Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback

To help test the VisualEditor:

Go to any page in the article or user namespaces and click "Edit" instead of "Edit source" – this should open the VisualEditor

Share your feedback

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):

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Frequently asked questions

If you would like to try VisualEditor without editing an article, here is a page where you can freely do so. You don't need an account to use it.

Shortcut

WP:VE/FAQ

Main page
Feedback at MediaWiki
Sandbox (no account required)

About

Why are the developers building this? (2013)
- User Test Data (2013)
Documentation:
Development:
- Roadmap up to 2017
- Updates (2013-2023)
- Weekly status reports (2015-2016)

Help out

Research

Main research page

Other

Customization
Known problems
Requests for Comments (RfCs): Jul 2013 a, Jul 2013 b, Jul 2015, Sep 2015

What is VisualEditor?: VisualEditor is a way to edit pages that looks more like a word processor. It was first offered here in 2013.
How do I enable VisualEditor?: VisualEditor is available alongside the original wikitext editor if you opt-in, by changing your preferences. It is currently not available to unregistered users at the English Wikipedia, unless they switch modes while editing.
Why is this change being made?: Some people who could become productive, experienced members of the community are turned off upon attempting their first edit in wikitext "source" mode. Some edits, such as adding or rearranging columns to a table in wikitext, are difficult even for experienced editors.
Where do I go to learn more about how to use VisualEditor?: Please see the VisualEditor User guide.
Does VisualEditor make automatic fixes to pages?: In most cases, VisualEditor will not change or reformat lines that are not being directly edited. If markup already on the page is handled incorrectly (for example, with tables that are not closed), then it may attempt to correct these.
Will it still be possible to edit articles using wikitext after the visual editor becomes available?: Yes. While the visual editor will become available to all users as an editing environment, a method for editing the underlying wikitext "source" will continue to exist. There are no plans to remove the "Edit source" option.^[1]
Won't this slow down reading and editing for people who have slow connections or computers?: VisualEditor loads the bulk of its code only when you edit a page in the visual editing mode. So if you keep using "Edit source" or are a reader, the effect on your user experience should be negligible (~4KB of additional JavaScript payload before you click "Edit", or about 0.5% of one typical page). Your web browser will typically cache the JavaScript, speeding up future uses even if you are on a slow connection. However, using the visual editor for editing may cause problems for those on slow computers or connections, especially on very large pages. For these users, opting-out for now may be the best option.
I've found an issue with VisualEditor or a feature that is missing. How can I tell you to fix it?: Please report the issue in Phabricator, after first searching exiting tickets to make sure it hasn't been reported already. Additional bug reporting instructions can be found here. There are four main kinds of issues that the developers especially need to hear about:

Something breaks: The failure may only affect a particular type of browser or computer, on a particular page, or after doing something else. Please post your problem at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. In your description, it is helpful to include information about what you were trying to do, your web browser, computer operating system, and a link to the article or a diff of the edit if it was possible for you to save the change.
Performance problems: If all pages seem unexpectedly slow on loading or on performing a particular task, or if it used to be faster and has recently gotten worse, then please report this.
User experience issues: If it didn't make sense, or if it was awkward, or if you couldn't figure out what you needed to do (Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide covers the basics), please speak up, and feel free to offer your suggestions for improving the design.
Missing functionality: Is there something you need to do, but it currently can't be done in VisualEditor, like editing mathematics equations or seeing hidden comments that contain instructions to other editors? Make sure that it's on the developers' list of needed features. If you'd like to know which missing features have been reported before, you can search the talk page archives and feedback archives. If you can't find any reference to the new feature you'd like to suggest, please report it at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Can visual editor be customized ?: Yes, see Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Customization, and mw:VisualEditor gadgets for more advanced customization.
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 wikitext editor selected in your preferences 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 do so.
- If it is a beta feature: go to the Beta tab of your preferences page, untick the checkbox "Visual Editor", and click the Save button near the bottom of the page. (As of 2021, this is how you do it on Meta-Wiki and the Chinese Wikipedia.)
- If the visual editor is already out of beta:
  - go to the Editing tab of your Preferences page, untick the checkbox "⧼visualeditor-preference-betatempdisable⧽", and click the Save button near the bottom of the page. (This is how you do it on some sister Wikipedias, for instance, Russian Wikipedia, as of 2021.)
  - on English Wikipedia, go to the Editing tab of your Preferences page and change the "Editing mode" to "Always give me the source editor"

See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Opt-out for other options.
Can I install VisualEditor on my personal wiki outside Wikimedia?: Yes. The VisualEditor extension is available for download.
Can I use named references like the basic wikicode editor does, so I can choose my own reference names?: This has been requested via Community feedback, and is on the list of things to do. There are some links and more information about this on the Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Named references page.
The FAQ didn't answer my question. Where may I ask it?: You can ask on the central feedback page on mediawiki.org.

Notes

^ <<And no, we're not taking markup-level editing away. Some users may always prefer it over visual editing, even if the exact nature of the markup changes, and even if VisualEditor becomes the best tool it can possibly be.>> Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change, op-ed for Wikipedia Signpost, July 31st, 2013.

Please, leave things the way they are

Not all change is for the betterment of Wikipedia. Enough said. Bwmoll3 (talk) 18:23, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not enough said at all. What specific problems do you have with the VisualEditor? It's going to be deployed at some stage; it is in everyone's interests for people with issues to speak up so we can try to solve for them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Okeyes (WMF). What I'm about to say is not directly for you but to them who are complaining here. I wish people could be more open with VE as it surely brings new editors who have avoided editing because they are not into codes and stuff. I wish people would not attack each other when they first see some changes. I've been a member of a game community for over 5 years and have done nothing but found and reported bugs. I used to enjoy the game until it turned out to be full time job and yet I didn't walk away. Over five years I've been struggling with the game, with its old version, beta version and now with a new version. Surely it's been exhausting but as I said I didn't walk away even though we had no chances of editing old-fashioned style and new-fashioned style as people can do in wikipedia. We only have got one style for editing and it's a lot worse than what happening here. Old editors here can use old-fashioned style for editing and yet they are complaining when you guys are trying to make this more user friendly for people who have knowledge but have no time or interest of learning all codes, as Pointillist mentioned below. Feedback is always welcome but being hostile for changes that really don't take anything off but give more tools for more people is not constructive. It's not polite to belittle newcomers. Also I have been screaming for many things and changes in my game community and in life generally but it doesn't mean I need to be mean when something happens. If people rather have this hostile attitude over VE towards other people even they have no reasons for that, you can be sure that newcomers don't join this community and leave you all in peace for doing what ever you were doing before VE, even though it would mean that they also take knowledge with them. If old editors here know all about everything, who needs new editors and their knowledge in this perfect community. Any of you have been novice once but obviously don't want to remember that. It's time to remind that we have to start somewhere as you once did. If you think that you can make wikipedia by yourself and don't need more people and knowledge here, so be it, but I have learnt long time ago that there's no such thing as perfect people. No offense but these comments here make me wonder if I wanted to do anything with wikipedia. But as I'm not doing anything much in English wikipedia, I don't need to read these negative comments, unless I'm looking for some help here. I really wish people could take things as they are, especially when there's no reason for crying out loud. The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on. And pardon my French. ;) AniaKallio (talk) 09:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, AnniaKallio :). I...don't have anything additional to add, because I think you've said it all! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:12, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We've been screaming for a Visual Editor for literally years. If you say "whoah, let's halt this" now, no-one will listen, and quite rightly. The VE is almost usable enough for a serious workout ... that magical point where software becomes usable enough to seriously beta for bugs - David Gerard (talk) 19:56, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think there is any doubt about the strategic importance of having a full-featured, stable Visual Editor that inexperienced editors can use to make contributions without great risk of damaging existing articles. As I see it, the majority of concerns being expressed here are about deploying the current solution too widely too soon. It's a question of what&when, not whether. - Pointillist (talk) 21:10, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm not sanguine about this being ready for a July release. It's so near serious beta status, though ... I'll whinge about it here, with diffs, because I want it to get better real quick ... I've been tending to do a simple edit, create a diff that's been crapped all over, then revert and post the bad edit here, 'cos that's the best way I can think of to get attention to the problems - David Gerard (talk) 21:22, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mmm, I agree, except that real quick angle. IMO that's not really how software gets fixed. There's a small development team for VE and it looks as though the implications of editing complex pages completely safely weren't sufficiently explored by the business. It'll take time to get this right, and I doubt that Okeyes (WMF)'s recent promises to "kick the developers" are going to help. - Pointillist (talk) 21:50, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's the popular pages, which tend to have the insanely complicated wikitext, which the n00bs will hit first. I'm sure it'll be popcorn all round - David Gerard (talk) 22:37, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is the problem with WMF lately. Trying to kick things to impose their will instead of working through rough consensus. The WMF tries to run things through Meta which few people check for long due to the lack of integrated watchlists. Then the WMF tries to use "a small development team for VE" instead of what is needed, a massive development team. When the WMF finally realizes after years of work that the poorly-funded VE team may actually have something almost usable it tries to rush it through real testing on English Wikipedia.

Then the VE team gets inundated with genuine, non-ass-kissing feedback from busy editors who aren't part of the cliques at Meta and WMF. So this is the real world of English Wikipedia where no prisoners are taken. Get used to it, WMF. Or you may alienate more active editors by imposing a half-finished product.

This really is a good product if both source code editing of sections, and VE editing of sections, can both be used at anytime without having to go through preferences. That is being worked on (see bugzilla:48429). Lots of things need to be fixed, but the basic product looks good. Much better than Wikia's visual editor. But fixing all the problems will take time, and this beta should not be made the default for registered editors until the problems are fixed. Now that registered editors can opt in to VE the problems will continually be pointed out and fixed. And no one will be forced to use VE during this beta period. VE will not mess up thousands of pages if it is not prematurely made the default. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:38, 16 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So, let me just correct some assumptions here. The WMF isn't using a small development team - by Foundation standards, it's a very large development team. We've currently got eight people assigned to the project, seven of them devs (which seems the right ratio to me, at least). The WMF isn't running things through Meta, it's running things in parallel on multiple wikis - I can't help but feel that it's somewhat silly to poke a WMF staffer to pay attention to your thread, on enwiki, on the enwiki VE feedback page, which the staffer monitors, as part of a suite of pages on enwiki set up by the VE team....to tell the staffer that things are being run through meta.

If you think we're not aware that the enwiki community is a "real world" community, I invite you to take a look at my userpage and tell me that the people running this launch don't know what they're doing. Then take a look at my boss's. Following this, I invite you to come back and offer the feedback you have in a tone that doesn't imply you think we're all idiots. We're not expecting ass-kissing; we're expecting basic politeness. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:00, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It has obviously not been a large enough development team over time if it has taken this long to get this far. To say otherwise is delusional. A visual editor has been desired for many, many years. Much discussion about many major development projects in the past in my experience has been through Meta. Other venues have been used too. The major feedback discussion about the visual editor in practice on Wikipedia has only occurred relatively recently, and it is being rushed through incredibly fast lately. If you are asking whether I think some of the WMF staff are idiots, you are baiting and trolling.

You did not address the point from me and others in this thread about this being rushed through lately. Pointillist asks: "As I see it, the majority of concerns being expressed here are about deploying the current solution too widely too soon. It's a question of what&when, not whether." He also wrote: "There's a small development team for VE and it looks as though the implications of editing complex pages completely safely weren't sufficiently explored by the business." --Timeshifter (talk) 10:28, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The technical complexities of any VisualEditor are vast. While it has been discussed for many years, that is very different from it being developed for many years. Development only began around two years ago (actually, taking into account the Parsoid team - we've got 12 developers, not 7. Certainly the biggest team I've seen here). Much discussion has occured on Meta in your experience, I'm sure - but this is not the case for the VisualEditor, or Page Curation, or AFT5, or Echo, or the mobile team's work, to my knowledge, or... etc, etc, etc. I haven't seen meta used as a primary discussion venue for major software since I joined the Foundation, almost two years ago. And if you think Meta is somewhere that the Foundation gets ass-kissing, I'd ask if you've ever seen the sort of people who tend to edit on Meta ;p.

To address your core point: yes, we're developing quickly - that's not a timetable set by me (or anyone else on the team), but it's a timetable we're going to do our best to adhere to while also doing our best to avoid deploying a bad product. There are a lot of bugs with the VE at the moment, some major, some minor, and the community-facing staffers are working closely with the development team to get them resolved, and to make clear what bugs are (from our point of view) blockers to any deployment. I have hope that these bugs will be fixed before any deployment takes place. Should new ones crop up during, for example, the A/B test, on such a scale as to totally disrupt editing for VE users and non-VE users, we retain the ability to disable the VE very quickly. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I discuss the technical aspects in the next talk section.

I don't want to belabor a point, but if the visual editor has only been worked on for 2 years, then it is worse than I thought. Wikia worked on it longer, and people have been asking about it on Wikipedia almost since Wikipedia was first started. Also, I wonder how many of the people working on VE have been working on it full-time. And when did they move from working on it part-time to working on it more. People have often asked the WMF to hire more development staff instead of the other staff they hire. I know I have. There are so many major features that have been requested over the years.

As for Meta, I use Meta as my all-around generalization for WMF discussing things away from Wikipedia. Whether feedback occurs through MediaWiki.org or Bugzilla or Meta or Strategy or other wikis they are all places ignored for the most part by regular editors due to the lack of integrated watchlists. MediaWiki.org uses the much-hated LiquidThreads for its talk pages. So it has 2 strikes against it being used much by regular Wikipedia editors for feedback. Bugzilla is even more difficult for regular editors to use and keep up with. It took me a long time to figure out how to use it somewhat effectively. I even researched and wrote a lot of how-to tips at WP:Bugzilla. You and I both act as interfaces between regular editors and developers, and between regular editors and the WMF board/staff. But the real solution in my opinion is to move most WMF and developer feedback to locations with watchlists that more people use: English Wikipedia and/or the Commons. --Timeshifter (talk) 11:28, 17 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm certain much work has gone into this, however, I suggest that you have an "opt out" option. I've been on Wikipedia for over 7 years and have over 120,000 edits and have written several thousand new articles.

Honestly, I haven't heard a massive cry from the user community about the need for a visual editor. Nevertheless, I subscribe to the Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) philosophy when it comes to change and "making things better". I'm quite happy, thank you, with the current editor as it gives me maximum flexibility to edit and create articles without having to experience the problematic issues that seem to be well-documented by other Wikipedians (above) in this discussion.

If Visual Editor is designed for new editors, then that's all well and good. However, for the experienced editors here, I'd be quite happy with the old, antiquated, simple editor I've been using the past seven + years. I just don't see any advantage of going though a leaning curve to learn new software that, in the end, will force a learning curve and in the end, do exactly what we're doing now with the existing editor that is quite simple to use, is extremely flexible and quite adequate. Just a few thoughts. Bwmoll3 (talk) 08:39, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Brent,

At this point, there are absolutely no plans at all to turn off the classic wikitext editor for anyone. You don't need to opt out of VE to get what you're used to. You just need to click the [Edit source] button, which will always^[1] be on every editable page. Or, to put it another way, there's no way to opt out of the classic wikitext editor. Everyone will have access to both.

^ For values of always that may be somewhat shorter than the WP:DEADLINE, but are longer than the next couple of years.

If what you want is a way to hide any reminder that VE even exists from yourself, rather than simply choosing not to use it, then let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 24 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE for new editors

I'm looking forward to VE because it'll make it possible to introduce friends and family to the joys of editing (and wasting hours trying to find sources for articles). When Everything is Working Properly™ I'm going to encourage my brother, sister, father and father-in-law to get started here. They've each got domain-specific knowledge, good writing skills and I know the retired parents have time to spare. If all our experienced editors were to recruit and induct a couple of new editors each, the project would get an enormous boost. That's the central benefit of the Visual Editor IMO. - Pointillist (talk) 10:25, 20 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An excellent point :). You know, I've been genuinely impressed by how willing so many community members are to open their minds around the VisualEditor. Sometimes I'll be working on software and it'll be a bit controversial, or not aimed at experienced editors, and a user will just suddenly turn up and blow me away with a well-reasoned argument for why this is A Good Thing, even if it's not something they'd use. With the VisualEditor, that seems to be happening daily. My barnstar button is looking rather worn. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do agree that VE will be useful in attracting new editors, but I strongly believe that there should still be an opt-out option (excuse my repetition) for VE for pre-VE editors who do not prefer the new change, even after VE is out of development stages. smileguy91^talk 23:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Opening 'Edit' in new tab disabled for everyone

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51993

Is VisualEditor the reason why Edit links are blocked via JavaScript from opening in a new tab? This has been the case for the past few weeks, only on the English Wikipedia, only for Edit links (e.g. not History links), and of course only when JavaScript is enabled.

If this bug has been introduced by the VisualEditor changes, it should be fixed for editors not using VisualEditor. --pmj (talk) 23:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not having trouble opening either editor in a new tab, including section edit links, even with Javascript enabled. –Thatotherperson (talk/contribs) 02:42, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, this seems to work fine for me whether VisualEditor is turned off or on, or whether I am logged in or out. Maybe Thatotherperson and I are too Other to notice the problem!

In all seriousness, which browser are you using? — This, that and the other (talk) 02:58, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting. Browsers affected (English Wikipedia only; VisualEditor not enabled):

Firefox on Linux (logged in)
Chromium on Linux (not logged in)

Browsers not affected:

Firefox on Windows (not logged in)
Internet Explorer on Windows (not logged in)

Everything works fine on several other language Wikipedias. Any idea what to make of this? Have there been changes to the way the Edit links work recently? --pmj (talk) 12:47, 22 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

User:Thatotherperson and User:This, that and the other, are either of you using the same combination of browsers and OSes as User:Pmj? It may not have anything to do with VisualEditor, but anyone with a (free) Bugzilla account can report other bugs, too. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:43, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox on Windows and possibly other ones. I don't have access to Linux to test.

Just to be clear, Pmj, how are you attempting to open the Edit screen in a new tab? Ctrl+click? Middle-click? Right-click and "open in new tab"? etc? — This, that and the other (talk) 09:53, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 21, Windows 7, logged in, VE enabled. Just from looking at Pmj's list, it appears Linux would be the obvious suspect.
Thatotherperson (talk/contribs) 10:05, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Under Linux, neither middle-clicking nor Ctrl-clicking opens a new tab, while selecting 'Open Link in New Tab' from the right-click context does. When the edit link in this page is middle-clicked, the browser for some reason requests the following URI (some values redacted):

https://bits.wikimedia.org/event.gif?{"event":{"version":0,"action":"edit-link-click","editor":"wikitext","pageId":37904286,"pageNs":4,"pageName":"Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback","pageViewSessionId":"[redacted]","revId":561492441,"userId":[redacted]},"clientValidated":true,"revision":5570274,"schema":"Edit","webHost":"en.wikipedia.org","wiki":"enwiki"};

This fails with a 204 No Content error from the server, after which the browser proceeds to request the edit page and load it in the same tab. This round trip produces a slight pause between clicking and page load, which is also not present under Windows.

Presumably this issue doesn't appear under Windows because middle-click historically has a different significance in Unix-like operating systems. But the real question is, why is this edit-link-click event bound to the Edit button for a non-VisualEditor user? --pmj (talk) 10:36, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We've got devs looking into it now :). Thanks for surfacing this bug! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I recommend you mention the edit-link-click event in the Bugzilla ticket, to give the developers a head start in their investigation. --pmj (talk) 22:24, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

~~This is fixed now.~~ Thanks again! --pmj (talk) 01:16, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarrely, this is only fixed for middle-click; Ctrl-click still exhibits the incorrect behaviour of opening the edit page in the same tab after a brief delay. --pmj (talk) 03:01, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Opting out

Hi, How do you opt out from this Visual Editor? I like the current editing system a lot. --Bogu Slav 07:04, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There will be an "Edit source" button you can use to access the old editor. –Thatotherperson (talk/contribs) 07:17, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is the current way to not use it. Once VisualEditor is turned on as default, you can go to your preferences and under the editing options turn off VisualEditor, just as right now you can select to turn it on. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or use one of the many browsers that are currently not supported, such as Opera.... Personally I still think this is being rushed far too quickly. Dsergeant (talk) 06:07, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are they not going to give us both buttons? I thought making VE the default simply meant everyone would have two edit buttons.
Thatotherperson (talk/contribs) 07:10, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm interested to see where Keegan is getting this information from. As far as I can tell, wikitext editing will remain available indefinitely. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure. @Keegan:, Thatotherperson's advice is actually correct :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Don't mind me sometimes, I'm new :) I misread the question. Edit source is not going away. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:40, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How to opt out needs to be clearly explained on the information page. It took me a lot of searching to figure it out. Preferences > Gadgets > under Editing, check/tick "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface". It is not at Preferences > Editing, where one would expect it. Yngvadottir (talk) 02:01, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Text appearing behind infobox / behaviour after editing

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52181

VisualEditor is improving a lot and in general I now prefer using it to editing the wikitext, so that's a huge step forward. I'm really looking forward to the instructions on how to use TemplateData so that we can get template parameters displaying in VE. A couple of issues I've noticed lately:

In VE infoboxes tend to sit on top of the text rather than the text wrapping around the infobox. As such you can't edit the text underneath (or you can, but you can't see what you're doing!)
When I first navigate to an article page and click any of the section edit links, VE opens. After making a change in VE, if I then click on one of the section edit links, I get the old wikitext edit box. Similarly javascript tools (notably WP:POPUPS) don't seem to work after saving an edit in VE.

