to find that the one bit that I want to alter - a hatnote - is inaccessible because it's in a template. Please can I have it back the old way - or at least give me the choice. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE always loads the whole article, even if you click an "edit section" link. That's been discussed and might change eventually but won't change very soon. As a consequence, it is utterly useless to have the "edit lead" link go to VE -- it wouldn't be any different from using the edit link at the top of the page. The "edit lead" function is provided by a gadget -- it isn't part of basic editing functionality -- and that gadget really ought to continue providing an "edit source" function. Apparently it is behaving erratically right now. Looie496 (talk) 20:03, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hear, hear. This problem is very inconvenient. (Using Ff 22). Nurg (talk) 23:45, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is not a Wikimedia Foundation gadget, as I understand it, and it may require some patience before the volunteers who created and/or maintain it address it. :/ Of course, maybe they already have. Hope so! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe a better question is "why is the 'edit section 0' button an unsupported gadget rather than a normal part of the Wikipedia interface? VQuakr (talk) 05:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please fix this problem ASAP. For technical reasons I can't do large uploads so the removal of the ability to edit the lead section is very inconvenient (e.g. I can't remove the Wiktionary tag from the top of the Vehicle article). DexDor (talk) 05:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that I have fixed it, see here and WP:VPT. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Redrose64! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


This is shit

Change it back I can't do shit Kuriboh500 (talk) 22:02, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Kuriboh500: if you click 'edit source' instead of 'edit', you will return to the old interface. Can you give some details on what you dislike about the software? We can't fix it if we're not told what's wrong with it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reference error

I'm continuing to have problems with rendering references. I attempted to include five citations to an article I'm developing on my user page, involving four references and one split citation. For some reason, only the first reference rendered, the second, which I attempted to split, ended up with some rendering error, and the third and fourth never appeared at all. I have no idea what happened, but here is a link to that version of the page, and these are the references I attempted to cite: http://reachrecords.com/about, http://reachrecords.com/artists/show/Lecrae, http://www.allmusic.com/artist/sho-baraka-mn0001000605, http://allhiphop.com/2012/04/08/five-christian-hip-hop-acts-you-should-know/.--¿3family6 contribs 00:19, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@3family6:Hello, do you still need help? I've seen that you added many references since your comment TeamGale (talk) 09:20, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@TeamGale:I added them by editing the source code directly. I think the trouble I had with the references was splitting the second one (the Reach Lecrae biography link).--¿3family6 contribs 16:33, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@3family6:Oh! I see! The splitting is not difficult to do it if that was the problem. After you add the reference the first time, it's added on the list. So when you click to add a reference the next time, if you want to re-use a previous one you are just choosing it from the list and click "insert reference". You are not clicking on the "create new source" button. If the list is long and you can't find it easy, you are typing on the "use an existing source" box key words from the previous reference and it filters them for you. :) TeamGale (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@TeamGale:That's what I tried. For some reason, it added <ref name="0" /> to both the first and second instances of the source, instead of just the second. I wanted to open a bug report for this, but I don't know how to do that.--¿3family6 contribs 17:18, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@3family6:Hmm...that's weird. The last time I tried it it was working fine for me! :/ I'll try to test it on my sandbox. I don't know how to open bug report neither. When one of the WMF's members is back probably can do it. I know there are reports about the "nowikis" thing but I don't know if that is the same. I'll try that on my sandbox to see if it happens to me too now. TeamGale (talk) 17:27, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@3family6:Just did it here. It's working fine. I don't know what happened when you were doing it :/ Did you save the difference? TeamGale (talk) 17:33, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@TeamGale:Yes, I saved the difference. That's what I have linked above.--¿3family6 contribs 21:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@3family6:, I have no clue what the issue is, but I do know how to open a bug report. :) Are you able to replicate the problem so that it happens again? Can I ask what browser and operating system you are using? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:08, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Mdennis (WMF): I'm sorry, I don't know how to replicate what happened. I'm using Firefox on Windows 8.--¿3family6 contribs 17:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @3family6:. I can simply copy your initial report here to Bugzilla, unless you think by some miracle it was a one-off? (There's a term for that - somebody used it here a few days ago - but I can't remember what it is. :/) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Mdennis (WMF): It happened again, here. I attempted to split this reference: [5].--¿3family6 contribs 12:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Okeyes (WMF): (or anybody else), do you have any insight into what's happening there? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
None; I'll poke the James. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Okeyes (WMF): @Mdennis (WMF): If I understood, what 3family6 is trying to do is to reuse a reference. When she is trying to do it, then VE is replacing the "original" reference with the <ref name="test" /> too instead only the second reference and that destroys the source completely. I tried to do it on my sandbox, but it was not happening to me. If I am wrong, please @3family6: feel free to correct me TeamGale (talk) 19:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@TeamGale: That's exactly it.--¿3family6 contribs 21:14, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Different but somewhat related error: I'm finding when I split a reference (if it works), the citation appears not on the line where I want it, but at the beginning of that paragraph. Here's an example, fifth paragraph in the History section. This bug occurs much more consistently (like pretty much every time) than my above problem.--¿3family6 contribs 01:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@3family6: odd! What browser/operating system are you on? @Mdennis (WMF): where is this in bugzilla? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Okeyes (WMF): I'm running Firefox 22.0 on Windows 8.--¿3family6 contribs 13:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's very strange :(. Can you try to duplicate the problem? (also, can you give us diffs, rather than old revisions? It makes debugging easier :)). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor encourages frivolous textual changes (Barack Osama), but discourages adding links, citations and templates: key elements of an online encyclopedia. It is always a struggle to maintain quality. We can now expect rapid deterioration. "Wikipedia: You type it, we display it." Like blog comments, but you change what the blogger wrote. This seems irreversible. There will be earnest efforts to fix bugs, but VisualEditor will not be scrapped. Millions of hours of effort down the drain. "Wikipedia: Crap." Sad. Aymatth2 (talk) 02:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • Exactly. Once again, there is a reason learning curves are good, and we don't give handguns to toddlers. μηδείς (talk) 02:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'm not happy with the current state of VisualEditor but comments like these remind me of the debate over getting rid of the morse code requirements for ham radio licenses. Just because something once was hard and arcane doesn't mean it needs to stay that way forever. This is a wiki, which is built on the idea that there's more constructive than destructive people in the world, and that on the balance, it works out. Don't lose sight of that. Gigs (talk) 04:51, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
      • I am uncertain if that analogy applies. More interestingly is the phrase before the comma, a new encyclopedia (2003) was about collecting all human experience and a ve could help. Editing WP (2013) is more about providing links and cites, which clearly was never included in this ve's specification:- so an analogy about deck chairs and Olympic class ocean liners may be more appropriate -- Clem Rutter (talk) 07:36, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
        • Most people are well-meaning but unclear about what belongs in an encyclopedia, and often add unsourced content. A new editing tool should encourage anyone adding content to provide citations. This one discourages citation. Adding links, infoboxes and other templates should also be easy. VisualEditor makes that harder. It is yet another WYSIWYG editor. We need a Wikipedia editor. VisualEditor has made what was already easy a little bit easier for novices, a little bit harder for experienced editors (more mouse movement). It has made what is already difficult for most editors even more difficult. The inevitable effect will be a growing percentage of unsourced stream-of-consciousness text. As overall quality declines, editors interested in quality will turn away in disgust, in a vicious spiral. Aymatth2 (talk) 14:02, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
          • Agreed. VisualEditor does make editing prose easier, but it is needlessly hard to add wikilinks, references, templates etc. I hope it doesn't lead to a wave of vandalism – sure, we can deal with it, but having to constantly revert vandal edits makes it harder to add and maintain good sourced content. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 13:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References lost in copy and paste

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51396

I can't vouch for how the editor was reorganizing the content but the editor appears to be cutting content with references from one location and pasting it into another location. The references are being pasted as [8] rather than the encoded reference. I'll inform the editor of the problem and ask the editor to supply steps to reproduce. Walter Görlitz (talk) 04:59, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to explain. in VE I copied and pasted several paragraphs from one section of the article to another. The bracketed numbers came over, but the refs did not. Thanks for your attention. Lfstevens (talk) 05:12, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Lfstevens: could you please also also report which browser and version of the browser you are using ? That might help solving the problem, since I was unable to reproduce this problem with my Safari 6 browser. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 20:21, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You may need to request on the editor's talk page. Walter Görlitz (talk) 20:59, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Chrome. 27.0.1453.116 m Lfstevens (talk) 17:46, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just noticed that another editor did similar which is why I came back to see what was happening with this.
I can confirm that this is happening in Windows 7 64 bit, SP1. I cut the copy with reference, the remaining references re-number, and then I paste. The reference is converted to brackets around the former reference number. This does not happen if I copy and paste the contents and then delete the old contents. Walter Görlitz (talk) 23:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeek; yep. Copy-pasting needs a lot of work. Looks like bugzilla:49396. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Filling out cite templates

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53120

Hi all, I want to preface this statement by saying that I'm not a huge fan of using the Visual Editor myself but am grateful for how easy it's going to make my upcoming workshops. That being said, I think you could make some improvements to the way references are edited. I think labeling the button "edit reference" as opposed to "transclusion" or even removing the screen in-between clicking on a reference and editing it would make it much easier to tweak references. Thanks much for considering. :) Keilana|Parlez ici 01:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, one more thing, I can't figure out how to add special characters and it goes all wonky when I try to copy/paste them. This is particularly frustrating as my current project is Birt-Hogg-Dubé syndrome. Is there a special character menu like in the source editor that I'm just not finding? Thanks. Keilana|Parlez ici 01:38, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, availability of special characters is a sine qua non of editor usability. One shouldn't have to paste them from somewhere else. They should be available right there, as they are in the standard editor.—Anomalocaris (talk) 05:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've tracked the "Special character editor" request. :) Thanks for noting the need! I believe your question about renaming the button may tie into a discussion taking place elsewhere. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yay, thank you! I will take a look at that discussion as well. :) Keilana|Parlez ici 04:25, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cite error message when editing template in Global warming

This may be a known issue, but when I edited "Greenhouse gases" subsection of Global warming (or maybe it was the "Initial causes of temperature changes (external forcings)" section, I don't quite remember), then edited the template Template:Multiple image on the left-hand side to change the parameter "image1" from "Annual world greenhouse gas emissions, in 2005, by sector.png" to "Annual world greenhouse gas emissions, in 2005, by sector.svg", I got the following Cite error message popping up as soon as I saved my changes to the template: [6]. When I saved the page of course the error did not appear and the edit it made was correct, although it did also needlessly remove whitespace from the "image2" parameter. The editing was also very slow on a large page like this, with high latency and taking a couple minutes to save, but I think that's a known issue (I was also running another CPU intensive task on my system). Dcoetzee 09:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Dcoetzee:, is this possibly Template:Bugzilla? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53013

The link autocomplete function fails to find many short page names and regards them as redlinks, e.g. A, B, To, Hi. Dragons flight (talk) 10:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I presume this is because of case insensitive compare problems, as you note, these have all counter parts/redirects in another case. Linked the issue. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think this is the same issue. With the prior example, there was a case choice that it definitely knew existed and it would find. With these both a and A are considered missing. Similarly for Hi, hi, and HI are all missing. If I had to guess, I might imagine the problem is something like:
  • User enters $str.
  • Autocomplete looks up at most X number of strings beginning with $str.
  • As more than X strings exists starting with $str, it may be that the exact match $str is not necessarily in the first X results reported.
  • Consequently for short strings there could be some non-trivial chance that the exact match is not reported back to the autocomplete function.
Dragons flight (talk) 16:26, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect you might be right, Dragons flight. I changed the bug number in the tracked template to a new one I just filed. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:14, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Attempts to delete or cut section header fail

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51452

In visual editor, if you select a section header and attempt to delete or cut it, the result is code like:

==<nowiki />==

Which essentially leaves an empty header in place of the existing header that one tried to remove. Dragons flight (talk) 11:02, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This has been noted before. When I questioned this, I was told I was doing it wrong - David Gerard (talk) 13:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
On one level, that is true - you can usually avoid this problem by deleting more carefully - but this is still a bug that needs to be fixed. Empty headers shouldn't be allowed. There is bugzilla:49452, which has been classed as an "enhancement" for some reason. (By the way, I hope it wasn't me who told you you were doing it wrong!) — This, that and the other (talk) 10:19, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Old revision notice

I understand that the old revision alert given when making a second edit is a bug, but it's also in the way of the page itself (so this would apply when you really are editing an old version of a page). When editing the source, the warning that you're in an older version is just a wide but short banner, but in VE this is a narrow but long bubble that covers the edit space, which is very distracting. You shouldn't have to click on the bug notice before being able to edit. Reywas92Talk 13:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you think of a better way to display it? The problem with horizontal banners is that they vanish when you scroll, which means that if you scroll immediately before something has finished loading...you get the picture. Personally I think that, absolutely warnings of "if you hit save on this you'll undo all of the future edits" should prevent you from editing until you've acknowledged them. (the specific bug is itself now fixed; went out yesterday evening, I believe). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thumbnail resizer non-functional

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53026

When preexisting images are specified with "thumb", the VE interface allows one to stretch the image. However, it appears that resizing such images has no effect as the changes in size are not saved. Dragons flight (talk) 13:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! Bugzilla'd :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:44, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Manipulating templates?

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52359

Are we suppose to be able to drag, cut, or copy templates? I've tried, but so far it appears that templates are immovable. Obviously we ought to have the ability to reposition templates as needed. Dragons flight (talk) 13:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

ooo, nice point. I just tried to move a quote template in Clinton Presidential Center and it seems glued in place ... can't cajole it to move; it is currently placed between the section header and the first word of the section paragraph and one cannot select the template along to cut and move that way. Appears the only way to move a template right now is to edit-source. Input from others? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:26, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In bugzilla; thanks :). It's a feature we need, but not one we currently have. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Parsing failure on 2012 Olympics

On 2012 Olympics the editor craps out somewhat after the "Sports" subheading. From that point on much text is abnormally small and the links and images remain clickable in the editor (i.e. clicking on them causes you to leave the page rather than edit the element). Dragons flight (talk) 14:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I found the problem. There was an unclosed <small>. It appears the current parser essentially closed this shortly afterwards at the start of a new table (or some such thing). The Parsoid system on the other hand seems to have choked on it and didn't process the part of the page after that unclosed tag correctly. Dragons flight (talk) 05:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oy :(. Suggested resolutions? Really we shouldn't have unclosed tags, but.... Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, yes, we shouldn't have unclosed tags, but really there are a couple parts to this. 1) The existence of unclosed tags shouldn't cause VE to fail. Whatever else is done, VE ought to know how to recover from bad user input. 2) A decision should be made about when to close the tag. Doing so at the end of the next highest container, e.g.
<p> ... <small> ... </p> automatically converted to <p> ... <small> ... </small></p>
Would seem sensible, though as far as I can tell neither Parser actually uses that rule right now. 3) It would be good to give the user some warning about unclosed tags so they can be fixed more thoughtfully. Dragons flight (talk) 15:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T35094

The link tool allows the user to enter nonsense that will appear as if it is a good link until after they save.

For example:

[[ <abc[]> {{main}} [[567]] | My link ]]

The link target on the left hand side of the pipe contains multiple examples of code that is not allowed to be included within a wikilink, and yet the link processor will happily allow you to add any of that as a link target and not reveal the problem until after the page is saved. Dragons flight (talk) 14:49, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An old bug that is back again: bugzilla:33094. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:23, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


The newline symbols

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50290

Sometimes VE inserts a newline symbol, ↵.

