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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by JEissfeldt (WMF) (talk | contribs) at 16:53, 10 July 2013 (→Transcluded pages: +). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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

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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

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References - first attempts - ouch

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

  1. Clicked on the icon for "Edit reference"
  2. It seemed to offer me "Create new source" or "Use existing source" but neither link was responsive
  3. Then there was a blank window asking what I wanted to cite - no clues about format
  4. Eventually stuck the URL into it, as I didn't see what else it wanted. Superscript "1" appeared.
  5. Clicked on the icon for "Reference list": nothing useful offered (can't remember exact detail)
  6. Used the "Transclusions" icon to add "Reflist"
  7. No visible response to that.
  8. Repeated previous step
  9. still no response.
  10. Went to "Save page", looked at "See your changes", observed that Reflist was added twice.
  11. 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]
Completely agree with PamD. VE is a huge step back for ease of use for references, which is THE core feature of wikipedia. Not only is it not intuitive, but it takes more clicks and time to use than wikitext. The Cite dropdown menu on the toolbar worked very, very well. Mnnlaxer (talk) 15:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad to know this has been marked ANSWERED, otherwise I might have thought there were no answers in it. The entire subject of "transclusion," including its arcane name is illusive at best. When I needed to modify a reference it showed up blue and wouldn't let me select any part of it. So, good doobie that I am, I clicked on the puzzle piece icon (a good choice because its use is puzzling) which gave me the option of adding a parameter or removing the template. I chose to remove the template. To my surprise, this also removed the content, though of course I couldn't see that until I had saved the page. Camdenmaine (talk) 00:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I now see what I did wrong, that I should have selected one of the parts of the template on the left and then I would have been allowed to edit that. But I've left my comment as was because I'm guessing other people will stumble just as I did. The visual clues of the blue box are all wrong. You click on a part of it (of course you would, because it's what you want to change), it frustrates you by not responding. Similarly the visual clues of the template parts in the left hand column are also imperfect. What makes matters a bit worse is that people insert additional information in any one of the template parts (say a comment after publisher name), and whoever wants to edit that has to guess what slot the comment resides in. Finally, the dialog box gives me an option to edit the template, but I have no idea what this means. Am I editing it for everyone, or just my copy? I can imagine someone who wants to edit information contained in a template parameter deciding that he has to edit the template to get at it. I wish I had a constructive comment to offer, how to improve the VE in this respect, but I don't. (Human interface problems are really hard.) One thing I would do in an instant is get rid of the word transclusion (which doesn't even pass spellcheck). Camdenmaine (talk) 00:48, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Totally agreed, on that: I've actually already thrown it into bugzilla:50354. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sadly, the use of templates is much more accessible in markup (edit source) than in the VE. I am finally baffled as to how I'm supposed to enter a citation in VE using a template. When I click on the references icon, it lets me enter a citation in unstructured text, but won't let me use any of the four essential templates that are accessible to me in markup. When I click on the puzzle icon (I refuse to use the stupid name that the creators have given it), I'm presented with a dialog box which is, to me at least, completely incomprehensible. This is not a minor flaw. The entire reason for the VE is to appeal to non-geek content experts, historians, philosophers, etc. If all they're entering is text, the VE is fine, but so is markup. Where editing gets dicey is in adding citations. This is hard in markup if you use the Wiki markup icons at the bottom of the edit box, less hard if you use the Templates dropdown in the toolbar, and impossible if you're using the VE. pagnol (talk) 13:21, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You use both of the features together: Go to the references tool to create a new reference. Once in the space where you could add unstructured text, click the puzzle piece. It will ask you for the name of the template that you want to use, e.g., cite web. Then you can fill it out by adding the parameters one at a time (if TemplateData has been processed for the one you're using, then it will give you a list of all the options). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Which raises another issue. Not that the technology doesn't work, it does. But and this is probably more important, the way it's laid out and the instructions on how to use the functionality need improving (dramatically). NtheP (talk) 11:51, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Whataidoing, you recommend "You use both of the features together: Go to the references tool to create a new reference. Once in the space where you could add unstructured text, click the puzzle piece." but when I am in that space there is no puzzle piece to click. Is this a bug? Or am I doing something wrong? pagnol (talk) 12:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unless someone knows a quicker method, the full process is:
  1. Click on the "Insert reference" icon. A new window appears.
  2. Select "Create new source"
  3. Click the "Insert reference" button. This opens another new window.
  4. Click on the puzzle icon in the new window. This opens a third new window.
  5. In the text box, type "Cite", but don't press return
  6. Select the citation template, ignoring anything with /doc on the end
  7. Click "Add template"
  8. Fill in the details.
    1. Select the desired parameter (or type some of it in, then select it)
    2. Click on "Add parameter"
    3. Enter the data
    4. Select the template again from the left side to add a second or further parameter and repeat until finished.
  9. Select "Apply changes"
That's probably much more detail than you were after, but it seemed worth putting in the steps. - Bilby (talk) 14:30, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Just gave this a whirl with a real world example. Needs a couple more steps, even for a reasonably experienced editor.
1. After sub-step 1 of step 8, add the following: Scroll down to the hidden "Add parameter" button.
2. On the end of sub-step 4 of step 8, add the following: then select "Apply changes" on the Parameters form to return to the Template form.
Comment re the User Guide: The "Adding a new reference" section should include the Parameters form.
Comment re the Parameters form: The "Add parameter" button should be near the top of the form. Downsize43 (talk) 01:14, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whew. Well, I hope this is apparent to everyone, not just me, but this whole process is so deeply anti-intuitive that it simply wrecks the expectation that a new user should have when working with a "Visual Editor." In particular:

  • There is nothing visual here at all.
  • That you have to Insert Reference before you've entered any reference to insert is a crazy surprise
  • There is no visual feedback when you select any of the parameters
  • The add parameter button is hidden, who would have guessed it was there?
  • The names of the parameters (in Cite Book) are dumb: for Title you have to enter Work, while Source Title means something else entirely
  • That you have to select the template again to enter a second parameter is silly; the obvious expectation in using a template is that there will be multiple parameters
  • The list of parameters (again I've chosen Cite Book as my example) includes no fewer than 68, of which probably 60 are used by fewer than .001% of citations

What makes this all particularly sad is that in Edit Source mode you get a toolbar Templates rollbar that is truly visual, and that has none of the problems cited above.

This is not a documentation problem; the design concept for dealing with templates in the VE is just wrong. pagnol (talk) 13:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

+1 - I've asked before about the design documents and user testing, if any, and got no response. It seems there was no design and no user testing before this was put live - David Gerard (talk) 13:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"Happy to announce"?

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

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

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

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

To quote Douglas Adams:

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

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

Any plans to make infoboxes appear?

The new visual editor looks great BUT it is that easy for a novice user to accidentally delete an infobox because they simply don't know one is there. Can someone please attend to this as a matter of urgency? Given most project maintained pages have an infobox, I can't believe this wasn't thought of before it was deployed. See West Swan, Western Australia for an example. Orderinchaos 06:03, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Er. It was; the infobox appears fine for me. What browser/OS are you using? Can you send a screenshot? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:36, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Firefox on XP. And will do shortly. Orderinchaos 15:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Orderinchaos: Thanks :). (What version of firefox?) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
23.0 beta. And will shortly (sorry, have been horrendously busy offline.) Orderinchaos 08:47, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Section editing will never be implemented

The "edit" links on sections are purely decorative and will never be otherwise. Official word:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=48429

Imagine a world in which everyone can share in the sum of all human knowledge, if they live in San Francisco - David Gerard (talk) 16:05, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am not extremely techy (or really even remotely) but I do not see where that bug says that, David. Can you clarify? :) (Mind you - I'll be disappointed if that turned out to be the case, since I think it's a pretty important feature myself, even if of necessity low priority at this point.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:11, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Comment #35 - David Gerard (talk) 16:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The one that starts:

Enhancement" means "the software doesn't do this, and isn't as-written meant to do this"; it's not a judgement on whether it should. "Lowest priority" means "the core developers of this are not intending to work on this issue any time soon"; bugs are always open to other developers coming and working on them, which frequently happens.

I don't see how that leads to a conclusion that these links are purely decorative and will never be otherwise. :/ I wish it did conclude differently than "Solving what you're actually asking for (a form of VisualEditor/Parsoid that loaded and edited only one section at a time) would be a mammoth piece of work, albeit with some usefuless as you describe" and "I cannot justify spending donor funds to that extent when there are more pressing demands on the resources of the VisualEditor team" (I would be much happier if it concluded with "This is an easy fix, and it'll be done by the time I hit save"), but I'd like to be hopeful that if it isn't picked up by other developers, it'll be attended after the more pressing demands are met. (Of course, if people think this is more pressing, making a case for that is a good idea! I'm sure it's not always easy to prioritize fixes.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
At present, the links do not in fact edit the section - they load the whole hundreds of kilobytes of page. The interface lies to people.
"I cannot justify spending donor funds", when talking about this feature, looks pretty conclusively like "no" to me.
(I don't think "maybe some outside volunteer developer will implement it at some unspecified point in the future" counts as "it will happen" - what's the ratio of outside volunteer VE developers to WMF VE developers been so far?)
- David Gerard (talk) 16:34, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we got the opt out gadget from a volunteer developer. But, mind you, my technological abilities are slightly to the left of "none", so I have no idea how possible it is. You and I are reading that differently, perhaps because I'm focusing on the word "when" in the rest of that sentence: "I cannot justify spending donor funds to that extent when there are more pressing demands on the resources of the VisualEditor team." It might be worth asking for clarification there, though, and I'd be happy to if you don't want to. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think the complaint is overly pessimistic. Section editing is quite challenging to implement because the appearance of a section can depend in crucial ways on material that lies outside that section. Given that the developers are in fire-fighting mode right now, it makes sense for them to defer that problem until more basic problems have been resolved. It is, however, a very important problem in the long run. Currently it is very unpleasant to use the Visual Editor on an article such as Parkinson's disease, because it takes so long to load even on a fast computer. My plan for the present is to use the Visual Editor for short articles, but to stick with the old functionality for long and complex articles. Looie496 (talk) 16:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll predict that this is going to end up with portions of articles getting terminated. Had to deal with that before in long articles in a full wikitext source edit. VizWiz not being able to section edit will end up with more articles getting a bad/partial save ... --J. D. Redding 18:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm going to agree with David Gerard and the filer of the bugzilla that this is actually quite a serious problem, and one that should have big red flags next to it. This will have major effects on the ability of editors in non-Western regions with slower computers and little or no high speed internet to participate. Risker (talk) 23:20, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hear hear. Please add your comment to bugzilla. I am having trouble convincing the devs that this means the importance!=lowest. (Even though I see that Joe Decker has upgraded it, I think it's important that the devs share our view of the importance). --99of9 (talk) 14:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • What bothers me the most about this issue is that it doesn't seem that the development team was given the mandate to match existing functionality.—Kww(talk) 23:24, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
    • Please add your thoughts there. :) I can tell people that this is an important issue, but it really conveys best if people speak for themselves. Anyone with a Bugzilla account can register a comment on that thread. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:50, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate it's a hard problem, but the problem is now that the interface lies. You're providing section links that the person project-managing the VE says will not be funded to work. - David Gerard (talk) 07:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, I see the "edit|edit source" links on sections have turned back into just "edit" links, which edit the wikitext. Thank you :-) You need to correct the text at the top of this page - David Gerard (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
This is due to bugzilla:50731 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am not a specialist, but I think the section should open in a separate frame on top of the article page (while maintaining the possibility to scroll through the whole article).--Wickey-nl (talk) 09:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just don't see me ever really using VE much unless section editing is implemented, contemplating the page-loading/time-lag for some of the huge articles I edit just boggles my little non-tech mind. Shearonink (talk) 13:09, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