Sorry if these are already known issues. WaggersTALK 07:50, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you give an example of the first one? (testing the second now). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Second now listed in Bugzilla :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:56, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Waggers, in addition to the name of an article where you found the first problem, it might be useful to know which browser you're using and which operating system. Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:41, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I'm using Chrome (version 27.0.1453.116) on Windows XP. It certainly seems to happen on Borough of Eastleigh and some VERY strange things are happening when I load the Southampton article in VE. I think it's something to do with the image_map parameter of {{Infobox settlement}}. WaggersTALK 07:27, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Having played a bit more, it's not image_map specifically but there definitely seems to be something odd when there's an image in the infobox. WaggersTALK 07:50, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just {{Infobox settlement}}? Is it happening on other pages with other info boxes that contain images? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:15, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is, it seems to happen with any page with an infobox containing an image that is wider than the infobox would be if it didn't contain the image. WaggersTALK 19:14, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52416

I see what you mean. The opposite happens at an article like Leukemia, where it seems to think everything should be skinnier than default. I have just created a Bugzilla account and filed this as my first bug. (I hope I did it right!) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:35, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. The developers have closed that as a duplicate, and claim the duplicate bug is resolved. Certainly things look better at Southampton but the problem is still occurring both there and at Borough of Eastleigh. WaggersTALK 09:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's supposed to be the same problem as Template:Bugzilla. Southampton is still screwed up for me. I'm not sure how to interpret this comment, which seems to say that it both hasn't deployed and that it already deployed. It might be one of those things that's fixed in the code but hasn't quite reached us. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 10:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Creating a new article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52180

When I create a whole new article with VE, when I click on the "preview your changes" I get a very weird page that it's not easy to go through it. I know it's not possible to have a comparing page with the previous one since it doesn't exist but that kind of page makes it difficult for me to check the article. I don't know how to describe the page and I don't know if that's how it was supposed to look. Just try to copy an existing article and paste it to a totally new page (no need to save it) just to see what I mean. Thanks TeamGale (talk) 13:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh, that's interesting; let me try it at my end. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that is...not particularly helpful :P. I've tracked it in Bugzilla; thanks for reporting the interesting bug! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:53, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome :) Hope it gets fix. TeamGale (talk) 16:45, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry if I am bothering but, any news on that subject? Thanks again for everything TeamGale (talk) 08:22, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's fine! So, latest update; what we're hoping to build over the next couple of months is HTML-based review, so instead of getting weird wikimarkup you'll get shown a "this is what your article will look like" render - almost a preview. That's some time off right now, however :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:25, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh! That's amazing! Can't wait to see it! Personally I am patient so, I don't mind waiting...I know you have many things to work on and it's not easy. I can deal with the one that exists now till the new feature arrives :) Thanks for the update! TeamGale (talk) 10:51, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the point of that; a WYSIWYG editor should already show you "what your article will look like" without having to hit preview. The review-your-changes step only seems useful as a way to review the changes you've made to the code. Will it still be an option to review your changes as a markup diff, or will we simply have to use the markup editor for that?

Thatotherperson ^talk
Thatotherperson contribs 09:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. I keep getting edit conflicts on this page even though the other edits weren't in the same section. Not sure what's up with that.

Thatotherperson ^talk
Thatotherperson contribs 09:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Table/Template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52361

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52423

When I am trying to edit anything on the table/template that exists on this page, even if that is a simple typo, it gives me the notification:
→Cite error: There are ref tags on this page, but the references will not show without a reflist template. (See help page)
First, why is this happening and second, it's obvious that the page does have a reflist. Same happens to all the table/templates that are like this one. TeamGale (talk) 23:19, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We just patched referencing; can you try again and see what happens? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just tried it again...same thing happens :( Is this not happening to you if try to change something? TeamGale (talk) 23:37, 25 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nope, now happening for me too :(. I'll throw it in Bugzilla. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And now I can't edit references or templates at all. @TeamGale:, can you try editing the above article? Does it seem...screwy. To you? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK. The same thing as I said at the very beginning still happens with the table. Nothing changed. When I edit it, the notification appears so for now the only way to do it is with the "edit source" road.

For the references, I am not sure what you mean by saying that you can't edit them. Can't edit the old ones or can't add a new one? I can do both. What I noticed though is that when I clicked in an "old" ref to edit it, the text on the ref box appeared as a template so I had to click on it and edit it as template. I have to say that's something I was thinking to ask to be added on VE but, I see that it's already there. It took me 20min to discover how to do it after watching it but, I finally found it! :D

I am not sure if that's what you were asking. If the Q was if I could edit the article, table or refs, the answer is yes, except from the table that was the original problem TeamGale (talk) 14:59, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to say that this issue still exists. Can't edit with VE this type of templated because of the error that appears after the edit TeamGale (talk) 08:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Darn. Can you give me an example of a specific tweak I could make to replicate? I've found an error, but... Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...I don't think is something specific because if I try to edit anything on a table like the one above, even if it's just one letter, I get the error notice in red letters...if you can explain me how to post a screencap, I might be able to show you what I mean better. If you try to edit the table, you are not getting that notice? TeamGale (talk) 10:40, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am. I'm not 100% sure it's a bug - it's a valid warning when there isn't a way to expand refs on the page, but there is at the bottom. That said, it certainly is confusing. In spite of the warning, I was still able to save the change (beyound -> beyond). TeamGale, are you trying to complete the edit after you change the template? The template editor subpage does not save the change - you have to click "Save Page" still at the top. Apologies if you knew that and it didn't work for you. :)

Meanwhile, while I managed to correct the typo, I am not at all happy with its decision to move episode 9 to the top of the list ([1]). Checking to see if this is a known issue. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:04, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now tracking :). Not a known issue, but an important one! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm...to be honest, after getting that notice I never tried to save the page because I didn't want to "damage" the table. I was clicking cancel and was going the old way to make my edits. But it seems that what VE does after saving, is way more interesting. TeamGale (talk) 15:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Always save a bad VE edit, so you can post it here - you can always revert yourself straight after - David Gerard (talk) 16:28, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I'll have that in mind from now on :) TeamGale (talk) 20:53, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dashes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52296

Is there any way to add dashes (— –) using VisualEditor? Thanks. Epicgenius^{(talk to me • see my contributions)} 15:34, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was wondering the same thing. I use Ubuntu which has a "---" emdash shortcut, but it would be nice to have a special characters panel for Windows users.—Love, Kelvinsong talk 15:54, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not to my knowledge, but it should. Sticking it in. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:06, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is important - the WP:MOS is fussy about hyphens, en-dashes and em-dashes. JohnCD (talk) 20:23, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, as am I. Many is the time I've confused the two and regretted it at GAN. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:08, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Mac users can do this easily from the keyboard. Is Windows still using the "type the special numeric code" system that they were using twenty years ago? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:38, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we Windows users do still have the Alt+number thing (a MS-DOS holdover, I think). We may as well not have it, though, since it is exceedingly rare for non-power users to know about it. — This, that and the other (talk) 10:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox inside infobox + links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52355

If someone wants to edit an infobox that is included in another one, is there a way to do it?
Plus, while making a template with parameters or editing one that already exists, when I want to add a wiki link in the description of one parameter, I have to use the brackets to do it. Any chance in the future to be able to do it in the template the way VE does it on the main article? Thank you TeamGale (talk) 16:45, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good questions both :). I'll ask about the second - can you give an example of the first? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Go to this page and try to edit the infobox of the episode. The parameter "Season list" is concisted by another infobox. Is there a way to edit that infobox if I want to change something on it? TeamGale (talk) 18:41, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ooh. Excellent scenario! I'm going to fling it in Bugzilla now :). I'm not quite sure what the resolution is, here, but I've thrown it in as bug 50355. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much! I didn't want to "edit" something on the second infobox but, a what if... came to my mind when I saw it :) Hope the wiki links issue can be fixed too. Thanks again for everything you are doing. We really appreciate it. TeamGale (talk) 10:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And thank you for the attitude you (and many others, I must say) are bringing to the VisualEditor. It's a genuine pleasure to come to work each morning; this is probably the smoothest and most on-the-point deployment process I've ever been involved in. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:13, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You and all the people who work on VE, are trying to bring us something more helpful and easier to work with. Reporting something that we see and it might need improve is the least we can do to help. Especially when you are so patient and polite with all of us. :) TeamGale (talk) 10:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am not certain that {{Infobox Modern Family season four episode list}} is actually an WP:INFOBOX, despite its name. To edit it, you go to Template:Infobox Modern Family season four episode list. This is true in both the old and new editing systems. WP:Transcluded templates (or transcluded non-templates) have always been edited from the original page, not from the multiple pages that they are transcluded into. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am aware of this. I just gave it as an example to explain what I meant. But if there was a transcluded template inside it (the ones we can edit on the original page) how would we do it? Can we? :)

And since you mentioned it, with the "markup" we could find infoboxes after we were clicking "edit" at the bottom of the page. Is there a place we can find them now after clicking "edit" with VE? And just a thought...why we can't edit them on the original page like templates? I am just wondering. TeamGale (talk) 13:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Subst and template data

I've started to read the documentation about adding Template Data. One question: will it work for subst'd templates? Or will typing "Subst:L" in the template name box ignore any information about the parameters?

Have I got this right, that it is impossible at present to add more than one parameter to a template if it doesn't have this "Template Data" info? And we're rolling this out as the default editor within days? Not good. PamD 16:58, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, you can list all the parameters; what TemplateData means is that instead of getting "1" or "2" or "colwidth" or something, you'll get an actual descriptive name for each parameter, and a description of what the parameter is for. The infobox here is a good demonstration. I'm honestly not sure about substitution; I'll ask :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've just asked; you can Subst:foo, yep. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just can't see how to do it: if I want to add, say, a hatnote like (ie {{about|something|something else|elsewhere}}), how do I do so? I can add one parameter, numbered as "1", but then can't see how to add a second. I tried adding them all in one go (ie typed "something|something else|elswhere" as parameter 1), the result was (ie {{about|<nowiki>something|something else|elswhere}}</nowiki>).

Guidance, please! PamD 18:19, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Addressed below (terribly sorry about the problems/inconsistencies here :(.) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to add that they're getting some of these problems fixed. We've gone from about 5% of VE edits having some sort of problem down to 2% recently. (We're all looking forward to 0%, of course.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 09:42, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Correcting typos

It would be helpful to have key mapping for correcting certain common typos, e.g.,

Flip case
Lower case
Transpose
Upper Case

Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:28, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is the sort of thing where most operating systems provide key bindings; on windows, it's Shift+Letter, for example. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the user wants some kind of "change case" tool (e.g. change a passage of uppercase text to lowercase). The existing wikitext editor doesn't have this, but I suppose it could be nice to have it in VE. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Plausibly but, well, operating systems tend to cover this indirectly :/. Given the number of bugs/necessary enhancements I can't promise this is something we'll work on, now or in the near future. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editors for operating systems may have tools for manipulating case, but not for altering the case of data maintained by an application. Are you suggesting cutting the text, pasting it into an external editor window, changing the case, cutting and pasting the text back? That would work, but seems rather clumsy. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:15, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm saying that most keyboards have a shift or caps-lock key which OSes (and the VisualEditor) interpret as changing the case. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Or, in plain English, you're saying that if an editor encounters "tHIS IS THE WAY THE COOKIE CRUMBLES" in an article, then he should just re-type it from scratch rather than solving the problem by clicking a button.

This isn't a bug, but it would IMO be a nice feature enhancement to request for "someday". Perhaps it would be worth filing the request at Bugzilla. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:28, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The shift and caps-lock keys have an effect when you are typing; they cannot correct the case of text that has already been typed. Two of the editors that I use on a daily basis have case translation facilities, and I make heavy use of them. I doubt that I'm the only one that periodically accidently hits Caps Lock instead of Shift. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:43, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's easy to bump the caps-lock key (although I find that aiming for the tab key, rather than shift, is when I bump it). I also think it would be helpful for times when you're copying and pasting titles from sources, which sometimes use all-caps.

We could file a request for an enhancement. The only thing we can promise is that it won't happen any time soon, as fixing existing problems is obviously a higher priority than adding handy features. Would you like someone to do that? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 06:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Special characters

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52296

It is awkward to enter special characters with the current editor. I would like to see a facility in VE to allow selecting characters from displayed Unicode pages as well as by typing their Unicode names. In additional, I would like a facility to automatically change certain characters to character attributes, e.g., []. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:36, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep; already in bugfzilla, the first bit. What's the use case for the second? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:58, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Unicode names would allow easier navigation in the situation where you know the Unicode name but not the code point.

What about the suggestion for converting problematic characters to character attributes? It's awkward to type, e.g., &#91&#93, in contexts where wiki would otherwise interpret [] as having syntactic significance. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 13:45, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor doesn't normally interpret anything as having syntactic significance (see, e.g., half a dozen complaints that typing [[something]] gets nowiki'ed rather than producing a link). You can already type text with single square brackets around it without doing anything special. Here is an example. Did you have something else in mind? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:34, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As an example, if I ask VE to insert a {{cite manual}} with page=37[41], will VE escape the [ and ]? Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 18:54, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you try to insert it as raw text, yes, along with the braces and pipes. If you try to insert it as a template, using the reference editor, no. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Edit and edit source links so confusing I had to disable Visual Editor in preferences

I disabled Visual Editor (VE) in preferences today due to constantly clicking the "edit" link instead of the "edit source" link. I am talking about section editing.

I almost always prefer editing with the source editor since I make frequent edits to tables, images, navboxes, and reference formatting. All at a deep level of formatting, placement, etc..

But since the source editing link only shows up after unintuitively mousing over the edit link I am constantly clicking the wrong link. So you have lost another beta tester. A good one too since I have written many comments and bug reports about VE here and in Bugzilla.

It would be better to use an icon for the "edit source" links for sections. For ideas:

commons:User:Timeshifter/Sandbox 10

The images below are all SVG except these:

(at native size of 23px).
(at native size of 23px).
(at native size of 22px).

15px:

20px:

25px:

30px: --Timeshifter (talk) 19:01, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate it's not immediately intuitive - I think that's always going to be the case for a subset of users with, well, any design. Icons are, I suspect, something that the community (at least on enwiki) would object to, and something that is very different from every other element of the interface, making them appear rather odd. If you look at the button below "enable the VisualEditor" in your preferences you will see there is an option to restore the old 'edit source' links as 'edit', without any mousing over; this is better than losing a beta tester, obviously. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See: Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. Currently there are no more options listed after "Enable VisualEditor".

There are many icons used constantly on Wikipedia. Look at the editing toolbar in the edit window. Look at the top of the page at the star used to add and remove the page from one's watchlist.

Mousing over a similar, but incorrect, link to be able to click on another link is not intuitive. It is confusing. Many people might adapt to it kind of like adapting to cheap chairs. :) But that does not make something intuitive that is inherently non-intuitive and illogical.

"edit source" can show up after mousing over the icon. That is much more intuitive. Just like mousing over the watchlist star at the top of the page.

This could drive away many editors. Anonymous editors especially. They have no ability to fix the problem by turning off visual editor in preferences. Many anonymous editors just do not like to log in, and are very used to editing in source editor. Some will be very irritated by the confusing clicking. --Timeshifter (talk) 19:35, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of the examples you've given, one of them (and it's a fairly tiny icon) is present in the reader-facing interface, which is what we're talking about here. I have serious concerns, as do others, that there would be understandable and substantial pushback from the community on introducing the icon, which would undermine any utility it provides since said utility is based on people accepting it. If you're interested in convincing us that this is worth pursuing, I invite you to start up a wider discussion about whether an icon would work better than the existing link. Again, I would ask for a citation on your statements about the habits of anonymous users. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:45, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I read what others write since I started editing Wikipedia in 2005. That is the citation. You can choose to ignore me, brush off my concerns, or otherwise pooh-pooh my complaints. You do this a lot concerning many complaints on this page. Your lack of respect in many cases, and true engagement in many cases, is an example of why many people dislike some of the WMF board members and staff.

I have seen your type of response many times on Wikia when we brought up the numerous problems with their visual editor. And so that visual editor remains unused by many, if not most, regular editors. Even worse this visual editor is now similar to that visual editor in that regular editors will have to disable it in order to be able to edit effectively. Wikia refused to provide an option to put the source editor tab on top of the visual editor tab. So people had to do a multi-stage process for every single edit in order to get to the source editor. Click edit, then wait tediously for visual editor to load, then click the source tab. For every edit...

Similar to here now. I have to use a multi-stage process to get to the source editor. Aim at "edit" link or the line it is on, mouse over that "edit" link or line, aim better if necessary, wait for "edit source" link to show up, move mouse over to that link, click. Many times I accidentally, or by habit, click the edit link, and then have to click the back button, and start over.

Here is a possible icon method. "Edit source" tooltip can show up after mousing over the icon. And the small icon can have a transparent left and right border that makes the area wider for mousing over. So people will have no problem understanding that the icon is an "edit source" link. The visible part of the icon will be small, similar in size to the watchlist star at the top of pages. But the clickable part would extend to the left and right a bit to allow easier clicking. --Timeshifter (talk) 23:03, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry you feel that my attitude is one of "brushing-off" complaints; I'd like to think that with the vast majority of issue reports I've been polite and reported them to the devs, who have ideally solved for the problems. But, here's the situation; my gut says that actually this is a pretty good implementation. The users here seem to agree - I see two contributors negative about it, three positive, which might not sound good but given the community's almost legendary capacity to speak up when it feels annoyed (and stay silent when it's comfortable with a decision) this would seem to suggest that people are generally okay with the change. My gut also says that the community is likely to be annoyed by an icon popping up in the middle of article text. I'm not brushing you off, I'm making a legitimate offer, here - demonstrate that this sort of iconography is something that the community wants or alternately is comfortable with, via a village pump discussion or any mechanism you choose, and I'll raise it to the developers. If you're not willing or able to do that all I can go on is the data I have in front of me, which, given the lack of shouting, strongly suggests most people are totally fine with it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

People shouldn't have to shout for you to listen. SHOUTING is frowned upon on Wikipedia. Several people in bugzilla:49666 also dislike multi-stage methods of getting to a link. It is clunky and wastes time. Anything that wastes editor time is a bad thing. The point of a visual editor is to get more editing done. It is hoped that it will make basic text editing and reference editing simpler for newbs. Making editing more difficult for more experienced editors is a bad idea. There are many experienced editors who do not log in. We can not afford to further erode the number of people who are editing. Nor can we afford anything that lessens the efficiency of editing.

Wikia's corporate execs and staff screwed up many things on Wikia, especially the visual editor. They had their gut feelings, and they have often been wrong. What is about execs and staff in organizations? I thing it has to do with groupthink, and the fear of telling the boss they are full of it on certain issues. So problems get glossed over, up and down the chain of command. Your gut feeling about icons is just that, a gut feeling. I highly doubt that anyone will edit less often, or edit less efficiently, because of an icon, or even a direct text link to "edit source". I am happy with either one. --Timeshifter (talk) 10:42, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not saying people have to shout at me, or that they should, just that they regularly do. If you think shouting is frowned upon you've clearly not seen many of the discussions around controversial software changes. I'm not a corporate exec - heck, I'm barely staff (short-term contractors ftw) - I'm a long-term editor and sysop who, my bosses will confirm, is perfectly willing to tell said bosses they're full of it. On this, however, I don't think they are. My gut feeling is, indeed, a gut feeling - the same is true of yours. Again, if you want to start a discussion and demonstrate that this is a wider problem than the evidence suggests, I will move forward. The alternative is that you're asking us to put our energies into a tweak with little evidence to show it is necessary. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I also dislike the new rollover system. The extra step is not justified by minor aesthetic concerns. If you want the buttons to look less in-the-way, I would suggest moving them back to the far right side of the page rather than hiding one of them. Speaking of which, if you set your account preferences to force the edit buttons back over to the right, you end up with an edit button floating about an inch to the left of where it should be and a big blank space waiting to display the edit source button.

Thatotherperson ^talk
Thatotherperson contribs 03:36, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeek, that's a pretty problematic bug. What's the preference switch in question? I can't seem to find it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it's actually a user gadget (Gadgets → Appearance → Move section [edit] links to the right side of the screen) so that's probably the issue, but I would still suggest moving the buttons over there as the default. I thought I remembered it being the default at one point, actually. Also, to be fair, it's not actually causing any problems in terms of functionality; it just looks really stupid.

Thatotherperson ^talk
Thatotherperson contribs 08:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can I suggest a compromise? How about there be a setting in the Preferences that determines which edit link is shown first and which is hidden, make the [source edit] default for all existing users, and make the [visual edit] link default for all new accounts created after it's implemented. The next time a user opens an edit window, they would receive a "setup prompt" that would ask them "which editor do you want to set as your default?", which could be saved as a cookie for IPs and saved as a user preference for users.