It doesn't do this with every newline, which I would say makes them confusing. If they aren't always present, then when are they present and what meaning are they intended to convey? In addition, they are "editable" but not functional. In other words, I have the ability to delete them when editing but according to the diff nothing changes. Since removing them apparently doesn't do anything, I'm not sure what is the point? Decoration? I have no objection if the developers want to consistently use ↵ and tie them directly to the newlines. As is though, I think the user would be better off if the haphazard and non-functional symbols were simply removed. Dragons flight (talk) 15:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is one of the few features that really makes VE somewhat useful. In WP:Accessibility, it says "When editing, never break up a line unless absolutely necessary, as the easiest way to edit with a screen reader is to navigate line by line". Chris the speller yack 18:11, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See #In edit mode, a category appears as non-alpha characters below. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So VE finally has a useful feature, which allows editors to improve Wikipedia from an accessibility viewpoint, and now they want to rip it out? Why not spend some effort to fix some of the actual bugs instead? Chris the speller yack 16:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chris, if you read the bug removing it is only one of several options we're considering. What is being discussed is a way to identify newlines that is more intuitive and transparent. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How is it useful? I can't even figure out what rule Mediawiki is applying. It is some newlines but not others. Nor is it triggered consistently by the presence of several newlines in a row. One can have several line breaks in the source and HTML with no symbols and in some cases there are strings of newline symbols (↵↵↵↵) when there is no line break in the HTML. I agree that it could be useful if there were some rhyme or reason to it, but right now I regard the unpredictable placement of the symbols as more confusing than helpful. Dragons flight (talk) 16:19, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not at all clear how to create a redirection page

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49328

I put "#REDIRECT Joseph L. Rauh, Jr." in the box and there was no option to preview until after I had clicked "Save Page". Then it became clear that the editor had nowiki'ed my redirection. So how to I get what I want? None of the (unhelpfully obscure) icons seems to be for creating a redirection. Dominus (talk) 15:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is no method for creating redirect pages via Visual Editor at present. You should create the page using the "edit source" tab and enter the wikitext you have there just as you would in the past. Dragons flight (talk) 15:16, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Is there a bugzilla for this? Seems like it'd be a useful feature to have. Theopolisme (talk) 16:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The wording of such an enhancement request might go something like: Provide a "create redirect to this page" link in the _Toolbox_ (left-hand panel) which opens a) a dialog which pre-populates with the page name, b) provides a selection of anchors existing on the page to choose from (excluding citation-related anchors) and c) provides a lookup for addition of one or more R-templates (Redirect description templates). ← this would be a great addition, I think. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's a bugzilla entry at bugzilla:47328 that seems to cover this. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53024

In this edit, VE added an extra space between "1965" and "[[novel]]" in the first sentence of the article. (This edit also removed the infobox but that was "my fault" insofar that it is my fault that infoboxes seem so easy to accidentally remove.) Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 16:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Orange Suede Sofa; now tracking :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:24, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Server errors

I decided to give VisualEditor another try, but it keeps failing to complete edits – it just brings up a "Server error" message. My internet connection is fine, and the same problem does not occur when editing the same text with the usual wikimarkup. Why make VE the default system for the whole of Wikipedia, if you don't have the server capacity to handle it? More to the point, why can't we choose to opt in to VE, instead of having it forced upon us (also, as I've said before, the Gadgets option to disable it doesn't work). – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 16:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Michaelmas1957: does this happen mostly when, for example, you open the edit window and then spend a lot of time editing before saving? It's not to do with server capacity, it's to do with the edit token expiring - which happens with the source editor as well. This is a known bug, and one that is being worked on. As said, if you do not like the editor you can still edit in markup using "edit source"; I'm sorry the gadget isn't working :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Known issues

Would it be good to have a known issues section? I'm thinking a summary table for the major points which reoccur here. Something like

Features not yet implemented:

  • Tables - (link to bug number/archived discussion)
  • Redirects - (bug no)
  • Mathematical formula - (bug no)

Editing problems:

  • Insertion of nowiki tags (bug no)
  • Problems with inserting links

I'm not thinking of something with the depth of bugzilla, more a summary. This could help to wiki users get a feel for quite how fit for purpose the system is, and maybe save some repeated questions.--Salix (talk): 17:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a great idea, particularly the first. I suggest two new pages:

I'd be happy to help build out these pages. For the first, I suggest at least four columns in the table: general area ("Tables", for example), missing feature ("Cannot add or delete row or column, or change table formatting"), bug # (whatever), and comments (for example, target date to implement, and/or link to a discussion of the issue). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me.--Salix (talk): 18:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That kind of already exists although I agree its not very clear. You can click here for a list of most of them. Although not all the Visual Editor related changes are here. Some are under other categories so its only partially helpful. I think an FAQ type page would be good but the problem is bugs are added and removed constantly so it would be a pain to keep updated. Kumioko (talk) 18:09, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it does rather mirror the bugzilla, but there is a a big advantage to having a page onwiki which users here can see, and have in their watchlist. Keeping it updated is really part of the need to inform users of whats happening.--Salix (talk): 18:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I created a basic table at the Known problems link above. I kept it simple for now but it can be expanded fairly easily if needed. Kumioko (talk) 20:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've just added a summary General issues, Specific parts of markup and fixed bugs to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Known problems. Still working on find all the main issues. If anyone else was to add more feel free.--Salix (talk): 12:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Italicizing or bolding a trailing space

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53023

A common way to highlight/select a word or phrase is to double-click a word, or double-click and hold and drag through following words in the phrase. This also highlights/selects the following space. Clicking on the "Bold" or "Italics" symbol adds the closing markup after the trailing space. Seems to me that there is no point in having the markup after the space, and it makes the source ugly and confusing. {Firefox 19 on Window Vista) Chris the speller yack 17:21, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I can see it myself; reporting. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:19, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Please don't ever bring up Linus' Law in connection with the VE

Linus' Law - "Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterized quickly and the fix will be obvious to someone." - only works in an open source project run as a functioning bazaar model - where there are not only lots of bug reports, but where random passers-by can effectively contribute. MediaWiki is free software, but has long run on a cathedral model where effective development is a WMF house project; and the serious problem with barriers to outside contribution has been a long-running issue. You don't have the co-developer base, and one wasn't developed for the project. So you see bugtrackers that look like the one at OpenOffice.org used to - with hundreds of thousands of bugs and only twenty devs to work on them. So please just stop saying that, and take it out of the intro of this page - David Gerard (talk) 18:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If the development environment isn't open to volunteer devs that's something you should bring up with Sumana and her team; I know they're trying to solve for. We've got several volunteers working on the VE, with focuses as wide-ranging as browser support, RTL work and (either) Math or general-LaTeX support (It was one or the other, and I can't remember, which is dumb of me). Looking through the gerrit queues for the VE and to a lesser degree, Parsoid, I can see quite a few volunteer contributions. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In edit mode, a category appears as non-alpha characters

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50290

I was editing House of the Virgin Mary using Visual Editor, and I noticed the following characters at the end of the page (following External Links): ↵↵↵↵↵↵↵↵ ↵↵. My first inclination was to delete these as I assumed they were stray text. Then I thought better and decided to review the change. Deleting these characters would have deleted Category:Christian sites of the Roman Empire, which happens to follow an HTML comment associated with the preceding category:

[[Category:Islamic pilgrimages]]<!--not bogus. revered by Muslims as well. There is a kiosk catering to Muslims there --->
[[Category:Christian sites of the Roman Empire]]

-- Gyrofrog (talk) 19:52, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I'm not sure whether if/how this fits in with the description in #The newline symbols earlier on this page. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
P.P.S. I'm using Firefox 21 with Windows 7. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 20:23, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can't remove categories by deleting/backspacing text in VisualEditor - try and try all you like (even select all and backspace), but it is impossible. The only way to remove categories is to use the "Page settings" dialog.
As for the ↵ characters, yes they are ugly, and there is a suggestion to get rid of them: bugzilla:48290. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Hate it

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Can someone please tell me how to make these "edit source" buttons fuck off? I'm sick of mis-clicking them. I ALWAYS want to edit the source. Parrot of Doom 21:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see someone has already added it to the preferences section. Thank God for that. Why is the default on Wikipedia always to try and force people to do things differently? If people want a new interface, let THEM be the ones who have to learn to click a new button. Parrot of Doom 21:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think i can give you a sensible rationale for that. The visual editor is mostly geared towards new editors who just started editing - the ones that barely know their way around at all and are thus extremely unlikely to find any option whatsoever. More seasoned editors are at least more likely to figure out they can press "edit source" for the old editor, and they can also find a help page that explains how you disable it. And erm, to be frank - is clicking "Edit Source" or searching for a setting once in a lifetime really such a big deal to start with? Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 22:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So tell me, how am I supposed to click a button which only appears when you hover over the edit button, on a tablet? Try it. Parrot of Doom 09:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The 'edit source' link at the top of an article works fine; the problems around tablets are a known, and something that will be fixed in time. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're not alone... Currently, you can use edit source instead of edit, or hide VE using "Preferences/Gadgets/Editing/Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" (not perfect, an option to really remove VE as be requested by many users at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"Opt out" of VE needed under preferences). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Several bugs attempting to work with Visual Editor cleaning up Ernestine Eckstein

  1. I've previously noted the problem VisualEditor has where it won't, in many circumstances, allow the removal of a space between a period and a following reference. Note that the attempt to fix various WP:PAIC issues in this diff was able to do so with respect to refs 1,3,4 as I requested, but not with respect to reference 2, as I requested. That is bug 1 in this report
  2. Edit, using VisualEditor, the "Early Life" section at [7]
    1. Place cursor to the right of the period following reference 5
    2. Press backspace
    3. Move cursor to left of reference 5
    4. Type the period symbol (effectively fixing a WP:PAIC issue here.
    5. Note a problem in that there appear to be two lines following that paragraph, before the quote. That is bug 2 in this report.
    6. Move cursor to the second of those two blank lines
    7. Press backspace
    8. Note that the entire quote, following the cursor, has been removed from the article. This is unexpected, as the quote follows the cursor. That is bug 3 in this report.
    9. Press [UNDO] (Crtl-Z)
    10. Note that the quote is not restored via Undo. It is impossible to correct the bug in bug 3 using UNDO. This is a particularly bad bug when one has, as I had, makes twenty-some other corrections before hitting this bug in the same edit, and has to abandon them all to preserve the text. This is bug 4 in this report.

Enjoy! --j⚛e deckertalk 22:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the detailed report! I've filed "bug 3" (which seems to be the most severe, and possibly one and the same as the unintended whitespace) as Template:Bugzilla. Eloquence* 01:20, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. I'm a little disturbed by UNDO not working, but perhaps once 3 is fixed that will work too. --j⚛e deckertalk 06:44, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editor timing out

This might have already been brought up, but the editor times out after a while. I sometimes work on edits over a period of several hours, but with VE I have to re-type the content (fortunately, I foresaw that that might happen, so I replicated the content in Word). It would be handy if the developers (those poor slaves - I'd hate to be them right now!) could implement a way to refresh the editor without eliminating the new content.--¿3family6 contribs 23:12, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give us some more details on what happened, and how it differs from the experience when you edit wikitext?--Eloquence* 00:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(a more focused request for details) I am using DSL and an in-home LAN connection and I do see the lengthy period, but it does not time-out. Are you using either a dial-up connection or a slow wireless connection? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
My wireless here is 72.2 Mbps. I did put my computer in hibernate at one point, but I left my browser open. When editing Wikitext, sometimes I get a message to the effect that the session expired, but all I need to do is hit the save change button a second time. Visual Editor does not do this. In this particular case, when I tried to add references, it wouldn't add the cite web template.--¿3family6 contribs 02:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, so the problem is that it times out not loading, but refuses to save? What message does it give you? I suspect this is the problem of edit tokens expiring. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In this case, I didn't get any message, I as just re-opened the editor and pasted in the changes after the references would not save. Previously, it just won't save any changes, and won't leave a message.--¿3family6 contribs 12:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor "needcheck" tag woefully optimistic

I've looked at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&tagfilter=visualeditor-needcheck and compared it to Filter 550 and it's pretty obvious that monitoring the tag alone doesn't give a feel for how many edits are being corrupted due to people misusing Visual Editor. People that want to mitigate the damage being done should be paying active attention to Filter 550. Filter 550 simply monitors the insertion of "nowiki" tags so it has some false positives, but my estimate is that about 80% of these are cases of VisualEditor not recognizing that the editor has inserted markup.—Kww(talk) 23:33, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Needcheck" is intended to identify edits where Parsoid/the VE has potentially borked something; it doesn't hunt for nowiki tags, because strictly-speaking they're not a bug at the software end. We are working on ways to (for example) prompt users who start entering wikimarkup into the VE. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:44, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Preview font too small

The font in the preview is very small, making it impossible to read the text. CuriousEric 23:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you referring to the "review your contribution" which is available between editing and saving in the Visual Editor or the Preview available when using the Classic Editor? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@CuriousEric: are you using Monobook? If so, this is a known (and a bug that's being worked on). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:30, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reference numbering problem (might have been reported before)

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52474

I am working with the article Methyl iodide. I find that the number of references is different in the article vs. in the article-in-edit-mode. I am currently attributing this to one primary reference residing in the infobox on the page. Wondering if this is something observed by others. Thanks. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're on the right track. The reference inside the infobox displays as a number, but isn't presented in the reference list.—Kww(talk) 01:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Ceyockey: exactly :). It's been observed, and is being worked on - see 50474. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


edit summary


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I cannot see where to leave an edit summary... Pstanton (talk) 01:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You'll get the option to do so when you press "Save" (that could be a bit more intuitive - it's been suggested to change the button label or style - but it seems preferable to having the edit summary field present even while you don't need it).--Eloquence* 01:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, the button is labeled "Save page". That's the same label as on the button, in the old editing interface, that completed the edit session. Lots of effort has been made, over the years, to encourage editors to write an edit summary before they click "Save page", and now VE is designed exactly the opposite. The button ought to be labeled "Finish edit" or "Continue" or "Final steps" or just about anything other than "Save page".
The current problem is even worse than just one poorly labeled button. In VE, after clicking "Save page", a dialog box appears that also has a "Save page" button. So now an editor has to understand that the two "Save page" buttons do not do the same thing. And documentation (when it's written) is going to have to clarify which "Save page" button is being referred to - unless the label on the first occurrence of "Save page" is changed, as it should be. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have boldly changed the local label for the first "Save page" to "Finish edit". People have repeatedly complained or been confused by that "Save page" button that doesn't actually save anything and in my opinion "Finish edit" is the best suggestion that I've heard that also fits well in that space. As with anything, if people think this is "too bold", we can always go back to the old version. Dragons flight (talk) 04:58, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for being bold. :-) Looks like a sensible change to me. "Finish" is a bit nonstandard and perhaps difficult to translate, so perhaps we could find language that's more commonly used, but this should do for now.--Eloquence* 06:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"Complete" maybe? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Seee bugzilla:42138, where I referenced this discussion. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The newly labeled button is a thing of beauty. Thanks, Dragons flight. Chris the speller yack 15:55, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The change I implemented was reverted by a WMF staffer. See: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#VE_.22save.22_vs_.22finish_edit.22_button. Dragons flight (talk) 23:45, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Reverted using my volunteer admin account, I'll note for the sake of formality. I don't work on the VE team, so please don't take my word as theirs. Steven Walling • talk 00:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suggest, since this is (at least initially) a community decision, that discussion continue at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#VE_.22save.22_vs_.22finish_edit.22_button. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Transcluded pages

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53119

In German Wikipedia quite often pages are transcludet into other pages like here is it possible to make clear that this part is transcluded and has to be changed on the other site. Also it messes up the parts which are actually on that page.--Livermorium (talk) 02:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The Visual Editor isn't enabled for that page yet, is it? Looie496 (talk) 02:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You have to activate it in your preferences at the German Wikipedia.--Livermorium (talk) 02:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see. It does look like it properly refuses to let the transclusions be edited, but isn't cleaning up correctly after a transclusion is finished. Looie496 (talk) 03:14, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Livermorium: odd :/. Can I suggest reaching out to Lydia or Jan at ? They're probably more familiar with templates on de-wiki and so more able to help :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I'm using Chrome 27 and VE says in the template interface that you should edit the actual article just as the note in Wikicode does. However, the template seems to eat into the respective next non-template entry as well, providing within the template interface the content (example) "<!-- Änderungen bitte dort vornehmen, siehe unterhalb des Bearbeitungsfensters --> * [[Christina Rau]], geb. Delius (* 1956), deutsche Politologin". Therefore, the respective next entry gets transformed into template content instead of being directly editable. If your finding looks like mine, we should figure out how to fix that. If your issue is different, I would be grateful for more specifics :); regards --Jan (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@JEissfeldt (WMF): No thats exactly what I get with Firefox too.--Livermorium (talk) 20:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
K, thanks Livermorium. I looked for ways around this, tried, it actually turned out to be two-fold (i.e. worse), and then I put in a bug. Lets wait and see, regards --Jan (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Transclusion Helper Mess

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52728
An example of the dysfunctional display created by the transclusion UI.

