Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 9

a sensible way to edit {{div col}} sections

I know this has probably been asked before but a more intuitive way to edit an article containing {{div col}} sections is needed. In a list article like List of topics related to Cornwall there are many sections with lists broken into multiple columns. What I would like to happen is that you just click on the list and add an item. Just like you would expect to happen for a normal list. Having to go through the template dialog with a rather too small edit box is not visual enough. There are quite a few other templates where you really want to edit in-place rather that with a dialog. Quite how this could be done I'm not sure, maybe some hints could be given in the templatedata, maybe some template specific plugin is needed. This is a big problem as it is making a large number of articles hard to edit.--Salix (talk): 07:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Why can't we just have VE accept Wikimarkup? So you'd type '''text''' [[File:foo.jpg|200px|thumb|caption]] and it would automatically add that to the page where you added it? If Wikimarkup was actually part of VE, it'd make templates far easier, as you could just choose to be shown the wikimarkup for them whilst editing, then have them "snap back" to visual mode when done. You could have a toggle to switch between that behaviour and a strict visual mode. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 08:33, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I think thats a separate issue. Indeed clicking on the template dialog for a {{div col}} section will allow you to edit the raw wikitext. What I'm looking for is a visual way of editing the content.--Salix (talk): 09:01, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

<thinking-aloud> For multi-part templates (which is what these col-* templates are) that build a single dom structure (a 2-column table in this case), if Parsoid can mark up the HTML that lets VE distinguish between top-level page content or parameters (and hence editable) vs. content that comes from the template (and hence NOT editable), this would be possible. Right now, VE cannot distinguish between editable and non-editable HTML pieces since Parsoid gives it wikitext for top-level content (See Template Content Spec for the gory details). Also, T52587 covers the other piece of this puzzle (visual editing of template parameters). Anyway, still some work to be done before this is feasible. </thinking-aloud> Ssastry (talk) 23:57, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if there's any way around that, short of doing columns differently than through a template? Tech-people, any ideas? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:59, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This is at least related to T52589 and T52366, and is a result of VE and Parsoid having difficulty with templates that produce subsets of table markup.—Kww(talk) 20:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

See also #Bulleted lists below, which is the same problem. PamD 20:15, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Appreciation

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well done. it makes new users feel much comfortable with the GUI. Thanks!! 88.9.116.14 (talk) 13:30, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad you like it. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual mode should allow you to edit source

Hi Wikipedia,

I know you're working hard on the site infrastructure. There are plenty of us who appreciate the blood, sweat and toil.

The visual editor looks slick. But please know that people like me would be thrilled to be able to edit source code (C, C++, etc) from the visual editor. Until then I'll probably switch back to editing the page source directly.

Thanks, TMI Themysteriousimmigrant (talk) 16:34, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

As in, things in <code> tags? Being worked on :). (I don't think we'll have a C++ editor and compiler in the editor for a long time, although it would be wonderfully recursive). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:03, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual Editor Userbox?

I took a quick look around, but did not see a userbox which one could append to their user page indicating they are either using or trying to use Visual Editor as their primary editor (vs. Classic). Hmm, could be a parameter taking userbox which would allow one to select either VE or Classic as their preferred editing mode. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:39, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

There are three userboxs: Pro-VE, Neutral-VE, and Anti-VE.--Dom497 (talk) 00:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm not aware of such a userbox either. Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/Ideas is apparently the place to discuss ideas for new userboxes, while Wikipedia talk:Userboxes/New Userboxes is for announcing, discussing and testing newly created ones. 00:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Ceyockey: How's this? Pseudonymous Rex (talk) 02:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I think Psedonymous' draft userboxes are more neutral in tone than the Pro/Neutral/Anti box set. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 10:52, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Inserting Template Parameters

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53671

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53672

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53673

Whenever I try to insert parameters from a template into an article, only the first few parameters come up for me to choose from; I can not scroll down to see the others. Is anyone else experiencing this problem?--Dom497 (talk) 00:03, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Which template(s) are you experiencing this with? I have possibly misunderstood this, but I think that only mandatory parameters are listed and you have to manually enter the names of optional ones. Thryduulf (talk) 00:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Thryduulf: All of them. Try to add cite web for example and I only the first 5 optional parameters show up (the mandatory parameters are already placed in the template). To access the rest, I have to scroll down, but I can't.--Dom497 (talk) 00:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't remember whether the list was scrollable or not, previously (though I would have thought I'd have noticed if it were not). But it's very much not scrollable now. (The examples in user's guide don't have enough parameters to be scrollable, and the guide doesn't mention this.)