For those who want to comment in Bugzilla threads here is a help page: WP:Bugzilla. --Timeshifter (talk) 03:51, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I find the "edit source" buttons on sections are completely useless. Simply put, nothing happens when they are pressed. This isn't a problem on small articles, but on longer ones it is extremely annoying. If the devs don't consider that a "priority bug" to fix, I assume it's only because VisualEditor is so goddamn broken that they haven't got the time. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 13:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Michaelmas1957:, if "edit source" button on sections is not working for you, I think that's a very different issue than being discussed here, which is about how "edit" changes the whole page instead of just the section. I've taken the article Impalement, which is one of the longest pages we seem to have, and tried "edit source" on it, and it's working well for me. What happens if you click "edit source"? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I must have misunderstood the discussion heading. When I click edit source, I either get a server error message, or the page just freezes up. Partly I imagine that's a hardware issue, but my computer never has any trouble with editing usually, and generally can display VisualEditor fine. I can deal with not being able to edit individual sections, but on large articles it is pretty inconvenient. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 13:46, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I would imagine. :/ Can you tell me what operating system and browser you are using? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

tried to add a picture. Very confusing, didn't work

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

It would be better if it put you back into the normal editor when you tried to do something it can't yet support like adding pictures. I was able to fix things by changing my preferences to opt out of the visual editor, but a newbie would just be stuck and bitten. ϢereSpielChequers 19:50, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, WereSpielChequers. It's supposed to be able to add pictures. :/ Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide talks about how. If you encountered specific difficulties, sharing those could be helpful, in case there's anything we can do to help developers improve the experience...or in case you found a bug. Thanks. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
OK tried again, this time reading and rereading the instructions. It was rather slow, it didn't go where I tried to put it and and I didn't spot where I had the opportunity to put in captions, so I've gone back the previous system as it takes much less time to edit that way. ϢereSpielChequers 20:39, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It is a little difficult getting used to. :) I appreciate your trying and am glad that even if it was not as efficient for you it basically worked! I'd hate to find out image additions were broken. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
So you think "so confusing that the editor gave up" fits your definition of "basically worked"? No wonder there is so much antipathy here to WMF. Please include this in your reports of design failures. You do have such reports, right? Not just reports of not behaving as designed? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:50, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you're feeling antipathy to me, I'm really sorry. It wasn't my intention to anger you. My initial thought here was that image additions were no longer working, which would mean something new had broken. I'm relieved that this is not the case. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 3 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@David. Software testing is not helped by an aggressive environment, there will be bugs, we need to try and explain them in ways that let the programmers find them. I pulled out of this before because my bug reports were being archived without any response - not even "another example of bug ****", if Maggie is actually looking into bugs then I might try this again. But if the opportunity to add a caption and even alt text was not obvious to me then it won't be to those who might not be looking for it. ϢereSpielChequers 13:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really sorry to hear that, WereSpielChequers. :/ The only two reports I find from you in archives (here, here) do seem to have received response, but if I've missed any that did not, I'll be happy to try to make sure they are properly tracked. Image functionality is being improved - there are a number of existing requests related to it, and I hope that it will better meet your expectations as those are implemented. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Maggie. The first of your links is a redlink. The second links to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_05#Spellchecking where I did get an initial response, but the problem wasn't fixed and the final post in that thread is still from me. If you continue in that same archive you find one thread I raised where another editor linked it to another thread raising the same bug, which is fine obviously I wasn't the first to report that problem. But there are four others - it looks like I was the only person testing this on the morning of the 19th May. Now that was a Sunday so of course I wasn't expecting a staff response that day, but Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_05#Copying_a_barnstar and the subsequent threads just seem to have been ignored. It is just one of those things when you test something only to find that others have already spotted that bug. But less enthralling when when your bug reports get archived without comment. So that's why I stopped testing the visual editor, if it didn't work for really simple stuff like typo fixing then there didn't seem much point testing it for things like image adding let alone referencing. I have to admit I was rather surprised when it went live this week, the sooner it goes back into testing with people who've agreed to test it the better. ϢereSpielChequers 23:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry about that - I dropped the W. It's fixed now. In terms of the ones from May, I am sorry you didn't get a response to those. It doesn't mean they weren't noted, though. As it says at the top of the page, "All comments are read, but personal replies are not guaranteed." Due to the activity here now, obviously, comments would not be read if we didn't have both volunteers and staff keeping an active eye on things. It's just too busy. :) But problems are not always going to be fixed as soon as you report them. Nor will solutions be proposed or explained here. Part of what we are doing here is annotating them for the developers, who then triage and assign them (which is a good thing, because I don't understand this stuff at all :)). But that doesn't mean your feedback doesn't matter -- even if you get no more than a bug number or a question clarifying your issue, your observations could still be relate to a crucially important issue. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Maggie, I've done enough testing to be OK with being told that something is a known bug, but in my experience of software testing it is best that once you've found a few bugs you tell the programmers and then wait for them to say they have a new version to test. But its difficult to motivate myself to test when my bug reports don't even get a cursory "nuther example of problem x", and there is a nagging feeling that I'm simply wasting my time if I test something without knowing the bugs that have already been found but not yet resolved. ϢereSpielChequers 20:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hopefully the improved communication we're striving for now will assist with that. :) There's a list of existing bugs linked from the top of the page that might help if you want to see if something has already been found but not yet resolved. I say "might" because I can't always tell what those bugs mean, so I have filed a few redundant bugs myself. The developers have never yelled at me for it, though - they just mark them "redundant" and merge them. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:56, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Visual Editor not loading

Yesterday Visual Editor was working when I clicked on "Edit" next to a heading on my user page but now it doesn't load even though I didn't disable it when I go to edit my user page

If you're still having the issue, please let us know! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

One click disable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540

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

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

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

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

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

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

and
How do I disable VisualEditor?

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

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

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

Some thoughts

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Task T52354
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52731
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Task T52913

Just wanted to give some thoughts after the last update:

  • First, I am glad seeing that there is a list of the parameters now when I am trying to add a "cite web" reference. The thing is that the list, personally, confused me a little and I finally ended up just typing the parameteres I need the way I was always doing. I think it would be easier for the parameteres to already being added, at least the basic ones, to the template. For example, to the "cite web" template, the parameters that most people use (title, url, author, publisher and date). So, when the editor adds the "cite web" template, would only have to add the content of each parameter and not the parameters themselves. If the editor wants to add an extra parameter, they could choose it from the list and add it. I am sure that this is difficult to be done knowing that there are lots of templates to go through but maybe keep it as a thought if it can be done?
  • Why the "edit/edit source" was removed from the section parts? I know the flashing was annoying for many people, but I was hoping that both would stay without the flashing. Now if I am at the end of an article and want to make an edit with VE, I have to scroll all the way up, click edit and then find where I was since the "edit" on the section takes me to the old way of editing. Not to mention that now "edit" on the section and "edit" at the top of the article mean a different thing. :(
  • And a bug I found...when I add the reference/template, if I want to edit it again it's not easy to choose it since the "blue line" that has to be on the text appears completely elsewhere and I can't click it. I took a screenshot and I could send it if it helps. TeamGale (talk) 14:52, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. :) I think the edit/edit source issue is a bug: Template:Bugzilla. Looking at the other issues.... --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
First issue - added to Template:Bugzilla. Third issue, I'm sure it would. :) How do you feel about uploading it here? You would license it by using {{Wikipedia-screenshot}} and naming the page, if text shows. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the answers Maggie and for reporting the issues to bugzilla. I'll give it a try with the upload! :) Never done it before...another new experience! ;) I'll be back as soon as possible! TeamGale (talk) 18:08, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Mdennis (WMF): OK...I think I uploaded it here. Hope I used the right copyrights. Notice how when I put the mouse on the text of the reference/template, the blue line appears on the title "reference content". I can't click it so I can edit the template. TeamGale (talk) 18:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good job with the upload. :) I changed the template - in the old way of doing things, you just have to use the curly brackets. I am really too tired to do anything sensible with it right now, but unless somebody else wants to file the bug, I'll work on it in the morning! Thanks for learning new tricks for us. :D You're so incredibly helpful. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Mdennis (WMF):Oh thanks! I just saw it and thank you so much for fixing the licence! I got the notice, tried to fix it but I didn't know exactly how! It's ok...the bug can wait till tomorrow, no problem for me. I survived with it today, I can survive with it few more days! ;) You all need some rest! Thanks for everything. TeamGale (talk) 00:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Just wanted to know if the last bug with the misplaced edit on the references template was reported? I think it not but I might be wrong... TeamGale (talk) 00:37, 6 July 2013 (UTC) @Mdennis (WMF): I know you are not here these two days, just a reminder to look at the last bug when you get back :) TeamGale (talk) 09:17, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No, I forgot! Thank you, Gale, for so patiently bringing it back to my attention. :) I'll work on it now. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:10, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:24, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Adding reference error

I'm trying to add a reference to "Steve Smith (pool player)" and clean up the page. I am unable to add a citation. This instruction from the user guide does not work: "Then, click the "Insert reference" button to open the reference editor." The reference editor does not open up after inserting a reference. Vcczar (talk) 18:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Vcczar. I'm a bit confused by your desciption, could you clarify? You mean the reference editor doesn't open for you at all, or after you've already inserted one? (btw, improvements are coming to the reference interface. rubs palms) PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
hi PEarley (WMF). Yes, reference editor is not opening up at all. I can add a reference number, but I cannot get the reference editor to open so that I can add a book to the references. Vcczar (talk) 16:49, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Vcczar:, if you're still having this problem, can you give more information about your browser and operating system? I hope it's resolved. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540
  • I recognise that these changes have come about because the dropoff in active editor numbers, together with feedback from their prospective replacements rightly has the WMF running scared. I do see the need for them.

    I was personally one of those who managed not to notice the impending change to the interface, so I'm apparently blind. I'm also exactly the kind of person who was going to be annoyed by it----I've been editing a while, I'm set in my ways, I'm accustomed to how things are, and I'm a Linux user. (Might as well have turned off the custom interface for Linux users by default. "I use Linux" means "I'm comfortable with scary text windows full of code", "I'm accustomed to all changes to my computer interface requiring my permission", "I'm obsessively focused on increasing speed through low consumption of system resources", and surprisingly often, "I have an enormous beard". The Visual Editor might as well have a routine that detected my operating system and waved a little white flag...)

    I think the main lesson for the WMF in this was making the "turn it off!" button too hard to find. The business of trying to decrease its prominence so more users would try the Visual Editor was poor form----it was an example of the Foundation trying to manage how I spend my volunteering time. That's not appropriate, you don't manage that. In future, I'll be the judge of how my volunteering time is spent. The next time you make a change of this kind, please put the opt-out button front and centre without any fuss or argument at all.—S Marshall T/C 18:54, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

    • I would have to agree, although my issue early on was that it was switched on without an option to switch it off. Obviously, this has been fixed, but I would love an option to make it so "Edit" leads to the old window, instead of the Visual Editor. I too am set in my ways, and I would prefer having the option to edit the old way immediately instead of waiting a second for the option to pop up. I know it's a tiny issue, but it would be a nice option to have. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:15, 4 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

font too small

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Task T52058

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

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

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

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

Change font/color while editing

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52456

It would be very nice to show changed text in a different font and/or color (or bg color), while editing. It helps seeing what you are editing. --Wickey-nl (talk) 09:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @Wickey-nl:. I've added your thoughts to a related request for a visual "tell" to let people know when they are editing. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Keyboard shortcut has vanished

I edit on a laptop and therefore use keyboard shortcuts whenever possible. The standard keyboard shortcut for Edit (alt-shift-E in Windoze) has stopped working and the tooltip offers "Edit the source code of this page [<accesskey-ca-editsource>]". A couple of questions and a couple of comments.

Q1) which particular key combination is <accesskey-ca-editsource>?

Q2) having used the gadget to get this extension off my screen, shouldn't everything have reverted to the previous "normal"?

C1) for those of us with smaller screens this extension takes up too much screen real-estate. The edit bar at the top needs to be much smaller (I'm using Monobook with maxium screen resolution and it's still huge).