Also, those icons are hideous from a design standpoint, and could probably be represented with unicode and CSS. Maybe

[[ ]]

—Love, Kelvinsong talk 13:58, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A good suggestion, but it sounds potentially finnicky and raises some philosophical questions (do we include a preferences switch for everything anyone could object to? If so, what do we do about the implication that we then support that outcome? How do we avoid doing this in a way that hinders future development?). In my experience if people are legitimately peeved by this they're liable to write a CSS hack that solves for the problem anyway. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:02, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's important for mobile users, where the hover state doesn't exist. In fact, I just tested on my iPhone, and it is impossible to use the source editor.—Love, Kelvinsong talk 14:12, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but we're building a distinct and proper mobile setup as we speak, so hopefully the need to jury-rig the desktop interface on a mobile phone will go away. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:22, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okeyes. We should solve as many problems as possible for as many people as possible. That is my answer to your question: "do we include a preferences switch for everything anyone could object to?" Or we use better designs where possible so that preference switches are not necessary. See talk section below for the reasoning:

#Monthly number of edits will continue its downward slide since 2007

I think that Oliver's suggestion of a regular community discussion on this point, perhaps at WP:VPR, is a good one. Since this seems to be more "irritating" than "desperately busted", there's no immediate rush here, so it could be held whenever anyone wants to start it. (If it's soon, then perhaps a link here would be handy, in case the devs follow up on it.) It sounds like the Mobile version isn't going to be a problem, so I'll add accessibility as a possible concern that could be discussed. It seems likely to me that people who have physical trouble using a mouse would have trouble clicking a link that moves on hover. So if anyone decides to start this conversation, then perhaps he or she would invite WT:ACCESS folks to join it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:55, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The more problems, the less people will edit. See talk section below:

#Monthly number of edits will continue its downward slide since 2007 --Timeshifter (talk) 22:01, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nice job on the Section edit links!

Well, thought I would take a break from my usual list based Visual Editor complaints and just say that the little animations on the [ edit | edit source ] are really good from a motion design standpoint. It's very hard to subtly introduce new buttons/text in a non jarring way. This is one of the few examples of good design I've seen on wikimedia projects (no offense!). Nice work.

By the way, how were those implemented? Are the CSS animations accessible to content editors?—Love, Kelvinsong talk 23:14, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It may look good, but the [ edit | edit source ] popup method works badly and inefficiently in practice. At least for me. See talk section higher up:

#Edit and edit source links so confusing I had to disable Visual Editor in preferences --Timeshifter (talk) 23:25, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Kelvinsong, the animation and popup are both very attractive/well done, good job!AioftheStorm (talk) 00:05, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks @Kelvinsong:, @AioftheStorm:! I'll pass your compliments on to the devs :). I think at this rate I might owe them a small brewery. The pertinent patch can be found here if you're interested in looking at the animation mechanism. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:54, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just a question—is it possible to use CSS animations through wikitext?—Love, Kelvinsong talk 14:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, something like the edit/edit source animation can't be done in pure wikitext (though it could with Common.js/Common.css). Superm401 - Talk 05:00, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good start, needs fine tuning

I've been testing VE and it's working pretty well. I appreciate that you still left the source code for those who wish to use it.

Here are a few difficulties I've found with it in the short while I spent trying it.

1) Templates are seemingly impossible to move around the page. Perhaps it's just my browser (Chrome), but I'd appreciate it if templates could be either copy-pasted or dragged around.

2) I'd like a way to edit parameter and template names after they're created. If I incorrectly capitalize a parameter name, I currently have to delete it and reenter it. Same with template names.

3) The Source editor has some useful features that are not as easily accessible in the VE; namely, special characters and certain highly used templates.

I also am worried that VE will be impossible to implement in the Wikipedia name space due to the complexity of many pages there that only the Source Editor can create. If this is the case, casual users could more easily add content, but would still have to learn a lot about Wiki markup if they want to access many of the Wikipedia namespace pages, especially noticeboards. Marechal Ney (talk) 00:36, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Marechal Ney. Thanks for the feedback.

For point 1 - Most large templates have a "home" (i.e. navboxes at the bottom, infoboxes right- and top-justified, so on). Which temps where you trying to move around?
Point 2 - This is concerning to lots of people, including me. The developers are working hard on improvements to the template dialog.
Point 3 - Hopefully enhancements can be added for all that we find useful. I believe the special characters need is tracked, I'll check. Reporting here anything else useful but not supported will help make it happen faster.

On your last point, difficult: yes, impossible: no :) PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On Point 1, I'd think that inline templates get moved around a lot. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Error saving

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52356

I keep getting "error saving data to server: failed request: error" for major changes. But the minor changes go through. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dampayi (talk • contribs) 03:49, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Uh-oh. @Dampayi:, can you give me an example on an article on which this is happening? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Okeyes (WMF): This is in all likelihood bugzilla:50356, which I have marked "critical" to try to catch the attention of the VE developers. — This, that and the other (talk) 12:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh no :(. This could really impact the test :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:20, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem was with the VisualEditor; I couldn't reference to outside pages. I had to use Edit Source instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dampayi (talk • contribs) 01:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Invisicomments in VisualEditor

Has it yet been discussed that when using VisualEditor, it doesn't seem that invisible comments  are visible to editors? We often rely on these to tell editors things like "please don't change this to 'color'; this article is in UK English" or possibly "this wording was decided by a binding RFC; please don't change it", and it would seem to be a loss if we no longer have a way to make new editors aware of such things. Heimstern Läufer (talk) 05:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this has been discussed. bugzilla:49603. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:04, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Urgh. Would someone be willing to explain what that discussion means in a way non-devs can understand? Like, what is actually happening with comments? Is something being done to deal with this problem or not? Heimstern Läufer (talk) 06:11, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I admit that that bug discussion is quite messy (most of the comments don't have a lot to do with the actual bug title) but I gather that this issue is being worked on. I don't know exactly what interface will be developed for this, so I await a pleasant surprise. — This, that and the other (talk) 06:16, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

In the meantime, try an WP:Edit notice for anything critical, since those were working fine the last time I checked. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:09, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This has previously been discussed, and WP:Edit notice does not work for most hidden notes because notes are specific to specific parts of the page. Plus "All users can create editnotices for their user and talk pages, but editnotices for other namespaces can be created and edited only by administrators and account creators." Do new and old WMF staff drink some special koolaid that makes them not pay much attention to what people write now and previously on a subject? And then to pooh-pooh much of the feedback here? --Timeshifter (talk) 03:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm familiar with the process for creating edit notices, as I have asked to have them created several times.

We don't know when the ideal solution will be available. There is a possible solution that may work today. I am going to keep providing possible solutions that may work today, even if you think that offering information and alternatives to people is "pooh-poohing much of the feedback" and even if you think that noticing that the OP's question was his first-ever edit to this page, and that he therefore probably hadn't seen the previous discussions, constitutes "not paying attention". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:05, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Top icon shown in text

Top icons, as used to identify e.g. good or protected articles, are shown within the text at the location where their template is instead of at their normal location at top of the article. This is confusing and makes it very easy to erroneously delete them. --WS (talk) 11:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed; I'm actually not sure what the solution is here, though. Ideas? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Keep displaying the icon at top (perhaps editable with a template-puzzle icon?), and handle the template in the text like any other hidden template. Perhaps statuses like these are best handled in the page settings. --WS (talk) 11:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, although for that MediaWiki would have to recognise them, which it doesn't :/. The problem is twofold - one, there's no space for them (insofar as there isn't really a top bar to the VE), and two, a lot of people put them at the bottom of the article; VE renders things where they appear in markup. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:49, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Space isn't a problem, they are displayed to the far right of the article title, and this space is still there and empty when using the VE. And I would think that the VE should render everything as it would appear normally, not necessarily directly where it appears in markup. Probably still a technical challenge though. --WS (talk) 11:58, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah. I'll inquire about it, but what I suspect is that the CSS in the featured article star pegs it to an element that simply doesn't exist in the VE. This is something that is meant to be deployed to 200+ projects, so I suspect that requests for direct support of wiki-specific templates will be problematic :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:05, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well... maybe Mediawiki should recognize FA and GA status. It could be generalizable as a 'page status' setting, which I imagine that a lot of non-WMF wikis would use for new pages, outdated pages, etc., but we could use it for recognized content (and maybe for pages under discretionary sanctions). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:15, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summaries

I'm not pleased that this has not been automated. Edit summaries are more than just etiquette. They are profoundly useful when scanning your watchlist and it's something new editors usually do not provide. Looking at the VisualEditor, there does not even appear to be a place to provide a summary, let alone encouraging or requiring new editors to do this. When a new editor makes many changes to an article, having the summary lets you know what they did and that it was productive. Unless this is changed and is somehow automated (they can't save until they provide the summary), all you're doing is making more work for the regular editors, checking on the new editors' work, reverting vandalism and warning new editors to use a summary. freshacconci talktalk 15:01, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello freshacconci. There is an "edit summary" section. When you click "save", a box opens where someone can describe the changes they did or preview the changes before save it. TeamGale (talk) 15:14, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. Still trying to get a handle on this. I'm one of those editors who thinks that you shouldn't be able to save your edits until you've provided a summary, but I don't think that's ever going to happen. I'm relieved to see that there remains an edit summary section as I've come across new editors using VisualEditor who are not providing them. freshacconci talktalk 15:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are welcome. Not be able to save your edit until you write a summary might be a good idea. I, personally, forget many times to write one after I preview my edits and I know it's not the best thing... TeamGale (talk) 15:25, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's actually a preference of "remind me to leave an edit summary" here (" Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary "). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That prefs setting hasn't been working consistently for me for a couple of months.

As for the general idea, Wikipedia:Perennial proposals#Automatically_prompt_for_missing_edit_summary suggests that the overall community doesn't want edit summaries to be technically enforced, and it therefore will not be added to VE. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, that discussion shows a proposal to remind editors about missing edit summaries, but the reason for rejection is a reason for rejecting forcing them to add an edit summary. I use the preferences setting to remind me when I'm about to save without an edit summary (seems to work fine for me both in Edit Source and in VE), but if I don't want to add an edit summary I can just click Save again. I wonder if it's time to revisit that discussion? I'd be delighted to see that preference set as a default for all editors, and it is far short of "forcing". PamD 19:54, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that WP:VPP is the usual place for that discussion. Check the archives there to find the most recent discussions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Switch to edit source

It's nice to use Visual Editor to make quick corrections, but when there are more structural changes, using Visual Editor may quickly become troublesome and unpredictable. In this case, it will be nice to switch to source edit without having to save the visual edits as a revision first. It will be even more awesome if you can switch back and forth between the two - edit the source, preview the result in the WYSIWYG editor. ADTC^{Talk Ctrb} 17:38, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Agent007bond: Agreed! I am thinking of sorta how Wordpress handles it, for example, with the visual/html tabs. I think this is on the to-do list for the long term :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We'd love to provide simple switching, but sadly doing so would make it very hard to still provide clean wikitext diffs. This might have to wait until wikitext diffs are replaced with HTML diffs. --GWicke (talk) 21:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi both, thanks for the responses. Although ultimately we would like to see Visual/WikiSource switching, in the meanwhile, if you can at least irreversibly switch to WikiSource editing (with all the Visual edits carried over) that could also work. At least it would serve one group of people who might start off editing visually, but at a certain point want to continue editing in source or do a clean-up of the source. What do you think? -- ADTC^{Talk Ctrb}

Technically such a one-way switch is pretty straightforward. Indeed something for the VisualEditor team to consider. --GWicke (talk) 16:56, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't copy a template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52421

Trying when editing articles to think "Could I use VE for this?" I came on an article where the {{AfD}} template had been removed and needed to be restored. The easiest way to get that right is to call up from the history a version with the template in place, and copy it from there to the current version. This doesn't seem possible in VE: after selecting the template so that it is highlighted, Ctrl-C doesn't copy it, and right-click doesn't offer a "Copy" option. JohnCD (talk) 21:29, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've submitted it as a feature request. If it's already meant to be supported, I imagine somebody will let me know. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reference

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52110

The current default source editor of wikipedia has an elaborate system of dialogue boxes for adding references. It includes scripts to fetch details of reference from ID like ISBN/DOI/PUBMED ID etc. Hope this is included in future development of VisualEditor. ★Saurabh P. | ☎ talk 21:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At least one of the older reftools versions can do magic with Google Books URLs and NY Times URLs, writing out pretty much full citations from those alone. Would have never gotten through the old unreferenced BLP backlog without that. --j⚛e decker ^talk 21:38, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's a bug for that :D. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

:) --j⚛e decker ^talk 16:08, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No "edit source" for section 0

When I hover over a section header link, it changes to "[ edit | edit source ]", except for the [edit] in the lead (i.e. Edit section 0). GoingBatty (talk) 22:27, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since when did we have section-edit links for section 0? Wasn't that a gadget? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:30, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's the first gadget in the Appearance section on Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets. GoingBatty (talk) 22:34, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Then, yes; we're not writing code that supports volunteer-maintained, project-specific gadgets, I'm afraid. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:43, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A request for help at MediaWiki talk:Gadget-edittop.js might work, or contact the gadget's original dev, via User talk:Alex Smotrov/edittop.js (He's not active here much, you might try his ru. talk) –Quiddity (talk) 03:04, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, the link as it currently stands goes to what is now called the "source code", rather than VisEd; as the only people who've enabled that gadget are more likely to be power users, I think it's fine the way it is (note: I have zero statistics on that, only my intuition). I'll mention it on the MW talk, though. Ignatzmice•talk 14:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Simplify Sidebar?

The visual edit is looking pretty good and should be much simpler for editing when released as the default editor. I especially like how easy it is to link other pages, add media, and references. One suggestion would be to make editing the sidebar easier. I noticed that in order to edit the sidebar you must open up a special menu and use traditional link format. Perhaps this could be simplified? Paranini (talk) 22:51, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. Currently VisualEditor is just meant for editing actual articles (or User space) and is not meant to simplify editing MediaWiki in general. Perhaps that will change in the future if VisualEditor works in a way that makes this possible. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 01:22, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe he is talking about the infobox, Keegan, based on his edit. :)

If I'm right, Paranini, what you're dealing with there is called a template, and they're a little more difficult to work with at this point because they're fairly complex. I will pass along your request, though. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:42, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is so much detailed descriptions

There is so much how to, and explanations of what everything is I can't even find a link to make a change even on a semi locked page..so here is my change to Zlatan Ibrahimović. The best soccer player in the world, and his number at Paris st. Germaine is 18 not 10..that is all — Preceding unsigned comment added by Willyj89 (talk • contribs) 22:51, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry to hear about your difficulty! I will leave information at your talk page about how to handle that situation. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Brilliant Experience

I really loved my first use of VisualEditor editing a page Visual Editors on English Wikipedia. And it was a such a brilliant experience! I'm looking forward to the completion of this worry-free and handy tool. Keep up! Alnel Vincent Alico 23:46, 28 June 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by AlneltheGreat (talk • contribs)

I'm so happy to hear that it worked for you. :) I'm excited about it as well. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:28, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's good that new users find it easy, it's not so good that when I look at the edit, it appears to have introduced formatting errors into the article. NtheP (talk) 13:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from roads projects

I tried editing some road articles with the VisualEditor and here are the issues I found:

On my 13 inch screen, the editing toolbar always obscures any template/reference windows, which is a bit annoying.
No way to insert nonbreaking spaces.
Most junction list tables can be edited (see the bottom part of California State Route 78 for an example), though there is an awkward Content thing in between the templates.
- Nested templates cannot be edited with the interface, such as {{Jct}}.
- I ran into an error where the table did not show up on California State Route 52 when I tried to edit it. Not sure what happened.
- Very long tables such as Interstate 5 in California do load, but are so slow as to be unworkable.

Overall though, the experience was a lot better and more functional than I thought it would be, with our complicated templates! --Rs chen 7754 02:58, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm happy your overall experience went well! Issues with templates and tables are being worked on as we speak and hopefully they'll be debugged very, very soon. If there was anything striking that you may have noticed as a bug in particular, we'd like to hear about it. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 05:27, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One other thing: I've added TemplateData to {{mileposts}} as a small test but it's not showing up in VisualEditor after several hours. Is something wrong? --Rs chen 7754 07:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missing warning message for editing protected or semi-protected pages

I'm I missing something, or is there no warning message like MediaWiki:Protectedpagewarning and MediaWiki:Semiprotectedpagewarning that displays on the VisualEditor when editing a protected or semi-protected page? This is just as important as the page notices. The last thing we need is an admin inadvertently making a controversial edit to a fully protected page solely because there was no similar MediaWiki:Protectedpagewarning on the VisualEditor interface like on the regular editing form. Zzyzx11 (talk) 04:57, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

bugzilla:50415 — This, that and the other (talk) 07:01, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New VisualEditor is so welcome to me

I'm happy to see that you truly are making editing Wikipedia a lot easier for us who don't know Wiki codes and who have no time or interest of learning them. I've always wondered why making a minor editing in Wikipedia is so hard that I rather quit than make any changes even though I know what to edit. It just has been too complicated. I learnt to walk and talk 49 years ago, I learnt to write 45 years ago, and I learnt my first English words at age 6, that's 44 years ago but in 2010 or 2013 I couldn't make even a minor edit in Wikipedia because I'm not into codes. You have no idea how many times I have given up on editing, simply because it has been so difficult and takes too much time considering what I'm about to edit. This VisualEditor is so welcome to me. Maybe from now on I don't have to walk away from a page even if I see it needs some editing but instead of that I can do it without sweat, toil and frustration. I can't wait to try new VisualEditing. I believe it makes me more active for making minor editing. And later on I might take bigger editing jobs as well. Thank you for making my extra hobby a lot easier. AniaKallio (talk) 07:24, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So VisualEditor is doing pretty well for new users. :P -- ^(T)Numbermaniac_(C) 07:27, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ania, thank you for the comments. I'll pass them along to the team. :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 08:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The pleasure is all mine. :) But, now I'm beat after reading all these bug reports and comments here. I think I need a cup of coffee and fresh hot sunny air. Keep on doing good work! AniaKallio (talk) 10:15, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Removal of image not reflecting immediately

I remove an image from Anarkali. After submitting, changes were not immediately reflected. I refreshed manually, then were reflected. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 11:12, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unwanted format changes throughout article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52420

I used VE to remove two redlinks from List of male kickboxers, but had to revert because it also made unwanted format changes all through the article, see diff. It is quite hard to make out from the diff just what it did - it seems to have added extra "pipe" characters in half a dozen places, and |}|}|}|}|}|} at the end. The effect, seen here, is that items are progressively more indented as you go down the list. JohnCD (talk) 13:11, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Odd. This seems similar to but not exactly the same as now-closed bug 50012. Given the differences, I've opened it as a new bug. Thanks. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I find a bug like this, which makes changes well away from the intended edit, very worrying on the eve of general release. The inexperienced editor most likely to use VE would not understand a diff like this even if he checked it. While an inexperienced editor would not be removing redlinks, he might well add an entry to this kind of list: I just did that as an experiment with the same result. I notice that VE chose the same six locations (B, G, H, I, J, M) to add extra pipe characters - that may have some significance. JohnCD (talk) 14:16, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To be fair, that page's wikitext is very messed up. Each section is wrapped in a table, but many of those tables are never closed. This results in the remainder of that page being wrapped in unclosed tables. While I agree that we can further improve our handling of such situations, simply closing those tables can avoid the problem right now. --GWicke (talk) 17:03, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I went ahead and closed all the unclosed tables -- in general, it is hard to support that kind of buggy wikitext well. Try editing the page again in VE. Ssastry (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that has largely fixed it for that article - only one extra "pipe" this time. But this is still a serious issue: I'm sure there are many, many more articles which have screwed-up wikitext but display OK, and it is bad news if an innocent edit with VE can screw up the actual display and require this sort of digging into the wikitext to sort out.

The FAQ at the head of this page says that "In general, VisualEditor should never make changes to formatting on lines that are not being directly edited." I think that is a very important principle, which is why I have been reporting counter-examples (and I would like to know more about that "in general" caveat).

It has never been clear to me whether these instances stem from a design intention to have VE make AWB-style automatic tidyings-up, or whether they are just undesirable side-effects of its design. Repeating today this test of another example, I saw for the first time the interesting message: "Warning: Your edit may have been corrupted – please review before saving". Can you tell me what triggers that? JohnCD (talk) 22:41, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for reporting the bugs -- this bug is being tracked and we'll fix the issue with the extra pipe there. Parsoid attempts to do its best to represent wikitext as well-formed HTML (which is required for editing and converting it back to wikitext). However, badly nested tags, missing closing tags, stray closing tags are some cases Parsoid has to fix up the HTML and record information about the fixup so that the original (even if buggy) wikitext can be restored. It does a decent job of handling a lot of corner cases, but bad table markup will occasionally trip up Parsoid (as in this example). So, on converting HTML back to wikitext, sometimes (not always), the wikitext gets fixed up. But, our HTML-to-wikitext converter is also designed to only do this fixup (when it does happen) in edited portions of the document (other fixups are bugs which we will fix whenever we encounter them). Does this answer your question? Ssastry (talk) 04:23, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quirk editing Chad Griffin

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52474

References get misnumbered [2], the two refs in the infobox are properly numbered 1 and 2, but the count restarts in the main text. Reproduced in Safari and Chrome. --j⚛e decker ^talk 15:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Joe. Your link is to the edit screen, and I can't reproduce it in Chrome. :) (I added a couple of quick citation requests for the quotes that lack inline sourcing.) It doesn't look like you saved in whatever edit resulted in that issue - if you can replicate that, can you save it and link it? It might help determine how it's happening. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:53, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I should have been more clear, sorry about that. If you compare the first reference within the infobox with the reference at the end of the "Early Years" section, you will notice that they have the same number while being edited, but have different numbers when the article is viewed outside the editor (e.g., the "Read" tab.) I continue to see this behavior on Mac/Chrome. --j⚛e decker ^talk 16:13, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmn; could you grab some comparative screenshots? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should be appearing in your mailbox in a sec. --j⚛e decker ^talk 19:26, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now reported! Thanks for the speedy work - it's much appreciated. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't remove a space at Michael Lowry (actor)

Attempting to remove the space that is erroneously between the period and the following ref at the end of the penultimate sentence of the second paragraph at Michael Lowry (actor) fails--the editor visually appears to allow the change, but when the change is saved, no error is produced, nor is any change left in the article history. Reproduced in Chrome and Safari. --j⚛e decker ^talk 15:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Confirmed in Win7/FF21.0. There are actually two spaces in there; at first I thought the problem was maybe that you were only removing one and VE didn't consider that a change, but removing both still produces "No changes. Could not start the review because your revision matches the latest version of this page" when you do "Review your changes". JohnCD (talk) 17:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I moved the reference to inside the period and it saved just fine. Thoughts? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:29, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is very odd. In this version that you saved, there are still spaces left of the reference, which I don't suppose you intended - in fact, looking at it in edit-source mode, there are three. I moved the reference back (because they are supposed to be outside the punctuation). What I did, in VE, is:

put the cursor to right of the full-stop
backspace to remove it
left-arrow to put the cursor "on" the ref
left-arrow again to put cursor just left of the ref
backspace three times removing spaces
backspace once more removing the "n" at the end of "Epsilon" (to be sure there are no spaces left)
replace n
add full-stop.