Perhaps the thought was that the list should not be scrollable because you can't select from it; you have to select a parameter by typing a parameter name in the search box, and then pressing Enter/Return? By (as I've posted earlier), the only description of the parameters is with the list; when you start to enter data for an already selected parameter, there is no clue given as to what the parameter is for, or how its data should be entered. So, a bug, definitely. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:22, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I rather scroll than have to type in a parameter name that I might not even know! So yes, this is a bug that needs to be fixed.--Dom497 (talk) 01:31, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, without scrolling, it is impossible to access the "Remove template" button - Evad37 (talk) 01:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Just to complicate matters, the parameter name is case sensitive, eg typing "publisher" (without the double diddles) results in "Unknown parameter". Downsize43 (talk) 02:24, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I understand now (I wasn't really awake when I first commented) and I've reported these as separate bugs: Lack of scrolling: Bugzilla:51671; covering remove template button: bugzilla:51672; and case sensitivity: Bugzilla:51673 (although this might be the same isssue as Bugzilla:51670 in the section below). Thryduulf (talk) 10:28, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Template parameter search fails when searching for a parameter whose name is two or more words.

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53670

I was testing the template/transclusion dialog box, using the cite web template, and noticed that when I start typing "Source date" (without quotes, of course) into the search box, something interesting happens when I get to the "d" - the search results say "Unknown parameter". That is, at the point where I've typed "Source d", then - essentially - the search fails; the search software decides that there are no matching entries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Downsize43 (talk • contribs) — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Broughton (talk • contribs)

Confirmed in other templates as well, reported as Bugzilla:51670. Thryduulf (talk) 09:54, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Wrong attribution, fellows. Is this from a bot or a real person??? Downsize43 (talk) 11:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, human error on my part. Thryduulf (talk) 11:38, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Weird image problems

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53665

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53624

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53666

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53292

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53531

Using Firefox 21.0

Problem 1: Clicking on a media file and dragging the mouse causes the cursor to change to the "I'm moving an image" icon, but the image doesn't actually move. I can only move an image if I click it once to select it, then click and hold.

Problem 2: If I move an image a small enough distance across the screen that it doesn't actually move, I can't move it again unless I deselect it and then reselect it.

Problem 3: Suppose an image lives between paragraphs 1 and 2. If I click before the first word of paragraph 2 and press "backspace", the rest of paragraph 2 gets moved into the caption of the image.

Problem 4: Suppose an image lives between paragraphs 1 and 2. If I click after the last word of paragraph 1 and press "delete", the image disappears and the caption gets moved to the end paragraph 1.

Problem 5: As far as I can tell, the only way to move an image such that it lives at the very beginning of a section is to drag it such that the cursor falls immediately after the last letter of the section header. This is not intuitive.

Problem 6: Dragging an image such that the cursor falls in the middle of a section header causes it to split into two sections. Not sure why this should be possible.

Problem 7: If an image has a caption which ends with a link, and I attempt to add text to the end of the caption, it automatically gets added to the anchor text of the link. I can find no way around this.

My apologies if any of these have been reported before. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

• Problems 1 and 2 seem to be new (or at least I can't find them in Bugzilla). I've reported them as Bugzilla:51665.
• Problems 3 and 4 are likely to be the same issue as Bugzilla:51624, I've added your report to that bug.
• Problem 5 also seems new so I've reported it as Bugzilla:51666
• Problem 6 is known and reported as Bugzilla:51292.
• Problem 7 is a known bug. You can work around it by adding a new line (press enter) after the end of the link, typing a space then whatever you want to write and finally deleting the newline you entered. This is Bugzilla:51531.

Thank you for all this feedback and don't worry about reporting duplicate issues as you might be encountering it in slightly different circumstances or with a different browser, which can help the devs fix the bugs. Thryduulf (talk) 09:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Fooling around with indenters

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52841

Using Firefox 21.0

Here's what I tried: Place a colon, semicolon, or asterisk at the beginning of a paragraph in VE. When it saves, the indenter is preceded by <nowiki>, which makes sense. As far as I can tell, the closing </nowiki> tag is placed immediately before the next piece of wiki markup in that paragraph. In some cases, this will be at the very end of the paragraph.