C2) the standard keyboard short cuts for going back a page in the browser don't work (alt-←) and the logical alternative of using the escape key to cancel also doesn't work. — Preceding comment added by Beeswaxcandle (talk • contribs) ; original signature removed while fixing wiki markup errors NtheP (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding <accesskey-ca-editsource> this is a known bug, see bugzilla:50725. I don't recall seeing the other issues mentioned previously so they might be new, but I'm not certain. Thryduulf (talk) 11:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Proly it's a cog. Good people decided they had a right to intercept keystrokes. --Holigor (talk) 12:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have not the faintest idea of what "proly it's a cog" means. This is the English wikipedia. Please use English when responding. Beeswaxcandle (talk) 02:56, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
If you problem has not been solved yet you may try to disable Universal Language Selector. It is a cog icon in the left panel. --93.75.134.116 (talk) 12:10, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Confusing

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I prefer editing as much as possible by hand, not using pop-up windows. I couldn't do the necessary edits to an articles because I didn't understand how to do the most simplest of edits (using the previous system). Kaiser Torikka (talk) 12:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Kaiser Torikka: sorry to hear that :(. Is there anything specific you think we can improve? (You can still get to the old interface just by clicking "edit source", of course). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You should definitely work on how to go about editing templates. I didn't make any sense of that part what so ever. Kaiser Torikka (talk) 19:32, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are a lot of requests for modifying template editing - you can review some of them in the reported bugs. I hope that as it is refined and improved, it will work better for people. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


For short templates, display the actual source when it is selected for editing

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If a person sees "23–30 metres (75–98 ft)" and needs to change '30' to '35', editing the "Convert" template shows parameters 1 through 4, and the user has to guess which one needs to be changed. If the template editor displayed "{{convert|23|-|30|m}}" at the top of the box, the user should be able to see at a glance what do. Same goes for "{{frac|6|1|2}}" if "6+1⁄2" needs to be changed to "6+1⁄4". Obviously, this would be undesirable for lengthy templates, like infoboxes. Chris the speller yack 15:55, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Surely TemplateData will solve the underlying problem here? It's going to take a bit of work to roll out, but it seems to be coming along nicely. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52915
No, Chris is absolutely right, we are needing a context specific editor. There are certain templates that need to be treated in a special way because they are so common. I have a little list
  • convert
  • frac
Those are simple- all we need is to display the parameters so they can be changed, when focus is lost they just display. For useability you could enter the the inline-template-editor by double clicking or ctrl-shift -click.
  • fact
  • cn
These two are more complex as editors are there to change the *cn to a reference- of which the *sfn template is ideal. So here on a double-click, you need to change a *cn to a *sfn and enter the inline-template-editor to add the fields which are Name|Year|pp=page-lastpage. For a sfn, on leaving, you need an alert that offers to take you to the reflist to confirm or edit if that reference is missing.
  • sfn
Explained above.
  • efn
Simplicity- there is only one parameter. Though an alert may be needed if the Notes {*{notelist|notes=}*} structure is not in place.
  • reflist-
fiendishly complex from a programming pov but functionally simple- as the functionality we need is
  • add a line in wiki code- I C&P common ones from a master list of commonly used texts in field that I keep in a subpage, or as a textfile on the desktop. An easy technique to teach when you are training at a museum or library as you can give your students the file on usbstick
  • change some data- for instance an isbn number
this can be achieved in a popup wikicode editor- or even gedit, vi, geaney, wordpad as no parsing is required.
  • infobox
it is totally essential to just be able to change the content of a field visually. It is desirable to add new fields but this is of lower priority nigh essential, and this wont be achieved until the issue of recursive templates is resolved. (That rates as essential on my list.)
I leave the list there for a Linus test, so if you could pass this on to your dev team and ask them to add these to the functional specification. Here is an example of a sample edit for them to try Swanley it keeps coming up on my watchlist:
  • first three references contain raw urls- probably could do with a *cite template her- not mentioned above
  • fix a *cn
  • change item in infobox
  • convert acres to hectares needed
All of that could be easily achievable.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52916
No, Convert is actually a good example of where TemplateData falls over and hits the ground. The meaning of the numbered parameters changes depending on how many of them there are and whether the entry is text or a number. For example, each of the following are valid:
  • {{convert|3.21|kg|lb}}
3.21 kilograms (7.1 lb)
  • {{convert|3.21|mi|3}}
3.21 miles (5.166 km)
  • {{convert|60|to|170|kg|lb}}
60 to 170 kilograms (130 to 370 lb)
  • {{convert|60|+/-|10|kg|lb}}
60 ± 10 kilograms (132 ± 22 lb)
  • {{convert|6|ft|5|in|m}}
6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m)
In those examples, parameter 3 is variously 1) The output unit, 2) The number of significant figures, 3) The upper limit of a range, 4) The measurement uncertainty, 5) The number of inches in foot-inches measurement. Now write a TemplateData description for parameter 3 (or 2 or 4 or 5)? Convert is used on 500,000+ pages, so it is not like it can simply be redesigned at this point. That said, if someone can see the values of each parameter in the transclusion window then it would still be pretty easy to figure out which one they need to edit. I would suggest that the transclusion editor needs a way to preview the parameter contents (even if just a snippet) without having to click on each parameter. Dragons flight (talk) 17:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a pretty serious challenge to me. :/ These read different, so I've opened two separate bugs, both tracked. Please feel free to expand on them there, if you can provide clarification. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Template parameters in order of where they are placed in the template

Hi, it would be nice if template parameters weren't placed in alphabetical order, but instead in the order of where they are in the template. This makes it much easier to locate and edit them (especially when it comes to infoboxes, as I always expect the name parameter to be first). Insulam Simia (talk/contribs) 15:59, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is particularly problematic for citation templates which use first= and last= for names. Alphabetical ordering will make the first and last name be quite separate making it hard for editors using the standard system to see the author names.--Salix (talk): 06:31, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a note about this to Template:Bugzilla --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Table editing

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Please add the ability to edit tables (add/remove rows/columns) to the Visual Editor. Thank you. Mattsephton (talk) 16:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Mattsephton:The WMF is working on the tables. I don't know though when this will be ready. TeamGale (talk) 09:48, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Ugh

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52720

I hate it. All the [[links]] are now static and given the "./". It's annoying and can ruin articles if not done right. Hitmonchan (talk) 00:36, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a known and hopefully rare issue.--Salix (talk): 08:09, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


CSS styles for making things visible only during VE edit mode?

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Is there any VE specific CSS classes applied to the whole page that would allow editors to create elements that are visible during VE edit mode but not visible in the main read mode? This could serve a role similar to hidden comments and instructional templates (e.g. {{use British English}}) which are intended to be shown to editors but not readers. At present the VE edit mode, doesn't allow such elements to be visible. Dragons flight (talk) 00:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Not currently, but that wouldn't be too hard. But let's not jump to that solution too quickly. I think we should let things settle a bit before we start using methods like that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:30, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Actually .ve-ce-surface could probably be used for that purpose, if we wanted to. I put it in my personal CSS to tint the VE edit window slightly green. The other thing that I would personally like to style is VE's popup windows for transclusions, etc. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any naturally way to apply user styles to that because it loads through an iframe. Dragons flight (talk) 17:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52797

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

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


Changing the semantics when using <sup> and ''

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52938

In this edit [1] VE has change ''F''<sup>''i''0</sup> (Fi0) to ''F<sup>i</sup>''<sup>0</sup> (Fi0). While they render the same the semantics are different ''F'' indicates a variable so ''F''<sup>''i''0</sup> indicates a variable raised to the variable i0. In then second version we have a variable Fi raised to the power zero, (mathematically this always evaluates to 1, see Exponentiation#Arbitrary integer exponents). Even without the 0 I would say ''F''<sup>''i''</sup> is more correct than ''F<sup>i</sup>''. Quite a number of similar subtle mathematical formatting changes are seen in the Tag:visualeditor-needcheck.--Salix (talk): 06:57, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The correct notation for the former meaning would be Fi0, surely? And the correct semantics for the former notation is "F raised to the power i0" (i.e. 0). Regardless, I'd suggest that mathematical notation is beyond the scope of VisualEditor. It's hardly reasonable to expect it to implement recursive subscript/superscript like that. Hairy Dude (talk) 01:47, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are actually quite a lot of edits where VE is messing with the mathematical formula [2], [3]. These are often side-effects when purpose of the edit is something completely different. I know there are long term plans to do a visual mathjax editor, but it is subtly messing with HTML format maths without being told to do it.--Salix (talk): 11:08, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


"show changes" button like with source editor

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Would be nice to have option to show changes (in the source) when submitting, as you can already do when editing source. Maybe not by default (as the whole point of the visual editor is to avoid exposing the source to the user) but for users who are very familiar with the wiki syntax but just want to make a quick edit with the VE, it would be nice. laug (talk) 07:01, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's already available but just not 100% intuitive: you have to click on Save page to get access to the Review your changes button, edit comment, ... --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 08:06, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Unusable interface in some sections

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52854

I found that I was unable to edit a 'See also' section in the article Dumpster diving that had the {{div col|3}} and {{div col end}} tags around it. I simply got a shaded blue area when clicking on it that couldn't be modified. My browser is Google Chrome 27.0.1453.110 and my operating system is Ubuntu 12.10. — Preceding unsigned comment added by EvilKeyboardCat (talk • contribs) 07:03, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you click a 'blue' section, there is a puzzle piece at the top right of it. This puzzle piece is a button that will open an editor for that section for you. You are not the first to have missed it, so I have opened up a report to ask to improve this element of the user interface. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:08, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


myEventWatcherDiv

I've seen a couple of edits where odd markup is inserted at top and bottom of page, [4] added <div id="myEventWatcherDiv" style="display:none;"></div> and [5] added <embed type="application/iodbc" width="0" height="0" />.--Salix (talk): 07:31, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The first one is due to a broken DivX web extension. The second one I suspect to be this extension. There is another pattern ( _clearly_component__css ) which is caused by Evernote Web Clipper. Little we can do about it, though if it gets too annoying we can install an abusefilter to explain to people that they have broken web extensions installed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:48, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Italics followed by apostrophe (becomes bold)

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51926

[6] beginning with Sebastián Covarrubias' Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española.

In Visual Editor the text turns bold after Covarrrubias' while in normal page view it doesn't. --Darklingou (talk) 09:52, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Darklingou: thanks for reporting this! It looks like another instance of bug 49926. Hopefully it will get fixed soon; it appears to have been assigned to a developer :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:03, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


what is wrong with the editing system?

can not add references Hans100 (talk) 09:58, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Hans100: can you give more details? Is reference-adding broken, or can you not find how to do it, or...? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:03, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

SLOW

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Just wanted to point out that it takes a really long time to load, to the point that, the last few times I tried it, I thought it wasn't working. I do wonder if it's because I opened the link in a new tab. — trlkly 10:04, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What article were you trying to edit? Your contribs don't give any clue -- in the time since the VE was enabled, your only listed edits are to a template. Looie496 (talk) 14:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Trlkly: yeah; my apologies :/. It's something the developers are working hard at - recently they made some changes that pushed the amount of JS you have to load on each article from 119KiB to 4KiB. A pretty impressive change, and one that I hope will be replicated when it comes to editing as well as reading :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Impossible to edit my adoption page in VE

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It seems that I cannot edit my adoptee's adoption page. Maybe it is down to the fact that I have User:Jcc/Adoption/Nav over it? Anyways, I was expecting a lot more from VE than this. jcc (tea and biscuits) 10:09, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That entire page is structured as a single huge table, because of the transclusion. Editing of tables is one of the things that are not supported yet -- you can change entries, but you can't change the structure of the table. Looie496 (talk) 15:05, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Well, tables is quite important in Wikipedia, so my fingers (and legs, for that matter) are crossed that the devs will fix this. jcc (tea and biscuits) 16:50, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Toggle between VE and edit-source mode

Is the following possible?
Always start in edit-source mode, but make the code invisible by default (=WYSIWYG).
With, e.g. ALT+F10, show the code and vice versa.
So, one edit mode, but two screen-versions.--Wickey-nl (talk) 10:27, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Wickey-nl: that's on the developers' to-do list, at least as something to explore :). The analogy I would draw is with Wordpress, where you have one tab for rich-text editing and one tab for the markup. It's a very complex technical problem, though :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:06, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
One could also think of the good old WordPerfect, destroyed by Microsoft, which had a separate codes-frame at the bottom.--Wickey-nl (talk) 11:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
WordPerfect is not completely destroyed, although I do recall the slogan for early Windows developers: "The job ain't done till WordPerfect won't run." (Quoting a Microsoft employee who wishes to remain anonymous; and besides, I don't remember who it was.) I'm using version X5 (the sequence was 10, 11, 12, X3, X4, X5, X6, for triskaidekaphobes.)
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52945

At Eltham Well Hall rail crash#See also I attempted to change the first link from Morpeth rail crash to Morpeth rail crashes (both redirects to Morpeth rail crashes). The VE did change the link but piped the original text - [[Morpeth rail crashes|Morpeth rail crash]] [7]

Further testing in my userspace shows that this happens regardless of the status of the link:[8]

  1. [[Morpeth rail crash]] → [[Morpeth rail crashes|Morpeth rail crash]] - both redirects to the same article
  2. [[Paddington rail crash]] → [[Ladbroke Grove rail crash|Paddington rail crash]] - bypass a redirect
  3. [[Castle Hill Railway]] → [[Castle Hill Railway|Bridgnorth Cliff Railway]] - disambiguating a link (a very likely use case)
  4. [[Great Western Railway]] → [[Great Western Railway|Midland railway]] - two separate articles.