Now (still in the editor) it looks just fine. Save it - and the two spaces between the full-stop and the ref are back! It looks as though VE is adding spaces to the left when it saves a reference. I will try to devise a simple test case to demonstrate this. JohnCD (talk) 09:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sidebar Summary blocks edit of introductory text

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51925

This is a problem when trying to edit the introductory text of the entry on Leo Strauss. Kleinias (talk) 16:06, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reproduced on MacOSX/Chrome : The infobox grows over a fair bit of the lead in a "oh, that can't be right" manner. --j⚛e decker ^talk 16:35, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

And on Win7/Firefox21.0. The infobox covers the whole of the lede and "Early Life" and part of the "Education" sections. JohnCD (talk) 17:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeek! Looks like another instance of 49925; thanks, all :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE on iPad/Safari?

Is VE not to be available on iPad/Safari? JohnCD (talk) 16:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was able to pull it up on my iPad/Safari. Is it possible that you're not logged in there? (I only suggest that because that was a mistake I made in trying to reproduce this.) --j⚛e decker ^talk 17:32, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, I'm logged in, but I only see the "Edit" links, which go to the Wikitext editor. When you say "pull it up", did you have to take some special action to get it? I have "Enable VisualEditor" checked in "Preferences", of course, or I wouldn't be able to use VE on my desktop machine. I am still on IOS5, being a slow adopter and mistrusting Apple's maps - could that be it? JohnCD (talk) 17:45, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not a dev, but I would imagine that could be the difference, I'm at 6.1.3, on a 3rd generation iPad. --j⚛e decker ^talk 17:47, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(As for maps, for navigation I've completely switched over to Waze. --j⚛e decker ^talk 17:48, 29 June 2013 (UTC) ) [reply]

Haven't tried Maze. I like Bing maps because, in the UK, at appropriate scales it offers the option of displaying the excellent Ordnance Survey 1:50,000 and 1:25,000 maps. JohnCD (talk) 21:22, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template parameters

Currently, when editing a template, the template parameters list is taken from TemplateData (if exists), or from the actual page being edited.

Whenever TemplateData exists, everything is hunky dory. However, when there is no TemplateData, the user does not know which parameters are recognized by the template, if they are not already present on the page.

There are two possible solutions:

The more effective solution is for the backend to generate TemplateData based on parsing the template page whenever "TempalteData" does not exist. Presumably, in this case, only parameter names (or numbers) are available, and all other parts of the metadata will have their default values.
in the Visual Editor itself, run something like the following code to extract the parameters list from the template page if no metadata is available (this is an illustration, and uses "async: false" so it works correctly. in reality, there are better ways to do it than using async:false):

function extractParameterNames( tempalte )
	var
		result = [],
	$.ajax({
		url: mw.util.wikiScript(),
		data: {title: template, action: 'raw'},
		dataType: 'text',
		async: false,
		success: function buildParamsRaw(data) {
			var
				paramExtractor = /{{3,}(.*?)[<|}]/mg,
				m;
			while (m = paramExtractor.exec( data )) 
				result.push( $.trim( m[1] ) );
		}
	});
	return result;
}

we use this exact logic in hewki, with the "TempalteParamWizard": the wizard does not use metadata embedded in the tempalte page itself - we did not have the TemplateData extension available - but rather we have an optional subpage that contains the data in a form which is more human-friendly and less script-friendly, but is basically very similar to TempalteData.

When this optional subpage does not exist, we use code very similar to the above to extract the parameters recognized by the template from the template page itself.

Suggestions for TemplateData attributes

(all of those are in use in hewiki's "TemaplteParameterWizard")

define a "secondary" flag. add a checkbox to the template edit dialog, "Show secondary parameters" (or "Show all parameters"). This lets designers of templates with large number of parameters to specify both "condense" and "comprehensive" list of parameters.
add a "depends on" field. in many templates we have parameters that depend on other parameters. for example, we might have "population" and "population year". the 2nd parameter specify the date when the data in the 1st parameter was collected (e.g., "2011 census"). we can hide the 2nd parameter entry, whenever the 1st parameter is empty. Another example are templates which allow defining several instances of the same thing, e.g., tracks in an album. the template may allow for 20 tracks, while most albums contain much less. in this case, we make "track 2" depend on "track 1", "track 3" depend on track 2 etc. this way, the dialog will show only one empty field for "track", but as soon as the editor fills it, we show the next one. (if each "track" is represented by more than one parameter, e.g. "track3", "length3", "lyrics3", "music3" etc., the editors will make all those parameters depend on "track3", and "track3" itself will depend on "track2".
for "boolean" fields, allow defining what will be written in the page if the user chooses "true". (i assume that if a field is defined "boolean", the dialog will use a checkbox to represent it).

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 16:31, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding the 'secondary' idea, I agree that would be quite useful. ProveIt has a similar concept in its current representation, 'default' parameters. Default parameters are automatically shown as blank fields. They are not necessarily required (that is tracked separately, as TemplateData already does). It seems that default parameters and non-secondary parameters are essentially the same thing. For the track1, track2, etc. example, there should probably be a repetition type. This is also useful for authors; the cite templates (such as {{cite book}}) now allow essentially an arbitrary number of numbered authors, using Lua. Superm401 - Talk 04:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

links preview / proper links in editor

hi guys :) VisualEditor is amazing! thanks and keep up the great work! one suggestion: after adding links with the autocomplete field (love it!) the linked pages can not be opened by clicking on them (which makes sense to be able to edit the text), but if i right-click to follow them the URL is not what it should be i guess. so for example, instead of en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_peel it is en.wikipedia.org/w/Banana%20peel, which results in a 404 error message. i wonder if the /w/ will be usable instead of /wiki/ ?

thanks again :) Mangostaniko (talk) 20:20, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem actually is that %20 compresses down into a space. I'll add it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:16, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive timeouts on large articles

I have experienced the Visual Editor always timing out whenever I tried to make even minor edits to some of the large, higher-traffic generating, most-watched articles such as Barack Obama, PlayStation 3 and World War II. Anybody else experiencing this issue, especially with pages with combined tons of content, templates, images and citations? If so, that is not very good... Zzyzx11 (talk) 20:20, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This bug tracks similar. What is the text of the error message you're getting? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 20:27, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The error message is: "Error saving data to server: timeout". This error message is generated by the Visual Editor itself, not the standard server-side MediaWiki error message mentioned in that bugzilla case. Zzyzx11 (talk) 03:39, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Show changes" needed in VE also

VE dropped the "Preview", as a matter of course, but on the way to do that, it also dropped the "Show changes" option. This action is useful, and all the reasons why it's needed with the traditional editor, is just as valid when using the VE.

Not everyone uses "Show Changes", but some people do use it routinely. I can't think of a single good reason why this option should not exist in VE. Please find a way to integrate "View Changes" into VE. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:25, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Using VE, after you make your changes and click the first "Save page" button, you're presented with a window to enter your edit summary. You can click "Review your changes" before clicking "Save page" again. GoingBatty (talk) 00:28, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

thanks. i missed it: maybe we want to consider placing this functionality in a more predictable place? i was looking for a place to review my changes *before* saving them.

The convention is that if the button you are about to click is going to open a new dialog, the button text ends with ellipsis.

if the button would have read "Save..." instead of "Save page", i would probably be more inclined to press it even before i reviewed my changes, assuming that pressing the button will open a dialog with several options, one of which will just cancel the operation. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 00:38, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Where's that a convention? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's a standard computer UI convention for buttons and menus, since the first Macintosh - no ellipsis to do it straight away, an ellipsis if it leads to a dialogue box. e.g. "An ellipsis prepares users to expect another window to open in which they complete the action the button initiates." [3] Remember that users can't tell a web app from a native client app ;-) - David Gerard (talk) 17:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could the button say "Review and save" or something like that, to give a clue that this is where you can check what you've done? Though I suppose the "ordinary" editor shouldn't need to bother looking at the changed wikicode because all their changes will be visible on the screen as they edit (unless they've added or changed any categories, made the title italic, added {{reflist}}, ... no, I know it's not really fair to pick on all the recent problems!).

I rather like the idea of "Save..." leading to a place where one can 1) write an edit summary 2) review changes and/or 3) save. Ignatzmice•talk 21:24, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template:Loop

I have been working on creating the TemplateData for Template:Loop/doc and keep getting a "Syntax error in JSON." I've tried a couple of scenarios, including having 2 optional parameters for the string, with and without the equal sign, + this simplified approach. Either way, I'm unable to get one to successfully save.

<templatedata>
{
        "description": "The template is used to produce a simple loop of repeated strings.",
        "params": {
                "repeat": {
                        "label": "Number",
                        "description": "number of times to repeat",
                        "type": "number",
                        "required": true
                },
                "string": {
                        "label": "Alpha-numeric text",
                        "description": "the string to be repeated",
                        "type": "string",
                        "required": true
        }
}
</templatedata>

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong? (I'll watch this page). Thanks so much!--CaroleHenson (talk) 20:39, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

it seems you forgot to close the last "string" clause: the next } actually closes "params", and the next one closes the whole object. here is the corrected form. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 20:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

<templatedata>
{
        "description": "The template is used to produce a simple loop of repeated strings.",
        "params": {
                "repeat": {
                        "label": "Number",
                        "description": "number of times to repeat",
                        "type": "number",
                        "required": true
                },
                "string": {
                        "label": "Alpha-numeric text",
                        "description": "the string to be repeated",
                        "type": "string",
                        "required": true
                }
        }
}
</templatedata>

I'm not sure where my comment went to. Thanks so much! What a silly mistake.--CaroleHenson (talk) 21:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bug report. Unknown if new.

Bug - nowiki tag appeared on page after edit SLBohrman (talk) 21:27, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, we're still zapping that bug. Thank you. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bug report. Unknown if new.

Footnotes are showing --- BUT only the most recent footnote, which appears 23 times on the edit screen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SLBohrman (talk • contribs) 21:55, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can you provide a link? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can't speak for sure for this other editor, but there's something weird going on at Atoka, Tennessee, one of the few articles this editor has edited recently, even before I get into visual editor, and most of the references that show in that article at "read" (around 9, but numbered very oddly) don't show in Visual Editor (only two do). Mac/Chrome. --j⚛e decker ^talk 07:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ahhh, there are several reference groups, that's why the numbering looks odd in the unedited article. Without having dissected the source code, there does appear to be a bug there, which should be visible by comparing the reference list in the article as viewed and the article as edited. --j⚛e decker ^talk 07:38, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I didn't post the link. Yes it was on Atoka, Tennessee. Could just be me. SLBohrman (talk) 14:39, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I need to know if I'm not supposed to be using the "group" attribute on references. I was trying it out just to see how it worked. Do I need to remove it from my references or is it ok to leave - Atoka, Tennessee? — Preceding unsigned comment added by SLBohrman (talk • contribs) 16:31, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Still need to know or learn markup

Yes, its great and should allow many more people to contribute.

One worry I have is that it makes it difficult for new users to edit links, citations etc. To do these tasks, the editors will have to revert to 'editing source'. So to get effective contributions, editors need to use the skills of editing wiki markup, bypassing the simple editing process.. Making the editing simpler has in my view made the learning process harder as people still have to investigate how to edit the source. So the difficulty has been eased, but not removed.

TonyClarke (talk) 22:04, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's quite possible to edit links, etc, using VE - I'm not sure why you suggest that it isn't. Can you give me an example? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:46, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE not available from some views of an article?

I have VE enabled in my preferences and its edit tab is visible normally when I view an article. It is not visible when I view a redirect using &redirect=no (e.g. this one) nor is it visible when I view an article's history. Any reason why not? —David Eppstein (talk) 01:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Since VE doesn't yet support redirects, it would be rather inconvenient to have it be the editing interface there. For now, it seems to make sense to leave that for the wikitext editor. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on References icon

In reading the revised mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide, I just learned that the References icon is a black book with a white bookmark. Now I see that, but before I thought it looked like a W with a line above it. GoingBatty (talk) 02:25, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Looked like a city skyline with a cloud, or a factory to me.—Love, Kelvinsong talk 02:38, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think the "insert reference" icon would be much more obvious if it looked like a "[1]" rather than a clothesline at night. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:03, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1 Ignatzmice•talk 03:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I thought it was a graph with some meaning like "page statistics" and assumed that the bookshelf icon was "add a reference". Of course, now that I know, it's perfectly clear. Whiteghost.ink (talk) 10:23, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What user testing did the icons go through, if any? - David Gerard (talk) 11:11, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've put this on my list to ask about. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:40, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Audio size

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52448

Prince Marko: audio appears huge in edit mode. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 04:55, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, filed a new bug for this. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 07:05, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is likely a duplicate of 49689. --j⚛e decker ^talk 07:41, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(Ahh, it is, I should have gone and looked in bugzilla first.) Looks like a fix is on the way--developed, but not deployed on ENWIKI yet. --j⚛e decker ^talk 07:46, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

um..

i don't seem to like the new layout i see how you may see it as "easy" but it's not. Locolocoalex (talk) 04:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can I ask you to be more specific? What about it don't you like? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:41, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Failure to edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52463

Have only received error messages regarding failure to edits using Chrome, Windows Seven. Qravenq (talk) 06:26, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Qravenq. Could you copy the text of the error message you received, or let us know which article you were have trouble on? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 06:57, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure thing. The pages Colorado 14ers and Garden City, Colorado, both receiving the error 'Error saving data to server: Failed request: error. Attempting to insert some text and a reference only. --Qravenq (talk) 14:00, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear :/. They seem to work for me, now - I'll throw them at the developers. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Create new source

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52471

When I try to add a new reference in a page which already has many, like this page, I can't find the "create new source" button. I think it's because the list is very long and it was "moved" up. Either a scroll apply is needed or better, "create new source" and "use an existing source" may always be visible and the scroll apply only to the list of the references. TeamGale (talk) 09:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I tested that page in both Chrome and Firefox, and I find "create new source" at the top of the list in each on that article. If I scroll down and don't select anything, when I hit "insert reference", it seems to default to creating a new source. Can you tell me what you're seeing and what browser you're using? Or perhaps I'm misunderstanding your concern? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:24, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox. I tried it again now but I am getting the same. When I click on the ref icon to add a new one, I can only see the last refs of the list. No "create new source" nor "use an excisting source" buttons. Is there a way to scroll up the page and I can't see it? :( The only way to "activate" the "insert reference" button from grey to green is when I am clicking in one of the existing sources, but that way I can't add a new one. TeamGale (talk) 12:42, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmn; what browser version and OS? Could you send a screenshot? We've had quite a few confused users from the current references setup, so I think this is something we need to look at. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:43, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. I just took the screenshot, just guide me how to post it. Is there a mail I can send it? And...sorry for the stupid questions but, where can I see the version and OS? What is OS? I am clueless about technology! :) Just to add that, I don't have any problem adding a ref, the problem here is that I can't have access to "create new source" so I can do it. TeamGale (talk) 13:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Quick way: go to http://www.whatsmyuseragent.com/ and see what it says your web browser is announcing you as. e.g. this browser on this machine announces itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0" (Firefox 22 on Windows 7, 64-bit) - David Gerard (talk) 13:33, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the help! :) Well...it says: "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:21.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/21.0" TeamGale (talk) 13:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Firefox 21, then; that should be working fine. Oh dear :/. Feel free to just email me the screenshot; okeyes

wikimedia.org :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:54, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just sent the mail. Just to clarify once again, the problem seems to appear only when the list of the already existing refs is to long. TeamGale (talk) 14:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmn; I haven't got the email :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:36, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Damn! I just resent it. It appears as sent both times in my mail :( Hope it will come this time. TeamGale (talk) 15:50, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No dice. Try sending me an email here as a test? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Was the test succeeded? Any mail? TeamGale (talk) 16:22, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It was! Okay, try sending the screenshot in a reply to the email I just sent you. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please tell me you got it. This convo is ending up in a marathon! :) TeamGale (talk) 17:27, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I did :). That...looks very, very wrong. What operating system? Windows 7, Windows XP... Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:10, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Amen is right :) Windows XP. TeamGale (talk) 18:28, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great! I'll throw it in bugzilla :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cursor disappears

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52338

After choosing "heading" or "sub-heading 1" etc for a line to apply, the cursor disappears and I have to click again in the text to make it appear and be able to write. Wouldn't it be easier after the apply the cursor to be at the point you left it before? TeamGale (talk) 10:04, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When I test that with Chrome, my cursor does not disappear. It's still flashing merrily away where I was. But I do replicate the issue in Firefox. What browser are you using? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:10, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, I am using Firefox. Is this a browser issue? TeamGale (talk) 12:24, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At least a browser specific one, it seems. :) Now that I know, I'll search the bugs, see if it's known, and mention it if I don't find anything. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:25, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks :) TeamGale (talk) 12:44, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Make editing view more distinctive from article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52456

I like the visual editor, and I predict that more people will edit WP when it's introduced. However, there is one thing that bugs me: After I clicked the "Edit" Tab, the view of the article does change only slightly - so sometimes I do not know that I am already editing, especially when I scroll down the article. I'd suggest a visual hint: A modal popup, a slim outline of the editing area or a more distinctive design of the tool bar, for example. Mateng (talk) 12:00, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hear, hear! Perhaps a (faint) background colour? There needs to be some visual clue. JohnCD (talk) 12:17, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for filing this, John. Yes, a faint background color could work, too. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jesus Presley (talk • contribs) 14:37, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

(Actually, I filed it, but would not have been able to do so without John's and your noting the request. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:33, 30 June 2013 (UTC))[reply]

Any bouquets that arrive for me I will forward to you, Maggie. I would even give your username to the enthusiastic fan who put 16 barnstars on my talk page yesterday, if he hadn't been indeffed as a sock. JohnCD (talk) 15:55, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

LOL! I appreciate your thoughtfulness. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To add support to this proposal, I've been dealing with a new editor who was frustrated that they couldn't edit - didn't realise that clicking edit called up VE and thought that nothing was happening. NtheP (talk) 22:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Subst" and TemplateData

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51904

Some templates should always be subst-ed, some should not. I'm not sure whether there any where it is optional? TemplateData should cover this: there should be a "subst" field with values always/optional/never, and some indication when the template is applied: "This template will be subst-ed"/"Click here to subst"/"This template will not be subst-ed". JohnCD (talk) 12:15, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is TemplateData is built around template structure, and templates don't include that as a value. It sounds like it would be worthwhile to put in the description of each template, though - well, each template that should be substed. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a pity. We need a neater way of subst-ing: at present you can do it by typing "subst:foo" in the box but (as I reported higher up, but I think it has been archived) then you only see {{subst:foo}}, you don't see the effect of the template until after you save the page. There should be a check-box for "subst" on the "add template" dialogue, and it would be nice to have the system check it automatically where appropriate, or at least call up guidance from the template description somehow. JohnCD (talk) 13:51, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, that's something I've asked about, and they have it on the to-do list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. You are certainly providing a real-time response! Are you getting any sleep? JohnCD (talk) 13:58, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sleep, what's that? ;p. My task today, as it happens, is to come up with a timetable to provide literal 24-hour coverage of enwiki from 1pm PST tomorrow to 1pm Tuesday. I need a pay raise. And 20 staff. And a pony. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:27, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cornetto optional - David Gerard (talk) 14:31, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slice of fried gold mandatory. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to subst a template with VisualEditor. I saved the page, but it didn't work. Pseudonymous Rex (talk) 20:46, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Citations (more)

So, the old citation button produced a box. Not ideal, but workable. Now, however, it produces a "what do you want to cite" one line field, and a "use existing"/"create new" button selection, which then takes you to the box to input the citation. I'm not sure what happened to just producing the box, but if anything, this is glitchy and half the time doesn't let me create a new reference (by clicking the button for create new), and if it doesn't, it closes and doesn't let me click any other VE buttons except close and save.

Also, if anything, shouldn't it be moving toward a "reftoolbar" type thing, instead of a "go learn how to make references look right and consistent on your own then come do it"? Instead of the textbox for "what do you want to cite", have a dropdown with common options (book, web, news, journal, etc.) and then an "other" or "not here" which would default to {{cite}}. The rest would default to the other templates, preferably with two options (standard and advanced/all parameters) as the current Reftoolbar.