When one has TemplateData available and you try to add a new template, the UI attempts to provide a list of possible attributes along with various textual descriptions. That said, the present result appears to be a giant mess. As shown in the provided image, some of the field description run out of the window (with no horizontal scroll bar provided). In other cases, multiple items get stacked on the same horizontal line. It seems very dysfunctional at present. In fact, it is so bad that I wanted to stop and ask if it is just me? Is this a problem with Chrome in particular or is everyone seeing this kind of a mess when they attempt to add a template like {{cite book}}. Dragons flight (talk) 04:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The display width issue (text out of view and not scrollable) is known and high priority -- unfortunately our three VE front-end devs were sick today or it might already have been fixed. (While it's cut off in the list view, you do see the full description when you actually add a parameter.) I've not seen the messy layout issue before and can't repro with {{cite book}}. Can you give exact steps to reproduce and browser version? Independent of these issues the template dialog needs a fair bit of UX love still.--Eloquence* 06:08, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's a known in Firefox, too (as is the UI love); this is bug 50728 and 50458 respectively. Thanks for reporting this instance, Dragons flight; it's useful to know it happens in Chrome, too, and I'm updating the bug to reflect this :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Problem with image and other information in an infobox

When I open Japan Airlines Flight 350 to edit, with VE, the image in the infobox now takes up half (or more) of the entire editing box, and the rest of the infobox information isn't visible on the screen. Very problematical. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

It appears the template is essentially asking for [[ File:Airplane.jpg | 250pxpx ]], with an extra "px". The current parser apparently is happy to render that as if the size specification was "250px", but apparently the Parsoid system used by the visual editor aborts and gives a full sized image. If we were starting from scratch, I'm not entirely sure which system would actually make more sense, but given the millions of existing pages, we probably want Parsoid to have the same behavior as the previous parser. Dragons flight (talk) 05:20, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, but do we know how common this kind of problem is? If it's just occasional typos we can probably solve for it at the community end - if it's more systemic, I think a bot would probably be better than building gross tolerances into the VE. Ultimately we can choose where to spend our developers time, and there are a lot of open bugs that are only solvable by them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that there are almost no examples of a user intentionally entering pxpx. The underlying issue is that the template had a field called "image_size" that expects a plain number and appends "px" to it when constructing the image link. However, some users will (not unreasonably) think to do something like "image_size = 250px", which is how one ends up with "250pxpx" in the file request. The current parser doesn't see any problem with that. I found a second example of this error (involving a different template) while doing a brief search, but because it is a combination of template design and user error, I don't think these things will be all that easy to identify. Dragons flight (talk) 18:00, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fruit of the Holy Spirit template, paragraph divisions; unclear.

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53015
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53009

When I opt to visually edit Fruit of the Holy Spirit, I find the first paragraph becomes bifurcated (after "likened to trees,") and the second part of the paragraph is treated as a transclusion for some reason. This is Firefox 22.0 on Windows 7 Professional SP1 64-bit.

Also, are we going to add blockquote support? Thanks. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 06:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh lloyd. Good bug! I'll throw it in bugzilla. Blockquote support in terms of allowing blockquotes to be edited, rendering them properly...? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I meant editing (I can't at all, at least); as for rendering in my browser they also render with ~1.5 line spacing in edit mode, but normally in view mode. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They should be editable; if you click on one, do you get a little puzzle-box icon? Click on that, see what you see :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No such luck; I only get a tooltip, "Sorry, this element can only be edited in source mode for now." These are blockquotes written in the source with <blockquote></blockquote>, for example, lede at Plato. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:56, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is bugzilla:51009. It is still "unprioritized", but I daresay it would be quite low on the list of things the VE team has to do right now. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:05, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:18, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Reference in image caption

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52459

How should one edit a reference in the caption for an image using the VisualEditor? Thanks. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 06:32, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

bugzilla:50459. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:40, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Brilliant!

Great to see the new editor live on wikipedia! Toby (talk) 07:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Toadams: thanks! Let us know if you see anything wrong or broken; we'll do our best to fix it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE's vicarious changes

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53017

I was about to congratulate VE for making it easy to clean up some wierd formatting added by some broken browser extension [8]. This can be tricky and tedious to do with the source editor, but VE made it easy, so +1 there. However it didn't work so well for cleaning up the same formatting bugs in the template. VE could not parse the template parameter correctly and split some parmeters into two.[9] A case of junk in, different junk out. Overall a score of 0 for VE.--Salix (talk): 08:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Salix alba: I'm seeing a broken link, but no parameter-splitting :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:31, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Wait, I see what you mean now; the "revenue" param? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:31, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It split "product" and "foundation" creating two unnamed parameters. --Salix (talk): 08:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If I look at the source view of that edit, I can't see it. It shouldn't be moving revenue and location to the same line, but I can't identify newly-created null parameters. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Missing keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts appear to be missing for most of the buttons in the VE ribbon. Particularly there seems to be no way of activating the "Save page" button without switching to the mouse. In the hope that I might be able to get to it by pressing TAB multiple times, I tried such, but all I achieved was to cycle through every link on the page except those on the ribbon. Being able to select the page options faux-menu for category additions by a key-press would also be useful. (I've already suggested ESC elsewhere for cancelling the whole edit.) Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's no shortcut for save; what else is missing for you? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52868
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53018
A coupel of issues with links:

a) When a link is selected the icon for "clear formatting" lights up, but clicking it does nothing.

b) I highlighted some text to create a link, pressed CTRL-K then realised I had selected the wrong text, so I pressed ESC in the hope that that would stop the process. All that I succeeded in doing was creating a link to a non-existent article called by the highlighted text. If I can create a link with a keyboard shortcut, then I should be able to uncreate or stop the creation process with the keyboard too.

After some experimentation, I've found a mouse work-around (click the dangling link icon and find a tiny rubbish bin in the top right-corner). Beeswaxcandle (talk) 08:56, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm finding the same thing with clear formatting. A "get me out of here" keyboard shortcut would be good. Will post both to bugzilla :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:10, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now tracked :). Thanks for the helpful bug reports! Keep them up (although hopefully you won't find much more to report. Knock wood ;p) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Images displayed on wrong side and uneditable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53039

When editing lung, the first three images are displayed as a single item on the left instead of the right, and can't be edited. --WS (talk) 11:33, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This one is quite interesting. I tried to reproduce the issue in my sandbox by copying the images in the page itself: Test 1. Since i could edit that page just fine i added a larger share of the page and found out that it stopped working. Afterwards I have been removing sections until I reached the point where i ended up with a page identical to the page in the first edit Test 2.
If you diff these the result will tell you that both revisions are identical. Yet for some reason the visual editor can edit the first revision just fine, and breaks on the second. On first glance i would state: "This doesn't make sense to me" Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 11:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have e-mailed jforrester about this a few times but heard nothing. bugzilla:50165 was created to track this, but because of the intermittent nature, it was erroneously deemed "fixed". — This, that and the other (talk) 12:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It seems it was written down as a caching issue / something an update fixed. Seeing i copied the content to a new page i can't imagine that this is caching (Especially since the Lung version doesn't work, my first test does and my second test doesn't). Can't imagine this being a regression either, seeing the time frame of the succeeds and fails. Now what is the correct method to report this - a new bug report mentioning the old one? Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 12:49, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here is another example where this happens: gallstone, the first three images after the infobox. --WS (talk) 13:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually two occurrences within that page: the two images under diagnosis as well. --WS (talk) 13:43, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Progress indicator only visible at top of page

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When clicking edit, a progress/busy indicator appears at the top of the article. However when you click one of the section edit links, the only noticeable change is that that the text goes gray and moves around, giving no further clue that anything is happening at all, unless you scroll all the way to the top of the page. This is especially problematic with the still quite long load times of the editor. --WS (talk) 11:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

bugzilla:50206. — This, that and the other (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Removing template and adding content breaks editor

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53130

When editing a template, when I click remove template, and then without closing the dialog, click add -> content and enter some text, the template is not removed and the editor hangs on saving and reviewing changes. --WS (talk) 11:47, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Tracked. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Remove template text color

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53133
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Task T53135

"Remove template" is displayed in red, which gives the impression that it is a wikilink to a non-existing article. Presumably the developers want to warn the user that it is a potentially dangerous action, but that its probably better achieved in different ways. Furthermore why is it listed under options? --WS (talk) 11:51, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since the light red may present issues to color blind, I'm inclined to agree. I'll ask about that, but first, @Wouterstomp:, can you explain your issue with listing it under "options"? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I am not a native English speaker, but under options I would expect settings of the template itself. I would imagine it be title 'actions' or something similar if it includes a remove template button. --WS (talk) 19:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I've added them to bugzilla for developer consideration. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:50, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


What does add content do?

What is 'add content' in the template dialog supposed to do? The only thing it seems to be doing is add the text I enter after the end of the template syntax. Either it is broken or it is useless. --WS (talk) 11:54, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It actually allows you to add arbitrary wikitext to pages, but that's not the real purpose. For more about this feature, you can read mw:VisualEditor_talk:Template_test, where I asked a similar question. — This, that and the other (talk) 12:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now try to convey that in the UI... --WS (talk) 13:47, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template dialog title

Why is the template dialog titled 'transclusion'? That makes no sense to most people who are not familiar with the technical details of the template system. Just name it 'edit template' or something similar, or even better the name of the template being edited. --WS (talk) 12:00, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. "Transclusion" is a term of art for Mediawiki and not something that should appear anywhere in a UI that is intended for new users. Dragons flight (talk) 15:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair though "Edit template" is also a term of art for Mediawiki. However, at least "templates" are things that have an analog in the real world. According to dictionary.com, "transclusion" isn't even a word. Dragons flight (talk) 16:45, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
dictionary.com is wrong. :) I can find book references dating back to the 1990s using it. That said, I don't disagree with you that our language use there may bear improvement, and I see you've proposed that at Village pump. Turning off my linguistic nerd mode, and back to sorting bugs! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The end of WP:ORDER?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52882

VE takes no notice of the rules laid out by WP:ORDER for the order in which elements of an article should appear. As an example, I added a third category to Permyak Salty Ears (it's a sculpture I was stub-sorting!). VE put it at the end, after the stub category and inter-wiki link, separated from the other two categories.

I raised this issue a long way back and was told that order of elements is a project-specific issue.

So has English Wikipedia agreed to abandon WP:ORDER (aka WP:FOOTER or Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Layout#Order_of_sections? If not, then the developers of VE need to take it on board. WP:AWB can sort this out as part of its general fixes: if nothing else, can't the developers of VE copy the logic it uses, and use that logic in deciding where to put new elements added by editors?

I haven't checked what happens at the top of the article - eg the rule that navigational hatnotes go above everything else (for accessibility issues) - but it would surprise me if VE is getting that right either. ... pause for quick experiment at User:PamD/sandbox for VE ... no, of course it doesn't. Nor does it add new maintenance tags within an existing {{multiple issues}}, as Twinkle would. In short, VE is dumber than two existing facilities - AWB and Twinkle - where it ought to have learned from them to create a wonderful user experience. We aren't there yet.

OK, I've for once managed to search Bugzilla successfully and I find that this is Template:Bug, albeit labelled as "unprioritized minor" which sounds about as low as it can go. Sad. Meanwhile I and many other editors will be following most VE edits with a cleanup edit in Edit Source - or just using Edit Source for speed, if I haven't the stamina to use VE. (I'm trying to use it to test and debug it, but it's just too much like hard work sometimes). PamD 12:02, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You raise good points here. It was myself that made the comment about it being a project-specific issue. I'll let someone from WMF (Okeyes (WMF), perhaps) answer the rest of this, but you can at least rest assured that this bug has not been classed as "trivial" or "Lowest priority"! — This, that and the other (talk) 12:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's harder than it looks for machines to respect WP:ORDER. I've been working on a Python script to insert elements (e.g., navigation templates or categories) while correctly following the policy, and it's a complicated mix of searching, regular expression, checking template contents, etc. Theopolisme (talk) 16:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template editor allows for duplicate parameters

The template dialog should not allow you to add parameters that are already present and should not display them in the list under add parameter. --WS (talk) 12:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This might be an issues with the disease infobox templatedata, as some other templates do hide the already used parameters. --WS (talk) 13:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Infobox disease can (and should) take multiple copies of each parameter because there are often multiple codes for disease concepts within a particular clinical classification. See the Template data section at the end of the template documentation for the list of parameters that do accept multiples. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 07:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it works that way. If name= is listed twice, only one of the two is displayed. For ones that can have multiple codes there are extra uniquely named parameter, e.g. MeSH2, 3, etc. --WS (talk) 09:12, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=50715 --WS (talk) 06:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Double-click to add parameter

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53143

In the template dialog, in the add parameter view, I would expect double-clicking on a parameter would add it, instead of having to find the add parameter button at the end of the list (which should, by the way, not be at the end of a scrolling list, but always visible in a fixed place). --WS (talk) 12:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with this - it took me a while to figure out that I had to scroll to the bottom of a long list of reference parameters to find the button. GoingBatty (talk) 04:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Added to Bugzilla. :) Thanks. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Edit template icon should be in the current view

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53144

When you click on a large template, often the edit button displayed in the top right corner of it is not visible because it is outside of your view, making it in-obvious how to edit it. The edit icon should always be displayed within the current view. --WS (talk) 12:21, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Added to Bugzilla. Thank you. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Clicking on top-right corner of template opens template dialog

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Task T53176

Clicking on top-right corner of a template (not selecting it beforehand) unexpectedly opens the template dialog despite the edit icon not being displayed there yet. --WS (talk) 12:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed with FF22. Not exactly the corner, but if you click in the place where the puzzle-piece icon would be, the editor opens immediately, as stated. Looie496 (talk) 15:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That's interesting. That works for me, too. @Wouterstomp:, @Looie496:, is that a problem? It seems to me almost like a shortcut. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it's a problem. A user you merely want to select an element, for example to copy or move it, should not accidentally open it because they happen to click near the corner. (Of course we can't currently copy or move templates, but that is a separate issue.) Dragons flight (talk) 00:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a terrible problem, but it's not desirable. I believe that a double-click on a template ought to open the editor, but a single-click at a particular point shouldn't. I would class this as low-priority, though. Looie496 (talk) 02:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Before reporting, I'll just ask if anybody disagrees that opening it with a double-click would actually be a good thing? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:54, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A few days ago I already posted on this page saying that double clicking ought to open the appropriate editing dialog. So yes, I think that would be a good thing. Dragons flight (talk) 15:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, would be good. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:10, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So noted. :) Thanks. :D (Double-click bug Template:Bugzilla was listed as "high" priority and assigned, so maybe this will be an easy implement!) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


can't edit tables

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41596

Don't seem to have any table support. Resuna (talk) 13:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can change entries in a table, but there is no support yet for changing the structure of a table. Support for table-editing is planned but not yet existent. Looie496 (talk) 14:23, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