Because piped links are not shown, the VE gives no impression of having done anything. Indeed after trying to change the first link twice I was expecting to come here with a report that the link wasn't changed. It wasn't until I looked at the source that I saw what happened. Thryduulf (talk) 10:34, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My test suggests that this is what always happens when you change an existing link instead of removing the link and changing the text. (I changed one of those links to "Lady Gaga", and it still piped - did not save, for obvious reasons.) This makes sense to me, since it's not the text editor, but it will be less efficient. I wonder if this could be resolved by some kind of tick box to change the text displayed or something, @Thryduulf:? Do you think that would be an improvement? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:54, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
There are three things you could want to do:
  1. change the link without changing the text (e.g. [[Mercury]] → [[Mercury (planet)|Mercury]])
  2. change the text without changing the link (e.g. [[Mercury (element)]] → [[Mercury (element)|Mercury]])
  3. change both (e.g. [[Mercury]] → [[Freddie Mercury]])
At present it seems that the visual editor always assumes you want to do 1 and unless you delete the link completely there is no way of doing otherwise (although see below for how that can go wrong too), but for beginners I'd say that 3 should be the default. There needs to be some way to set the target of a link independently of what is displayed, and I'm not sure how best to do that but maybe an option on the link dialog called "display as" or something like that would be the way to go. Thryduulf (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much. :) I've added this to bugzilla. Please just drop a note below if I've mistaken something. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Let me sign!

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There really needs to be a way for me to able to sign with VisualEditor, as I always end up making two edits when VE adds nowikis around the tildes. -- (T) Numbermaniac (C) 11:16, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VE is only enabled in article and user space, so why would you want to sign any contributions in those two areas? NtheP (talk) 11:29, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
CVUA courses. -- (T) Numbermaniac (C) 11:35, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fairy snuff. 4 tildes is markup so not surprising it isn't accepted. Wonder if this is on the devs to-do list? NtheP (talk) 11:52, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hope it is. smile -- (T) Numbermaniac (C) 11:58, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
From my understanding, you shouldn't expect this to happen any time soon. The support for "user" pages is intended to allow people to develop articles in their user space. There is no support for talk pages and won't be any time soon (see WP:FLOW). What you have set up is basically a group of talk pages that are not in a talk page domain (sort of like the Reference desks, Help desk, ANI, etc.). The developers would be going way far afield if they tried to support that. The solution is simply not to use the VE on those pages. Looie496 (talk) 14:52, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
User:Looie496 took the words right out of my mouth. Supporting discussion pages is something that will be built, but as part of Flow, rather than as part of the VisualEditor (although Flow will include a stripped-down VE). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:08, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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

Following from my report above I've done some more testing in my userspace [9]

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

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

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

I want to understand what you're doing here, @Thryduulf:. It looks like you were attempting to see what would happen if you changed some links by backspacing and retyping rather than using the link editor - is that correct? I can't find any other way to get the results you did at Afghanistan, for instance. :) Were you using the link editor at any point? I want to be sure to report this correctly. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Every time I added, set or changed a link I used ctrl+k. When I was deleting or backspacing the link it was to remove the existing link in order to replace it with a new one. Setting the link and then altering the text was to see what happens when someone does that, because the displayed text does not change when you change a link using the link editor. Does that explain things or should I try again? Thryduulf (talk) 14:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The Afghanistan test was very much a "what happens if". I remember now that I've seen a result like this in the wild [10]. I don't know what exactly Kinda Stolen was attempting to do with that edit but the effect was the same. Thryduulf (talk) 14:44, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
"What happens if" makes a sense to me. It seems like a natural thing for somebody to try to do. :) I can report the issue with backspacing and its outcome, certainly. The control+k issue seems like the one we've been talking about above, unless I'm missing some nuance, so I've essentially just reported that one. Just let me know, @Thryduulf:! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I was changing some of the old text on the page using the Visual Editor after I moved the page to reflect the moons new name. When I was changing the text from P5 to Kerberos, I had to relink it but for some reason the visual editor only made the "k" of "Kerberos" form the link. Not sure what went wrong there but it was noticed and fixed sometime afterwards. Kinda Stolen (talk) 19:07, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'll come back to this in the morning (UK time) when I should be more awake, but I think there are several issues here. One is as above, one or two when you partially replace a link to modifiy it and one where you (attempt to) completely remove a link to modify it. Thryduulf (talk) 21:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've managed to utterly confuse myself with this, sorry. When I work it out again I'll get back to you about it if someone doesn't get there first! Thryduulf (talk) 09:00, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
A nice example of this was this pair of VE edits to Smile (The Beach Boys album). In the first[11] the user tries to link to The Elements: Fire but it gets mangled instead we get "[[The Elements: Fire|<nowiki/>]][[Fire]]" . In the second[12] it looks like VE tries to correct itself and changes "[[The Elements: Fire|<nowiki/>]][[Fire]]" into "<nowiki/>[[Fire]]". The end result is that VE has managed to not link to the intended page and link to an unintended page! There is a considerable time diference between the two edits, 3rd July and 9th July so VE might have been patched between the two.--Salix (talk): 06:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)?[reply]
My example: [[diesel generator]]<nowiki>s Why would I want to nowiki the plural? Is this the default behavior or a random flaw? Rmhermen (talk) 14:54, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Rmhermen:, can you tell me what you did to get that result? I'm trying to figure out how best to report it, and I find the issue somewhat confusing. :) Did that just pop up when you used the wikilink editor? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that I highlighted the words "diesel generators" and chose the first suggestion "diesel generator" which when saved showed as diesel generators. Rmhermen (talk) 15:53, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52943
Image of the issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

Very slow speed of VE #1 issue

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The VE is still unusable for me due to a huge increase in load and save time. Please don't take the edit source option away while this issue continues. Lesion (talk) 13:29, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There are no plans to take the source editor away, the two will run in parallel for the foreseeable future. NtheP (talk) 13:51, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Template Data

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I've added template data to Template:RCDB put nothing comes up when I try to add it to an article using VE. What did I do wrong?--Dom497 (talk) 13:37, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It takes a while for new TemplateData to propagate into the system. Looie496 (talk) 14:40, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have fixed it by doing a nulledit on the template itself. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 22:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52909

When a template call has been edited, VE often displays some of the piped links as wiki code. For example, edit Luton, click the infobox and then the puzzle piece to edit the template. Make any parameter change or no change at all and click "Apply changes". A lot of the blue links in the infobox are now rendered as black pipe code, for example [[List of towns in the United Kingdom|Town]] instead of Town. Note: No nowikis have been added by VE here. This is about VE's own rendering and not code pollution with nowiki tags. On the plus side, this error means you can actually see where piped template links go. This normally appears impossible in VE. Other errors in VE's display after the template edit are a false Cite error about missing {{reflist}} (bugzilla:50423), and the coordinates displaying at the bottom of the page instead of the top. I think VE could really use the "Show preview" button of the source editor which actually displays the page as it will look when saved, including categories, clickable wikilinks in templates and captions, and other details missed in VE. It could also use the one-click "Show changes" with return to editing instead of the cumbersome and illogical three-click "Save page", "Review your changes", "^". If Review your changes also displayed the rendered page below (correctly as in the source editor) then it would be helpful. Ironically, VE often makes it harder than the source editor to find out what your edit will do. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:55, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I reported that bug with the transclusion editor for you. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Another try editing: Ouch

I've tried the editor again on List of Metal Gear characters, and it's awful at the moment. I try to edit, and the thing takes forever to load. Then it doesn't go to the section I want it to go to, then when I try to review the change I made, that takes forever. Then when I try to save the change, it takes forever to save. In fact, it took so long that I reverted to editing the source code. I agree with one of the other users who commented here now: it seems far more like an alpha than a beta. I know these issues are probably common, but I really needed to put my thoughts here. --ProtoDrake (talk) 14:00, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

That's a very long article with lots of sections and 178 refs. I think we'll have to accept that the VE needs some optimization before it is effectively usable for articles of that size. It ought to be possible to solve the problem of section-edits going to the wrong place, though. Looie496 (talk) 14:39, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Preformatted section editing loses all blank lines

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52906

Using VE, editing a section delimited with <pre> </pre> markup will result in all blank lines in the section being unexpectedly removed. Bevo (talk) 15:24, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a diff showing the issue. Looie496 (talk) 16:00, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well spotted, I have reported the problem. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:41, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


VisualEditor

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This is amazing <3 Works so cleanly, looks incredible.

Glad to see my donation being put to good use!!

Cheers guys. Samcooke343 (talk) 16:23, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comment. :) I'm glad it's working for you; the developers are continuing to work on it to try to make it a good experience for everyone. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Speed, Edit Summary, and Limitations

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Speed: It is very slow to the point where I'm using it less.

Edit Summary: I wish this appeared at the same time as you edit (as in "Edit Source"). I can't remember everything I changed! I usually include the grammar rules.

Limitations: How does one edit links in Visual Edit? Can we? I think a much better visual format without Wiki markup would be what the Harry Potter Wikia (and maybe more, but that's the one I'm all over) does. It is seen more like an email where you can add links, change text formatting, and add references with the push of a button and filling out of a form without having to search through all the references and watch out for links with different names as sometimes occurs with Wikipedia source editing.

Thanks for trying something new, though, Wikipedia! It's exciting. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JustAMuggle (talk • contribs) 17:32, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @JustAMuggle:. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about it. :) Speed has been improving over the last few days, and I hope that it will continue to get faster. One can edit links - The user guide talks about how. Unfortunately, there do seem to be some limitations there at the moment - I've just added a note for developers to consider how to allow people to change the text that displays in addition to the target of the link without having to first remove the link altogether. I hope they can come up with something soon! Speaking just from my perspective as a volunteer editor, you don't have to mention everything you do in your edit summary. :) If you want to mention a couple of major things and say "general fixes" or something like that, that should usually be fine. I often use "tweak" or "CE" (for copy edit) in my own edit summaries. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


how do i turn it off

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i have like 10,000 edits, i think i can manage without this bloated slow awful thing Decora (talk) 17:33, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Copied from the FaQ at the top of this page: Excirial (Contact me,Contribs) 18:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
How do I disable VisualEditor?

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


where is the preview button?????????