The problem: Upon entering VE again, the first line of the paragraph will be blocked off with the green "no edit" bar, but the rest of the paragraph will appear to be editable, even though it is not. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This is a known bug, see Bugzilla:50841. Thryduulf (talk) 08:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

There are some peculiar side-effects. To demonstrate, prepare a paragraph of text several lines long, with no Wiki markup until a wikilink several lines down, and some further text after that. This test piece is a suitable sample. Test done with Win7/FF22.0.

• In VE edit mode, add five spaces at the start of the first line. They appear on the screen.
• Save the page. The spaces are no longer visible.
• Examine with Edit source. The spaces are present, but everything from the start of the paragraph until just before the wikilink is bracketed by a <nowiki> ... </nowiki> pair.
• Click "Edit". About one space is now visible at the start of the paragraph, with the cursor blinking to left of it. Pressing the right-arrow key to move the cursor skips it straight to the wikilink.
• Try to edit. Moving the pointer over the first line covers it with green stripes, changes the pointer to a red "prohibition" sign, and gives the message "Sorry, this element can only be edited in source mode for now."
• Positioning the pointer (to try to edit) anywhere after the first line but before the wikilink covers the first line with green stripes but does not give a message or change the pointer. Clicking in this area to try to position the cursor has no effect, but if you now type something, everything before the wikilink (the whole content of the nowiki pair) is deleted.
• Editing after the wikilink is normal.

This will all be deeply confusing to a newbie, and trying to indent the first line of a paragraph is not an uncommon newbie mistake.

PS: I see that bug is marked "resolved fixed" so I will try this again in a day or so. JohnCD (talk) 09:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

editing Baird's Trogon - problems

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51820

Hi I am still very new at wiki editing. I have read the tutorial and chatted with a senior editor (Ser Amantio di Nicolao) who has sent me to you. He thinks the problems I am having are because of visual editor and he is not that familiar with it. I am just trying to figure out how to add links. I added one but not successfully and he changed it for me. I wanted to add a flickr photo too and I am not having any luck with it at all. I am so ignorant I don't even know how to ask an intelligent question about my problems. All I can say is "help!" Reefswaggie (talk) 06:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Nobody's familiar with VisualEditor yet. It's a new feature. Hereby, you are appointed the Senior Specialist. --93.75.134.116 (talk) 06:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Reefswaggie: Hey, looks like you've run into the nowiki problem! That's a major bug in VE; I don't know f they're actually trying to fix it, but they are considering more in-your-face warnings about adding wikitext while in VE. (Note: User's diffs start here. Ignatzmice•talk 11:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

so how do I get out of VE? Reefswaggie (talk) 11:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

and if I am the Senior Specialist, you guys are in trouble! lol Reefswaggie (talk) 11:59, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

see the FAQ at the top of this page, or the big yellow box when you edit this page Ignatzmice•talk 12:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we are.—Kww(talk) 14:45, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Reefswaggie: Regarding adding a flickr photo, you need to upload it to Wikimedia Commons; after that, you can add it to a Wikipedia article. (For finding and adding a photo, VE has some advantages in it's search function, so you might think about using VE just for photo adding).

On the left side of your screen, you'll see "Toolbox", and in that section, "Upload file". (A photo is one type of file.) However - and with Wikipedia, there quite often is a "however" - you must own that Flickr photo, or the owner of it must have put it into the public domain, or given it a license (one of the Creative Commons licenses that we accept), before Wikimedia Commons will accept it. All these restrictions are because Wikipedia allows its content to be used by anyone for any purpose - commercial or otherwise. So we don't want to have images at Wikipedia where such sharing-by-everyone would violate the copyright of the image owner. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I think I better leave the flickr photos till I get a bit more experienced. And am I correct in assuming that adding "Wiki VE Sr Specialist" to my CV right now would be committing career suicide? :)

Navigation boxes

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53664

Currently, navigation boxes are always uncollapsed when editing. This can be quite annoying when having to deal with big ones like {{The Beatles}}, e.g. on "I'm a Loser", also it might be confusing editors into believing that this part of a page can easily be edited. --The Evil IP address (talk) 08:14, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Good point, I've tracked this as Bugzilla:51664. Thryduulf (talk) 08:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Accidental removal of an entire infobox

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51806

Using Google Chrome's "find" feature, I've noticed that a few other editors have run into this issue as well. However, I thought I should make it a more prominent concern listed on this page by giving it a separate subsection.