This isn't super urgent I guess, as long as references are in the VE someway, I can ping the person who made the RefToolbar video about a new one :) Charmlet (talk) 18:39, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Most of those templates only exist on enwiki and a few other projects. What bugs are you finding with the existing setup? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:25, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"this is glitchy and half the time doesn't let me create a new reference (by clicking the button for create new), and if it doesn't, it closes and doesn't let me click any other VE buttons except close and save" from above. I click reference, type something in, select the "new" option, and it freezes up and closes, will still let me type, but won't let me click any buttons other than save/cancel.

Also, saying that you can't add in a feature that'll work on wikis with the templates is not going to go well with some of this project - if anything, you're making it much harder to create references. It'd be great if you could work a little more with the community - when they say they want something, don't shrug it off with "oh but that's enwp specific". Charmlet (talk) 20:43, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How do you think this should be handled? Would you be happy getting a list of citation templates, only to be told that the one you picked doesn't exist on the project you're editing? If they put all the templates into VisualEditor itself, then you're going to see things that only exist at the Spanish or Hebrew or Arabic Wikipedias, and they're going to see options that only work at the English Wikipedia. That doesn't seem likely to please anyone. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:34, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is quite simple, or at least has been done before, that it would be programmed to work on the Wikipedias that have them. Maybe look at the old RefToolbar for ideas, I'm not a coder, I don't know. But what I do know is this is going to lead to more unsourced edits, more unsourced BLP edits, more unsourced stuff in general.

On projects where the templates already exist, code in something (hell, hardcode the word "citation" or "cite" in each language if you must) to find {{cite web}} {{cite news}} {{cite}} {{cite journal}} {{cite book}}, (es:Plantilla:cita web es:Plantilla:cita libro etc.) and any ones more common in another language. That's a big part of the old edit window, is the easy ability to add citations, and I don't support rolling this out to anyone more than it needs be before a referencing tool is added in that doesn't make people still learn the templates.

This is supposed to be for new editors, who don't know WikiCode. They aren't going to have any idea that they're supposed to click template, then type in "cite web", then type in some random paramater names that, frankly, aren't super intuitive, and then save it. They're going to be overwhelmed with another text box, and not know how to cite. So they'll give up. Isn't the VisualEditor supposed to eliminate that kinda situation? Charmlet (talk) 13:40, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with the stated concern: if the purpose of the VE is to get more editors, then referencing has to be easy with it. Easier than the present system. Facilitate a minimal reference, e.g. <ref>http://url</ref> at the least (and I confess to doing reference links like that when I can't be arsed to do the entire tedious {{cite web}}) - David Gerard (talk) 16:23, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Need to be able to follow links/refs while editing

In editing Pli I added a hatnote and wanted to check that the piped link had worked: couldn't click on the piped link in the hatnote from within VE. In editing Ponticus I wanted to look at the reference, an online source, to see what it said and check the claim that something wasn't supported by the source: couldn't do so within VE. We need to be able to follow links like this while editing, please. PamD 19:21, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You should be able to using right-click; in firefox, at least, that opens up the dialogue box you'd normally get with right-clicking links ("open in new tab", etc) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Error

While saving getting the following error : "Error saving data to server: Failed request: error." 3dmatrix (talk) 20:29, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't notice any changes on Safari on my IPad 2. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adam9812 (talk • contribs) 20:31, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't notice any changes on Safari on my IPad 2. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Adam9812 (talk • contribs) 20:33, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References - first attempts - ouch

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52458

Just had a go at adding a reference to James Gordon MacGregor (to replace an existing somewhat malformed "links" section). Ouch.

Clicked on the icon for "Edit reference"
It seemed to offer me "Create new source" or "Use existing source" but neither link was responsive
Then there was a blank window asking what I wanted to cite - no clues about format
Eventually stuck the URL into it, as I didn't see what else it wanted. Superscript "1" appeared.
Clicked on the icon for "Reference list": nothing useful offered (can't remember exact detail)
Used the "Transclusions" icon to add "Reflist"
No visible response to that.
Repeated previous step
still no response.
Went to "Save page", looked at "See your changes", observed that Reflist was added twice.
Despaired of being able to do anything useful in VE except offer this feedback, and will now save the page and reopen in Edit Source!

Nothing intuitive, no indication how to get anything like the helpful prompts from the dear old RefToolbar. Oh dear.

Ah, when I save it, the two copies of Reflist take effect and I have a duplicated single-entry list of refs. But, as with several previous comments, we need to be able to see in VE the effects of our VE edits, because lack of visual feedback causes confusion!

Will now go into Edit Source to fix the article. PamD 20:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I guess I'm echoing what User:Charmlet said a couple of items above: it's a terrible step backwards to move from the RefToolbar approach into a blank "what do you want to cite" box. This is not going to help new editors to create full, well-formatted, references. If I'm editing an article and know I'm going to be adding references (much of my editing is wikignomish stuff which doesn't involve that), I'm going to have to remember to use Edit Source until VE can come up with something more helpful - and that's as an experienced editor. PamD 20:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll say that es:Wikipedia:Portada and other Wikipedias also use cite templates, so this would help out a lot more than enwp.. And if I remember right, those don't have the A/B test going on, so they may not even know that they're going to lose the RefToolbar. Charmlet (talk) 20:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's a feature request already tracked at Bugzilla 50458 (linked above) that might be a good place to discuss this - I note that already under request there is a list of parameters to be filled in, which I agree would be enormously helpful. I'm not finding this feature very intuitive myself. :/ I link here in case either of you would like to add your support or your own thoughts. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My Verdict

What is my verdict on the Visual Editor? MOST EXCELLENT! I always use the Visual Editor on Wikia, and have little idea how to use wikimarkups. Now making a table will be easy! --BNSF1995 (talk) 21:09, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you like it. :) I hope we will continue to improve and refine it and that everyone will find it as useful as you do. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Poor response to problem of inability to see article while adding categories

Bug 49969 the response to my 21 June report seems unhelpful.

If I'm editing an article and want to add categories for birth and death dates, I need to be able to see those dates in the article while I'm adding the categories. The "Page settings" box totally obscures the article. I can probably remember one, but not both, of theose two dates. But I might want to add other categories too. Some categories involve unfamiliar placenames whose spelling is difficult to remember. The response seems to tell me that looking at the article while adding categories is undesirable multitasking. Can this bug please be bumped up the system: it's not a "low-importance enhancement" but a feature which makes doing a perfectly ordinary job very difficult.

When I'm stub-sorting I tend to add defaultsort and birth/death categories whenever I can, even if my main aim in opening the article was to remove {{stub}} and replace it by something more specific. I might add a maintenance category or two, as well as tidying up obvious typos, making a link or two, unlinking a date, etc etc. The response to this bug says "As far as adding a category or changing the default sort of a category directly from some other mode (such as reading, or editing paragraph text) we should look at those workflows rather than dissolve the intentional model-ness of the dialog." (I guess "modal-ness" is intended) - this makes my heart sink, as it seems to say that my sort of driveby wikignoming is not at all what editors are supposed to be doing, and we must categorise our activities into separate modalities and not expect it to be simple to make several quick improvements to an article in one short editing session. Deeply depressing. PamD 21:32, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Have now commented on the thread at Bugzilla, probably more appropriate than here. PamD 21:45, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for following up. I hope that your clarification there will make your issue more clear. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:41, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Monthly number of edits will continue its downward slide since 2007

The many problems with this visual editor may cause many anonymous IP editors to edit less. So the monthly number of article edits by anonymous editors may continue its downward slide since 2007. See:

File:Timeline of anonymous edits on English Wikipedia.png - more charts are needed.
commons:Category:Stats for anonymous edits on English Wikipedia

WMF board and staff are hoping that the VE editor will be easier to use by IP editors. But if those editors are being constantly reverted there may be a net loss in the monthly number of edits as many edit less. Post-and-run editors may edit more. IP editors who prefer wikitext source editing may edit less if they are as frustrated by the lack of a direct link to "edit source" as I am. See section higher up: #Edit and edit source links so confusing I had to disable Visual Editor in preferences. Registered editors can turn off VE. IP editors can not.

It is about net losses and gains. Some have asked whether the VE developers should try to please everybody. Well, they should try to please as many people as possible in order to slow down the decline in monthly edits, or to reverse it. If the loss is inevitable, then we need to make editing more efficient, so that there are less reversions, and less mistakes. So people get more done with less edits. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@User:Timeshifter, I'm not sure if I understand this line of reasoning. Currently a small fraction of people edit Wikipedia, as IPs or otherwise. Those people are self-selected in that they're the ones who brave the Wiki-code. Wouldn't making it easier to edit result in more people editing, since we wouldn't be weeding out would-be editors who are afraid of computer code? Is there an underlying assumption that a higher proportion of edits will be reverted? (I'm a bit confused by the 2nd sentence in the 2nd paragraph.) ~Adjwilley (talk) 22:04, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is the theory. But that only works if VE actually makes editing easier for IP editors. If there are many reversions, then there may be a net loss in the number of IP edits over time, or only a small gain, or a gain smaller than it could be. Until recently IP editors could edit sections without having to check a preview for a whole page for errors introduced by VE. With VE they now have to check a preview for a whole page for every single edit they do. So the net effect of VE may be to make editing more time-consuming, but "easier". See what I mean about net losses and gains? How will it add up? Looking at Wikia's experience with its VE I foresee many problems with Wikipedia's VE. --Timeshifter (talk) 22:31, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we have considered these things and are working on them. 'dirty diffs' can lead to the same outcome, for example. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Until recently IP editors could edit sections without having to check a preview for a whole page for errors introduced by VE.

Last I heard, unregistered editors couldn't use VisualEditor at all, and thus are untroubled by the section edit links that bother you so much. I suggest that you log out and try it before worrying about the IPs' experience. The latest timeline that I've seen says the VE might become an option for them as early as next week. A couple of people over at Meta have encouraged the devs to postpone the switch for IPs until the core community has had a month to get used to it, and there are other reasons why it might be postponed (e.g., if the increased load might slow down the Parsoid system too much). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 10:25, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I mixed up who the A/B test was implemented for. I knew it at one point and forgot. :) It is good that VE has not been implemented for anonymous IP editors. I think it would be a catastrophe if implemented now for IPs. I keep thinking of more reasons why.

In the last few days I have been thinking of the last reason you mentioned. Since every single edit by VE edits the whole page that could add a crushing burden to the servers if implemented for IPs. IPs will not be able to opt out, and will click the "edit" link most of the time since they will not notice the hidden "edit source" link at first. I believe in its current state many registered editors will opt out of VE when VE is made the default, or they will not use it much. They will click the "edit source" link much of the time. They will be more likely to notice it since many people will be talking about VE on talk pages. So registered users may not be as much of a burden on servers if VE is implemented by default for them. So it would be dumb to make VE the default for anonymous users first. First see how much of a burden registered users put on the servers when VE is made the default. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Addition of and removal of categories.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52481

Here's the diff. All I tried to do was move a quotation mark, and it added a bunch of underline markup in the References section and removed all the categories. ~Adjwilley (talk) 21:54, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeesh :/. What browser/OS? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Windows 7, Firefox 21.0. ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I tried to reproduce this in the sandbox, but it looks like VE is only for article space. Do you know of a sandbox-type place where I can play with VE that's not going to cause problems in the main space? ~Adjwilley (talk) 23:59, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okeyes I think that is a great suggestion if your still watching this thread. It should be fairly easy to extend the Article/Userpage functionality to subpages like /sandbox. Kumioko (talk) 00:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Adjwilley: Try User:Adjwilley/sandbox. Ignatzmice•talk 01:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I did three test edits in my sandbox. The first was an exact reproduction of what happened in the article. In the second I wanted to see if it was my edit summary and/or use of the "minor" checkbox that did it, so I didn't check "minor" and I left a blank summary. It did the underlines and removed the categories, plus a whole bunch of other changes that I hadn't seen before. In the third edit, I wanted to see if it was my moving the quotation mark that did it. Instead of moving a quotation mark, I just added a "test" sentence to the Lead. I left an edit summary, but didn't tick the "minor" box. I got pretty much the same result as in the first edit.

Summary: Apparently no matter what edit I do to that particular article, it blanks the categories and adds the underline tags. If I don't leave an edit summary, it does even more. ~Adjwilley (talk) 02:02, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Anybody who wants to is invited to come play in my sandbox :-) ~Adjwilley (talk) 02:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, I tried to follow your footsteps and remove a quotation mark from the article (not the sandbox), and I notice that there is a bold note at the bottom of the save screen that says, "Warning: Your edit may have been corrupted – please review before saving." On review, I see the same issues you did. Do you see that note as well? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, I get that (I hadn't noticed it before...the save screen text is pretty small for me.) It actually doesn't matter what edit you make, by the way, you still get the "corrupted" changes. I did it just now by adding a single space. ~Adjwilley (talk) 16:11, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Automatic fixes

On a related note, I just ran across this. The user was just trying to add a new section, but Visual Editor made some other repairs to the page, both good as I can tell. (It got rid of a stray </blockquote> and merged two a duplicated named reference.) Like I said, the changes were good, but above in the FAQ it says VE's not supposed to be making changes like that. (I'm fairly certain the user didn't do that himself, since he's very new, and would have had to do a lot of searching to find those errors.) ~Adjwilley (talk) 03:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've added this to my list to ask about - if it turns out that it is meant to make changes such as this, we'll have to correct the documentation. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Minor edit checkbox; exit-X

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52508

The "This is a minor edit" label is truncated for me: I see ∆ This is a ∆ Watch this page. Happens on Safari 6.0.5, Chrome 27.0.1453.116 on Mac OS 10.8.4. I assume it's because of something in my CSS (most likely the fixed-navbar thingie), because it doesn't happen in my sock account.

Another thing: Also in the last dialog box before actually saving, there is what I assume is supposed to be an "X" in the top right corner. Clicking on it closes the dialog box. However, I do not see an X—it looks like an upside-down check mark (it isn't symmetrical). It seems all of the top half and half of the left half (of a regular [square] X) are somehow truncated. Ignatzmice•talk 22:14, 30 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a CSS hack, yep. Good catch on the truncation - throwing in bugzilla now (I see it too). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Still cannot view hidden comments

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51603

Despite the many changes made, hidden comments still cannot be seen or edited using VE. These comments are helpful in preventing unnecessary edits. Johnny Au _{(talk/contributions)} 00:11, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if a template can be made to give this a workaround? I'll try that in a bit. Charmlet (talk) 00:40, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Johnny Au: yep, this is something we're working on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slow minor copyedit on a big article

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52475

A very slow minor copyedit correcting one letter on the California article, FWIW. Djembayz (talk) 03:46, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a note to an existing ticket about time-outs on even larger articles, as I suspect the two are related. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Incorrect warning

When I try the following steps using Firefox 22, I get an incorrect warning:

For any article page on your watchlist, click the "hist" link to go to the Revision history page.
Click any "cur" link to go to the Differenve between revisions page. Note that there is a "Previous edit" link, but no "Next edit" link.
Click any "Edit source" link or the "Edit" link at the top of the page, and you can make your changes just fine. However, if you click a section's "[edit]" link, you see a big red warning stating: "You are editing an old revision of this page. If you save it, any changes made since then will be removed.".

Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 03:49, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I encountered the same thing a few hours ago. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, I can't replicate it. :/ Are you encountering this consistently or occasionally? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Mdennis (WMF): - I encounter this consistently. Seems that Whatamidoing (WMF) knows what I am doing, so maybe you two can get together on this. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 01:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My "you" was plural there. :) I'm interested in hearing from both of you, so we can make sure that this is properly reported. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I saw that, though I assumed it was accurate. I'm suspicious that it may have happened after I edited the page myself and tried to edit the same page a second time without a refresh in between. -- Beland (talk) 02:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

break minority input methods?

Will this break the ways that minority language Wikipedias (Cherokee, Navajo, etc) have rigged their special input methods? Is there a way to refuse the upgrade if so? Cheers, Nesnad (talk) 05:50, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that it's been turned off on the Chinese Wikipedia because of language-specific problems. If there is actually a problem at any of these languages, then there shouldn't be any difficulty in doing the same for them.

On the other hand, if it works for minority languages, then I believe you'll want to keep it. It's already hard enough to find people who can write in a minority language, without eliminating anyone who doesn't have time to learn wikicode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References within templates

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52474

I'd have expected this to be a known issue, but I failed to find such feedback: I see no way to add references to template parameters. See for example User:Huon/Test: The references within the template parameters are displayed as wikicode within the Visual Editor, the named reference <ref name="mojo"> that's used within the infobox is not available for re-use outside the infobox, and while all references are correctly listed in the "references" section, Visual Editor numbers the first reference after the infobox ^[1]; apparently it doesn't realize at all that the references within the infobox exist. If I add a <references /> instead of (or in addition to) the {{Reflist}}, that one won't display the footnotes within the infobox at all.

On a related note, I don't see how I could add templates within templates either - except by manually inserting the wikicode. Huon (talk) 08:06, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The tracking number I've added refers to the reference count. When I look at your diff, though, the reference numbering seems correct to me - the two in the infobox are 1 & 2, the one in the body is 3. Does it look different to you? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:33, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen something similer in that while editing the main body, the reference numbering starts from 1 regardless of the fact that there are references in the infobox. When the edit is saved everything then appears as expected so it's a quirk of the edit process that's ignoring refs not within the main text. Haven't tried the named reference yet to see if I experience the same. NtheP (talk) 14:36, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed the result is what I'd expect, it's just the VisualEditor itself that doesn't realize that references within templates exist (or indeed any formatting; links or italics would also have to be added manually to template parameters). VisualEditor doesn't allow me to add them, it doesn't allow me to refer to named refs that exist already outside the main body, and it doesn't count them correctly. The last effect is an entirely cosmetic bug (VisualEditor is not WYSIWYG here) that's just a symptom of the underlying problem.

In a similar vein I can't add a reference or a template to an image caption, though templates and images can be added to references. Huon (talk) 15:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

On second thought this seems to be a generalization of bug 50182 - I don't just want to nest templates within templates, I want to nest references in templates (though not in templates within references!), and references and templates within image captions. All that is unsupported at the moment. Huon (talk) 16:26, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The devs are actually talking this one through in IRC now :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

tables - nowiki tag, spaces

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52502

Spaces and nowiki tags are being added to a table on my users page when I'm editing elsewhere on the page using VisualEditor. SLBohrman (talk) 14:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to have gone wonky in this edit. It looks like the markup, etc. might have confused something in there. I'm wondering if the issue you encountered in the welcome message has to do with the known problem with colored text in signatures (unless that was fixed while I was out of town). I'll poke about. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:04, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

After looking more closely, I think not. I've opened a bug about the duplicated character string here. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! SLBohrman (talk) 17:55, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Can't unwrap template within template

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52182

In this edit I wanted to remove one of the two templates which were nested in {{multiple issues}}: the only way I could see was to delete {{mi}} and then re-add the one template I still wanted. Messy. What if there had been 5 templates within {{mi}} and I'd wanted to delete one or two: can it be done in VE? PamD 15:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When editing "MI", I see a "1" beneath it. Clicking on the "1" brings up the subtemplates, which I can remove individually. Unless that isn't working for you, it seems less a lack of feature than a lack of clarity. If you can let me know which, I'll see what we can do with it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Being able to treat templates within templates in the same way that you can treat stand-alone templates is actually on the to-do list :). I am particularly proud of the bug name. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Awesomely titled, but duplicate. :) I've linked the main bug above. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Right, thanks Maggie, I can now remove one or more of the templates from within {{mi}}. But if I've removed all but one, so want to drop the {{mi}} but keep one of the inner templates, can I do that? It might be one with a long text parameter (perhaps {{cleanup|reason= some verbose description of everything that's wrong with the article ...}}, tedious to retype. See this example edit. (Only a low-priority issue, as copy-and-paste or retyping would work) PamD 21:15, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Templates have evolved since this morning, I'm happy to see. You can now see the name of the subtemplate. But, alas, I don't see any way to remove the top template without removing the subs. This would be a nice feature to have, I agree - I'll put it in, but it probably will be low-priority, as you say. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:45, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE picking up old version of file? - 27 ghost references!

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52521

If I open Queen Anne Grammar School in VE, I can see two superscripts linking to references - and 29 references in the reflist. Some of them perhaps most, are the refs which were deleted in a series of edits 9 hours ago while the article was being moved from AFC to mainspace. If I open it in Edit Source, it's a respectable little stub with two refs and no sign of the other stuff.

Extremely confusing. I've got a word doc with a couple of screenshots pasted into it, could attach to an email if told where to send it.

Meanwhile will edit the article in VE and see what happens.

... Have italicised motto, stub-sorted, saved page, all in VE. When I open it again in VE it still shows 29 references.