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gde preview button??????????????? Decora (talk) 17:36, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. You can see the preview button when you click on "save". A dialogue opens where you can also write your summary. TeamGale (talk) 18:04, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Save dialog

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

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

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

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

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

First impression

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

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

Unanswered

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

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

Answered

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


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

Highly edit pages

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I know there has been much discussion about the problem of edit conflicts but I'm not sure if this has been mentioned before (I thought I saw something but couldn't find it). The slow speed of the editor can make problems for even simple edits on highly edited pages which are already difficult enough at times. I believe there are plans for much more sophisticated edit conflict management including allowing some form of real time collaboration but just thought I'd mention it so the team get an idea of where things stand now. I also believe I did get some edit conflicts where the section had not been changed but I'm not sure of this as I wasn't aware it was a point of contention. I did encounter what appears to be a bug. Sometimes even though I just used the edit link on the page rather then specifically viewing an older revision, I ended up editing an older version (i.e. I was warning I'm editing an older version). I presume this warning was accurate although I never confirmed that I killed older edits, of course I probably would have been edit conflicted anyway. (I think I may have had this once or twice before with the source editor, over the years but if it still happens it's rare. I must have gotten this 6 times or so the other day when dealing with the Egyptian coup article.) One thing is this must be difficult to test in the real world, you need to wait for a major event to happen. So a better bet may be a sandbox with a bot editing every minute or so. Nil Einne (talk) 18:59, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Missed the bug since the description didn't mention edit conflicts and I must have forgotten to search for older but see it's already been filed [13] Nil Einne (talk) 19:37, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And speak of the devil Asiana Airlines Flight 214. Nil Einne (talk) 20:03, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Nil Einne. That one is high priority, I think. I know that developers are aware of and focused on it. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:45, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Copy-pasting to another page still loses formatting

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This was reported last week here and tracked as Bugzilla:37860 which has been marked as "resolved - duplicate of Bugzilla:33105"; but 33105 has been reassigned to cover only copy/paste from external sources. Its comment 9 dated 29 June says "With this change: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/13423/ rich copying and pasting from other ve instances (same wiki, same browser) is supported." But it doesn't work - see this result of copy-pasting a formatted section from the beginning of User:JohnCD/VEtest. Maybe that change is still in the release pipeline; if not, can we reopen this? JohnCD (talk) 19:11, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I unduplicated it - David Gerard (talk) 20:29, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Mishandling of a redirect

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52898

Most of the time the VE link function seems to be aware of redirects, but I stumbled on the following example that it doesn't seem to understand:

[[Hands-on universe|Hands-On Universe]]

When edited with VE, if you open the link it complains that the page Hands-on universe doesn't exist even though it does (and has for many years). Maybe it is something to do with the fact that the link and display text differ only by casing? Not sure. Dragons flight (talk) 19:19, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's because it matches on the redirect Hands-On Universe which indeed is of a different casing and matches a case insensitive compare most likely. It seems that the first match is always the final match, and thus the editor assumes there is no match for Hands-on universe. Well spotted, I have filed a report. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 21:09, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Cannot edit section 0

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

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


Can't search on hidden text - eg link targets - not bug 50646

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I raised this on Weds 3rd, and it was marked as "tracked" by Template:Bug, but that doesn't seem to hit the spot. I'll repeat my point here:

When cleaning up incoming links to a page I sometimes find that the pagename isn't visible in the linking page, it's a piped link: I can only find it (either by eye or by ctrl-F) once I've opened the file in the old edit mode.
So, if I look at User:PamD/sandbox for VE and want to find the link to Dunmallet: how do I do so, short of hovering over every link to check it?

If I'm looking at incoming links to an article, perhaps because the base name is about to become a dab page, I sometimes find that they're piped links, and not visible in the article text. With Edit Source, once I've opened the editor I know I can find a piped link using ctrl-F "Find". In VE there seems no equivalent. Look at my example above. The linked bug doesn't seem to address this issue: I don't want to have to hover over each link in turn to see its target URL, I want to be able to search a massive long article to find the one or more piped links I need to tweak. PamD 21:12, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is bugzilla:49928 more like it? — This, that and the other (talk) 01:16, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the link, which has the same question but where the responses don't really seem to get the point as yet. I've added to the discussion there to clarify this requirement. PamD 09:47, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Allow for Switching Back and Forth At Will Between Visual and Source Without Losing Progress

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52698

One thing I don't particularly care for about the VisualEditor is that you either have to edit entirely visually or entirely in source. If you want to switch (say you started in Visual, but you want to switch to source to get something fancy working), you have to either discard your changes or save a partial edit in visual and create a second edit in source. What I want to see is a means of switching between the two at will within the same edit. Wordpress does something similar where you can type up a blog post to switch between visual rendering and HTML source using tabs surrounding the edit window. You can switch between visual and HTML at will and each will be updated. I want to see the same thing with the Wikipedia VisualEditor. -Thunderforge (talk) 21:32, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Interestingly, one of the early prototypes had Source and Visual visible side-by-side. Chris857 (talk) 21:36, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They don't necessarily have to both be visible at the same time (in fact, that might be somewhat confusing and perhaps wouldn't work well on mobile devices and tablets if the VisualEditor is going to be used there). But I would like some way to switch between the two without having to discard an edit. Again, the tabs on the edit window that Wordpress uses are one excellent way to do this: they allow the edit space to be swapped out, providing a compact way to easily switch. A picture of it can be found here. -Thunderforge (talk) 21:40, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've tracked a bugzilla request with the same intent and am adding your comments there. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Request for Yes/No Buttons when Leaving Page w/o Saving

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52955

If you open a page in the VisualEditor, make a few changes, and then decide to hit the "Cancel" button, you get a message that says "Are you sure you want to go back to view mode without saving first?". The options are "OK" and "Cancel", which aren't really proper answers to this yes/no question. As such, I'd like to request that instead the buttons be replaced with "Yes" and "No", which are clear responses to the question. -Thunderforge (talk) 21:36, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I've put your request into Bugzilla. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


This is shit

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

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

Changes rendering on page

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It seems that when I use the Beta Editor, as long as I am editing the normal page gets scrunched. MeanMotherJr (talk) 22:19, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, @MeanMotherJr:. :) I appreciate your giving it a try and offering your feedback. If this is still happening (they are rolling out fixes cosntantly), can you clarify a little more what you mean about the normal page getting scrunched? I assume this is a display issue when you are editing? Can you tell me what browser and operating system you are using? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:48, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, @Maggie Dennis. I am using Mozilla Firefox 23 on Windows 7 Service Pack 1. It was a rendering issue where text and pictures would get misplaced and would either overlap each other or leave the margins. However, it is no longer happening, presumably fixed by an update. Thank you for your support!
So happy to hear that. :) Thank you! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Review

This new way of editing sucks. You can't properly review your edits to make sure your edit actually works before saving. This is especially true when it comes to things like adding links. Stephen Day (talk) 22:24, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Stephen Day. Sorry to hear that it's frustrating you. I just wanted to ask if this is a problem you are encountering when using "Review your changes" before saving (The user guide has a screenshot), or if you were unaware of the option to Review. Either is an issue, but they are different issues. :)
I see you ran into a problem with your edit that is not at all uncommon for experienced editors. I've done it myself. Those of us who know how to do wikilinks sometimes put the markup in directly through VisualEditor, and since VisualEditor does not do links in this way, it assumes that the brackets you've added are meant to be visible. It adds the "nowiki" so that they are. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

When editing Viareggio train derailment#See also, the suggestions list didn't include Lac-Mégantic derailment (the link I was trying to add). Obviously we can't expect instant updates, but the Lac-Mégantic article was ~5 hours old when I made my edit [14][15]. It really needs to be quicker than this as major news events often quickly gather inbound links from all sorts of related articles. Thryduulf (talk) 22:25, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I assume this has something to do with vague and mystical processes such as "server refreshing" (which may be a nonsensical combination of words). Does anybody else know? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52872

Even though section editing in VE is a long way off, it would be really helpful if the title of the section you click edit on was automatically included in the edit summary in the same way that the source editor does. For example, when making this edit I launched the VE by clicking on the edit link for the "See also" section, so I was expecting the edit summary to begin with the usual "-> See also". This provides context for the edit summary and so helps give context at recent changes and on watchlists.

I'll put this in bugzilla myself, but I thought it useful feedback to have here too. Thryduulf (talk) 22:34, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for tracking that. Until the section editor in VisualEditor actually works only on specific sections, I suspect that one won't be implemented, since people can actually edit anywhere in the article. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Add close buton [X] in popups (when displaying edit notices)

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52956

Hi, I'm from pt.wiki, we display edit notices when editing so some users can't figure out where to click to get ride off the pop up, I suppose not all people know the modal concept at all. Dianakc (talk) 23:43, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just found the suggestion above, thanks a lot that is on the way, so I'd like to suggest:

Remove weird padding inside the flyout popup. I 'm not sure others but the editnotices seems strange inside the flyout because there's a weird padding inside the popup, without the padding the templates would look nicer (there´s already padding in most edinotices templates by default). Dianakc (talk) 23:56, 6 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your suggestion. :) I've now opened a request for this. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:01, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Visibility of comments

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51603

Sometimes when editing the source, editors will leave comments to other editors that are not visible to readers, e.g. "Please do not add X to this list" or "Discussion has established the following consensus". These need to be visible to editors using the visual editor too. I just came across this by finding some excess whitespace caused by a badly placed comment that couldn't be removed in the visual editor. Hairy Dude (talk) 00:01, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This one is on the to-do list, I believe. :) I've added the tracking number above. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Reference error

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

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

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

@Mdennis (WMF): I'm sorry, I don't know how to replicate what happened. I'm using Firefox on Windows 8.--¿3family6 contribs 17:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, @3family6:. I can simply copy your initial report here to Bugzilla, unless you think by some miracle it was a one-off? (There's a term for that - somebody used it here a few days ago - but I can't remember what it is. :/) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Mdennis (WMF): It happened again, here. I attempted to split this reference: [16].--¿3family6 contribs 12:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Okeyes (WMF): (or anybody else), do you have any insight into what's happening there? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Saving an edit using the keyboard

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52897

What is the series of keystrokes necessary for quickly submitting an edit by using the keyboard? It used to be that I could edit source, then use TAB to add my edit summary and then just press ENTER to press the "Save page" button. (I could also use TAB+SPACE to quickly mark the edit as minor, just before saving it.) Now when I go to save the page I cannot find any obvious sequence of keys which will save the page without having to use the mouse and press the button manually. It is very frustrating and makes using VE clunkier than just editing the source. Elizium23 (talk) 01:04, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have filed a bug report to make Escape key cancel the edit. I think we do need to take a hard look at keyboard use of VE if we ever want experienced editors to be able to make regular use of it. I would file a new bug for keyboard stuff for submitting an edit. Since we've already gone the route of heavy JS, we could really make it a single key combo, as opposed to needing to tab around. Gigs (talk) 04:54, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
And for the saving part, I filed bugzilla:50897 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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

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

References lost in copy and paste

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51396

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

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

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


Code View

Where's the code view? I work better in that — Supuhstar * — 05:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. If you have the "edit" view open there should be another tab at the top that says "edit source". I believe you can look through your preferences and disabled the VisualEditor so that the normal edit tab does not lead you to the "WYSIWYG" editor. Killiondude (talk) 06:29, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What is this?