References List

Is the references list icon supposed to be doing something for me? As far as I can tell it always just opens a blank dialog box. I'm not sure what it is for. Dragons flight (talk) 15:04, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Personally I use it when there is not reflist on an article (e.g. when you are creating an article) and it automatically appears all the references added till that moment on the article. When I add a new one, it is also added to the list. I don't know if it does something more to an already existing article with a reflist because I didn't attempt to use it there... :/ TeamGale (talk) 19:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

KHAN BIRMANI

ALI KHAWAR ALI KHAWAR KHAN BIRMANI (talk) 16:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you have a question? Looie496 (talk) 16:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox post-modification rendering issue

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51854

It seems that the issue with bug 49854 has resurfaced. Whenever I edit any parameter in an infobox (doesn't matter on which page), some (but not all) piped links and files are displayed as plain wikitext like "[[Capital city|capital]]" instead of "capital". If the infobox contains references, a cite error in red about a missing reflist also appears near the top of the page (as previously discussed at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#Table.2FTemplate and possibly related to bug 50423, but not entirely the same). Is this a known issue or have I missed it?  thayts t  16:33, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The reflist missing bug is supposed to be fixed within the next few minutes. Cross your fingers. :) I can't reproduce the issue with the infobox - are you still having the problem, @Thayts:? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Aww!! I just tried it after seeing your comment Maggie Dennis (WMF) It's working!!! The bug about the references is gone! :) Cross fingers it will be gone for good! Thanks to the people who fixed that! As for the other half "issue"...it's still there...When you make changes on the templates, the piped links appear as a whole and not as they will appear on the final save. TeamGale (talk) 00:50, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see. It's a question of displaying incorrectly before save. Thanks. :) I've added it to that bug (and reopened it), and I'm sure they'll help me if I've put it in the wrong place. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Mdennis (WMF): Yes, sorry I wasn't too clear about that, it doesn't affect the save indeed and is only a displaying issue. I found the pipe link bug still to be present though, but it's been only one and a half hour after associated bug 50801 was declared fixed and it probably needs some time to back-port. It also seems that the reference bug is not really fixed, but that the error message is simply being suppressed: if you hover over the infobox after editing it or if you click it, an empty bar as wide as the article body will be highlighted at the top of the infobox. Previously, this bar contained the error message. I'm using Firefox 22.0, perhaps you can reproduce it with that.  thayts t  17:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Edited reflist - it disappeared

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Task T53146

I've not yet done a lot with refs and reflists (a lot of my work is stub-sorting where it rarely crops up) but....

Editing Howard Wilson Elementary School I changed the number of columns of {{reflist}} from 2 to 1 (there's only one ref and it looks daft over 2 cols). The whole reflist disappeared, while I stayed in VE - see edit summary. On saving the page, it was there all present and correct.

This is one of several instances where VE alarms the editor: if it's supposed to be a Visual Editor, it needs to reflect changes made and not give the impression that the template has been deleted. Worrying enough for an experienced editor - totally offputting for someone new.

Apologies if this exact problem, or a more generalised case, is already tracked. PamD 16:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tried it out and replicated it myself. That would be alarming. Tracked; thanks, Pam! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:00, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Feedback form

So, when using the visual editor, if you click on "Beta" there is a link to "Leave Feedback" If you click that link there is a Feedback dialog with settings for "subject" and "message". If one fills out this form, it posts a new message to this page. Posting a "Feedback" form while it is blank will result in a post being added here that consists solely of the posting user's signature. I've noticed such signature posts on this page several times now, but it only just dawned on me where they are coming from. It might be good to tag or otherwise identify posts generated via the Feedback form. Also, I suspect that people who use that form to post here will not necessarily be watching this page and so they won't necessarily see any replies. Dragons flight (talk) 16:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That concerns me, too, Dragons flight- the empty signatures I tend to ignore, but I've been using {{ping}} (love that template) to try to attract the people I suspect aren't watching. I'll ask about the tagging issue. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Couldn't fix typo in reference quote

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53058

I was trying to make this edit. Opened article in VE, saw the "as as" was in footnote 134 ... couldn't edit there ... went up to reference 134, clicked on it to edit, and it was the wrong reference link. It actually gave me the reference that's numbered 220 (in that version) to edit! - David Gerard (talk) 16:48, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Blurk. I think it's because of how the VE reference-handling treats references in templates (i.e., poorly) - I'll throw it in now.
Unsigned note by Oliver. :) Not pulling up the timestamp - too much activity on this page! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Header templates deleted

This edit. May have been me, not the VE, but I didn't realise until I went back to check, so is way too easy - David Gerard (talk) 16:50, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah :/. Suggested better ways of handling it? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not off the top of my head. A problem that's hard enough that it's philosophical, but will bear some serious thought - David Gerard (talk) 20:31, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Consecutive spaces

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53056

In visual editor, type something like: 

abc         def

With many consecutive spaces between words. In the editor it will display as many spaces. If you save it, the multiple spaces are placed into the wiki source. However, when one goes to view the page, the consecutive spaces are rendered as a single space (e.g. "abc def"). Collapsing multiple spaces is a convention that Mediawiki borrows from the HTML standard.

Personally, I think users probably should be able to add multiple spaces, if that is what they want to do, but in that case the editor needs to translate these to "&nbsp;" or some other format that prevents them from be collapsed during the page view. Dragons flight (talk) 17:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a tricky issue, and any action should be well thought out. Looie496 (talk) 17:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. I'm going to post a bugzilla linking to a fixed diff of this conversation; I'm not sure if I can explain it second-hand as well as Dragons flight has. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now tracked. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:36, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Allowing image resizing is a terrible idea

Providing the ability to resize images using the handles at the corners is a terrible idea. Thumbnails should not have a size attribute unless absolutely necessary, as doing so overrides users' preferences, makes the formatting of articles inconsistent, and potentially creates problems for readers with phones or accessibility issues. Removing unnecessary size specifications is going to be a very tedious and entirely avoidable job. Celuici (talk) 17:17, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a really good point; I'm going to discuss it with the devs now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now discussed. So, basically the problem is this; we've got no way of easily preventing it just for thumb images - or rather we do (disable when the thumb tag appears), but not a way of doing it that would be easily understood by users. Some images would not be resizable, some would, with no clear explanation (from the visualeditor) of why. Because resizing does have some legitimate uses. Instead it looks like we'll go for (a) letting the community do what they've always done fantastically, and enforce policy around when images should and should not have a size specified and (b) make it really easy to do - so, images will default to thumb size, and there will be a method of easily restoring something to thumb size from the VE. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are some bugs for this Template:Bug is about default sizes for images and Template:Bug is a much richer dialog for image properties, including image size, alte text etc.--Salix (talk): 19:20, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Correct Name

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I am assistant to Mr. Carlos Wizard Martins.

We asked to change the name "Carlos Roberto Martins" to "Carlos Wizard Martins."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Roberto_Martins

We count on your help. Murilovisck (talk) 17:38, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on user's talk page. Insulam Simia (talk/contribs) 17:50, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


TemplateData changes in doc not showing in VE until an edit to template itself is made

Initially I wasn't having any luck getting my finishing changes to the TemplateData in the Template:LSJ/doc to show up in the VE transclusion dialog. Then I tried just making a null edit to the template page itself, and it worked! I also made a change to Template:Citation needed/doc TemplateData, but that change hasn't showed up either in VE.

Is it the case that changes to TemplateData on the /doc page won't show up until the main template page is edited? --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Atethnekos: yes and no. So, the job queue for processing updates is now somewhat backlogged. A null edit bumps it up said queue. So, you can make them, and in the short-term it's probably a good idea, but once this lag is fixed they won't (strictly-speaking) be necessary :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:27, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, again. I won't do any more null edits, unless I've made a mess that needs to be cleaned.--Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:31, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Atethnekos: Also note that as of Tim Starling's change yesterday to how null edits affect templates (gerrit:72064), these null edits no longer force updates across all pages using a template, so are low-impact even on high use templates. So null edit away without feeling bad about the server kittens. ;-)--Eloquence* 02:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53177

When using the link editor tool, it appears that the link is only updated if one either presses enter or clicks on a suggestion from the autocomplete list. This was very counterintuitive to me. If I am editing a link, I expect to be able to type the target (e.g. "Japan") and then move on by clicking elsewhere on the page. It is not at all obvious that I actually need to type "Japan+<ENTER>" before clicking outside the box. Obviously, now that I know what is required, I can do that, but it seems much more natural to have the link autoupdate to match new text as it is typed in rather than requiring the additional push of the Enter key. Dragons flight (talk) 19:15, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto. Clear "Confirm" and "Cancel" buttons should be a requirement at every dialog box, but it's clear that developers are playing by ear with respect to the interaction design. Diego (talk) 21:41, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


I can edit just fine the old way, thank you very much.

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I clicked the edit link of a paragraph but found the whole article on display and couldn't find the paragraph to edit so I chose the option to get to the old method, and left feedback on the way. Pifvyubjwm (talk) 19:28, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're not alone... Currently, you can use edit source instead of edit, or hide VE using "Preferences/Gadgets/Editing/Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" (not perfect, an option to really remove VE as be requested by many users at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"Opt out" of VE needed under preferences). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


so I thought (hoped) that "Leave" would lead to the old editor... Pifvyubjwm (talk) 19:30, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Pifvyubjwm: If you put your mouse pointer on a section "edit" link, and wait for a moment, the "edit source" alternative will become visible. That's the way to do editing the old style. If you find this irritating, you can turn VisualEditor off completely (so clicking on "edit" gets you into the old editing interface). To turn off VE: In your preferences (link is on the upper right of your screen), go to the "Gadgets" tab, then the "Editing" section, and put a checkmark by "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface." Then click "Save", and you're done. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tables

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41596

There should be a much easier way to add a table row using the visual editor. WikiTryHardDieHard (talk) 20:21, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Altering the layout of a table is not currently supported by the visual editor, that is coming in a future release. Currently you can edit the content of table cells. Thryduulf (talk) 20:25, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Deactivation

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How do I delete this account? Eban Hyams (talk) 20:22, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Replied on users talk page.--Salix (talk): 20:56, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


The easiest way for a new editor to ask anything about wikipedia is this page

I've noticed quite a few edits to this page which don't really seem to be VE feedback. If you follow through the new editor experience its quite obvious why they are being directed here.

  1. New editor finds a page, they want to edit and clicks "Edit"
  2. They have a question, they see the big ? in the top bar and click it
  3. There are two options: "user guide" and "Leave feadback", the second is obviously the one for questions so click that
  4. There is some complicate text which is tldr and a nice box to ask your question. The user types in that and
  5. Bingo, a new section here

This senario probably explains why we are getting a few simple signature with no comments. As the ? is much more prominent than the Help in the left sidebar its grabbing the users attention so diverting users away from our main help system. This will likely be a continuing problem and a way needs to be found to direct users to the right place.--Salix (talk): 20:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think there's an argument for, once the VE is fully live, repurposing it. But for now we get a lot of useful feedback through that box: I'd be loathe to tweak it to compensate for the occasional (good-faith) unrelated request. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Changes don't show up when page is saved, need to reload

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52737

I'm sure this is already in the system, but it's not easy to search Bugzilla for it!

I added two extra categories to Karl Parker (cursing, as usual, the fact that I can't see the article while adding a category), added an edit summary, saved the page. No sign of the two new categories. Once I reloaded the page, they were of course there. But VE needs to show the result of an edit correctly and immediately - or produce a flag saying "If the changes you've made are not visible, please reload the page." My heart sank, I thought "Have I managed to forget to click one of the buttons?", before I tried reloading: and I'm an experienced editor. What would a new editor do? PamD 21:03, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Pam! Tracked. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Section editing

A minor point, but if I mistakenly click the edit button by a header to edit a section, but had intended to click edit source, there's no easy way to switch from the VE view to the source editing view. Ideally, once I've started to edit a section with the visual editor, there should be a really easy way for me to switch to editing the source view of that section alone (as if I'd pressed edit source for that section in the first place). ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 21:06, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@ItsZippy: VE loads the entire article, not just the section you've selected. So it's not quite as easy to "switch" to a direct edit of wikitext as you might think. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:11, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, thanks. Is it not true, though, that when I choose to edit a specific section, the visual editor goes directly to that section in the article body, rather than the top? If that's the case, then surely it knows which section I clicked the edit button for and thus which section to direct me to if I want to edit the source. ItsZippy (talk • contributions) 21:16, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The url you click on to edit a section with the visual editor does include a section identifier, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auckland?veaction=edit&vesection=22 although the url actually loaded omits the section parameter. I'm not sure why it does that as manually adding a section doesn't seem to make any difference. I note this as if it retained the full url just deleting both instances of "ve" would do what you are asking (albeit crudely). Thryduulf (talk) 00:33, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fix it or lose copy editing of short sections of long articles

Put an "edit source" link on the help box, or lose copy editing of short sections of long articles from occasional users. These users expect to fix a comma or awkward wording in a short section by clicking on "edit" and finding an edit box right there after a page load. They don't expect to have to wait for "edit source" to appear after hover. They don't expect to find very sluggish scrolling and failure to reach the bottom of page in one try and failure of the "End" keyboard key and absence of an edit box at the bottom of page. They might keep trying long enough to find the help box. At least, the help box should mention the fact that "edit source" will appear after hover, and at least, that "edit source" should be linked to edit the section in an edit box. —Pifvyubjwm (talk) 21:08, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On the help box, @Pifvyubjwm:? What do you mean? (There is ongoing discussion about making "edit source" in sections permanently display, rather than hover.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53132

I've just noticed a couple of edits in visualeditor-needcheck which make external links like [null http://example.org/] [10],[11]. I've been monitoring the needcheck and its the first time I've seen them so it might be a bug introduced in a new rollout.--Salix (talk): 21:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strange! MzMcBride reported it, too - tracking number added. :) Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Wikilinking to a section of an article?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52881

There are times when one wants to link to a section of an article, such as Strategy game#Wargame. To continue this example, in wikitext the link might look like this: [[Strategy game#Wargame|game of ''Strategy'']]. Can VE do this?