... Closed it, edited it in Edit Source, saved it, no sign of refs 3-29. Re-opened it in VE, they are still showing up. PamD 20:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, thanks for reporting this, I'll let you know something ASAP. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I was able to reproduce it as well, so I have thrown your very words into Bugzilla. Again, thanks for stopping by! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Submit" button doesn't show up

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52524

Sometimes, the "Submit" and "Cancel" buttons don't show up, leaving the editor no choice but to backtrack and edit the page's source code. Is there any fix for that? Epicgenius^{(talk to me • see my contributions)} 21:13, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Epicgenius, can you tell us more about your browser, WP skin and OS? Which article were you working on? Have you experienced other issues that you feel might be related? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am using Google Chrome, on Windows 7, and I am using the Vector skin. I was working on DeKalb Avenue (BMT Fourth Avenue Line), but it wasn't a major problem since I was making spelling corrections. I haven't ran into any other problems with VE that are related to this. Epicgenius^{(talk to me • see my contributions)} 21:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I Bugzillaed it (new issue, new words!), thank you, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:41, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Epicgenius, any chance to provide a screenshot of the problem? That would be quite helpful for the developers. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Strange result with a </nowiki> tag inserted

I tried to edit the wikilinked word "Google" to the non-wikilinked word "Niantic" and got a strange result with an unexpected nowiki close tag:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ingress_(game)&diff=prev&oldid=562432188

Any idea why? Thanks! Woz2 (talk) 21:18, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Woz2, yes, I think there were multiple reports about VE adding those tags. Will still look into that ASAP, thank you. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is expected behavior if only a part of a word was linked. Without the <nowiki/> the unlinked part of the word would be turned into a link trail. --Gabriel Wicke (talk) 23:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry. I don't understand what a link trail is. Also the whole of the word "Google" was linked, not a part of it. Woz2 (talk) 00:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See "linktrail rules" in Help:Links. I suspect that Google was indeed the link target, but only the 'N' of Niantic was linked. --Gabriel Wicke (talk) 06:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Received error though edit was saved

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52463

I tried saving an edit to U.S. Route 377 in Texas (diff), it took a while and then finally I got an error. Sorry I didn't copy it but it was something close to "Error: Invalid error type." However, when I check the history it did accept the edit in spite of the error. FWIW, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 21:50, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gyrofrog, did it edit exactly like you wanted to, no extra things or something? I'll try and see if it happens to me as well. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It worked for me, but was extremely slow - I think perhaps due to all the transclusions. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:57, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just my guess, maybe due to the beta launch in these minutes? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I left a note in that ticket, though. Regards, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Akon discography

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52532

Look at the results of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akon_discography?veaction=edit . Notice how the visual editor treats html style tags as table entries.—Kww(talk) 22:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Specifically, look at the album for "Oh Africa", which certainly wasn't "Rowspan=3;style=background ...", or the album for "Lock Down", which wasn't style="background: #ececec....—Kww(talk) 22:28, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it looking something like this for you (I can't reproduce it ...) PEarley (WMF) (talk) 22:31, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, that is what it looks like. I can see the HTML as well in edit mode. PEarly, I filed a new bug, feel free to merge it (or have it merged) if this is already in Bugzilla. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm thinking it's 50366, but we'll let the pros figure it out. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Loving it

Hey y'all...I have to say, in the past few weeks the VisualEditor has improved quite a bit, and I'm proud to say that, what the heck, Oliver, for the first time ever you didn't botch up a release. I'm just kidding of course -- kudos to the entire team. Keep it up! Theopolisme (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Error message: 'Error: Invalid token'

I just tried to test VisualEditor by removing some text from my userpage, and got the message 'Error: Invalid token'. What does this mean? Robofish (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to have been a problem with the edit summary, I changed that and it worked. Are hyphens no longer allowed in edit summaries or something? Robofish (talk) 22:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Robofish: I tried a hyphen, a dash, an en-dash, and an em-dash, within edit-summaries, and all worked.

The only bug I can see that contains "token" is Bugzilla:50424 (VisualEditor: "Invalid token" message after period of inactivity leads to lost work). Might that be it? –Quiddity (talk) 22:55, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can only assume so. I haven't had any further similar problems, I guess my first edit just timed out. Robofish (talk) 22:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad it's working better for you. :) I had an issue with really slow editing when it was first rolled out for all logged-in users (mentioned above). Seems okay now. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Inline comments

First off, I want to say that the new visual editor is remarkable improvement over the version I tested out several months ago. This is an editor which I could actually use to manage articles! That said, one feature it currently lacks is viewing or editing inline comments to a page. These are useful in many different fashions. Could it be possible for Visual editor to display and/or allow editing of inline comments? Sailsbystars (talk) 22:21, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, tis a widely-requested feature. See above at #Still cannot view hidden comments for the most recent thread, and a link to the bugzilla entry. –Quiddity (talk) 22:42, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback and some nitpicks I have

I've been trying VisualEditor recently, and so far, I've been pretty pleased with it. I do have two nitpicks, however:

1) The text size for edit summaries and reviewing changes is a bit too small for me. I sometimes find that I have a bit of difficulty reading what I write in the text box and seeing the changes I made without zooming in. I think the text size could be made a bit bigger.
2) When I edit a particular section of an article, it would be nice if the text summary noted which section I edit like editing the source would. Currently, VisualEditor doesn't do that.

Overall, it's good so far, even if I have some minor issues with it. Lugia2453 (talk) 22:38, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your feedback, Lugia2453. Good point about the edit summary sizes and section edits being noted. We should certainly look into that. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:44, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please do. The licensing information is in that window, which is pretty important information, and I can't read what's in there without putting on glasses that I don't normally need for computer use. I'd suggest a 20-25% increase in size; it can be smaller, but not 1/3 the size of normal print. Risker (talk) 07:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you using vector or monobook? If monobook - that's a known bug, and one we're working on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Monobook, of course, because Vector is still too slow for some of my computers. It might be helpful to maintain a table on this project of the bugs that have been reported so that people will have a chance to (a) follow and (b) not duplicate work for each other. Risker (talk) 12:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that is that there are a lot of bugs being reported (go figure - big software project) and also that they're getting fixed admirably fast. I've usually got about 30 bugs in bugzilla at a time, and they're never the same 30 a week. Keeping it up-to-date would be substantial. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Old Editing Interface

The former edting interface of Wikipedia is way better than the current one. Windows55 (2) (talk) 22:45, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. You can still access the "old" editing interface by clicking "edit source" instead of "edit." Keegan (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

How to disable?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540

The Editing tab on my Preferences page doesn't have an "Enable VisualEditor" option under "Usability". Jordan Brown (talk) 23:14, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you do not wish to use VisualEditor, you can simply click "edit source" to load the wiki-markup editing interface. There is not an option to turn VisualEditor off or opt-out in your preferences- we do hope that you'll give it a try- but if you want to hide it from your interface you can add importScript('User:Matma Rex/VE killer.js'); to your common.js file. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like an option to disable it, I think. Having the "Edit source" tab appear several seconds after the "Edit this page" tab appears is confusing. (Might be OK if they appeared at the same time.) Regardless, if there's not going to be a Preferences entry for it, the documentation about the preferences entry (like at the top of this page) should go away. As for why I think I want to disable it: maybe it's just that I'm an old dog (and hence resistant to learning new tricks), or maybe it's that I'm used to being very picky about exactly what wikitext I write, but my immediate gut reaction is that I don't want to learn a new tool and I'm not comfortable not knowing what wikitext gets generated. Jordan Brown (talk) 23:29, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There's no plan to disable this in Preferences, but I can certainly put in a feature request for simultaneous "edit source" appearance, unless there's one already (I'll check). (Thanks much for the note about the Preferences on the top of the page. Overlooked in the beta release. :) I've removed it. ) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That hover thing is incredibly annoying: it probably wouldn't be so bad if the interface hadn't changed the definition of "edit". If it said something like "struggle to accomplish what used to come simply and naturally" or something like that, I probably wouldn't go through this cycle of clicking it, wondering why my screen goes dim and everything locks up for 30 seconds, and then realizing that I have accidentally engaged the visual editor, backing out, hovering, and then moving right to accomplish what I originally intended.—Kww(talk) 00:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hopefully they'll be able to accommodate the enhancement request, which I've linked above. I understand your annoyance with that - I've gotten used to it, but when they first changed section editing to VE only (before the "edit source" link was added), it kind of drove me crazy. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Opt out

Now that you've made the visual editor the default, I would like to have an option to switch it off again. However, I can't find the box to tick any more in my preferences. Could you please bring this back? I do not want to use visual editor, and the dual tabs for "edit" and for "edit source" are confusing. – Thanks.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:17, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. smileguy91^talk 23:19, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've just tried the JS snippet from the section before, and it works.--Aschmidt (talk) 23:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, agreed. Awful, unnecessary, unwelcome and unwanted. -- Necrothesp (talk) 23:30, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Smileguy91:, create the page /common.js in your userspace and copy the code above. The result is a page that looks like this and VisualEditor should be blocked off for you. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Having a switch in your preferences for switching this off would be the canonical way, though. Otherwise, you'll drive away the most important contributors to the project. Creating a JS file is only a work around. Make it a gadget, please.--Aschmidt (talk) 00:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Very slow and featureless

The entire process of this 'visual editing' is extremely slow, from the lag when altering some text to the long wait for an edit to be finished. I added a single space, and had to wait for about six seconds to finish my edit. This change adds nothing of benefit that I can see, and it looks to be useless for real article editing; how would one see or use wiki-markup in this interface? I have no idea.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52533

By the way, this feedback form constantly moves down my screen every time I hit a key, making me have to scroll down. It causes full screen flickering seemingly randomly too. I do not recall signing up for this, I hope that this feature wasn't suddenly enabled by default for everyone. Shirudo talk 23:36, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One doesn't see or use wiki-markup in this interface. :) It's a VisualEditor. Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide offers information on some of the ways you achieve the same results in the interface.

While VE is activated by default for everyone, it is not forced on anyone - you have the alternative to "edit source" and need never use VE if you don't want to. But I hope you'll give it a try. It's grown on me since my first halting edits with it some months back. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, but the instinct is to hit "edit" so it's an imposition. I've used the code to kill it for me. When all the bugs are ironed out, I'll adopt it probably, unless it's too much time to learn given all the templates and so forth I use. After all, I've made it this far without it. That being said, you learn in Horror Movie 101 never to activate something that lacks an off switch.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, it has an off switch - the developers certainly can turn it off if problems develop. It won't be staggering about killing us all. :D In terms of the gadget, WMF actively supported the development of that because nobody is meant to be required to use VE. To make it easier to use, it's now been added to "gadgets" under your preferences. VE is there and available for everybody, but the old way has not been taken off the table. On the contrary, they've been working hard to accommodate both. That said, it hasn't taken me long to learn the difference between the two buttons. We humans are remarkably adaptable. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are, I believe, younger than me and such things come more natural. My brother and his wife are amazed at the technological advancement of their two children, yet we are much further advanced than our father, who never learned the use of a computer. In any event, energy spent on such things is energy not spent on content, and pushes people further along the inevitable enthusiasm curves which takes us from our dawn to dusk here on Wikipedia.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:21, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For your interest the scrolling issue seems to be handled in bugzilla:50533. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

HTML comments

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51603

I just noticed that there are now 2 ways to edit an article, the "edit source" way uses the familiar theme; the new theme now called "edit" is different. I have a problem with it. If you use the "edit source" option, there's an HTML comment at the top of Christine Jorgensen saying to use she/her to refer to Christine Jorgensen throughout her life. But with the new "edit" way of editing the article, no one will notice this HTML comment. People who prefer to edit with the new "edit" way of editing the article will change pronouns in this article the way they want to. Any thoughts?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:49, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A very good observation. @Okeyes (WMF):, thoughts on this? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 23:53, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Already tracked at bugzilla:49603 Theopolisme (talk) 23:58, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Alrea-dammit! @Theopolisme:, too fast :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

A/B test results

I'm assuming that the A/B test results must have been fantastic in order to justify doing this to us. Can I ask what they were, and where they are summarized and analyzed?—Kww(talk) 23:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Kww, we have the data from the A/B testing and it has been gone through. Oliver and James are meeting with the research team tomorrow to finalize the results so that it can be presented to the community sooner rather than later. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Cool! --j⚛e decker ^talk 00:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

User:Keegan (WMF), forgive me for being so blunt, but is there a reason the community can't have the raw data, instead of the version that is "finalized" (to me that sounds like "how do we make this look like it's great", but assuming good faith I hope it's not)? Of course all identifying data (IP etc) would be stripped first (not sure if that was even collected), everything else would be almost public information, so why not just release the raw data? ~Charmlet ^-talk- 00:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, finalised means "we've been running tests for 7 days and want to analyse 7 days worth of data, not 4". I'm sure we'll release the raw data if we can find a way of properly anonymising it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You turned it on by default before analyzing the results of the entire test? Why would you have done that?—Kww(talk) 01:01, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There shouldn't be any anonymising that needs to happen. No IP data should've been collected, nor other data (other than perhaps browser). It shouldn't be that hard. I share Kww's concerns about this being very rushed and not forthcoming. We don't need the analysis of the people who are pushing this against many wishes, we need the raw data so we can analyze it ourselves. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 01:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

a moving bullet

A strange, and quite minor bug, when editing Pickup v. Brown and Welsh v. Brown. When I edit this, and decrease my window width in such a way that the external linka at the bottom of the page requires more than one line, the bullet migrates to the second line improperly. Reproduced in Chrome and Safari/MacOSX/latest. --j⚛e decker ^talk 00:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe that's because the link is actually a template? When I try to edit in Chrome on my laptop, the bullet starts on the second line. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could be. As for being on the second line, for me it depends on whether there is a second line, it sounds like we're seeing, likely, the same behavior. --j⚛e decker ^talk 02:11, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

visual editor

very annoying thing jumps out when I'm trying to read pages.

Ellin Beltz (talk) 00:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Ellin. If it's the banner that tells you about VisualEditor that you object to, you can turn that off by hitting "hide". :) If that's not it, can you give more detail? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Linking

Currently, there is no way to truly choose what you want to link to. For instance, if I want to link to Canada from "Canadian" (yes, I realize it is overlink, and wouldn't really do it) I can not, because Canada is not among the choice options, and there is no way to pipelink or input your own option. 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 00:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings! You can still link to whatever page you would like even though something may not appear in a dropdown box. All you have to do is type the word you want in the link box. Using your example of Canada, I created User:Keegan (WMF)/Canada with the text Canadian/Canadien, highlighted, clicked link, wrote Canada, and saved, all with VisualEditor. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 00:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Referencing

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52458

Before I begin to truly use this, the referencing function must improve. To me, the "What do you want to reference" doesn't make sense. I want to place a reference where the cursor is. Clicking on "use new source" does not work. It would really be cool if a selection of cite templates were included in a dropdown menu, and then fields were provided. Speaking for myself, cite book, journal, news, and album-notes are absolutely essential. Thanks! 78.26 (I'm no IP, talk to me!) 00:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed; see bugzilla:50458 :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 01:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What? No "Preview" button?

I will just say this: Thank goodness Wikipedia is not planning (apparently) to eliminate the "edit source" option. Apparently, "edit source" is the only way to be able to preview your work before saving your changes. I tried the new VisualEditor for the first time today (on CJQM-FM), but it was so disorienting that I cancelled editing numberous times before throwing up my hands and discovering the "edit source". One noteworthy source of my frustration was an attempt to add in image in the CJQM-FM Infobox; somehow, the markup codes for internal link (double brackets) appeared in the article, causing the internal link to be broken or at least appeared to be broken. (Luckily, I added the picture in "edit source" with no harm.) My preference is to always preview my work before saving, since it's important to make sure the edits are accurate before the world sees it.

So, for the benefit of the "new" editors, please at the very least add a "preview" button. If not, make them use the good old fashioned "edit source"; they'll learn.Darrel M (talk) 01:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The option to preview is included in VE. You can see the screencap with the "Review your changes" button in the Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide. I'm sorry that you found your initial experience with VE so frustrating. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure what you mean by this, User:Mdennis (WMF). When I click on "Review your changes" the resulting box covers the entire screen, and I cannot see the underlying article at all :/ -- Diannaa (talk) 03:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What Maggie means is that when you're editing with VisualEditor, what you're seeing is basically what you'll see after saving. There is no "preview" button, because you're essentially "previewing" all the time you're editing. guillom 07:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Support for Internet Explorer

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52085

Coming from a business background where support for IE (current and previous versions) was a far higher priority than other browsers, I wonder why this is not the case here. That said, I will be a tester of VE on IE10 when it is available. Can we please have a Bugzilla query that shows only outstanding IE10 issues. Downsize43 (talk) 01:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Downsize43, IE remains a high priority and we hope to have it supported as soon as possible. To settle your wonder about prioritizing, curiously enough only around six to eight percent of our editing traffic use IE, which is startlingly low all things considered, and currently we are supporting about 80% of our users. Our goal is naturally 100%, and we should hit this target eventually. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 01:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I've added a link to the bugzilla tracking item for IE support; the bugs preventing VisualEditor to work with IE are listed as its dependencies. It's not only about IE10, but I hope it's useful. guillom 07:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE incompatible with singlechart template

VE can't properly display any chart table using {{singlechart}}. Take a look at 5 O'Clock (T-Pain song)#Charts and certifications as a random selection, and try to figure out how to change the positions (or, worse yet, add a line). This is probably related to the fact that singlechart creates reference and table markup internally. It is, however, an extremely common template, used in most articles about singles.—Kww(talk) 01:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Citation templates

The old editor had a list of commonly used citations. This was extremely handy. It would be nice if that feature could be brought back. ¿3family6 _contribs 01:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, is it something much different from what is explained at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User_guide#Editing_references? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50368

It also had a built-in find and replace function. That of course tends to be more useful in the source edit, but it's ridiculous that that and many other functions of the edit toolbar were removed. Reywas92^Talk 07:13, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll check Bugzilla for similar requests, although I would not say that features were removed, they are not ready yet (remember, this is still the beta version!). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There was one, as a matter of fact :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Map display problem in Safari on iPad

The following does not display correctly in VE under Safari on iPad.

Lua error in Module:Location_map at line 391: The hemisphere "N" provided for longitude is not valid.'Bold text'Bold text

Downsize43 (talk) 01:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Could you elaborate how is it displayed incorrectly for you? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not part of the previous item

I'm still not very used to it. I was planning to added one more ref into a sentence, but I have no idea what to do. Rochelimit (talk) 02:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Rochelimit:, How to edit references. I hope this helps! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please get rid of this BETA editing tool

This new BETA editing tool is the most confusing and useless "upgrade" ever introduced by Wikipedia. Yes, it does look a lot fancier but Wikipedia is all about simplicity, which this new tool is effectively going to eliminate. We don't need this "chic" interface, make it go away! Permaveli (talk) 02:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you wish to hide the VisualEditor interface, for now you can add the gadget under "Editing" in your preferences. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 02:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you should stop making it the default until it actually functions properly on most articles? That would be simpler than subjecting everyone to this thing unless we take steps to avoid it.—Kww(talk) 02:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Look, here's the basic thing. The WMF team has been working on this super hard, I get that. But when they're faced with this much dadgum opposition, you'd think they'd take a step back and wait a bit before forcing this on people who didn't even know it was coming - i.e. new editors, editors who didn't see the watchlist/other notices, etc. And now, it's forced as default for all logged in editors? This is too much too fast, and this response is more proof of that.

@Permaveli - if you want to disable it temporarily, there's a nice script that you can use to do such. Just add:

importScript('User:Matma_Rex/VE_killer.js');

to your Special:MyPage/common.js page and it should work right iirc for the time being. ~Charmlet ^-talk- 02:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I strongly believe this rollout was premature at best. I have no idea why anyone thought displaying edit summaries in the tiniest text imaginable was a good idea. I don't see why anyone thought a function which does not display the standard BLP policy notice when editing BLPs, especially in a feature intended to appeal to new editors, was a good idea. I wonder whether not displaying the standard language about copyrights, licenses, etc was a good idea, and might even foul up the licensing legalities. With all the klutziness and obtrusive features, this may do for Wikipedia editing what Windows 8 has done for PC sales. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 03:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I note there is a strong statement on the info page to the effect that WMF and the Devs do not care one whit what the community wants, we are required to accept this. However, as others have said, imposing it as default before it works adequately is a sign of contempt and a completely separate point from whether a WYSIWYG editor is desirable in itself. The default being something that doesn't work is not desirable, and that policy statement is to say the least peculiar in a volunteer project. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Many, many people, including LOTS AND LOTS outside Wikipedia, have been yelling for a visual editor literally for years. At this point, surprise is not actually credible - David Gerard (talk) 07:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slow, WSYWIG is more confusing

I spend a lot of my time in code, so prefer modifying the wikitext, rather than an interface's attempt at rendering the text in real time gringer (talk) 02:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fair enough. In the end, it's all about choosing the right editor for the right task, and if you feel you prefer to continue to use wikitext for all your editing needs, that's perfectly understandable :) guillom 06:01, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unable to close input box

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52553

Clicking "Page settings", or the reference, image, and category buttons in the top right brings up a dialogue box for input. To close this box there is an X in the top right. However, when I am not at the top of the page, this dialogue box pops up beneath the standard editing options. This makes it impossible to close the box without adjusting the screen magnification.