I didn't ask for it to be turned on, and why isn't there a visible "turn this off" button next to it? – SmiddleTC@ 07:40, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is how it'll be from now on, there should be an option in the preferences to turn it off, or you can just click edit source to edit the source. -- (T) Numbermaniac (C) 07:52, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but I have to say that whenever you force a new feature on the user, it's very important that it's easy to turn off. I found it on 'Gadgets' but I think it would make sense to have it on 'Editing' too. – SmiddleTC@ 08:55, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This beta editing thingy crap

Please get rid of it ASAP. Niemti (talk) 10:49, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You can disable the visual editor by going to your preferences and selecting the first option in the "Editing" section of the "Gadgets" tab.
It would be helpful though if you could say what you don't like about it so that the devs can work on fixing those issues. Thryduulf (talk) 10:57, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's FUBAR, completelty. --Niemti (talk) 12:05, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The WMF coders say "Don't worry, it just has a few bugs!" but The Truth™ is that VE is a bug! Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 12:11, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

please change it back

it was much easier the old way please change it back or give us the option to change it back to the old way Stevendsi (talk) 11:35, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The old eiditor has not been taken away - just choose the "edit source" tab (top of page) or link (section edits) rather than the "edit" tab/link. You can also choose to disable the visual editor completely by going to the gadgets tab of your preferences and choosing the first option in the "Editing" section. Thryduulf (talk) 13:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

adding edit comments

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52961

One thing I don't like about the new visual editor compared to the old process is the way you comment changes. With the original editor I would always enter my comments before I went to review/confirm the edit. That way I wouldn't forget and if I was OK with the review I could just hit confirm. I prefer that way of working to the new visual editor where there is a drop down box only when you go to review/confirm the change. Perhaps it would be possible to utilize both techniques? To have somewhere you can fill in the comment first and then review/confirm but also be prompted for a comment when you do review/confirm if the comment hasn't already been filled out? Also, as I read some other comments I just want to say good job on the Visual Editor and don't be discouraged that some people hate it, its inevitable, people hate change. Mdebellis (talk) 11:54, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You are the second person I've read today who has requested this. :) I've filed a request. And thank you very much for the encouragement. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Infobox magically disappears on BAC One-Eleven

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52366

The infobox on BAC One-Eleven decided for some reason to disappear when editing with VisualItsNotReadyButWe'llPushItOnTheWikipediaCommunityAnywayEditor. Insulam Simia (talk/contribs) 14:23, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This has the same root cause as a similar issue with styling templates for table cells. As a template writer myself btw, these infoboxes are pretty 'dumb'. The project should really look into moving away from such 'partial' templates. They are even less understandable to 'normal' people than plain infobox templates and I expect that in the long term, with TemplateData coming and everything, we wouldn't want to support them anymore as a community. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:45, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I'm so glad you know that. :) Thanks for linking the bug! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:25, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


too slow

this is waaaay too slow for my laptop (Intel Core 2 Duo T5670, 4GB RAM). Don't even make me think of using this on my RasPi! Enormator (talk) 15:19, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the speed has improved and is still improving - I hope that you will find the issue diminishing as it does. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52966

On the whole, I really like it. It's basically intuitive and seems to have massively improved since I first tested it out. The main problem I'm having involves the amount of effort now required to open external links in references (especially those using {{cite web}} etc). As far as I can tell, I have to click on the footnote, then the icon, then the text of the reference, then another icon, then the url parameter, and once I'm done copy and pasting I have to close two pop-ups. Is there any way around this that I've missed? It's not an error or a bug, but it's the main barrier to efficient editing that I've encountered so far. – Arms & Hearts (talk) 16:03, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if there's a way around that - I've pop this in Bugzilla however. :) Hopefully if this is the only path, it'll be streamlined! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:10, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Disappearing reference

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52896

When I pull this revision into VE, reference 1 appears blank. Looking at the revision, it is not blank. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:51, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Second bug. At the same revision, if, in VE, I place the cursor to the left of the line that begins "The Peach Springs Trad....", just after the malformed comment, then press backspace, in the hopes of starting to delete said malformed content, the entire infobox disappears. This is quite startling. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:53, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The second problem is because the infobox is between the malformed comment and the "The peach springs" line. I agree though that it is somewhat confusing, since the floating nature of this infobox disconnects it from the cursor position you are currently at. A similar problem exists for templates that don't even produce visible contents, and I have attached your experience to that report. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:30, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Yes, the how to deal with the floating elements thing from a UI perspective is a difficult issue. You might consider looking at other software, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, which faces similar issues to see what the state of the art is. --j⚛e deckertalk 16:07, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor refuses to deactivate

I want to use regular wikimarkup editing, but VisualEditor keeps appearing even when I disable it in Preferences. Needless to say, this is a very annoying bug, currently making it impossible for me to edit, because my tablet refuses to work with VisualEditor. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 16:59, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Don't you have an "edit source" tab displayed, even with the Visual Editor enabled?—Kww(talk) 17:02, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, good point – it's working now. Thanks. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 17:05, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Still impossible to edit sections, as opposed to the whole article – edit source tabs just don't work. But my main issue is, is there any way I can just deactivate the whole goddamn VisualEditor? Why doesn't it go away when I disable it in preferences? – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 17:08, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I had this for a little while, and somehow managed to fix it. Try making sure you hit the save button (easily missed as its down the bottom of the page), restarting your browser and clear your cache. For me the I was using the secure https version of the site when I had the problem, and things worked better when I switched to standard http. If all else fails you could try switching javascript off.--Salix (talk): 17:22, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editing

I don't like the additional way of editing. I prefer the older way. I feel the newer way (less technical looking) will only allow more people to mess with Wikipeia. The older way prevented it due to it's "programming" look. Mcadwell (talk) 17:41, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • See the FAQ at the top of the page. Generally it is not believed that this will be the case, but the vandalism level is being monitored to see whether it does have any impact. Apparently the initial figures are suggesting that it is not making a significant difference. Thryduulf (talk) 17:52, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My opinion

I personally find the VisualEditor appealing when all I want to do is make minor prose alterations, but as I often want to make sweeping edits to infoboxes, references, templates, categories and so on I find it isn't really particularly helpful for me in most cases. I refrained from comment for a while, thinking the VisualEditor might grow on me, but so far it just hasn't. I think the vast majority of serious Wikipedia editors will prefer the old system for the moment, but I realise the VisualEditor is in a very early stage of development so I will keep an open mind for the future. This is a good project and a definite step forward if we can get it right, so we should push on with it. I recommend that the developers focus on getting notes and references sorted out as a main priority. —Cliftonian (talk) 17:50, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your feedback, and I appreciate your keeping an open mind. :D I hope that it will become more useful to you in more sweeping edits as it goes - the community has really put some great ideas and feedback out there for developers to consider. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:16, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Categories: please display them in VE - not the right bug

My comment of 26 June got tracked as Template:Bug, but I don't think that hits the spot.

I want to be able to see the categories when I've got an article open in VE: just as I can see them when reading the article, or when editing it in Edit Source. I don't want to have to click on "Page Data" to find out whether or not it's already got categories.

That bug is more concerned with another of my problems with categories: not being able to see the article while adding the categories. Not the same problem. PamD 17:55, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply] 

Ghislain Montvernay (talk) 18:05, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Ghislain Montvernay: Your idea is mentioned (visible categories in VE editmode), is mentioned in the comment of that bug. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:03, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
That was actually PamD - Ghislain just put his signature here. :) Pam, if you think it's not exactly right still, can you add a note? Or ping me, and I'll do it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"List of Publishers of Children's Books" "Heirloom"

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The link goes to a general Wikionary page defining the term heirloom, rather than specifically to Heirloom press. So kill the link! Kill it, kill it, kill it! Pittsburgh Poet (talk) 18:42, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed it. If the company is notable, and somebody writes an article about it, a direct link can be added back. JohnCD (talk) 19:55, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Clear opt out

Doubtless there is some way to opt out and by the time you read this I'll hopefully have already found it. All the same, my first experience with using thi... your product was slow, unpleasant, and buggy and my first instinct (since I'm already comfortable with Wikimarkup) was to turn the d... your product off.

It's not an obvious option on the page ("edit" goes straight to WYSIWYG); it's not an option in my user preferences (even under 'editing'); and it's not available as a huge button within the WYSIWYG editor itself. Frankly, given that user experience is the only thing we're working on here and there's no advertizing money being made by a establishing such a user-unhelpful experience, that's nuts.

I understand why you're doing this and good luck to you (albeit I imagine retention is more an issue of bureaucratic capture by obscure committees, code bloat (especially unhelpful template formats like {{zh}}), and general noob-biting rather than any problem with barebones markup itself). But the difficulty in turning this thing off needs to die a fiery death. All the other regulars must've been telling you the same thing already, so it's a little baffling it hasn't already been implemented.  — LlywelynII 18:48, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah. New "edit source" button (obviously I'd prefer a "VE edit" but that's a matter of taste) and it's under "gadgets" in the middle of a long list of other random dreck. This is a huge thing: you really should make it more prominent within the page. People will not naturally look under "gadget" for it (why would they?), let alone halfway down the page. Move it to "edit" or the front page of the preferences. A prominent switch-to-code button within the VE itself would also be welcome.  — LlywelynII 18:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also, the option to turn it off in Gadgets simply doesn't work half the time. I have to turn off Javascript to make it go away, which means that all of my web browsing (not to mention many Wikipedia functions) is affected. I can see the value of a visual editing interface, but at the moment it's still too damn buggy. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 19:43, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@Michaelmas1957: If it doesn't work half of the time, than that is likely an indication that you have another JS installed that is broken, which depending on how quick each of the parts loads, will cause a failure and stop other scripts from executing as well. You might want to look at your collection of javascripts and verify if they are all in working order. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:49, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure how to do that on iPad. Apple doesn't offer a whole lot of settings beyond "Disable Javascript". Anyway, it's not a disaster, just inconvenient. – Michaelmas1957 (talk) 19:58, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

2 versions of VE ?

Hi, since the management of the VE project doesn't seem to take into account any of the concerns of many experienced users saying that VE is just not yet ready for production (the one week delay clearly isn't an answer to that concerns), I'd like to suggest an idea : would it be possible to have all features that are not really finished only accessible to users that would opt-in for them ? That way, unexperienced user would get a basic version of VE but without the parts that are clearly not finished, and other features could still be tested by volunteers.

In the features that are not really finished, I would put without hesitation template editing, media editing, reference editing (because none of them is currently easy to use and doesn't promote good practices, rather the contrary). Then, we could really start a discussion on each major feature about what possibility it should bring to users.

For example, for template editing, I think the most pressing issues are : parameters are sorted alphabetically, you can't see all the parameter values in a glance, adding parameters is difficult, TemplateData is not used enough. For image editing, I think the most pressing problems are : size specified by default (against all MOS), caption is not requested when adding an image (separate action), alternate caption is not possible. I haven't played with reference editing, but from the feedbacks I read, it seems worse than the current Cite extension. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 18:59, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sorry to disagree, but the principal reason for introducing VE is to enable contributions from a wider variety of people. References are the most important part of contributing to Wikipedia. The only new contributors we wish to attract are those who will source their edits. It therefore doesn't make sense to release VE without the ability to create and edit citations properly. If the citation features aren't ready, then VE isn't ready. - Pointillist (talk) 21:05, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I too must disagree. I am deeply critical of the design of the reference implementation, I feel that it is superficially technically excellent and logical, but that it entirely misses the point of how references are used, creating an unusable mess. However, making it impossible to edit references, as your plan would do, only makes the problem worse. Moreover, forking VE into multiple versions would only annoy and divert resources from the enormous efforts devs are putting into making things better. In short, your proposal would be worse, in my view, for everyone concerned. --j⚛e deckertalk 21:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Having two versions of VE would be a programming nightmare. The solution to concerns over making VE the default ("Edit") for IP editors is simple: Don't until there is a stable, production version in place. Adding IP editors to the mix accomplishes only one thing: it allows the VE team to say "We hit this milestone." It doesn't help with testing (there is more than enough feedback, to date, from experienced editors, to keep the developers busy for quite a while, and more than enough criticism - of, for example, the quality of the UI for editing templates and citations - to keep the team busy revising the UI for quite a while); it's going to take resources away from the VE team (if they continue to review most or all edits tagged with VE). But turning on VE for IP editors is a milestone, and the VE development team doesn't work for this community, they work for WMF management, which has expectations about such deadlines.
It's possible that the only way to stop the further rollout of VE on the English Wikipedia is to ask the WMF Board to intervene. That's hardly desirable; perhaps someone higher up on the management side will agree that where we are is far enough, implementation-wise, to start consolidating gains - to clean up the bugs, and to look at UI improvements that will convince a larger percentage of experienced editors to start using VE. But given that the developer team has not shared with this community a list of their "blockers" to the IP rollout, let alone asked for community input regarding such a list, it's possible that trying to get the WMF Board to intervene is the only viable recourse this community has. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:58, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's actually rather troubling that the question "are there any blockers?" needed to be asked - a quick glance at this page and the red-coloured bugs on the "known bugs" list linked above would show everyone there are many. The questions should have been "How many blockers are there?", "Which ones are they?" and "How long will it take before all of them are fixed?". Rolling the product out to everyone is not any sort of beta testing, it's a full release. Rolling a product out as default, even to a limited set of people, before it is feature complete and free of critical bugs discovered in prior testing is not beta testing - it's alpha testing. Thryduulf (talk) 23:17, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Well, on that front, just to clarify; I wasn't asking because I don't think there are any blockers (heck, I threw a whole google-doc of them at the team on Thursday) - I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing any. The kind of process we have for making a go/no-go decision is an excellent opportunity to surface really high-priority bugs, so I wanted to ensure I wasn't missing any big ones through sleep deprivation, overwork or simply, well, probably spending less time here than you guys collectively do ;). You'll be pleased to know that the reference and template inspectors'....unique formatting was on the list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To address John's point; I don't have a concrete list of blockers to hand, I'm afraid, merely a list of things I consider blockers that I forwarded. In the future if you're interested in looking at the list, you can just ask for it and I'll see if I can rustle it up :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:43, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Documentation

At mw:Help:Contents, there are more than 20 help pages on how to do editing, pages that do not reflect how to edit using VE. Is the VE team responsible for updating this documentation, and if so, does it have a target date? If not, why should the English Wikipedia community (volunteers) be expected to do this?