If so, it's not obvious how. When I added the "#Wargame" part of the link, in VE, it objected (target link text turned red). And when I saved the edit, VE just ignored the "#Wargame" text altogether. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@John Broughton:, can you try this again. I can confirm the first part. Adding a link like Strategy game#Wargame does indeed get shown in red in the drop-down and labeled as a "new page", but I can not confirm the second half of your report. The #Wargame version of the link seems to save fine for me. As noted higher up the page, you need to either press Enter after typing the link or click on the link title in the drop-down to confirm. If you type out the link without pressing Enter and then click outside the link box, the link tool will forget your changes. Is that perhaps what happened to cause it to lose the #Wargame? Dragons flight (talk) 02:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Extensive testing at [12] shows that section linking works as expected provided you confirm the link you are added. There should be a GUI way of linking to a section, but that's a different issue. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've tracked the first issue as bugzilla:51118, and the lack of GUI as bugzilla:51121. Thryduulf (talk) 16:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That first one was marked as duplicate of bugzilla:50881. Thryduulf (talk) 17:15, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Dragons flight and Thryduulf: My apologies for not completing describing the situation. I was testing a piped link, where the underlying text was "strategy", and the intended link was to Strategy game#Wargame. The extensive/impressive testing by Thryduulf doesn't seem to cover this use case. And no, pressing [Enter] doesn't help - in fact, it makes the "#Whatever" text disappear.
I've just discovered, however, that if I add the section link and then click above, in the section of the dialog box with the word "Hyperlink", then the section extension (#Whatever) does remain. So I agree that there are two bugs here: (1) the target link turns red once the typing of the section link begins, and stays red even when what is typed does correctly point to a section; and (2) the only way to save the typed section name is to click above what is typed; typing [Enter] deletes the section link rather than keeping it, as does exiting the dialog box by clicking elsewhere on the page. (I don't agree that it should be necessary to press [Enter], but that's a different issue.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

General

I think that the visual editor is great for people who have never edited Wikipedia before, but if you have been on here for a while then it takes some time to get used to. Therefore I think that, once any bugs have been fixed, the defaults should be: VisualEditor on for IP users, and off for logged-in users. (If you approve this suggestion then IP editors would be able to override the default by clicking “edit source,” and registered users by going to their preferences and checking “Enable VisualEditor.”) Bwrs (talk) 21:52, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your feedback, @Bwrs:. :) While approval isn't in my scope, I will make sure to pass along your feedback. At this point, the plan is to keep VisualEditor on for everyone for some of the reasons explained by the Wikimedia Foundation's Deputy Director in the FAQ under "Why does no standard user preference to disable VisualEditor exist?" Personally, I do understand the challenge in switching over - I've found myself accidentally pressing "edit" when I meant "edit source" more than once, and I look forward to the time VE can handle some of the more complex tasks I do when volunteering. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't open "Page settings" after changing stub template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53134

This has happened before on other articles.

I opened Fay Alexander, added some content, removed stub template, added specific stub template, but then couldn't click on "Page settings" to add a category. Had to save the edits so far, and then reopen to continue editing. It's happened before: do something, then try to open "Page settings" and it won't respond. Can't be more precise as to what series of edits is needed to produce the effect, sorry: I think I've replaced stub template and then successfully added categories and/or defaultsort in other articles. PamD 21:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have just edited another couple of stubs, can't reproduce the problem. But it has definitely happened before. PamD 22:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Happened again on The Honey Trees: opened in VE; removed stub template by highlight + delete (or perhaps backspace); added new stub template; tried to click on "Page Settings" to fix the Defaultsort but although cursor turned from line to hand it wouldn't let me left-click. Right click offered unhelpful options. Tried positioning insert point variously around article, no effect. Had to save, reopen, and then do the edit I wanted to. Grrrrr. PamD 09:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Something odd is definitely happening here. I was unable to reproduce this on Diocese of Bristol - page settings opened fine, but wouldn't let me change the default sort so I closed and reopened page settings and it worked fine. At Bath bun however I got exactly the same as you. So I tried a few other pages randomly selected from Category:England stubs: Defence costs, Highgate Park and Jack of the North - no problems at all; Idle Toad and Andle Stone - wouldn't open page settings. In all cases I selected {{england-stub}}, deleted it using the delete key, and then added {{Wales-stub}} by clicking on the icon, tying the template name and selecting it from the suggested list and then applying it with no options or parameters set. I didn't save (for obvious reasons). I'm glad I'm not responsible for fixing this - devs just love intermittent errors ;) Thryduulf (talk) 19:30, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
As an afterthought I tried Diocese of Bristol and Idle Toad again, this time I reproduced the error on the first and the second worked fine! I'll put this in bugzilla and let the experts figure it out! Thryduulf (talk) 19:33, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Now at bugzilla:51134, but please do give any more information you have - especially if observe any patterns of when it is occurring or not occurring. Thryduulf (talk) 19:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a damaged wikilink: [[./Francis_W._Parker_School_(Chicago)|Francis W. Parker School]]. (It's damaged so badly that it doesn't even need nowiki tags to prevent redlinking.) It was damaged by this edit. (It's been more than 24 hours ago since it was flagged as a possible VE-induced error, yet it's still not fixed ... but I digress.)

I'm posting here because when I go into VE to edit the problem (it's in the "Legacy" section of the article McCormick family), VE displays the link as being perfectly okay. And when I click on what is displayed ("Francis W. Parker School"), and look what it links to, VE shows the correct link.) That obviously makes it difficult to actually fix the problem.

I'm leaving the wikilink as is, in the article, until someone adds this as a bug, or notes that it is already listed elsewhere as a bug. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The addition of .\ in wikilinks is bugzilla:50720. They blame the addition on old Firefox versions and don't mention your observation that VE acts as if the link is OK. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:34, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No comment about how such links are created, but I can confirm that VE in Chrome 27 hides the "./" and seems to pretend that the link is valid. Dragons flight (talk) 01:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Dragons flight, John Broughton, and PrimeHunter: Blacklisting of affected versions of Firefox is implemented as of gerrit:72675 and will be deployed ASAP, likely tomorrow (obviously this behavior should not occur, but for now it's best to just exclude these browser versions until any page corruption can be eliminated). I've noted the fact that VE ignores the invalid markup [[./Bla]] as Template:Bugzilla, which is presumably a lower priority issue once the corruption issue is fixed.--Eloquence* 02:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editing

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The new editing mode is crap crap and shit. Enlil Ninlil (talk) 22:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, don't use it then. Click "Edit source" instead. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:05, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You're not alone... Currently, you can use edit source instead of edit, or hide VE using "Preferences/Gadgets/Editing/Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" (not perfect, an option to really remove VE has been requested by many users at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"Opt out" of VE needed under preferences). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:23, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Formating

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49780
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40029

Maybe I did not see it but how do I insert subscript, superscipt and greek letters or even °? And I want to use this in Templates also.--Livermorium (talk) 02:17, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is presently no process that would allow one to add subscripts or superscripts in VE. There are also no tools for adding symbols or Greek letters, though you can copy and paste them from other pages or type them if your computer allows that. Personally, I regard both of these features as important missing functionality. Dragons flight (talk) 02:27, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Me too!!!--Livermorium (talk) 02:34, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a bug tracker for the subscript part of this. Is there a bug for the handling of special characters? I wasn't able to find one while searching obvious descriptions. Dragons flight (talk) 04:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Added the link to #38029. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 14:51, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Reference List

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52769

Reference list does not update with new references. Very confusing, especially with no refresh capability. Naugahyde (talk) 02:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Naugahyde: yep, we're working on it :). bug 50769. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:24, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53092

Check out this diff in my sandbox: [13]. The external link looks normal when in read mode, but shows the .jpg image as soon as I click "edit." Is this a bug or a feature? VQuakr (talk) 03:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's awesome! And also really bad. Dragons flight (talk) 03:30, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Horrendously bad and horribly misleading to any novice editor. On the bright side, I guess it will cut down on people uploading copyrighted images.—Kww(talk) 03:47, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also note that there is now a second bug on this diff. It's an old diff and the warning that I'm not editing the latest version comes up (correctly) and splits the VE ribbon so that the buttons to the right are down-shifted. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 06:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See also #Broken URLs to image files display only the filename in VE, cannot be edited in VE and bugzilla:51103 for a likely related bug. Thryduulf (talk) 09:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A fix for this seems to be being actively worked on at present, so I'm marking this answered. Thryduulf (talk) 19:12, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


unusable

The new editor is basically useless. I have been waiting for 10 minutes for it to accept an insertion point. Patrickwooldridge (talk) 04:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Most editors have just disabled it. I wouldn't even bother using it. Kumioko (talk) 04:15, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Kumioko, can you please provide a citation for your statement that most editors have disabled it? My data says otherwise, quite strongly.
@Patrickwooldridge: what do you mean by "insertion point"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Disabled or not, Okeyes, I'm still only seeing about 10% of edits by logged on accounts using it in my watchlist, so uptake isn't particularly high. I turned it back on just so that I could test some of the bug reports. What percentage of editors that have edited since it was turned are using it?—Kww(talk) 04:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This I don't know. I'm actually building dashboards tomorrow to display the proportion of mainspace edits using the VE (I was hoping to work on it tonight, but it's dependent on me getting R's package constructor and git to play ball with each other). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well first the fact that it has been disabled by several hundred editors (about 700 I think I saw somewhere but at least 500). Most of which are among the most active editors. Second, I have seen multiple statistics that show its usage between 8 and 10% of edits. About half by people testing it and then a large percentage of those show up to complain about it. Yes people are using it to various degrees. But spend a few minutes and do some analysis of those edits to complaints here and in other venues and you'll see the vast majority of the edits are time wasted that could have been better spent building an encyclopedia instead of testing an app that didn't get properly tested before it was released. I know you don't care to hear anything other than how wonderful the tool is, but that just isn't the case. As I said before, I'm keeping my editing to a minimum until this thing gets worked out. I'm not going to invest my time in something that breaks 90% of everything it touches. Kumioko (talk) 04:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Where did you see about 700? And where did you see these statistics? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There all over the place, try looking over at the Village pump (technical) for starters. But just do the math. pull in the transactions for the day and then subtract out the ones tagged for visual editor (of course factoring out the non applicable namespaces). And you have access better access to the data than I do. Depending on how you cook the numbers its as low as 4% and as high as 10%. In any case, just look at the edits being done, then associate the discussions here to the edits. You'll see a lot of correlation and a lot of the same people using VE. Many of which are WMF staffers. How many people do you have on your list that disabled it? I'm guessing its well over 500. It may even be over 1000 by now. Kumioko (talk) 04:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This thread covers some of this. I don't know where the 500 (or 700) disabled is coming from. Dragons flight (talk) 04:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Huh! I'll work on the dashboards anyhoo, just so we have consistent (and consistently updated) data, and fling a link out when I'm done. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you are dashboarding, you should monitor what percentage of Visual Editor edits are tripping filter 550. That would be an indicator of how many people are struggling with it.—Kww(talk) 05:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yep; thought of that :). (anyone know where the 700 figure is coming from, still? ) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Okeyes (WMF): Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences#Gadgets, entry "oldeditor", suggests that 607 users enabled the relevant gadget as of 4 July. Probably much higher now. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure how that report is compiled; is it "count of the number of entries" or "count of the number of entries where the value is 1"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The latter. Dragons flight (talk) 17:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The next scheduled update of that table should be around 23:00, 11 July UTC. Dragons flight (talk) 17:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the number of editors who have disabled VE as meaning much of anything, other than that editors familiar with wikitext editing can do most things much or quickly in the old editor than in VE, and, more importantly, can do everything in the old editor, while VE has limits (can't edit tables, other than contents; can't edit blockquoted material, etc.), and also is still producing quasi-random errors.

VE is a beta. It shouldn't matter, now, whether 2% or 20% of edits are done with VE - what should matter is whether the VE team is getting the feedback it needs to see where the bugs are, and how serious those bugs are. Eventually VE will be able to do everything that the wikitext editor can, and there will be minimal bugs; at that point - and only at that point - should we be concerned if VE isn't attractive to experienced editors.

In short, I think anyone at WMF who looks at "percent of edits using VE" as a measure of success is making a mistake. And I think anyone in the Wikipedia community who looks at "percent of edits using VE" as a measure of failure is also making a mistake. The goal as this point - the measure of success - should be to get to a stable, relatively bug-free, fully-featured WYSIWYG editing interface. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I generally agree that VE is not for the advanced editors or those who have been here for a while and know how to edit. I personally think VE is a great idea and will be agood tool. My problem is and has aleays been how the WMF did a half assed job of testing it and then threw it out for the every editor to use knowing it had multiple major problems, had virtually no support for references and only supported 2 namespaces. When they released a product that they knew caused unexplainable changes to articles and encouraged editors to not use references, that was a problem. As it is I have been tracking about 15 articles that have problems due to changes done by VE because I want to see if the WMF is really looking at the edits. I can confirm they are not. Kumioko (talk) 17:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We didn't "know" that it would encourage users to use references, and it doesn't encourage users not to use references. And we have never planned to support more than article-editing for the VE proper. We are tracking bugs, but unsurprisingly we don't have the resources to review every VE edit - we're prioritising reviewing this talkpage for issues. If you've identified bugs, bring them to my attention and I'm happy to triage them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think that's part of what irritates most experienced users who are complaining here: the VE team decided to widely roll out a version of VE knowing it was full of bugs, including some that were damaging articles, but don't even bother to deal with the damages that were done (and are still being done) on encyclopedic articles, rather relying on the good will of the same users that asked several times to postpone this roll out until VE was stable. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 18:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Precisely, I was all too happy to help test and identify problems but when the WMF decided that mass problems and broken articles were no big deal because the community would fix them, then they lost my support. I am here to volunteer to help to build an encyclopedia but if the WMF only cares about releasing software on time to make themselves look good and pat each other on the back about the grand job they did, when the community is cleaning up the mess, they can count me out and in fact I probably won't be editing for the next couple weeks at least. Maybe I'll check back in August and see if the mess is fixed. Kumioko (talk) 18:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
NicoV has it right, and that's the reason that I think VE needs to be put back on a true trial basis: opt-in only, and certainly not rolled out on a widespread basis or made the default for new editors. Putting a broken tool in the hands of our least experienced contributors on the expectation that the rest of us will cheerfully monitor the problems it causes and correct them for you is irresponsible.—Kww(talk) 19:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"... we don't have the resources to review every VE edit ... - So why in world is VE going to being enabled as the default edit interface for IP editors, on the 15th!!?? That's going to generate lots more VE edits, and - apparently - the resulting increase in errors is going to be the problem of the Wikipedia community, not the VE team. Mind you, these won't be newly-identified types of errors, they'll be already-discovered errors, because IP editors don't come close to doing the varied things that experienced editors do. So there is absolutely no testing or feedback value from this expansion. Yet the VE team continues - with no clear justification other than meeting a looming deadline - to plan this expansion. This is just bizarre. Is someone afraid of losing their job - or their annual bonus - if the team does the right thing and just focuses on the problems that registered editors continue to bring to it, plus the huge list of already identified problems, deferring the IP rollout until VE is in much better shape? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:42, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could someone from WMF please answer this in their official capacity? There's been a number of messages along these lines in various places, from experienced editors, and ignoring or evading them as you have does you no credit - David Gerard (talk) 22:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
We're not ignoring or evading them, David, we've got two staffers working EST and BST respectively, and it's midnight. John, to answer your question in reverse; to my knowledge staffers don't get annual bonuses. I appreciate things are a bit het up, but I'd appreciate if we could keep our concerns in good faith. I say our concerns because, yes, the impact that IP editing will have is something I'm worried about too. We've got quite a few dirty diff bugs, which we need to get fixed, and which I've surfaced as "things we need fixed, pronto". We've got smaller problems technically but bigger problems in practise, like the lack of a notification if a user uses wikimarkup - this, also, I hope will be addressed. But actually there is a lot of value from deploying to IPs: IPs might do less-varied things than experienced editors in wikimarkup mode, but we don't know that the same is true for the VisualEditor. When we release to registered editors, we largely get "the bugs people discover when they're familiar with wikimarkup". Quite a few newly registered users, I have no doubt, haven't experienced wikimarkup editing, but quite a few have, and all experienced users have. A logged-in deployment only gets us those bugs that occur when someone applies their experience to a new interface. What we haven't discovered - and what we desperately need to - is what happens if you apply a group of people who generally-speaking don't have an existing frame to compare the VE to. It's vital that we find this out, because the entire point of the VisualEditor is to make things easier for novices to markup. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You've already found more bugs than you can fix in the near future. Recall the deployment, fix it, and then redeploy once it's fixed. Don't go searching for another new pile of bugs when you haven't fixed the first pile yet.—Kww(talk) 23:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"What we haven't discovered - and what we desperately need to - is what happens if you apply a group of people who generally-speaking don't have an existing frame to compare the VE to." With all due respect, what you desperately need to do is to fix all the important, known bugs in VE.
"... the entire point of the VisualEditor is to make things easier for novices to markup." Okay, but you're contaminating the test by giving them a version of VE that (a) has significant bugs; (b) lacks documentation; and (c) can't do everything they might want to (copy a citation from one article to another, to name just one thing). There is absolutely no way that you can draw anything resembling defensible inferences if you provide IP editors with VE as it is now. In a month or two, quite possibly. In three to six months, when you've worked with more experienced editors to improve both functionality and the user interface, most definitely.
"A logged-in deployment only gets us those bugs that occur when someone applies their experience to a new interface." Really? Logged-in editors include those with essentially no editing experience (say, less than 25 edits) as well as those with more than 25,000. Moreover, IP editors just want their edits to survive. IP editors don't use complicated templates. IP editors don't do piped links. IP editors don't use "group" types in references. IP editors don't think about creating new tables. In short, experienced editors do everything that IP editors do, and more. And experienced editors understand what should happen; IP editors lacking wikitext editing experience don't have a clue as to whether what happens to them in VE is "normal" (and they just screwed up) or is a software bug. IP editors also lack the incentive to spend much time reporting errors - they don't have a commitment to Wikipedia, unlike experienced editors.
So here's a question for the VE team: If you turn on VE editing for IP editors, and you get essential no reports of new (undiscovered) bugs in, say, the first 48 hours, does than mean you'll turn off the expansion, since it won't have helped with identifying problems? Or will you just leave it on, forcing the Wikipedia community to clean up the additional messes that IP editors create every day as they use a bug-infested beta version of VE? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Refining David Gerard - Q: Could someone high up like User:Jdforrester, the VE lead, answer the community's questions?--Salix (talk): 01:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Jdforrester:, same request. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 07:09, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@John Broughton: (and everyone else),
Sorry if we have been unclear to date; the purpose of encouraging people to use VisualEditor is not primarily to find bugs - it is to make it easier for them to edit.
We are not rolling this code out as​ ​some scientific test of what happens when people use it, though data that we collect is valuable (and you can see some of that charted on the public dashboards). There is no concept of "contaminating" the test results here - this is far more important than some metricated experiment, this is about providing actually-useful editing tools for everyone.
Obviously there is tremendous value in experienced editors giving us feedback as to where we have fallen short of our aim to be the easiest, most obvious and natural way to edit. We know that we have not yet met this in many areas, and without the community's assistance, we could never hope to achieve that goal​; ​it would be ludicrous for me to pretend otherwise.​ ​ But we also know that VisualEditor provides a profoundly-better editing experience for new users in terms of their ability to understand how to edit, and I think it would be inappropriate of me to discount the many thousands of new users who struggle each week and turn away from our community for good because of the difficulties which Wikipedia's editing system provide (though note that the wikitext barrier is not the only one; VisualEditor is not, and never has been, a 'silver bullet').
As we have said a few times now, we will of course turn off VisualEditor, or delay its wider availability, if we are concerned that it is endangering the site - by technological demands, by wide-spread content corruption, or by placing a burden upon the community that it is unable to handle. As you know, I delayed the A/B test, and postponed the release to anonymous uses based on the second item. However, I do not think we are currently encountering significant issues on any of these three criteria. I would be keen to hear of evidence to the contrary - nothing is set in stone.
Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I would say that every hit of Filter 550 is evidence to the contrary, Jdforrester.—Kww(talk) 18:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Kww: I disagree. I see a lot of users mistakenly using wikitext in an inappropriate context, and VisualEditor/Parsoid rescuing those users from themselves to avoid breaking their edits. I don't see any corruptions at all any more - we squashed a number of them over the past two weeks. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Shrinking images