In addition, the opening of these boxes freezes scrolling of the underlying page, which not only furthers the problem above, but is also simply annoying and unnecessary, as I can no longer move to another part of the article I wish to see without closing and reopening the box. Reywas92^Talk 03:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Added a report for this. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 04:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Opinion and issue

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52441

Today, while editing Portals to Canaan (adding a link and removing a word) I tried out the VE, for these simple tasks I have found it to be pretty good for this. It was simple enough (once I knew what it was actually doing) and I liked the list of links that gave suggestions, to avoid linking to a DAB page. The one issue I had was when I saved it, I went to remove a duplicate stub templates, and it said I was editing an old version of the page (in VE), so I had to reload the page to remove it. Overall I think it is good, and I like that it is easy to switch back to old school and VE without having to change any settings. I will probably use a combination of the two in the future, depending on what I am doing. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 03:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your feedback; this is great to hear :) Regarding the "editing an old version" issue, is it possible that someone edited the page in the meantime? guillom 05:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, there were no edits between mine. My edits were eight minutes apart, which I would say was the learning curve for me to figure out the puzzle piece thing (which I think is alright). There were no intermediate edits. I haven't done much in the way of mainspace edits since, if I come across the same problem or any others I will post here again. I think the key is to make the source easily accessible, which you have done. Sometimes it is easier/faster to write in Wikimarkup, so it is always nice to have that option. I also did a multi-picture template edit with it since, again, after figuring out how it worked, not bad (but I will probably use edit source for that sort of thing in the future).--kelapstick^(bainuu) 05:26, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. Do let us know if you encounter the same issue again :) guillom 05:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes guillom there seems to be an issue with editing the same page twice in a row, I did it again on 2008 riot in Mongolia, first I added a word in a lower section and saved it. I then decided I would try again to see if I received the same message as I did in the first example. Sure enough I did, so I added a piped hyperlink to economy, and sure enough it edited on the old version. See this edit, and the one before it. Looks like the page does not refresh itself after saving I suppose. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 06:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for investigating; I confirm this issue. I've reported it, but it was actually already in bugzilla under another name. This is a high-priority bug for developers. Thanks again :) guillom 06:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[edit] button

The [edit] button should not shift to [ edit | edit source ] when you simply mouse over anywhere in the header line. It's very distracting and should only do that when you mouse over the button itself.

It's also distracting how it has to widen itself. Why add the spaces inside the brackets? Why widen or change text at mouseover at all? [edit|source] should be the link all the time. Reywas92^Talk 03:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I believe the expansion of the edit button behaves this way to improve discoverability, while the widening thing's goal is to avoid cluttering the interface. In the end those are design decisions, so only the designers could really explain them (I can only guess). guillom 05:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would prefer it not to shift at all, but to have an [edit|edit source] button instead of [edit]. As pointed out, this is incredibly annoying when reading. /Julle (talk) 11:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Issues

At first glance, my immediate reaction was to figure out how to turn this off. I much prefer editing using code, and am glad that option remains. This concept is not terrible, but the product it self really adds little (although it is beta). My suggestion here is twofold:

Allow users to set their own default in preferences. VisualEditor should not be the default at this point, because it is not even a finished product. Both systems should be treated equally.
Enable new users to choose which editing system to use upon the creation of their account. It is critical to not assume all new editors are opposed to a technically-rich editing experience.

I wish this project the best of luck, but I have no interest in using it at this point. Aside from that, this project misses a key point - editor retention. Making a new, buggy, unfinished, and not technically rich editing system the 'default' does not show that WMF values its current editors. Finding new members is important, but keeping the current ones is too. Toa Nidhiki05 03:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That last paragraph hits the bulls-eye perfectly. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 03:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"The WMF" definitely values its current editors, and the weeks spent following up on their comments, bug reports and feature requests should be an indication of that. I'd argue that VisualEditor wasn't made "the default", since both edit tabs appear on an equal footing (and "edit source" is more understandable than jargon like "edit using VisualEditor"). While it is true that newer users may be more interested in VisualEditor than experienced users, I think VisualEditor will also be useful to experienced editors for some editing tasks. I've been editing Wikipedia since 2005, and I still can't get a full {{cite journal}} reference right from the first time; VisualEditor provides a really nice interface for this. VisualEditor also drives me crazy at times, and I think it's a question of choosing the right editor for the right task. This will be even more the case in a few weeks/months when it's possible to switch between the two editing modes while editing. guillom 05:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor/Feedback

I do not like the new Visual editor. I don't edit very much, I usually change grammar or remove vandalism. I like the old way of editing better. Can I have the old way of editing back? BeckiGreen (talk) 03:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Click on "Edit Source". --j⚛e decker ^talk 03:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Copying from my post above: to revert the imposition of VisualEditor as default: Preferences > Gadgets > under Editing, check/tick "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface". This needs to be posted prominently on the information page. People who don't like it - or prefer to wait until it actually works - should not have to perform an extra step before each edit. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Er no.... Currently Opera is not supported in VE, great news. But if I go and check that remove visual editor option I find the edit page tab disappears and I am unable to edit anything... Dsergeant (talk) 05:52, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Dsergeant: Trying to track your problem down a bit: Which Opera version do you use? On which exact page does the "edit page tab disappear"? Do you by any chance know which MediaWiki skin you are using? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 09:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Simple edit, simple mess

[4] --NeilN ^{talk to me} 04:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh, that's not very pretty indeed. Could you describe with some more details what you attempted to do? This will help pinpoint the source of the problem. guillom 05:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wasn't me. I'm just looking over my watchlist for any VE edits. Maybe the editor was trying to use markup? VE should warn users who try to insert common markup syntax. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 06:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

D'oh, sorry, I didn't even look at who made the edit. Yes, I completely agree that VisualEditor should at least provide a warning. guillom 06:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, it's pretty clear what happened here. The user made a grammatical correction, changing "will" to "would", but VE added a whole pile of nowiki's. Risker (talk) 06:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The edit summary says "unlinked articles and...", so I assume it wasn't only a grammatical correction. guillom 07:10, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Highly disruptive

Not telling us that such a change was coming was highly disruptive to editing Wikipedia. Whoever turned this thing on should be blocked. Seriously.--Paul McDonald (talk) 04:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed publicly for more than a year and scheduled for June/July since at least March. Announcements appeared in the WP:Signpost, WP:VPT, the mailing lists, on the Watchlist, and other places. Whether or not it is a disruptive change, there was definitely a lot of notice that it was coming. Dragons flight (talk) 05:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not to mention the banners at the top of every page. :-) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not knowing this was coming would actually have required effort - David Gerard (talk) 07:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a list of problems I have encountered

Scripts are unavailable (regularising date formats, checking page size, general formatting, etc).
Citation Bot is unavailable.
References are far more difficult to add and correctly format.
BLP notices are not being displayed.
Editors are not being informed when they are editing a semi-protected or fully-protected page.
Hidden comments are inaccessible.
Section edits do not seem to be possible. These are crucial on large pages, to help speed load and save time.
The "Review Changes" box covers the whole screen, making examination of the underlying page impossible.
All added hyperlinks are displaying as blue, even if there's no underlying article.
If you can see mark-up errors while looking at the "Review Changes" box, there's no way to get at the underlying code and change them. People will potentially have to open the old-style edit box anyway, for a second edit to make repairs.
You definitely do Not want to be editing info boxes with this editor, as it's really easy to inadvertently remove the line breaks between parameters.
Unexpected formatting changes and gibberish code are being added on many edits that aren't merely simple amendments to the prose. -- Diannaa (talk) 04:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Diannaa: Thanks for reporting these :). In order: I suspect scripts and citation bot will catch up as the software matures. I agree, references need some love - it's an area in development, and if you have any ideas for improvement we have a bug here you can post them at (or just put them here and ping me, and I'll post it - bugzilla is one of the most fundamentally user-unfriendly pieces of software I've ever seen).

BLP notices not being displayed is a weird one; the VisualEditor should be surfacing page-notices. I've added that to Bug 50415, which also covers the semi- and full-protection issue. Hidden comments are at 49603; section edits, also working on. Can you send me a screenshot of the "review changes" problem? Hyperlinks is being worked on, and I totally agree about the markup errors; I think the plan is to move towards more of a wordpress-like environment where you can toggle between the two, edits intact. How are you removing the line breaks in infoboxes? And, if you can point me at gibberish code, I am happy to take a look at it.

Sorry for the TLDR; thanks for all your bug reports thus far. They're most appreciated :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Saving of the page

I have just started using the new visual editor feature. I notice a lag in the saving of the page which is much more than when editing the source. A m i t ❤ 04:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Concur with this. A page that I edited with VE took 28 seconds to save compared to less than 3 seconds using source code. Aside from the learning curve that comes with having to relearn how to do things I already knew how to do (I'll get over that part), this is the biggest frustration with VE. And I haven't even tried it on my 'slow' computer yet. Risker (talk) 05:30, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The speed of opening and saving the page in VisualEditor is related to Parsoid, the program that converts wikicode to annotated HTML, and vice-versa. Parsoid has a "caching" feature, which means that it will work faster if it already has a recent version in memory. The cache sometimes needs to be cleared, and therefore re-built little by little as editors edit with VisualEditor, so this might explain some of the slowness you've encountered. The lead developer on Parsoid says: "Basically, as long as the progress animation is animating, Parsoid is working; on cache hits and large pages the animation is only active for a split second". So speed should get better as cache increases. guillom 05:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That would explain the slowness of the first save. It would not explain why the second save, some time later, was equally as slow. Risker (talk) 06:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, you're correct. Unfortunately, I'm out of Parsoid developers to ask at the moment, but I'll try again when they wake up. guillom 06:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

rail icon templates

when previewing a change in a rail icon template, it does not render the new page correctly aligned but breaks up the icons and also misplaces them BT14 (talk) 04:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Template with show/hide template opens to "show" position after saving

Twice when I was editing Lois Brown, the large template at the bottom of the page with the show/hide toggle defaulting to "hide" has opened after saving the edit, and the show/hide toggle disappeared. This reverted to normal after a few page refreshes. Risker (talk) 04:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

InMemoriamLuangPu (talk) 05:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

Very difficult to add references. What happened to web templates? NovaSkola (talk) 05:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to hear that. Does the user guide help at all? You can add templates in references by clicking the "Transclusion" icon (puzzle piece) in the reference editing window; it should even provide you with fields for the possible parameters. Do let me know if the user guide doesn't help. guillom 05:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I meant, visual editor don't have button named "cite", which includes cite web or other refs, so where I can find that function? Furthermore Blablablaarticle doesn't work. Brackets stays but article isn't linked --NovaSkola (talk) 08:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi there, in the guide I read If you're adding a new reference and you want to include a template in it... and see the Cite template in the images. Doesn't this work for you? In order to create wikilinks, use the chain button. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Edit buttons

I really hate the [edit | edit source] that shows up. It took me a few to actually figure out what the difference between them was. For as long as I can remember, on Wikipedia [edit] meant "Go to a new page so you can make some changes and submit them." It didn't mean, "Stay on this page and make some changes in a reduced capacity. You want to make bigger changes? Click the OTHER button that is so obliquely-labeled good luck figuring out what it actually means. This new button, despite its confusing name, actually is the one that now does what the OTHER button used to do!" Great, so now I have to unlearn what has become so second-nature to me here on Wikipedia.

Can we PLEASE change this? It's annoying as crap to have to work with it like this. LazyBastard Guy 05:50, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My question is, can the buttons be relabeled? I for one am used to the "edit" button being the one that lets me take a comprehensive look at things. LazyBastard Guy 06:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The problem with that is priority; because the VE is the default, it's going to be the default for newcomers, too. If we have "edit" link to the markup editor and "edit [special word]" link to the VisualEditor - denoting that it's something 'advanced', or something complex, basically - it sorta screws with the prioritisation. Ditto if we move the buttons about so that markup-editing is, from a LTR perspective, prioritised (i.e. one of the first things people see, reading from one side to the other). My advice would be to give it a week and see if it's still a problem. I know from my end that it's initially frustrating, but eventually adaptable to - I've had it enabled for a month now, and can't remember the last time I mis-clicked. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540

I find it annoying that it has to change when you're just mousing over the entire header line. Make it static! We also NEED a link from the VE interface to the source interface. We still can't edit galleries, infoboxes, and such in VE, so there ought to be a quick link to the source edit. Reywas92^Talk 06:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think I can safely say that a better integration between the two is on its way :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 06:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reywas92: With regard to mousing over, there is a request in bugzilla:50540 to always show both. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:02, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds like a much better idea. As it is now, it has a negative effect on the (or at least my) ability to concentrate on the articles when reading. /Julle (talk) 11:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Complaints

(1) I was editing when suddenly I had Visual Editor thrust upon me. How do I revert to the old style of editing? (First you want to spy on veteran editors, then you use them as unwilling guinea pigs. Are you trying to drive us away?)

(2) Have Wikipedia's Dear Leaders ever heard the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"? How is this an improvement?

(3) Is it really a good idea to make editing easier? Do you want to make it easier for 14-year-old boys to insert the words "fuck" or "penis" or "my girlfriend is a whore" in the middle of an article on atomic physics -- which will require someone else to clean up their mess? (If you want to do something useful, how about installing a filter just to eliminate words like "fuck", "asshole", etc. -- or repeating characters? Then other people wouldn't have to waste time cleaning up articles after they've been vandalized.)

(4) Where the heck are the special symbols / alphabets? How can I use Greek or Cyrillic or other special letters?

(5) The new editing system is slooooooow.

(6) Want to do something useful for a change? How about displaying footnotes when they're added or altered? At present, when I add a footnote, I don't see it until I save the page; then I notice a typo and I must edit the page again. Save people some trouble by displaying, during "preview", footnotes to a section.

Cwkmail (talk) 05:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The "old style" of editing is still right there; just click "edit source". Many willing guinea pigs have enabled VisualEditor early and provided a lot of feedback, which has allowed developers to fix bugs. VisualEditor is now in better shape, and stable enough to be made available to all users. It's not completely bug-free (no software is), but developers have been fixing bugs at an impressive rate.

Regarding vandalism, there's an item in the FAQ about it, but basically, it's just as easy to add "fuck" with the wikitext editor; it's not like vandals particularly care about breaking wikitext. And I'm pretty sure there are already AbuseFilters in place to catch those words.

I do miss the special characters as well; there's a bugzilla request about it. Regarding speed, although a lot of improvement has been done, a balance needs to be struck between ease of editing and speed. If you're more comfortable with editing the wikitext source code, that editing mode remains available both for whole pages and for sections. guillom 06:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Cwkmail:, that filter you mention has been in existence since 2007; it's called the AbuseFilter. And actually, the VE does allow for footnote display. When/where have we tried to "spy on veteran editors"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, you guys respond pronto! I only wish that the real world worked like that. (1) "Edit source" is what's called "non-intuitive". May I suggest "Revert to traditional editing" or some such? (2) Glad to hear about the vandalism filters, although apparently vandals still find ways to delete entire sections of articles, add comments that come from a public men's room, etc. (3) If I edit a section of an article and add a footnote to it, the footnote isn't displayed during "preview". If there's a way around this shortcoming, I'd be glad to receive instructions. (4) A few days ago, editors were asked if they wanted to make their edit data (time, date, frequency, etc.) public. Hence the accusation of "spying". (5) Most important, if Wikipedia is trying to attract new editors, perhaps making editing easier will help somewhat. (It took me months -- imitating others' examples -- to learn the old system.) However, I suspect that a more fundamental problem is: all the easy stuff has been done. To write a beginning "stub" article about, say, Sir Issac Newton, is easy -- providing dates of birth, death, etc. But to add information to a more fully developed article -- e.g., to explain how his hypothesis of an inverse-square law explains the dynamics of the solar system -- is something that only a few people know. On the other hand, there's a continual stream of current events and popular culture to provide fodder for new editors and new articles. However, I think that most people don't enjoy doing the boring homework of finding and citing references (although I enjoy it as a kind of treasure hunt). Finally, the novelty of Wikipedia has worn off. There are new on-line activities to absorb people's time and efforts. Good luck with your new Visual Editor. Maybe you should steal some of Apple's staffers. They seem to be especially good at these things. Cwkmail (talk) 07:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not Default?

Can the powers-that-be NOT make this default. How about Opt-in and not forcing people opt-out?

WYSIWYG editing is gonna lead to dragging down contributors to the low·est common denominator [Is wiki-syntax really that hard to grasp? Really? (facepalm)] J. D. Redding 06:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is really that hard. VisualEditor isn't the "default"; it's just another editing mode offered as an alternative to wikitext editing. You're free to choose the one you want to use; in my experience, each editor is suited to specific tasks, and I personally use them both, depending on whether I'm fixing a link (which is more straightforward for me in wikitext) or editing a complex reference template (which is now easier in VisualEditor). guillom 06:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Is wiki-syntax really that hard to grasp?" Yes, actually. Don't get me wrong - for contributors with the level of dedication that you or I have, I think wiki-syntax isn't that big a challenge; we have an identity vested, at least in part, in our contributions to Wikipedia. We're long-term editors, we've got great experience contributing, and we joined in a time when actually having to learn a markup challenge to contribute to a work wasn't that big a deal (heck, even MySpace, back in the day - and that's as social as it's possible to get - had HTML and CSS editing). But nobody starts off with this level of dedication, they have to build up to it, and most people don't start off wanting to write great big articles; they want to start off...adding a reference. Or correcting a typo. And to do either, they need to be able to parse syntax; not just because many types of small contribution require it, but because being able to read the editable text of an article requires it. Hitting "random article" brought me to Detrended correspondence analysis, for example. If I spot a typo in the page and go to fix it (hey, it has a cleanup template, it might need it) I'm confronted with template syntax, dash-style bolding, square brackets for linking, pipes for linking, list syntax, header syntax and a massive table. If I want to fix something, I need to be able to read it to identify the element in the editing view that I saw needed fixing in the reading view. And that means learning a big chunk of wiki-markup...when all I want to do is fix a typo.

@At the same time, the internet in 2013 isn't a place where people expect to need to learn markup to contribute; pretty much all the nuanced interfaces I can think of (Wordpress comes to mind) features a rich-text editor. Users don't expect to have to learn wikimarkup, and when you combine "I didn't expect to have to learn this" with "I have to learn a big chunk of it to fix a typo", you get people going "this isn't worth the effort" and leaving, regardless of their intelligence. Nobody is saying "we want people too stupid to learn markup!" Far from it (heck, bits of the VE still require markup, just far less of it). We're a community of pretty brilliant people and we'd like to keep it that way - we're not doing this because we want the lowest common denominator editing. We're doing this because we want to reduce the initial cognitive overhead to contributing. And that means reducing the complexity that users are initially faced with - which is not the same as reducing the complexity of what they eventually might have to learn.

Having said that, I appreciate the VE isn't for everyone. If you look at the gadgets menu in the preferences, you'll find functionality to hide it - taking that option means you'll get the same editing interface you got last week. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is not really that hard for someone to use wikisyntax ... Me'the data is skewed [think, twain and statistics]. Please do NOT make this default. Regardless, allow opt-in ... and the problem is solved. --J. D. Redding 06:27, 2 July 2013 (UTC) (ps., "reduce the initial cognitive overhead " = "lowest common denominator editing". 'Nuff said. As to contributions ... if someone wants to contribute text, contribute it, let someone else mark it up. Real simple. Been that way since the beginning of the project ... goodness the early years were so much better.)[reply]

I appreciate the utopianism in your above message, but you have to understand that in practise that isn't how Wikipedia has worked for...quite some time. New contributors submitting text without, for example, references, do not get someone showing up to add markup. They get it deleted. I'm not sure what you mean by "twain and statistics". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Lies, damned lies, and statistics is a quote from Mark Twain.—Kww(talk) 06:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, gotcha (the lack of proper nouning confused me). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bell's First Law of USENET. --J. D. Redding 08:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Arguing that the button presented as the only option for section editing unless you learn to hover (or edit your preferences) isn't the "default" is a little disingenuous.—Kww(talk) 06:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, non-default would imply you have to make an active preference choice to enable it, imo. Different terminology, maybe. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

But Steven Walling only mentioned how it is difficult for women... SL93 (talk) 10:26, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is terrible

Don't use this new VisualEditor. It sucks. Brosensu (talk) 06:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Don't use it if you don't like it, I can't agree more. But perhaps everyone should make their own opinion on the matter? :) guillom 06:43, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Brosensu:, are there any particular things not working for you? We can't improve it if we don't know what's wrong with it. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Text shifts up

When I click to edit, the Table of Contents understandably disappears. However, this results in everything on the page to shift upward, causing my desired section to either be obscured at the top of the page by the edit toolbar or shift off the page altogether. This should not happen; all contents should stay at the same level on the screen when in edit mode. Reywas92^Talk 06:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

May I perhaps trouble you for a screenshot? I'm not sure I understand properly the problem you're explaining. guillom 06:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's the process taken when I go to enter VE from a section edit, it can't be captured in a screenshot. I wasn't clear that this is for section editing, not from the top edit tab. Click the section edit button of the section directly below the TOC, and the TOC disappears (as it obviously isn't editable), causing everything below it to shift up to fill the space. This means that I have to scroll back up to reach the point I wanted to edit, especially if the TOC was large. Reywas92^Talk 07:31, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To maybe be a little clearer, even if the section header is at the bottom of the page when I click edit, it automatically moves to the top of the page when VE is loaded. However the toolbar floating at the top covers the header and the first few lines. Reywas92^Talk 07:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is fairly annoying. I tend to click edit in the expectation that I will see the section I want to edit, and not have the page jump upwards and the section header disappear. Ideally the text should not move at all. Next best, the section header should be clearly visible at the top of the edit window. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just making sure it's not related to the browser you might be using: is it among those listed here? Thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hitting this too, using Firefox Nightly on Mac. The section header is always covered by the floating toolbox, and if I'm zoomed in (I usually am because I have a high-res screen), the first few lines of the section are also covered. Jruderman (talk) 10:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I need to be sure about Nightly, so I'll ask. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Jruderman, can you a) try a different browser in an "official" version which we are sure it's supported or b) manage to take a screenshot for us? Thanks! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:39, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

New editing format sucks

I did read the feedback page, and it looks like the people behind thins don't give a damn about the complaints, so i'll just put it simply; this new "idea" sucks. The old way was better and simpler. 293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 07:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can see why you prefer the classic editor, but I don't get how we might be overlooking complaints. People have been answering requests 24/7 on this page, so it sounds a bit unfair. Of course, we'd love to help you as well if you have a technical issue, beyond not liking the new interface :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:23, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps the complaints demanding that this new way of editing is an optional thing for starters instead of being default? The complaints that this was thrust upon the editors with little to no warning? The fact the interface was coded by a script kiddie hyped up on Energy Drinks? Just answering and acting like it's all hunky dory is not the way to address the problem. --293.xx.xxx.xx (talk) 07:30, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You'll find here a list of all the places where this was announced in time (I think banners were not included), so I think it is actually safe to say that enough notice was given - and with it, enough time to test it before today. If you had never heard about VE before, would you mind sharing ideas about other places that could be used to inform users about it? I would actually add that most of the complaints do not seem to come from new users, but rather from more experienced ones ;) As for the code, it's really just in beta now. I'm not a coder myself, but I don't expect perfection from software at this level. Thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed. As well as the announcements listed there we ran a centralnotice for a week and a watchlist notice for (iirc) 3. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It had years, months, weeks and days of warning as far as I could tell. Could you please detail what, to you, would have constituted sufficient warning? - David Gerard (talk) 07:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, it's too bad that the warning of it happening isn't the big issue. SL93 (talk) 10:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If default, make the new option appearance to the right

If default, can the 'programmers' make the new option _appearance_ to the right [with the new "default" option off to the side]?