(It's true that there is now a user guide for VE, but it is far less comprehensive than the above help pages, taken as a whole.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:06, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Someone can correct me if I am wrong, but I believe it has always been the case that most of the editing help pages were written by volunteers. It is an issue though since this transition creates a situation where most of the editing help pages are either out of date or missing. Dragons flight (talk) 23:25, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I totally agree, on both points - while they are volunteer-maintained, we have sort of...dated them, through this release :). updating the help pages is listed as one of the tasks we'd really love volunteers to engage with; I'm doing some work tomorrow with User:Rannpháirtí anaithnid on the matter. If you're interested in helping, pick a prominent help page and, well, help out! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately, it will be hard to get experienced editors to write documentation pages for the new editor while it is largely perceived as buggy and incomplete. Many of the experienced editors who might help in other circumstances presently seem more interested in simply learning how to turn the visual editor off. Dragons flight (talk) 09:12, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Enough of us are bloody-minded enough to keep testing the VE anyway (it may be buggy and occasionally horrible, but it's testable and it's really important), perhaps some will feel in the mood for the docs even if you and I aren't - David Gerard (talk) 09:18, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I opened a thread at the Village Pump. The task is complicated by some issues. One of these is the decision to roll out only in the Article and User namespaces, which means all other namespaces use the "old" way. Another issue is that for some things a user will have to use the "old" way.
There is also a broader question about the take-up of the Visual Editor. This question means we need to ask ourselves whether it is productive to do a big overhaul of help and documentation pages. If <10% of people use the Visual Editor then really should our documentation not focus on the 90% who use the Edit Source UI, with just passings notes on the VE (and possibly a separate single page of help/documentation cover it's functionality and coverage). --RA (✍) 09:24, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest that we simply add a paragraph to the beginning of every help page recommending that the editor disable Visual Editor and giving instructions on how to do so. Until Visual Editor actually works, there's not a lot of value in having instructions on how to use it. Any help pages devoted to using Visual Editor should be bundled together in a "how to participate in the beta trial" area.—Kww(talk) 17:22, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would concur with the suggestion that the VE may not be sufficiently developed as yet to be worth writing help pages for. The interface for the hard bits is, frankly, hideous. The reference editor, for example, looks very like there was literally no design input (and I've asked for links to any such a number of times, and got tumbleweeds in response). The interface needs someone to actually design it - then it will be worth documenting - David Gerard (talk) 18:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, there clearly is a problem with the last-minute additions to VE (references and templates), where the developers' priority seemed to be to get something to work regardless of design issues. Even some of the older design is questionable - for example, how to return to editing if one doesn't like what one sees in the "show differences" screen. So yes, maybe a deal with the developers - they stabilize the code, add the obviously important but still missing features (really, one can't add a row to a table?), and improve the user interface design (about which lots of experienced editors would, I'm sure, be willing to suggest specific fixes), and then we do the documentation. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Subwindow scrolling region for toolbar access?

It's kind of a pain to have to scroll up to get to the toolbar when editing the end of a long article. The wikitext source editor solves that by using a subwindow scrolling region so the toolbar can always be on screen. Is that a good idea for the visual editor too? It would also make it more obvious that you're editing instead of reading. Pointer wrangler (talk) 23:02, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The visual editing toolbar does seem to stay locked to the top of the screen for me (Chrome 27). What browser are you using? Dragons flight (talk) 23:22, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Serbianboy-Mozzila firefox 22.0

It is confusing, and I don't really like it very much. But I like the idea for the references I had problem copying source text. Gonna feedback along the way. VuXman talk 23:28, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Hi. Although each section has an edit and source edit link, the lead now only has an edit link. Previously, this link allowed editing the lead source. Now, it invokes Visual Editor. Now I have to actually copy, paste and alter an edit source link to achieve lead editing. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 23:47, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • The edit link for the lead section is provided by a gadget rather than being part of the core functionality of MediaWiki, and it appears that the gadget has not been updated to deal with changes brought by the visual editor. There is a little bit more on this in the #Cannot edit section 0 section above. Thryduulf (talk) 23:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T39901

Red links are blue in the Visual Editor until I save. This is unexpected (at least for me) and has caused me to miss an incorrectly spelled link target. Tobias K. (talk) 00:04, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Yes this a desirable feature and there is a bug report for it. There are also related bugs about link colouring annotation for external links (Template:Bug), interproject links (Template:Bug) and stubs (Template:Bug). --Salix (talk): 05:25, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


What happened when I tried to change captian to captain...

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I think you guys might want to see what happened when I attempted to change "captian" to "captain" in a couple of articles: [17] [18] Greengreengreenred 00:15, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The wikitext has a bug there where it is missing an open table tag. See this section on that page. Parsoid stumbles on this piece of wikitext which has a missing open table tag. We will try to improve our handling of such wikitext, but at this time, a simple fix would be to edit the source to add the "{|" tag there, save it, and try editing in VE again (to verify that everything works as expected). Ssastry (talk) 03:28, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Filling out cite templates

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

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

I agree, availability of special characters is a sine qua non of editor usability. One shouldn't have to paste them from somewhere else. They should be available right there, as they are in the standard editor.—Anomalocaris (talk) 05:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Disable Visual Editor

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This visual editor is a baffling, time wasting, piece of work. Where is an easy "disable" button to get rid of this thing? Why in the world do you want people to use this thing? I see no advantage to it and the user's guide is not helpful in the least.

My vote is to dump the visual editor project, kill it before it gets out of beta. Ande B. (talk) 02:00, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Ande B.: To disable: Preferences > Gadgets > Editing (section) > checkmark for "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" > Save
Re voting: Wikipedia, unfortunately or otherwise, is not a democracy. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can make a comment at Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor#Call for audit and rollback.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, thanks for the info re disabling and rollback. I had just checked back here to apologize for being so cranky. (I just got out of the hospital and feel dreadful.) But I was really flummoxed and disheartened by the Visual Editor. I can usually navigate new interfaces pretty quickly but, sheesh. Not this time!
I didn't even realize that the "feedback" feature, which popped up without prompting, was going to put my remarks on yet another WP page or what the "feedback" would be used for or by whom. Which indicates to me that even the feedback feature for this project is needlessly opaque. What would have been helpful, instead of the feedback prompt, would have been a link that said, "Want to use the old interface? Click here."
BTW, I can see why you would take me literally, but my comment re voting was just a figurative way of expressing, yet again, my utter dissatisfaction with the project.
Anyhow, thanks for the tips. Ande B. (talk) 04:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52925

Click a link like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New%20Zealand%20English&diff=0&oldid=123 and then [edit] on one section - the old version is presented for editing instead of the newer version.

Clicking [edit source] instead of [edit] does edit the newer version of the page. K7L (talk) 04:35, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I hate the Visual Editor, which is terrible in its editing process. Wikidude10000 (talk) 04:46, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Wikidude10000:, nice, I hadn't noticed this, since I have previews disabled when I open a diff —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:30, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
@K7L:, whoops, pinged the wrong person there I think. Thank you for the report K7L ! —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Overlapping of templates in edit view

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52970

When editing Taza, I note that the {{Infobox Weather/concise C}} template overlaps the {{Infobox settlement}} template, obscuring it sufficiently that one would not be able to see errors that would need to be edited. I also note that the "location dot" on the infobox map shifts very significantly when in edit mode, with the location name overlapping the legend, and the co-ordinates duplicated. Risker (talk) 05:07, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Whoa. I'll see if there's anything already in Bugzilla about that. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Note to me - ASAP. Unless somebody else gets to it first. (Sorry! Urgent phone call.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Done! Thanks, Risker. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:05, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Template editing

Template editing is a slow and confusing mess. I have to scroll down and click for every parameter - this makes quick editing very difficult. I do not know which parameter is which, making it a slow and laborious task Super Nintendo Chalmers (talk) 06:49, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, just realised that 'edit source' takes me to the old-fashioned way of editing. I like the move generally but template editing needs fixing. Also I need to be able to move the dropbox around so that I can see the template itself on the page as well! Super Nintendo Chalmers (talk) 06:57, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the difficulty; there's a lot of outstanding improvement requests on template editing, which I hope will make this easier, including sortable parameters. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Change in how to Edit > Confusing

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What have you done??? You've made it nearly impossible to edit the page and to add new information! Where is the window that reveals codings and citations that can be used as examples for creating new references with citations? The way to edit a page wasn't broken before ... why did you find a reason to break it? Pyxis Solitary (talk) 09:17, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You're going to have to disable it. The code may load by default, causing some browsers hang. Read the notice above: Go to Preferences, and at the Gadgets tab, add a check to "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface", then save. NintendoFan (Talk, Contribs) 09:37, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You can also just use "edit source", which will take you to the old style. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:07, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Cite error message when editing template in Global warming

This may be a known issue, but when I edited "Greenhouse gases" subsection of Global warming (or maybe it was the "Initial causes of temperature changes (external forcings)" section, I don't quite remember), then edited the template Template:Multiple image on the left-hand side to change the parameter "image1" from "Annual world greenhouse gas emissions, in 2005, by sector.png" to "Annual world greenhouse gas emissions, in 2005, by sector.svg", I got the following Cite error message popping up as soon as I saved my changes to the template: [19]. When I saved the page of course the error did not appear and the edit it made was correct, although it did also needlessly remove whitespace from the "image2" parameter. The editing was also very slow on a large page like this, with high latency and taking a couple minutes to save, but I think that's a known issue (I was also running another CPU intensive task on my system). Dcoetzee 09:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

No media handler for basic images

When a file is directly included, e.g.

  • [[File:Smile.png]]
  • [[File:Smile.png|25px]]

Clicking on it doesn't cause the media handler to appear (no media icon to click and no size selector).

I do see that using the "thumb" style, e.g.

  • [[File:Smile.png|thumb]]

Works correctly. Chrome 27, if it matters. Dragons flight (talk) 10:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53013

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

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


Consider:

A [[B]] C

In VE, select the entire phrase "A B C" and attempt to add a link to the page "Dog".

The Visual Editor result is to expand the link but ignore the new requested target, resulting in [[B|A B C]]. Dragons flight (talk) 10:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

See also my reports at #Attempting to change a link results in unwanted and potentially misleading pipes and #Changing link text often results in bad code, wrong links and unmatched </nowki>s. I've not bugzillaed them yet as I was wanting confirmation/someone who can translate them into dev friendly language. Thryduulf (talk) 10:53, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I can't reproduce this when waiting for the link target to be resolved before pressing [enter], but if I press [enter] before the result for the search is displayed, I get the behavior you describe (plus a display issue with the dialog). Let me know if this does not capture your experience accurately, or feel free to comment directly in Template:Bugzilla. Eloquence* 00:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Attempts to delete or cut section header fail

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51452

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

==<nowiki />==

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

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


Reference Bug - need triple click to show transclusion handle - handle misplaced (Chrome)

Example of the misplaced template selection box that is unreachable for me

For me (Chrome 27), when a reference contains a template, e.g.