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49804

For reasons I can't guess, several of the images in Leg before wicket appear to shrink when opened in the Visual Editor. Dragons flight (talk) 04:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, that's weird. I think the VE may be operating based on the system's default image size rather than the user's - pretty sure I saw a bug about this. I'll go a-questin' to hunt it down. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:51, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Gotcha! bugzilla:47804. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:54, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


.

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I find this set up rather difficult. I prefer the old way of editing a page.

SamSennett (talk) 05:12, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're not alone... Currently, you can use edit source instead of edit, or hide VE using "Preferences/Gadgets/Editing/Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" (not perfect, an option to really remove VE has been requested by many users at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"Opt out" of VE needed under preferences). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:19, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Need to be able to add "Multiple Issues" around existing or new templates

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52182

I think this is included in Template:Bug but have added a comment there to clarify: we need to be able to add {{Multiple issues}} around existing tags, or one existing and one newly-added tag. There doesn't seem a way to do so in VE at present - it's yet another reason causing me to do a cleanup edit after almost every VE edit. Not an efficient way of working! PamD 07:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for tracking this, Pam. :) Agree it's important. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:43, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Text at very bottom of the page

This revision[14] contains some junk text "QuickiWiki Look Up QuickiWiki Look Up QuickiWiki Look Up" at the very bottom of the page after the authority control, person data and categories. When you try and edit with VE you cannot actually see the junk text. I've play about in my sandbox and the actual conditions for the text not to appear seem to be quite sensitive, at one point new line character appeared. The text remains after VE finishes the edit.--Salix (talk): 09:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Caused by a broken Firefox extension. Abusefilter 345 tries to detect it, but it won't block people from saving. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) VE displays the text for me in Firefox 22.0. The addition of the text is not related to VE. It's caused by the QuickiWiki option in the Firefox extension WikiTweak. See Wikipedia:Edit filter/Requested#Adding QuickiWiki. Are you sure VE is editing the version with the text when you don't see the text? If you click "Edit" on a diff or in an edit source window of an old revision then VE edits the current page version and not the one you are viewing. By the way, is there a bug for the "Edit" and "Edit source" tabs not editing the same version in such cases? PrimeHunter (talk) 09:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Checking again now and the text is visable. Maybe they rolled out a bug fix.--Salix (talk): 12:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Broken URLs to image files display only the filename in VE, cannot be edited in VE

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53103

Possibly related to #External links to images show up as images in edit mode? above, when a raw URL with no markup (e.g. http://www.sucs.org/~cmckenna/photos/quizes/tq2012/July/Jun03key.png ) ends in .png, .jpg, .svg or .gif but does not work (e.g. it gives a 404 error) then only the filename portion of the URL, Jun03key.png in this case, is displayed in the visual editor. Visual editor cannot then edit this URL to correct it.

Links to other image formats (e.g. tif), html pages, .txt files and pdf files, and all urls enclosed in single bracket markup work as expected and are editable in the Visual editor. See my sandbox testing. Thryduulf (talk) 09:48, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've now put this in bugzilla as bugzilla:51103. Thryduulf (talk) 09:56, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Terrible

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Been using the old style for many years and not only is this not an improvement in functionality, but its slow and difficult to use. I would highly recommend against keeping this format. AStudent (talk) 10:37, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're not alone... Currently, you can use edit source instead of edit, or hide VE using "Preferences/Gadgets/Editing/Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" (not perfect, an option to really remove VE has been requested by many users at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#"Opt out" of VE needed under preferences). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Editting a table

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41596

I am afraid editting a table is not possible. Or, is it? Saha.rj (talk) 11:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Currently, you can only edit the contents of existing table cells. You cannot presently change the structure of tables (adding or deleting cells or rows for example). Full table support will come with a future release. Thryduulf (talk) 12:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Gesture of appreciation

This comment is just to say thank you to the hard working folks developing VE. As much as I have problems with this new editor, I appreciate the effort that is going into improving it.--¿3family6 contribs 13:27, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! The community's continued patience is much appreciated :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

General editor for extension tags

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T45133

Hi, I looked in bugzilla but didn't find anything related. I think VE should include a basic editor for all extension tags that it doesn't recognize (<source>...</source>, <score>...</score>, <timeline>...</timeline>, <blockquote>...</blockquote>, ...). This basic editor would simply let editors edit the contents of the tag in a text edit box. It would also help for tags that are planned to be managed by VE but the feature is not yet available (<math>...</math> for example). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 14:08, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Created #51131. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 18:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Odd bug after blanking page

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53169

When trying to blank a page in my user sandbox to do a different test, I've found a very odd bug:

  1. Load any page with more than 1 line of text in VE
  2. Select all text (e.g. by ctrl+a)
  3. Optionally delete everything selected (backspace or del) [this step makes no difference]
  4. Type any one character and it appears correctly
  5. Type a second character and you get the layout below (example characters are 1 and 2):
1121
12

The third and any subsequent characters appear as expected but with the cursor between the two "1"s on the first line.
When the page is saved, the wikitext is just the first line.

The text is not always possible to delete, other than by selection, and trying to do that results in various things:

  • A repeat of the above
  • A random number of instances of the first or second character you attempt to overwrite it with appearing on 4 lines
  • A ♙ (apparently U+2659 WHITE CHESS PAWN) on the first line and one or two characters on the second and third lines (or on the third and fifth lines with blank lines between)
  • A string of some (~5-20) of the characters you were trying to type but which cannot be navigated with the cursor keys. These can be selected and overwritten but not deleted any other way, after a few attempts the editor locks up and you can only proceed by leaving or reloading the page.

I have not been able to figure out how to reliably reproduce any one of the above though. Thryduulf (talk) 16:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Another occurrence [15]--Salix (talk): 03:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can see it; reported. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:54, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Alterar username

Boa tarde, como é que eu posso alterar o nome (user) da conta. Pretendia fazer a alteração de Iportaldoc para IPBRICK mas não estou a conseguir fazê-lo.

Obrigada. Melhores Cumprimentos, Joana Cruz IPBrick (talk) 16:16, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Note: this is in Portuguese and the question doesn't have any obvious relation to the Visual Editor. It looks like the editor is asking how to change her account name, which would be a policy violation as it represents a commercial entity. Looie496 (talk) 16:30, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to rename the template editing features in VE

See: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Replace the term .22transclusion.22 in the Visual_Editor. Dragons flight (talk) 16:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks; commented :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Icons are incomprehensible

I'm finding the icons on the little buttons to do various things (add wikilinks, add references, add a template) are not clear or intuitive, the only exception being perhaps the add-an-image icon. I think some of them simply have obscure design that could be improved, but that can only go so far to make things clearer. A mouseover of any of these buttons should display a brief text explanation for what that button does, and/or the VE should have an option to toggle the views of its tools between icon, icon w/text, or just text, just like browsers do. postdlf (talk) 17:27, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are not the first to say this. See for example Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 07#Mystery meat navigation, which was seemingly archived without resolution. Thryduulf (talk) 17:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I figured it was brought up at some point. Interesting that those other commenters found even mouseover text inadequate, but at least that would be more than what we have. I have no clue what the icon for inserting a reference is even supposed to look like (a bar graph? wtf?), nor do I know what a puzzle piece has to do with templates. And the three books icon between them doesn't even have a discernible function after you click on it. I also don't know why anyone would expect to find categories under "page settings". I could go on...

This whole VE venture is really the most perplexing and seemingly insane development in the nearly ten years I've been editing here. The insistence of the WMF that it be foisted on everyone when it is clearly not ready for prime time really makes me question their judgment and basic competence. postdlf (talk) 17:55, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The reference editing icon is pretty counterintuitive to me, too, and it's in bugzilla as a thing that needs to be worked on. I'm not sure how the linking icon is confusing, mind; it's a chain link, and matches the linking icon in the existing editing toolbar (and gmail, and wordpress, and...probably other services I'm not familiar with). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It was less obscure, in that I was able to figure out what it probably meant before actually experimenting on it. I've never seen that particular icon before (I don't use gmail or any of those other services), and I have to assume that a new user will find it even more confusing than me if they're faced with just that little picture. And if it's used in other services, it would have to be for web links, correct? So a user familiar with that icon would then presume it's for inserting external links, rather than wikilinks to other articles. postdlf (talk) 19:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The buttons do have mouse-over text. Or at least I see it, do you not? Or is the complaint that the existing mouse-over text isn't very good, which I more or less agree with. Dragons flight (talk) 18:24, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, I don't see any mouse-over text. Firefox v. 22.0. postdlf (talk) 19:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I just tried Firefox 22 and I did get the mouse-over text on the main icons. It seemed a little sluggish for some reason, but it did work. Does anyone else find that the mouse-over text isn't working? Dragons flight (talk) 02:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox 22 here, mouseover works fine. Postdlf, what OS? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Windows 7. I even tried letting the mouse-over hover for awhile after Dragons flight's comment that it was "sluggish," but ten seconds and nothing for any of the buttons. postdlf (talk) 13:22, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is puzzling. :/ I have Firefox 22 on Windows 7, and the mouse-over text works for me. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Postdlf, do you see the mouse over text in other parts of the interface. For example, most (though not quite all) of the interface links at the left and top of the page have mouse over text. How about on pages that don't use VE? Also, are you using the Vector skin or something else? Dragons flight (talk) 16:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No gadget

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I wish to turn off VE (it's not working in my Win XP netbook, and I have no need of it). I have no applicable gadget in my preferences, even though I'm signed in. I'm using Chrome, and the Monobook skin. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:39, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you looking in the right place? The relevant option is in the editing section of the gadgets tab, not the editing tab (which would be logical). Thryduulf (talk) 17:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Doh! My bad; thank you. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, you aren't the first to have this issue :) Thryduulf (talk) 17:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Transclusion editing

I don't seem to be able to edit transclusions. kees (talk) 17:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give more details or an example ? Normally, you click on a template (for example an infobox), which makes a small puzzle icon appear on the top right of the template, you then have to click on that puzzle to display the transclusion window. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 18:29, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would like to see the edit summary previewed as well

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44139

I'm one of those editors who likes to include links to policies in my edit summaries. I do this mostly to help new editors, as I learned a lot about various policies via edit summaries when I first started editing. However, VE doesn't provide a way to preview the edit summary so I have to be extra-careful to get links right the first time in the edit summary. Could the preview function also render the edit summary if one has been provided at that point? Regards, Orange Suede Sofa (talk) 17:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a really good point; I'll throw it in Bugzilla now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually that looks to be covered already by Bugzilla:42139. Thryduulf (talk) 18:10, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Edit summary is not WYSIWYG

The current "Save page" dialog permits entry of an edit summary with newlines, however, no newlines are preserved in the edit summary when it is saved to the Wiki. This is confusing, because I just used a WYSIWYG editor, but what I see in the edit summary is not what I get. Elizium23 (talk) 18:39, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • As I understand bugzilla:42139, the current save dialog is just temporary and it will be replaced by a "mini-VE surface". I suspect therefore that the devs wont want to spend time fixing this separately to that - but I am not a dev so don't take that as gospel. Thryduulf (talk) 19:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Messed up infobox image

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53166

Mohammad Azharuddin shows a different person in the infobox during Vedit that during view. This is apparently a consequence of {{Css Image Crop}} failing under VE. Not sure what exactly the underlying error is, but the gender bending result is definitely noticeable. Dragons flight (talk) 19:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the technical term is "I don't even what". Throwing in bugzilla now; good (and bizarre) catch :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Issues: Omnibus Edition

Before I explain the variety of bug reports and feature enhancements involved, I'll be presenting a typical example of what many editors do here on ENWIKI, day after day. Understanding the bug reports and feature requests will require following along with the steps of the example. So, before I proceed with the number of bug reports and feature requests that will follow below, please reproduce all the following steps in order.