Current implementation (poor)

[Edit Viz | Edit source)

Alternative implementation (better)

[Edit source | Edit Viz]

Better yet, just make it opt in. But, I digress ... --J. D. Redding 07:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As explained above, with a similar request, this would totally undermine the entire point of it being the default. People read left-to-right; the options that are the default or the expected mechanism should be the ones closest to the left, as it were. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Should be opt-in ... "new" features should be _added_ to the side ... J. D. Redding 07:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's been in an opt-in form since December 2012; a wider release is actually allowing us to tackle and identify a heck of a lot more bugs and bring this up from being an alpha, to a beta, to a release version. Adding new features to the side was, as said, conflict with how people identify functionality. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:47, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please keep it opt-in. Been going good with opt-in form since December 2012, seem like. The "functionality', your opinion, is thrust on everyone. Sounds like Democratic centralism. ... the new "default" option [notice the quotes] is really a _new_ feature. It should be added to the right. Not taking the place of the edit source. This is, upon consideration, also why the license should have been kept under GPL (and not made artistic). --J. D. Redding 07:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

We seem to be going in circles, here. Actually, opt-in form was going fantastically - we got a host of bugs - but there's no substitute for the "many eyes make shallow bugs" philosophy. A lot of the issues we've encountered and solved for over the last 24 hours would've been hidden for months or potentially years more without it. I'm not sure how the GPL relates to this. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

... and that misunderstanding ("not sure") may, nay does, lay at the root of the problem. --J. D. Redding 08:12, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Evidently, particularly since we've never used the GPL. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia never used the gnu copyleft license? Riiight. Now that is funny. --J. D. Redding 08:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC) (ps., next one will hear, "It's not a bug; it's an undocumented feature!")[reply]

The GNU copyleft license for text would be the GFDL, which we did use, but at this point I think we're down to the micro rather than the macro in our disagreement, so it probably isn't worthwhile to continue. If you have anything you're more willing to elucidate on, in bug terms, that we've not explicitly said we won't solve in the way you want, let me know. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Why cannot you just give them the eff'ing source text as the default and not the buggy editor ... god speed the bug squashing, until then 'Edit Hell'. --J. D. Redding 08:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC) (ps., will say one thing positive. Like the flashy edit transition, but edit source should be first; Source to the people.)[reply]

Defaultsort now editable - thanks

Brilliant: I needed to change the DEFAULTSORT from "The New Elizabethans" to "New Elizabethans, The", and this time I didn't need to retype the whole lot but could just delete and retype the "The ". I reported this as a bug a while back and it's been fixed. Thanks. PamD 07:37, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome! Do let us know if you run into any other bugs - or if some you've already reported haven't been moved on. I'll try to kick the devs a bit. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:41, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Resolution of references

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51555

Firstly, I welcome the introduction of this editing tool. I hope the developers are not too discouraged by the negative reception here – this is very much to be expected. Now retired (thankfully?) from a career doing this sort of work I know the impossibility of introducing any new development in a way and at a time that suits most people. Or at any rate "most people who comment".

Having said that I have found a problem with nested references although I expect the article is using references in a way that developers wish would be deprecated. Here in the "Notes" section, the references are just being displayed by the Visual Editor in "raw" form (perhaps this is inevitable?) and in the body of the article there is an extraneous "</ref>" in the second paragraph of the lead and in the first paragraph of "Enduring influence". I haven't tried editing or saving so I don't know what the effect would be. Best wishes and good luck! Thincat (talk) 07:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll look into that ASAP, thanks. Generally speaking, yes, VE does not really like workarounds in pages and recommends we do not use them ;) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It has to do with the bug above and/or linked bugs. Regards, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:55, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Slow

I mean, sloooow. After klicking the edit button, I have experienced loading times of up to 30 seconds. Completely unacceptable, basically you're wasting contributors' precious lifetime. How can you go live with this thingy as the "standard experience"? Stefan64 (talk) 07:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE being slow is a known thing, especially on long pages, I think. But it might also be there's a hiccup of some sort, since the next report seems related? The "standard experience" is only at beta stage, and asking for some faith :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:57, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Would be great to know which browser and browser version you are using, plus an example page that loads that slowly. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 10:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Too slow - can't re-edit article

Twice just now I've edited an article and wanted to edit it again immediately: first time, I did one group of changes, wanted to save them before starting a second batch, different edit summary, for clarity; second time I tweaked something, saved the page, then realised I wanted to change something else (I'd edited a line in a dab page, then realised I needed to move that line to preserved alphabetisation).

When I go back to re-edit in VE I get an error message: "You are editing an old version of the page...".

Even after the time I've taken to type all the above, I've just tried to re-open Robert Edwards and I still can't do so. ... OK, couldn't a moment ago for the nth time, but just immediately now can do so. What's that, about 5 minutes? I hope it's only a temporary glitch. PamD 07:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See above, maybe a temporary thing? Also, would clearing the cache help? Anyway, I already heard of (and filed about) similar conflicts, it might be another case. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's actually a bug: bugzilla:50441 and it's a high-priority task for developers. guillom 09:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unnecessary extra references

This edit, which is tagged VisualEditor in my watchlist but not on that diff, added a <references /> which was unnecessary, since {{reflist}} was already present. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:59, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, the label does not show up in diffs, in my experience. I'm 99% positive that this was already reported, but will check and report if it isn't, in the meanwhile, thank you. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestion: Saving and loading template definitions.

So far, good work on the visual editor. I would definitely suggest some polish before it is implemented for all editors , but it is a step in the right direction. One thing struck me as a bit odd while using the Visual Editor though: There is an entire interface for adding templates, yet the editor still expects me to enter each template parameter manually, which still requires me to remember what fields are used in a taxobox, or that "1=" happens to be a deletion reason, while "2=" is intended to be the signature in another template.

What I would like to suggest would be the ability to save a template definition for later use - one could actually go as far as creating default definitions for every commonly used template (and load these definitions by default when a template is selected in the editor). Since idea's are nice but examples are better, I added a quick mockup of this idea. The Pseudo-XML code below is an example of a saved template definition. The thumbnail would be an example of the result right after this definition would be loaded.

<Template>
<Parameters>
 <ParaMeterGroup1 displayname="General Information">
   <Parameter1>
     <ParameterName>Taxo_Name</ParameterName>
     <ParameterFriendlyName>Name</ParameterFriendlyName>
     <HelpDescription>The common, non scientific name of this animal</HelpDescription>
     <DefaultValue>Paraplatypoides longipes</DefaultValue>
     <Type>Text</Type>
   </Parameter1>
   <Parameter2>
     <ParameterName>Template_Image</ParameterName>
     <ParameterFriendlyName>Image</ParameterFriendlyName>
     <HelpDescription>The image that should be displayed in the taxobox</HelpDescription>
     <Type>Text</Type>
   </Parameter2>
   <Parameter3>
     <ParameterName>Regnum</ParameterName>
     <ParameterFriendlyName>Regnum</ParameterFriendlyName>
     <HelpDescription>The regnum under which this species falls</HelpDescription>
     <Type>Selection</Type>
       <Selection>
         <PossibleValue>Animalia</PossibleValue>
         <PossibleValue>Plantae</PossibleValue>
         <PossibleValue>Fungi</PossibleValue>
         <PossibleValue>Protista</PossibleValue>
         <PossibleValue>Archaea</PossibleValue>
         <PossibleValue>Bacteria</PossibleValue>
      </Selection>
   </Parameter3>
 </ParaMeterGroup1> 
 <ParaMeterGroup2 displayname="Diversity">
     <Parameter1>
     <ParameterName>diversity_link</ParameterName>
     <ParameterFriendlyName>Diversity Link/ParameterFriendlyName>
     <HelpDescription>The article that the text specified under the "Diversity" parameter links to.</HelpDescription>
     <Type>Text</Type>
   </Parameter1>
   <Parameter2>
     <ParameterName>diversity</ParameterName>
     <ParameterFriendlyName>Diversity</ParameterFriendlyName>
     <HelpDescription>The amount of species in a specific taxa</HelpDescription>
     <Type>Text</Type>
   </Parameter2>
 </ParaMeterGroup2>
 </Parameters>

Most of the data should explain itself - "ParameterName" is the name of the parameter that is to be used in the template. The other data fields are only intended for display, help and automation sake. I suppose the same set up could also be used to edit an existing template. As long as the editor could parse the existing template parameters it should be possible to map parameter data back to their respective parameter fields in the visual editor. Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 08:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Excirial, it is my understanding that Bugzilla can also be used for similar suggestions, since it's what devs actually read. Do you think you can submit this, or prefer us doing it instead? Thank you, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Excirial: this actually already exists! Take a look at the TemplateData extension and the tutorial on using it. Things are still being rolled out at the moment, simply because it's we've got a lot of templates and have to write TD for them all; if you'd be interested in helping we have a long list of the most commonly-used templates here. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Okeyes (WMF): I should have known to ask you this on IRC first, but it is great to read that this actually already exists! I've experimented a but and added templatedata to a simple template, Template:Red/doc. Mind taking a quick glance to see if this was done correctly? Excirial^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 12:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Display of interwikis ignores namespace

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52565

Editing User:John of Reading with VisualEditor, the "Page Settings / Languages" popup claims that my user page is related to the Swedish article sk:Ján z Readingu. But actually that's linked to the article John of Reading. John of Reading (talk) 08:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Great catch! I'll throw it in bugzilla now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Section 0 edit link different

Section 0 edit link should work the same as all the other sections, but does not. It only shows as [edit] and only functions as edit source.
It took me all of about 10 seconds to work out how to get back to the old editor once I realised that VE had been rolled out, and I have not trialled it. However there might be a better (more immediately obvious) term than edit source for the old editor. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Peter, browser/WP skin/OS? :) Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:04, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Chrome at the moment, Vector, XP. I also use Firefox, IE8 and IE10, but not yet with VE.• • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi again, sorry it seems the browser is not the problem here, as explained by Oliver. Still, remember IE is not supported yet for VE. Regards, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Pbsouthwood:, the section 0 edit links aren't a MediaWiki feature, they're a gadget a volunteer wrote for enwiki - so they aren't going to get updates that MediaWiki does, I'm afraid (one of the disadvantages of user-generated code). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That is a pity, because it is useful and this bug is annoying and confusing. No doubt the confusion will soon go away, but the annoyance is likely to remain. Not getting VE is less of a problem than expecting it and getting the old editor instead. I can live with it. There are far more annoying things on WP that I manage to ignore. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 09:42, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editing got more complex

"ultimately, a lot of people leave because editing is just too complex" [5]. Visual Editor is a good idea, but this implementation is way too heavy and clumsy. On Firefox 22 / Lubuntu 13.04 / Core i3 / 4GB RAM typing is so slow I can type a sentence and wait to see it appearing while sipping tea. In comparison, Wordpress is fluid and responsive. Complexity is an enemy, no doubts. However, the complexity is in the formality of the content (and ultimately in how Wikipedia is organized), not in the markup or in the editor. I am confident that the editor was not a significant factor of why people left. I was considering returning and this visual editor would be a motivator not to. Thank you for edit source. Good luck with visual editor, at some point you will get it right. Yuv (talk) 09:53, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think it was Stu I heard in Milan back in April talking about how it took 10 years for Wordpress to get a decent VisualEditor. We are still in beta stage, so I am quite optimistic there's still plenty of time to improve it. Thanks for your feedback, Yuv. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:01, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Naming references after first creation

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52568

name reference isn't an option when it's subsequently edited

So when you first create a reference you can chose to name it for re-use later on, great! But if you didn't name it when it was first created then it doesn't appear you can edit the reference to add a name later. Click on the reference and the only option that comes up is group; name is not an option. NtheP (talk) 09:58, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Nthep: good catch! I'll throw it into bugzilla now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Now tracking. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Correction to my earlier comment, I now seem to have lost the ability to add name in the first place. NtheP (talk) 10:25, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Don't do it

For some reason I have been forced to use this and don't have the option anymore to not use it and use the standard method of editing. It is horrible, it is slow, it is confusing. You say this is going to help wikipedia expand as everyone will be able to easily submit information but they won't. This is so much more confusing. How do I disable this? I do not like being forced to use an editor that is still incredibly slow and buggy. --Lolcakes25 (talk) 10:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Lolcakes, you can just use the "edit source", and everything will work just as usual, or take a closer look at the Gadget section among your Preferences. I fully understand today's discouragement, still hope to hear from you soon when you get to test VE again. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

So if it is not ready, how do we turn it off?

I do not want to be forced to use a new tool now. So how do I turn it off so I can learn how to use it (assuming that it works since there is a disclaimer that says some parts of it are not working yet) when I am ready to do so? Shouldn't that be the first thing that you add prior to rolling something out? Stevenmitchell (talk) 10:40, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Stevenmitchell, see my comment above. IMHO, reading Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User_guide (which features images as well) is more helpful in learning than shutting the whole thing down ;) and in the meantime, keep using the "Edit source" tab whenever you find it appropriate. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:51, 2 July 2013 (UTC) - PS: actually, it's testing that takes it from a beta stage to a really ready now stage, so I hope you'll be part of that process, at some point.[reply]

I found it in my list of gadgets (in preferences) and switched it off there. Might also want to tick the box to exclude yourself from future experiments too. I've edited mainly at work this year and if i am forced to use this new layout my CPU usage with firefox is between 80-95%. That's unrealistic and leaves me with no way to comfortably edit articles.

Please don't force this crap on us Wikimedia. It's pointless making editing "easier" to attract more people if you make it more difficult for the people who already edit. I really do resent having these decisions made for me without any discussion or option to participate or not. Thanks ツ Jenova 20 ^(email) 11:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Jenova20, this is interesting - is your CPU usage between 80-95% when you click on Edit source? Thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:07, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Impossible

I am severely disappointed with this. It is more complicated than learning the HTML code and I think the only fair thing is to allow registered users to choose whether they want to use the visual editor or do traditional HTML editing. Sonoflamont Sonoflamont (talk) 11:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you would like to remove VisualEditor from the user interface 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.--Rockfang (talk) 11:16, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You also have the option to simply use the other interface, every time you edit. :) Both are active. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:36, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Banner?

Why is there not a banner at the top of all pages (or at least on top of watchlists) mentioning this change and providing a link to more information? I was caught entirely by surprise by this and had to take some time (granted, only like 2 minutes) finding how to disable it. We get banners asking for money all the time; this is an even more major change, and judging by the number of people coming here asking how to disable it then it seems like having a banner would obviously help the transition. Where's the appropriate place to bring this up? rʨanaɢ (talk) 11:20, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rjanag: this is the right place and still, I promise you, there is a banner (also a message in the Watchlist page!, and it' also going on for a while now. Trying to understand why some of you can't see it - apart from using specific software which blocks similar messages and/or dismissing it days ago without realizing/reading it, of course. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the response. I'm using the Monobook skin (with Firefox 3.0, on Windows 7), I wonder if the skin is the problem? In your link I can actually see the message in the wikitext but it's not showing up when I preview the page (or of course in my watchlist), I have no idea why. Best, rʨanaɢ (talk) 11:45, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

From what I read around it should have something to do with cookies, mostly. Thanks for your reply, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:48, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Where VisualEditor will be used?

I noticed that right now VisualEditor is only happening in article space and presumably user space, and per the list at the bottom of Wikipedia:VisualEditor#About the VisualEditor it doesn't look like anyone's planning on taking it to other namespaces anytime soon. The reasoning behind this is obvious--presumably users who are straying outside of mainspace are more experienced and can handle MediaWiki markup--but I wonder if this reasoning is true everywhere. For example, I think AfD, and article talkpages [in the case of disputes or semi-protection, when anon editors might be told by other editors to go to the talk page] are people that inexperienced editors might come to and even be making their first edit at. I wonder if seeing a totally different edit window when going from mainspace to somewhere else might confuse these few newbie editors more than VisualEditor helped them? rʨanaɢ (talk) 11:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, we are planning on taking the VE to the discussion spaces - sorta. A different engineering team is working on Flow, which will apply to a currently-unknown chunk of the discussion space (certainly user and article talkpages, potentially things like AfDs, too) and that will include a stripped-down VisualEditor. We decided it was probably more trouble than it was worth to implement the VE for those namespaces now, and then have to totally redo it in 6 months. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:33, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Makes sense, thanks for the explanation. rʨanaɢ (talk) 11:46, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No problem :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:00, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

non sense

non sense Murrallli (talk) 12:03, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Well, you're saying pretty much all :p Anything in particular you might use a hand from us with? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:06, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Coords not displayed in title when open in VE

Dunmallet has its coordinates displayed in the title line, as do so many WP articles. I opened it in VE to make another edit, and noticed that the coords were displayed at the bottom. I assumed that this meant that the coords template parameter was wrong (ie assumed that VE was displaying the coords in the position they were displaying in the article - WYSIWYG, isn't it?!) I fiddled around, worked out how to check the "display=" parameter, it was set to "title" so I concluded that this had to be wrong and perhaps the correct parameter was "in title", tried that, checked documentation, verified that "display=title" is right, cancelled VE edit and of course the coords popped back to their correct display.

In short, VE is being non-WYSIWYG with regard to title-line coords display. Please fix it, apologies if it's a known bug. (Surely must be, if it affects every occurrence of coords displaying in title line?) PamD 12:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I can only find a bug in Bugzilla related to coordinates, so I am throwing this in. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:14, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sinhala not working

This is a must needed one! This'll make more help to get new contributors who've starter knowledge in scripting too. However, sinhala unicode isn't working on this. That means si.wikip won't get this for ever. Please look in to this and try to have something good to Sinhalese people too! --තඹරු විජේසේකර ^{සාකච්ඡාව} _{(Thambaru Wijesekara)} 12:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

[1] <<And no, we're not taking markup-level editing away. Some users may always prefer it over visual editing, even if the exact nature of the markup changes, and even if VisualEditor becomes the best tool it can possibly be.>> Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change, op-ed for Wikipedia Signpost, July 31st, 2013.

[2] For values of always that may be somewhat shorter than the WP:DEADLINE, but are longer than the next couple of years.

[1]

[1]

Notes

Please, leave things the way they are

VE for new editors

Opening 'Edit' in new tab disabled for everyone

Opting out

Text appearing behind infobox / behaviour after editing

Creating a new article

Table/Template

Dashes

Infobox inside infobox + links

Subst and template data

Correcting typos

Special characters

Edit and edit source links so confusing I had to disable Visual Editor in preferences

Nice job on the Section edit links!

Good start, needs fine tuning

Error saving

Invisicomments in VisualEditor

Top icon shown in text

Edit summaries

Switch to edit source

Can't copy a template

Reference

No "edit source" for section 0

Simplify Sidebar?

There is so much detailed descriptions

Brilliant Experience

Feedback from roads projects

Missing warning message for editing protected or semi-protected pages

New VisualEditor is so welcome to me

Removal of image not reflecting immediately

Unwanted format changes throughout article

Quirk editing Chad Griffin

Can't remove a space at Michael Lowry (actor)

Sidebar Summary blocks edit of introductory text

VE on iPad/Safari?

Template parameters

Suggestions for TemplateData attributes

links preview / proper links in editor

Excessive timeouts on large articles

"Show changes" needed in VE also

Template:Loop

Bug report. Unknown if new.

Bug report. Unknown if new.

Still need to know or learn markup

VE not available from some views of an article?

Comment on References icon

Audio size

um..

Failure to edit

Create new source

Cursor disappears

Make editing view more distinctive from article

"Subst" and TemplateData

Citations (more)

Need to be able to follow links/refs while editing

Error

References - first attempts - ouch

My Verdict

Poor response to problem of inability to see article while adding categories

Monthly number of edits will continue its downward slide since 2007

Addition of <u></u><u></u> and removal of categories.

Automatic fixes

Minor edit checkbox; exit-X

Still cannot view hidden comments

Slow minor copyedit on a big article

Incorrect warning

break minority input methods?

References within templates

tables - nowiki tag, spaces

Can't unwrap template within template

VE picking up old version of file? - 27 ghost references!

"Submit" button doesn't show up

Strange result with a </nowiki> tag inserted

Received error though edit was saved

Akon discography

Loving it

Error message: 'Error: Invalid token'

Inline comments

Feedback and some nitpicks I have