<ref>{{cite web|url=http:www.go.com|title=This}}</ref>

I am completely unable to edit this. I select it, the reference icon appear, and I can open the popup window. That's where things fall apart. I am unable to select the template or get a transclusion icon to appear. If I hover over it, a blue box appears but it is displaced far above and to the left of the actual reference text. If I try to move my cursor over to the blue box, it disappears as soon as I move off the reference text. Since I can't open the template, I also can't edit it.

Thus, it appears that I am unable to edit any reference that includes citation templates (which is a large percentage of all references). Dragons flight (talk) 11:21, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

What is your example that is failing? I am working with Chrome 28 on Linux and I was able to do exactly what you are talking about. One problem was, in fact, getting the transclusion icon to appear so that I could edit it -- this tricked me for a minute. If you double click at the start of the template inserted material in the reference dialog, you will likely see a blue band near the top of the dialog box and the transclusion button on the upper right. This appears to be a problem with the formatting of the dialog box in Chrome (have not tried in other browsers). (if you see the same thing ... let's reword the title of this section to indicate the bug for pickup) --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I've added a screenshot above. When I hover over the template within the reference editor the blue selection box ends up out of bounds. If I try to bring my mouse to it, then it disappears as soon as I move off the true location of the template. I never seen the transclusion puzzle piece and there appears to be no way to use the mouse to open the transclusion editor under these conditions. Chrome 27.0.1453.116 m on Windows 7 Ultimate SP 1. I even tried restarting the browser with no luck. Dragons flight (talk) 00:31, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Could you try a triple click in the dialog box and see what you get? I was just editing and needed to triple-click to get the transclusion icon to show. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:33, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that works. If I triple click on the true reference location, the transclusion icon appears on the misplaced blue bar and I am subsequently able to open it. Now if someone could explain to me why triple clicking works? (Double clicking definitely does not work.) Dragons flight (talk) 00:37, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I had the same problem on Firefox and Maggie Dennis (WMF) reported it in bugzilla. Maybe can add the problem with Google as well? For me now it works fine. Till it get fixed I was using the arrows on my keyboard to manage select the reference and edit it. Triple click is really weird...I'll have it in mind if it happens again! TeamGale (talk) 00:59, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52991
I've seen this bug pop up before, but it seems to be elusive, possibly some kind of race condition. I'll file it so we can at least track it. Eloquence* 00:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Some tags are not properly escaped

Typing certain tag based code into VE such as:

  • <math>1+2=3</math>
  • <ref>Hi</ref>

Will result in these items being treated as true wikicode after saving. Other tags such as <nowiki> and <span> are properly escaped and only regarded as plain text by the visual editor. Dragons flight (talk) 11:31, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Good find! This is a bug in Parsoid. Threw it in bugzilla Template:Bug. Ssastry (talk) 15:07, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Fix deployed. --GWicke (talk) 01:02, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Editing "hidden" templates?

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51806

I can't edit hidden templates, that have no visual output (like use_dmy_dates at the top of Otto I as example). Apparently there is no clickable area assigned to such templates. Suggestion: assign a small area with the transclusion puzzle icon to highlight a "hidden" template in that area of the article. (Ignore at will, if this is already noted - i couldn't find that bug in bugzilla). GermanJoe (talk) 11:55, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Known issue —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:12, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Old revision notice

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

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

Thumbnail resizer non-functional

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53026

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

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


Manipulating templates?

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52359

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

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


Parsing failure on 2012 Olympics

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

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

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

For example:

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

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

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


Monitoring formatting problems inserted by VE

I set up a simple filter to monitor for "nowiki" being inserted into an article. It's a pretty good indicator of an article being mangled because of the interaction between Visual Editor and the user. You can see the real-time list at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:AbuseLog&offset=&limit=500&wpSearchFilter=550 . It's pretty illuminating. At the very least, it's a good list of articles that need some love and attention.—Kww(talk) 14:52, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for making this. It will be good both for fixing bad VE edits, and hopefully so that the devs can figure out how to prevent some of these problems. Chris857 (talk) 15:48, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The newline symbols

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50290

Sometimes VE inserts a newline symbol, ↵.

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

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

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

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

Not at all clear how to create a redirection page

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49328

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

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


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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53024

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

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


Server errors

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

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

New Editing Layout

I do like what you did with this new editing system on Wikipedia. But you need an option that reverts the editing text back to the original format older Wikipedians were using. Rowdy the Ant talk to Rowdy 16:47, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It should still be available as "Edit source". There's some debate, I gather, about whether to change those names to make that more obvious. --j⚛e deckertalk 17:13, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Known issues

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

Features not yet implemented:

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

Editing problems:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Italicizing or bolding a trailing space

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53023

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

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


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

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

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

This thing sucks

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Old style was fast and reliable, I can't do anything on this. Ail Subway (talk) 19:34, 8 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Ail Subway: You can always edit the old way (select "edit source", for articles and in userspace, rather than "edit"). And you can disable VisualEditor (and then you'll just see "edit", for the old wikitext editor). To disable VE, when you're logged in, go to your Preferences (upper right on your screen); then on the gadgets tab, in the Editing section, select "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface", and save your change. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]


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

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50290

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

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

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

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


Hate it

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

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


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

  1. I've previously noted the problem VisualEditor has where it won't, in many circumstances, allow the removal of a space between a period and a following reference. Note that the attempt to fix various WP:PAIC issues in this diff was able to do so with respect to refs 1,3,4 as I requested, but not with respect to reference 2, as I requested. That is bug 1 in this report
  2. Edit, using VisualEditor, the "Early Life" section at [20]
    1. Place cursor to the right of the period following reference 5
    2. Press backspace
    3. Move cursor to left of reference 5
    4. Type the period symbol (effectively fixing a WP:PAIC issue here.
    5. Note a problem in that there appear to be two lines following that paragraph, before the quote. That is bug 2 in this report.
    6. Move cursor to the second of those two blank lines
    7. Press backspace
    8. Note that the entire quote, following the cursor, has been removed from the article. This is unexpected, as the quote follows the cursor. That is bug 3 in this report.
    9. Press [UNDO] (Crtl-Z)
    10. Note that the quote is not restored via Undo. It is impossible to correct the bug in bug 3 using UNDO. This is a particularly bad bug when one has, as I had, makes twenty-some other corrections before hitting this bug in the same edit, and has to abandon them all to preserve the text. This is bug 4 in this report.

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

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

Editor timing out

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

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

VisualEditor "needcheck" tag woefully optimistic

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

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

Preview font too small

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

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

Reference numbering problem (might have been reported before)

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52474

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

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


edit summary

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

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

Transcluded pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53119

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

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

Transclusion Helper Mess

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

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

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

Problem with image and other information in an infobox

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

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

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

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53015
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53009

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

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

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

Reference in image caption

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52459

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

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


Brilliant!

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

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

VE's vicarious changes

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53017

I was about to congratulate VE for making it easy to clean up some wierd formatting added by some broken browser extension [21]. This can be tricky and tedious to do with the source editor, but VE made it easy, so +1 there. However it didn't work so well for cleaning up the same formatting bugs in the template. VE could not parse the template parameter correctly and split some parmeters into two.[22] A case of junk in, different junk out. Overall a score of 0 for VE.--Salix (talk): 08:29, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

Missing keyboard shortcuts

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

There's no shortcut for save; what else is missing for you? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:46, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52868
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53018
A coupel of issues with links:

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

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

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

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


Images displayed on wrong side and uneditable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53039

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

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

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

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

Progress indicator only visible at top of page

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

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

Removing template and adding content breaks editor

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

Remove template text color

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

What does add content do?

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

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

Template dialog title

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

I agree. "Transclusion" is a term of art for Mediawiki and not something that should appear anywhere in a UI that is intended for new users. Dragons flight (talk) 15:01, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair though "Edit template" is also a term of art for Mediawiki. However, at least "templates" are things that have an analog in the real world. According to dictionary.com, "transclusion" isn't even a word. Dragons flight (talk) 16:45, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The end of WP:ORDER?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52882

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

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

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

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

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

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

Template editor allows for duplicate parameters

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

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

Double-click to add parameter

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

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

Edit template icon should be in the current view

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

Clicking on top-right corner of template opens template dialog

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

Confirmed with FF22. Not exactly the corner, but if you click in the place where the puzzle-piece icon would be, the editor opens immediately, as stated. Looie496 (talk) 15:57, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

can't edit tables

The following discussion is marked as answered. If you have a new comment, place it just below the box.
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41596

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

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


References List

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

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

KHAN BIRMANI

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

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

Infobox post-modification rendering issue

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

Edited reflist - it disappeared

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

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

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

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

Feedback form

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

Couldn't fix typo in reference quote

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53058

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

Blurk. I think it's because of how the VE reference-handling treats references in templates (i.e., poorly) - I'll throw it in now.

Header templates deleted

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

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

Consecutive spaces

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53056

In visual editor, type something like: 

abc         def

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

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

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


Allowing image resizing is a terrible idea

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

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

Correct Name

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I am assistant to Mr. Carlos Wizard Martins.

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

Tables

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41596

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

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


Deactivation

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Section editing

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

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

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

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

I've just noticed a couple of edits in visualeditor-needcheck which make external links like [null http://example.org/] [23],[24]. I've been monitoring the needcheck and its the first time I've seen them so it might be a bug introduced in a new rollout.--Salix (talk): 21:26, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikilinking to a section of an article?

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

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

@John Broughton:, can you try this again. I can confirm the first part. Adding a link like Strategy game#Wargame does indeed get shown in red in the drop-down and labeled as a "new page", but I can not confirm the second half of your report. The #Wargame version of the link seems to save fine for me. As noted higher up the page, you need to either press Enter after typing the link or click on the link title in the drop-down to confirm. If you type out the link without pressing Enter and then click outside the link box, the link tool will forget your changes. Is that perhaps what happened to cause it to lose the #Wargame? Dragons flight (talk) 02:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Extensive testing at [25] shows that section linking works as expected provided you confirm the link you are added. There should be a GUI way of linking to a section, but that's a different issue. Thryduulf (talk) 16:35, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

General

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

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

This has happened before on other articles.

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

Have just edited another couple of stubs, can't reproduce the problem. But it has definitely happened before. PamD 22:13, 9 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Happened again on The Honey Trees: opened in VE; removed stub template by highlight + delete (or perhaps backspace); added new stub template; tried to click on "Page Settings" to fix the Defaultsort but although cursor turned from line to hand it wouldn't let me left-click. Right click offered unhelpful options. Tried positioning insert point variously around article, no effect. Had to save, reopen, and then do the edit I wanted to. Grrrrr. PamD 09:36, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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

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

Editing

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

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


Formating

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49780
Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40029

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

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

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

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


Reference List

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52769

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

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


Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53092

Check out this diff in my sandbox: [26]. The external link looks normal when in read mode, but shows the .jpg image as soon as I click "edit." Is this a bug or a feature? VQuakr (talk) 03:20, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

unusable

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

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

Shrinking images

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

.

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

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

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


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

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52182

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

Text at very bottom of the page

This revision[27] contains some junk text "QuickiWiki Look Up QuickiWiki Look Up QuickiWiki Look Up" at the very bottom of the page after the authority control, person data and categories. When you try and edit with VE you cannot actually see the junk text. I've play about in my sandbox and the actual conditions for the text not to appear seem to be quite sensitive, at one point new line character appeared. The text remains after VE finishes the edit.--Salix (talk): 09:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

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

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

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53103

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

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

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


Terrible

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

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


Editting a table

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T41596

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

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


Gesture of appreciation

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

General editor for extension tags

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

Odd bug after blanking page

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alterar username

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

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

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

Proposal to rename the template editing features in VE

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

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