I know some of these are covered by existing bugs, but I really do think that the scope of my concerns can only be fully understood in the context of a complete example

  1. Open test case at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ben_Barres&oldid=563699414
  2. Select "Edit", invoking Visual Editor.
  3. Place the cursor in the Awards section, following the comma after "McKnight Investigator Award"
  4. Press "insert reference", which is a button two to the left of the puzzle piece.
  5. Select "Create New Source". Blue indicator line is good, very usable.
  6. "Reference content" window appears.
  7. Press the transclusion button
  8. "New template" window appears
  9. Enter "Cite book"
  10. Select the matching entry from the pulldown
  11. Press "Add template"
  12. "Cite book" page comes up.
  13. Select URL
  14. Type "URL" into the search bar
  15. Select the URL item (the second one if two appear)
  16. Enter this URL : http://books.google.com/books?id=v0Sn0jB9QwIC&pg=PA77&dq=%22Ben+Barres%22+glia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9KDdUcmFPM_higL-j4FQ&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22Ben%20Barres%22%20glia&f=false
  17. Click "Apply changes"
  18. Oh, I'm at "Reference Content", how weird
  19. Click on the puzzle piece
  20. Click on "Source title"
  21. "Add parameter"
  22. Enter: Research Funding in Neuroscience: A Profile of the McKnight Endowment Fund
  23. "Apply changes"
  24. Select text to get puzzle piece to appear
  25. Click puzzle piece
  26. Select "last name"
  27. Scroll to "add parameter"
  28. Click "add parameter"
  29. Enter Strobel
  30. "Apply changes"
  31. Click puzzle piece
  32. Select "first name"
  33. Scroll to "add parameter"
  34. Click "add parameter"
  35. Enter Gabrielle
  36. "Apply changes"
  37. Click puzzle piece
  38. Select publisher
  39. Scroll to "add parameter"
  40. Click "add parameter"
  41. Open another window in your browser
  42. In window 2, open http://books.google.com/books?id=v0Sn0jB9QwIC&pg=PA77&dq=%22Ben+Barres%22+glia&hl=en&sa=X&ei=9KDdUcmFPM_higL-j4FQ&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=%22Ben%20Barres%22%20glia&f=false
  43. In window 2, Click on "About this book"
  44. In window 2, Scroll to the bottom of the page
  45. Note that the publisher of this book is Academic Press
  46. Back at window 1, Enter Academic Press
  47. "Apply changes"
  48. Click puzzle piece
  49. Scrolll to pages
  50. Select pages
  51. Scroll to "add parameter"
  52. Press "add parameter"
  53. Enter 77, followed by a dash or hyphen, as you prefer
  54. "Apply changes"
  55. Click puzzle piece
  56. Scroll to "Year of publication" (not source date)
  57. Press "year of publication"
  58. Scroll to "Add parameter"
  59. Press "add parameter"
  60. Enter 2010 (you remembered this from step 46, I'm sure, I won't make you go back and look.)
  61. "Apply changes"
  62. Click puzzle piece
  63. Enter ISBN
  64. click Add parameter
  65. Enter 9780080466538
  66. Apply changes
  67. Click puzzle piece
  68. Enter access date and select it
  69. click Add parameter
  70. Enter the current date
  71. Apply changes
  72. Apply changes [sic]
  73. (At this point you'd do the rest of the steps to save this, but don't, I've already added it.)

Now, for reference, here's the previous workflow:

Bugs, feature requests, suggestions

  • Bug: At step 4: I have no idea what the logo for "insert reference" is supposed to mean. — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
    • @Joe Decker:, I agree that this is opaque. I asked about that for another contributor and received an answer yesterday that included the statement that this particular icon can certainly be changed, if somebody comes up with a better idea. The icon needs to be universal, so that it works in any language. Any ideas? I can open this in a new section, if you'd like, or feel free to copy it to a new section yourself for greater visibility. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Suggestion: After step 4, before step 5: "Create new source" and "Use an existing source" -- it's a little confusing that the latter is in bold. I wonder if the real choice here (new source, or a specific existing source) would be better communicated by having the bold be on "Create new source" rather than the other way around? — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Feature request: At step 5, would it be better to include options to "create new source from news", "from book", "from journal", "from web" at this point? this would bypass a few problems that I will outline below
  • Feature request: Short of this, one could make a similar shortcut at step 6.
  • Suggestion: At step 6, there's a heck of a lot of white space here doing nothing. I'd think it'd be reasonable to expend a few cm2 of it on a little assistance for new users.
  • Bug: At step 6/7, the use of "transclusion" is accurate but useless to new editors. Even template would be clearer, although not much, note that the window which opens at step 8 is called "New template"
  • Bug: At step 6, the featuring of "group" at this level is distracting and confusing to new editors, I've already seen a couple cases where this is mistaken for reference name to bad effect
  • Suggestion: At step 6, explain the group option and/or make it less prominent to increase usability.
  • Bug: At step 6, It's pretty non-sensical, I think, to insert media within a reference. Certainly rare, and almost certainly never what a new user intended. I'd suggest removing that option. — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Feature request: At step 8, the design has lost the context that we're editing a reference, and this creates an enormous amount of pain. If you haven't accepted some of the previous suggestions for how to streamline usage of reference templates, at least, at very least, make them clear one-click options here.
  • Suggestion: At step 8, there's a heck of a lot of white space here doing nothing. I'd think it'd be reasonable to expend a few cm2 of it on a little assistance for new users.
  • Bug: At step 8, The most reasonable thing for a new user to type at this point for a book reference is book. Doing this pulls up a template which isn't what the user wants. Fix this. — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Feature request: At step 12, indicate which parameters are required. In most web environments, this is done with red text or an asterisk — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Bug: At step 13, the most natural way to "select" URL is to double-click, and, failing that, hit "Apply changes". Neither is correct. "Add parameter" is invisible off-screen--make it visible. — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Bug: At step 14, there are two URL parameters listed, the first marked "unknown parameter". Remove that. — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Bug: At step 17, I seem to have left the place where I'm adding parameters to the template. I have many to add, this is the wrong default.
  • Bug: At step 20, the description for "Source title" is incorrect. It's a book, it's not the title of the web page we want, but the title of the book. Right? — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Suggestion: At step 56: it's confusing that the year of publication/month of publication are so well separated from source date, this will cause confusion, maybe some re-org would help a bit here — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Feature request: At step 53, it is my memory that hyphens here are always turned into the appropriate flavor of dashes automagically as an easy cleanup, even if the automatic of steps B8, B9 isn't invoked.
  • Bug: Steps 18-66 are unnecessary as demonstrated by steps B8, B9 — Joe Decker 19:41, 10 July 2013 — continues after insertion below
  • Bug: Steps 67-71 are unnecessary, accessdate is almost always "right now", and can be sensibly defaulted
  • Suggestion: The similarity of the generic words in steps 71 and 72 might make it worth considering giving one or the other a slightly different label, so as to provide the editor more navigational context.

I consider several of these bugs to be serious, blocking issues. I hope this demonstration, which is work I actually went and did, much like work that I've done thousands of times at Wikipedia in the past, conveys the magnitude of the issues with the current implementation of references.

We need to make references, which are a core object of Wikipedia articles, five times easier, not seven times more difficult.

Thanks for your attention. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • I can't answer to the bugs thing, but just a hint to help you next time you attempt to add a cite ref with VE. You don't have to click "apply changes" everytime you add a new parameter and then "edit template" again to add a new one. When you are done with one parameter, just click on the title of the template on the left up corner of the dialogue and it will take you immediately to the "add new parameter". No need to "get out" of the dialogue and "come back" everytime. I am sure that will save you lots of time! TeamGale (talk) 19:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • TeamGale: Thanks! I did not know that! It won't save me much time, though, since I can't imagine using VE to add references when using the existing tools is several times faster, even with your improvements. Where this is going to cost *me* time is in writing out instructions to new editors creating articles, and in marking unsourced articles for deletion. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:00, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are welcome. The truth is that many couldn't find it. I was just clicking everywhere because I knew there should be a way to go back to "add new parameter" without getting out of the dialogue. Sure there has to be a more obvious button for that. You sure can choose the way it fits you best. Especially since you are using wikitext for a long time, that way would be easier for you. But in case you will use VE again, this will save some time for sure :) Writting instructions, you mean as a guide how to use VE or while reviewing new articles? TeamGale (talk) 20:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I'll use VE again, I just won't use it for references until it actually works for references. Right now, largely by coincidence, I expect, the most common tasks I do are all things that don't work for VE for one reason or another--adding references is just much more painful, a lot of gnomish space/punctuation fixes (it's amazing how often I do WP:PAIC fixes) don't work because of a bug, and a lot of my AfC work is blocked by AfC drafts being in the WT namespace--so I have to go out of my way to find some useful way to use VE, but it is getting better. And I expect it will continue to do so--it's just going to take some pushback. That's the only reason I went to the trouble to write all of this out.
As far as writing instructions, I'm thinking about my reviewing of AfC drafts. We get a ton of new editors (who can't use VisualEditor yet because of the namespace problem, but I'm sure that will be fixed one way or another going forward.) They get horribly confused by our referencing requirements, that, copyright, and notability (which comes down to references, too) tend to be the big, hard things that I find myself explaining over and over again. I've got some TextExpander boilerplate that helps--and as instruction manuals and help pages fill in the gaps for Visual Editor, that will help too, but there's always that point where you have to address someone's confusion in the context of where they're stuck right now, and if it takes 3-5x as many steps to answer a question, that's just more work for me. The good news is that, with some sensible automation and redesign, VE can turn into something that does a better job for new users and references, and I look forward to that day. --j⚛e deckertalk 20:18, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I understand! I agree that VE needs a lot of work but it was improved a lot the last few days. I am new editor here (less than a month) and for what I want to contribute VE is helping me a lot. I had the honor to use the wikitext for a week before find VE so I somehow can work on both for the things I need. And if there is something I can't do on VE yet, I use the "edit source" button. I am sure when things are finished, VE will be a really nice tool for everyone. TeamGale (talk) 20:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
TeamGale: That's my feeling as well, absolutely. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Joe Decker, thank you very much for taking the time to document this so thoroughly. At least it's right here in black and white why experienced users are registering concerns and complaints about the referencing process (and that assumes all goes well). It is really illustrative to see this step-by-step description of the process under optimal conditions. Risker (talk) 20:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    You're quite welcome. It seemed more constructive than my first response. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Risker and Joe Decker: Completely agreed, and improving references is among the highest priorities right now. There are some pretty low hanging fruit improvements that will make the dialog a lot more efficient for the common case. Two important ones are described in Template:Bugzilla (patch in progress; this one will help filling in the cite templates more quickly) and Template:Bugzilla (this'll just reduce the clunkiness of the dialog a bit). We'd like to get these two done before the IP release, ideally, since adding citations is such an important aspect of authoring content. After that release, we'll do further UX work in this area. Ideally I'd like to get some RefToolbar-like functionality (but nicer) for auto-populating citation data from ISBN numbers, and such.
It's important to note that RefToolbar on en.wp was a community-developed innovation -- we hope that over time, we'll also see similar community improvements to VisualEditor.
Joe, thanks for the detailed breakdown! I encourage you to participate in Bugzilla as well, since that's where a lot of the detailed discussions with the devs will take place.
Please do remember, a lot of us WMF folks are long-time Wikipedians, even those who are not very active on the content side anymore. We know that this stuff matters and we'll get it right. We made tradeoffs for the beta release and you can legitimately be angry with us for compromising too much and shipping too early. I for one think we needed to get from our protected alpha existence into the real world, so I'm not apologetic for that. But we'll get there -- making this thing awesome for everyone is our number 1 goal. :-) Eloquence* 06:22, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
two done before the IP release ... After that release, we'll do further UX work in this area ...
Why on earth WMF folks seem to simply ignore what many experienced editors are saying ? Why is that IP release so vital that it needs to be done before VE is fixed of many of its bugs, and the UX is redesigned to be usable ? This question has been asked several times and no answer, you (VE team, WMF) simply seem to want to roll out VE to as many people as possible even if it's currently damaging encyclopedic articles, and you don't even bother to fix that damages. you can legitimately be angry with us for compromising too much and shipping too early : why continuing in this path then ? --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 07:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Eloquence, with respect, I'm afraid I must disagree on one point. Whether the existing RefTools was developed by WMF or the volunteers, it is a living, breathing part of the ENWIKI environment, there are videos (I think produced by the WMF) on how to use them, and it is very much a part of the bar the previous editing environment sets. I see the goal of the Visual Editor as being "improving user experience for new users", not "improving user experience for new users over what they'd have if they never used any volunteer-developed gadgets." New users don't care where their tools from, they just care if they actually get the job done. That's my view as well.
Your comment about long-time Wikipedians is from what I've seen probably true, but I have terrible visibility into anything outside of the editing community. It's been clear in previous discussions that I'm highly misinformed about the relationship of the various groups of people outside the editing community.
Looking at the bug numbers you listed, I'm delighted to see those two issues in-progress. When I have more time I'll see what else is poking around Bugzilla. But the work I just put into this section was very real for me, and I hope that at least someone reads through it all. If it's considered tl;dr, well, at least I'll have gotten my minimum daily dose of irony. ;-) Have a great week. --j⚛e deckertalk 15:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Eloquence:, I agree with Joe Decker. I have a lot of respect for you but between this VE mess and the ongoing recent protectionism of abusive admins that the WMF refuses to do anything about, I have better things to do. With that said I care about the project very much. I believe in it and want to see it succeed. So when I see decisions like the one that was done with VE it really causes my irritation level to increase. Especially from the organization who is being paid to keep the project going, not break the backs of the volunteers. It would be one thing if the problems were unexpected, but they weren't, the WMF knew it was going to bottom out and released it anyway. Letting the volunteer community deal with the mess and then ignoring them when they say don't release it and it doesn't work. I for one have a major problem with that, even if others are happy to clogg along. It feels like this VE project is being done at the expense of the current community in an attempt to get new users...but at the sacrifice of the existing ones who have continued to stay with the project through the hard times. That isn't acceptable. So I would say don't release it to IP's or the rest of the Wiki's but your not going to listen anyway so you may as well just go ahead and do it all at once. Don't bother soliciting comments from the community, don't bother with a phased rollout. The bugs will still be identified and logged, the problems will continue to be added to articles and creating problems that will sit there on the articles for months to come. Its no big deal really...unless you are actually doing the work!. With that said I think most editors will be glad I'm not editing. Because I have no problems telling the WMF or admins that they are screwing up, and no one likes it when people tell them they screwed up. Especially when its just some dumb editor with 400, 000+ edits! Kumioko (talk) 16:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52945

Spotting a VE edit on my watchlist today, I looked at it - and had to tidy it up. VE had created "[[Indonesia]]<nowiki/>n", so it appeared as Indonesian, with a black "n", rather than "[[Indonesia]]n", Indonesian, as it was intended. Messy. Probably already reported, but difficult to find in Bugzilla. (This problem was in an edit 13 hours ago - delighted apologies if it's been fixed already!) PamD 20:44, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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Task T52945

Just now I wanted to modify BuAer to the Bureau of Aeronautics, but couldn't figure out a way to do this, or revert to the old editor to do it there. Joconnor (talk) 20:54, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • See Bugzilla:50945. The only way currently is to delete the text that is there already, type the display text, select the display text, open the link dialog and set the link to what you want it to link to (it will default to whatever text is selected, but you can override this). It might still leave some junk in the code from the previous link, and if you make a mistake you have to start again, but it seems to work in my testing. Thryduulf (talk) 21:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • To revert to the old editor you have two choices. On a per-edit basis just click "edit source" rather than edit; to opt-out for all your edits go to the gadgets tab of your preferences then click the first option in the editing section, scroll to the bottom of the page and save the changes. Thryduulf (talk) 21:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Infobox problem?

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Task T53161

Hi - sorry if this is an FAQ or anything but is it normal behaviour in this VE-tagged edit that, afterwards, the infobox worked fine but its layout, if you wanted to see it in the source, was trashed (line feeds stripped, I think?) so you couldn't really read it, and you certainly couldn't compare it with the previous? As I say, apologies if it is covered elsewhere and please feel free to point me in the right direction if so. Cheers DBaK (talk) 21:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@DisillusionedBitterAndKnackered: it's not; looks like bugzilla:51161 :(. Sorry about this. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:41, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Copy References and Templates

How can I copy References as whole from one article to the other what about Templates?--Livermorium (talk) 21:55, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, you can't :(. It's something that is being worked on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Problem with Persondata

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Task T52120

I noticed that Persondata is now editable, so I had a go. There are two problems, as you can see from this diff:

  • Both Persondata and the following DEFAULTSORT and cats have been duplicated
  • The Persondata is written in its expanded wikitable form, not the template form. This would lead to exceedingly inconvenient and unidiomatic source, so I think this counts as a second bug.

I corrected the article in the subsequent edit. --Mirokado (talk) 21:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reporting it! Looks like bugzilla:50120, which is high-priority. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Add a comma after a link, get a pawn

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Task T53140

Editing Jabhala I found that when I tried to add punctuation (full stop or comma) immediately after a link, I got an icon of a chess pawn instead. I managed to fiddle it by adding the punctuation after the pawn, moving left, and deleting the pawn. Having done my edits I then tried the same in my sandbox and in a random article and couldn't reproduce the problem. But then reopened the first article and reproduced the problem. All I did was to type a comma after the Assandh link. Very weird. PamD 22:30, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I see the same thing; throwing in Bugzilla :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Aaand done. Thanks, as always, for finding these bugs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Problems editing templates

I have just edited my first template: {{cite web}} in a reference. I was able to edit the template successfully but have the following comments:

  • The dialog is not resizable and the parameter descriptions do not wrap, so I could not read the whole description
  • There is a long bold parameter heading (such as Translated title) but no indication of the parameter name trans_title in this case). Thus I cannot use the filter to select a parameter unless I already know what its name is, which rather defeats the object of a GUI
  • I miss a link for each parameter which will enable me to open its value dialog directly: that would be a significant improvement to the user interface
  • I notice that the template definition is replaced by a canonical form irrespective of the previous formatting of the source. That is I think inevitable, and I realise we are never all going to agree about the "right" source format if any, but I see real disadvantages with the current choice: ...value2|name3 = value3|name4 = ...:
    • a parameter value is tightly visually bound to the next parameter name and follows it if the line is wrapped (this might be browser-dependent: I am using Firefox 20.0 on Linux)
    • spaces either side of the equals sign mean it appears unpredictably at the beginning or end of a line when being wrapped
    • without implying that this is "right", I think a canonical format of ...value2 |name3=value3 |name4=... with spaces before each delimiting solidus and not around the equals would avoid these problems.

--Mirokado (talk) 22:38, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • So, in order:
    Is the wrapping problem still appearing? We pushed some patches last night that hopefully resolved it.
    Well, you can scroll; the point of the long bold parameter heading is that it's human-readable. You can filter by either the parameter name or the human-readable title. The greater problem here, I think, is bugzilla:50773.
  • What do you mean by "open its value dialog directly"? Surely that's doable from the left toolbar in the template inspector.
  • I would argue that actually the form should be ...value2 | name3 = value3 | name4 = ... if we're going to change it at all. So, to go mea culpa for a minute; I explicitly requested that normalisation should normalise with, rather than without, spaces. This is because ultimately normalisation is for the sake of markup-editors; name3=value3 is somewhat hard to read for long templates with lots of values. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There's going to be a serious conflict here between source editing and visual editing. When source-editing a long complex template such as an infobox, it becomes very difficult unless each parameter is placed on a separate line. But if that is done for every template, it becomes very awkward to work with templates that are inserted in text. One possibility might be to normalize "freestanding" templates (that is, templates that appear as the only element of a line) differently from "inline" templates. (Incidentally, the setup I usually use is ...value1 |name2=value2 |name3=value3 |name4=....) Looie496 (talk) 13:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not really; the situation I'm talking about is, say, efn or sfn, where putting it on one line is commonplace. The one-lining of big infoboxes is a bug, rather than a feature :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reference Templates

There are none or I cannot find reference templates. Swimmermroe (talk) 00:37, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is impossible to understand. What task were you trying to do? Looie496 (talk) 03:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Presumably add a citation. @Swimmermroe: if you open the reference editor and hit the puzzle-box icon, you can insert templates - efn, for example, or sfn, or cite web, or... Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:18, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would like to suggest that all of the editing dialog boxes should have help page links (probably via an embedded icon) that open a new window with help information appropriate for that dialog. Dragons flight (talk) 02:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, certainly. A more standard approach would be to allow the user to activate context-help by pressing some "Help" key with the mouse over a UI element. F1 is commonly used in applications, but I don't know if that would be viable in a browser. Looie496 (talk) 03:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I think this would work pretty well for enwiki, but I'm not sure how well it would work for other projects; we can translate blurbs easily, but not so much entire pages. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External link in text shows as blue wikilink when in VE edit screen

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40726

I noted a typo at Campus of the University of Washington in the subheading "Military Memorials" and clicked the edit link to correct it. I noted that there was what appeared to be a regular blue wikilink for the words Interrupted Journey. There was a carriage return in the screen immediately before the words "A Medal of Honor.." so I elected to abort the edit. I then switched to edit source, corrected the typo, saw that there was no carriage return in the source, and was surprised to find that the link in the phrase Interrupted Journey was an external link to a youtube video. This appears to be reproducible within the history of the page, and I believe on other pages as well. Risker (talk) 03:51, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The issue, I gather, is that there is no difference in appearance between wikilinks and external links until you open the link editor. Looie496 (talk) 04:10, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well that (why would I open a link editor for what looks like a wikilink?) and the fact that the appearance changes from the view mode (where it looks like an external link, with the appropriate icon) to the visual edit mode (where it looks like a wikilink). In fact, I wonder if that's why I got that stray carriage return, which is visually similar to the icon used to identify external links in the view mode. Risker (talk) 04:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is bug 38726, though there is a more general issue with links not being coloured based on not existing or being under your stub colour threshold (bug 37901) or being inter-project links (bug 33084). Adding this information to the system is a little complicated and we have not yet done this, though it's something I consider important and which we want to get to soon (once we've fixed more of the bugs). Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 04:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Notice on top of edit box in old edit interface

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53160

The old edit interface carries the notice Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions. (with some wikilinks) We should probably have something similar in the VE too?OrangesRyellow (talk) 08:00, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a good point. That message comes from MediaWiki:Editpage-head-copy-warn and doesn't appear anywhere on the VE page. The save page dialog does include MediaWiki:Copyrightwarning (which appears by the save button in the source editor) but in tiny letters. See bugzilla:51160 Thryduulf (talk) 08:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
In practice that message is probably totally pointless, like most of our messages. It's been shown that people don't read those things, so basically they are just there for the comfort of the 'regulars'. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
But because it's there people can't claim they weren't told what would happen when we remove all their copyvios. Thryduulf (talk) 09:33, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, frankly it's in the TOS, too, so really they can't make that claim anyway. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:03, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


A large amount of references vanished.

I added about 4 or 5 more references than is shown. They just disappeared after saving the page. Now I need to go through them all over again to re-add. Not good. Cowicide (talk) 09:12, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The article in question seems to be Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Thryduulf (talk) 09:30, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hmn. @Cowicide: how did you add the references? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
With the beta thing that has the add reference button. I found that I could only add one reference at a time and had to slowly stop and save each time. Instead, I stopped using the beta button and edited the source and did it manually instead. Cowicide (talk) 12:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
More specifically, how did you handle it with the VisualEditor? Did you insert the 4-5 more references, and if so, how? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:21, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Add a link to template documentation page

Some templates are really rather complex. I'm trying to write the template data for {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} and parts are just too complex to explain in the short json format. Really a it would be good to have a link to the full template documentation. Maybe a "Documentation" field could be added to json and that interpreted as a clickable link in the dialogue.--Salix (talk): 10:52, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OH and the parset for template data has a rather uninformative error message. All you get is "Syntax error in JSON" lets guess where in the 100+ lines the error is!--Salix (talk): 11:16, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, there's a bug for that. Drop the JSON on my talkpage? I'll try to debug. Can you give an example of something too complex to explain? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK some wierd buggy jason there. As to complicated documentation {{Infobox World Heritage Site}} as parameters which should take {{coord}} which is a lot to explain, it also has a "locmapin" map parameter which is passed to Template:Location map which has complex instructions as to the name of the map to use which involve looking at Template:Location map/List. Links to those pages would be nice.--Salix (talk): 12:07, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, linking would be good :). So, Krinkle's approach with TemplateData was to deliberately build something barebones. This was because he didn't know precisely how it would be used in practise, and thought it would be better to build a system that can be expanded in line with how people need it to work (for example - linking, a dropdown box or something) rather than building features and hoping people use them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox edit

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Task T53161

I edited an infobox earlier, but after editing, the line breaks were gone (meaning it was no longer one line per parameter). I'm not sure if I did it wrong, or if it's a bug. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 10:57, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An example of this is [17]. I would class this as a bug as the result make it harder for editors not using VE to edit the infobox.--Salix (talk): 12:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, this is bugzilla:51161. I've added your example to that bug. Thryduulf (talk) 12:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Author parameter for web refs

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What happened to the "author" parameter for the cite-web template? Online journalists often use pseudonyms, and the author parameter works better in this case then first or last name.--¿3family6 contribs 14:05, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It just looks like aliases haven't been added to the templatedata for cite web. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, some "lazy" person only wrote TemplateData for 64 of the approximately 100 supported parameters and didn't include all of the additional 130 aliases. Have I mentioned lately that we might want a better way of handling references than the blinding wall of template options, most of which won't be used in most cases. Dragons flight (talk) 17:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Incidentally, being able to include links in a TemplateData description, for example to a documentation page, could be quite helpful. Such links should probably be set to open in a new window by default. Dragons flight (talk) 17:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry if I came off as implying laziness; trust me, as probably the first person to look at fixing up cite web with templatedata, I boggled and went "....screw this". The source of that data has my admiration. I agree links would be useful; it's a requested enhancement. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Need for written specifications

It's apparent to me that there is a need for prototyping of the UI elements of the editor. Without at least a sketch of a specification, the developers are in many areas hacking around, and the final product is likely to be an unmaintainable mass of kludges. As an example of the sort of thing that is needed, I have written a draft specification for a reference-insertion-tool at user:Looie496/VE Reference editor. I won't assert that the design there is exactly what is needed, but what is needed is explicit planning at this level. Looie496 (talk) 16:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

While prototyping UI elements is beyond me, I have put your reference-insertion-tool draft specification in Template:Bugzilla in case it helps. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A new (old?) bug

I was trying to edit a template in a table after the bug of the references inside template was fixed, but the edit broke the whole table. This was also happening before with the references bug. I don't know if the two bugs were reported together...maybe not. Here is what happened.
When I edited the template with the 12th episode, the cite error didn't appear. But when I clicked to save it, the 12th episode moved at the top of the table when it should be at the bottom. I reverted the edit and re-made it using "edit source". Can this be reported? Thank you TeamGale (talk) 16:58, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen this before, but can't find it. Poking around, and I'll risk duplicating it if I don't. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:52, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

new editor

This new editor sucks. I just want to edit the old way. Please make an option to do this. Sometimes newer is not better. Torturella (talk) 17:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Torturella: That option already exists. Below is a copy of the FAQ that details using the old editor / disabling the visual editor completely:
To continue to edit the wikitext directly, simply click the "Edit source" button instead of "Edit". On section edit links, you can open the classic wikitext editor for that section by clicking "edit source" instead of the regular "edit" link. If you would like to remove VisualEditor from the user interface, then you can go to the Gadgets tab of your Preferences page, check the option "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" in the "Editing" section, and click the Save button near the bottom of the page. (Note that gadgets are community-developed and not supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.)
I hope this helps. besides this, is there anything specific you didn't like about the editor? Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:08, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

save changes

Your save changes popup is so tiny I have to blow up the page 5 times to see what I type. Then I have to do the reverse afterwards. I hate this. Please leave such things alone. It has worked for years. If it aint broke, dont fix it! Torturella (talk) 17:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When you edit this page, there is a big box at the top explaining how to avoid or disable the Visual Editor, if you want to. (The "save changes" popup is a temporary expedient, and will be replaced by something better.) Looie496 (talk) 17:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Save changes/review changes dialogs are not intuitive.

The Save Page bubble/box/dialog thing is really annoying. I wanted to review my changes (as I'm not sure how the visual editor does things yet). I had no idea how to do this, so I clicked "Save page". And then I found the preview changes button...

Even so, this leaves me with an overlay of the diff with the darkened background of the page I was editing. In most content display styled like this, clicking in the darkened area closes what you were doing in the foreground and re-focuses on the main page. This is not the case with the visual editor. This then prompted me to look for "x"s in the top right corners of boxes. As no x's exist, I had to stop completely and look at the entire UI.

It's also not immediately clear that the arrows across the top of the changes preview dialog and save changes dialog exist, nor clear what they do. Commonly "exit dialog" is reflected with an "x" in the top right corner. This is instead, an up arrow.

I understand that this isn't at all confusing once you get used to it. It's a new thing and humans don't like new things. However, my brain is trained to look and act on specific cues on how computers tend to work. Clicking on an unfocused area should focus it. x's close things. Neither currently holds true for the visual editor. -- SnoFox(t|c) 17:25, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Drag-and-drop appears to work, sort of, but doesn't

Drag-and-drop appears to work, but there are oddities about what seems to happen, and in the end the transfer doesn't actually happen.

Demonstration: start with this test page. We will attempt to drag and drop to the bottom of the page the line "L3 header" and the line below it. Strange things happen which I have called "Oddity" rather than "Bug", because I am not sure whether this is supposed to be working yet; if not, it is confusing that it appears to.

1. Select the first L3 header and the line below it by placing the cursor to the left of "L3 header" and dragging down to the left of "Another L3 header" (so as not to leave an unwanted blank line).

2. Place cursor on highlighted area and depress mouse button to "grab". (Oddity 1: cursor does not change shape until you start to drag)

3. Drag selection down to bottom of page. (Oddity 2: the "Another L3 header" line, which was not selected, ceases to be a header)

(Oddity 3: an image of the selection moves, but apart from the line the cursor is on, it is almost invisibly faint)

4. Release the mouse button: the selection appears at the bottom of the page, with formatting correct. (Oddity 4: but it is displaced one indent's worth to the right, and it is not possible to move it left. I think this one may be connected with Bugzilla:50353, inability to put the cursor below the last line of a page.)

5. Try to save the change. {Oddity 5: though it appears to have happened, it hasn't. The "Save page" button is greyed out and inoperative. If you make another change and then undo it, the "Save page" button becomes operative but "Review your changes" produces "Could not start the review because your revision matches the latest version of this page". If you actually make another change, that change happens but the drag-and-drop does not.)

JohnCD (talk) 17:29, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

User-unfriendly terms.

I've been around Wikipedia. I make small edits -- correcting notes that should be a template, moving things to talk pages, fixing typos and stray characters. I know what a transclusion is as I sit and read things about Wikipedia. However, I have never once said "transclusion" in conversation when talking about Wikis. I use the word "template". Everyone I know uses the word "template". It's a simple word and everyone knows what it means.

When mousing over all of the new toolbar icons, the context menus told me what they are. I hovered over all of them and then thought, "Okay now where's the template button?" A few moments later, "Oh, derp. Transclusions."

A new editor or inexperienced editor will never make that association, and will likely (if ever) find out how to add a Citation Needed template by simple trial and error - clicking all the buttons until he get what he wants. -- SnoFox(t|c) 17:42, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That said, I still have yet successfully add a citation needed template, so I'm going to keep working in that.-- SnoFox(t|c) 17:44, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See: Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Replace the term .22transclusion.22 in the Visual_Editor for an ongoing discussion of the "transclusion" issue. Looie496 (talk) 17:47, 11 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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