I just deleted an entire infobox and disambiguation link at Gondar after I attempted to remove a bit of excessive spacing — and in order to re-add them, I had to use a previous revision of the page for a copy/paste edit to the source. Clicking the "undo" button did nothing. This is needless tedium and should be fixed as soon as possible. If not, then VisualEditor compares unfavourably to the original editing format. Kurtis ^(talk) 08:25, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This is mostly covered by bugreport 49806 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 19:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing window does not scroll when dragging an image

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53669

When dragging an item in the visual editor (tested with image and text), the editing window does not scroll up or down when you reach the top or bottom of the window. This means you have to make several consecutive drag and drop actions to move an item within a long article/section.

I've tracked this as Bugzilla:51669 but it would be useful to know if it affects browsers other than Firefox 22 on Xubuntu Linux. Thryduulf (talk) 09:34, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I can confirm that this also occurs in Firefox 22 and Chrome 28 on Windows 7 - I've amended the bug report with this information as well. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 10:10, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Cheers. Thryduulf (talk) 10:40, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, both of you :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:52, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

"♙♙♙♙♙♙♙" characters appear in iOS after editing near a link

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53677

After I edited text near a link, "♙♙♙♙♙♙♙" characters started appearing around once a second, and I couldn't stop them or delete them. 121.45.199.248 (talk) 11:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

That really shouldn't be happening! I can't replicate that in Firefox on my Linux laptop (I don't have any iOS devices), but I've reported it at Bugzilla:51677. If anyone else can repoduce it that would be good to know. Thryduulf (talk) 11:47, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Not confirmed in Safari on iOS 7 beta 3. IP121, what exactly did you do? How close is "near" a link? Ignatzmice•talk 11:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I have _not_ observed this behavior on iPad2 using Safari. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:19, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): Oliver has several times made cryptic comments about bugs involving "infinite loops of chess pieces", so he probably has some idea of what is going on here. Let me note that archive searching using the box at the top of this page doesn't seem to work -- when I search for "pawn", I only get one hit, even though I know there are a lot more than that. Looie496 (talk) 14:40, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Searching on "chess" (as in "chess pieces") will get you another archived section. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, this...looks like, if not the same bug, the same output (parsoid flinging the characters it uses to internally represent data out to where users can see it). I'm glad to see it's reported, and hopefully it will be fixed soon :).

Slow Speed on MobileSafari on iPad 2 with iOS 6.1.3

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The initial edit load took about a minute on MobileSafari on iPad 2 with iOS 6.1.3. Subsequent edits were faster - about 10 seconds. The first edit upload was also very slow - about 30 seconds. 121.45.199.248 (talk) 11:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

There are other problems on the iPad 2 using Safari in addition to load performance. For instance, in general it is difficult to get popups to behave properly, so that section editing using Classic is problematic (tough to get the 'edit source' link to appear without click-through the 'edit' link). There are problems with the Template Editor in relation to the basic rendering of the dialog and the ability to scroll through parameter options. The local caching behavior is such that it is easier to lose content from an editing session than on, for instance, Chrome on a linux desktop machine. In general, I would not at this time recommend using VE on iPad 2 using Safari; but I do edit on this platform using Classic mode. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah; I think some bugs with the VE on tablets is known :(. They'll be fixed in time, but to be honest, the priority right now is making the VE functional for the desktop, which most of our users use. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't save changes!

See subject 1Z (talk) 14:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Peterdjones: Browser and operating system? Do you have JavaScript disabled, or anything like that? Ignatzmice•talk 14:51, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

CSS

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52402

Currently, on articles and userpages, editing using the VisualEditor uses the #ca-edit CSS id and editing the source uses the #ca-editsource CSS id. However, in all other namespaces, #ca-edit is the only edit link. For people like me who like to change the titling or styling of the tabs, this inconsistency is annoying. (For me, it makes the "edit" tab on this page display as "VE" rather than "Source".) Could the CSS id tags be made consistent (use #ca-editsource for all non-VE editing)? Thanks. Reaper Eternal (talk) 15:38, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this is covered by Bugzilla:50402, but I'll copy your feedback there and if it isn't related I'm sure someone more technical than me will say so! Thryduulf (talk) 16:07, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

As I posted at bugzilla:

Reaper Eternal's proposal is an excellent solution to the issue of what the "Edit source" tab should be named, and partly addresses whether "Edit" should be "Edit source" even when VE is not available (and thus there is one edit tab, not two). His proposal is a good solution because it then allows individual editors to alter these labels (I would prefer "VE" rather than "Edit", and "Wikitext" rather than "Edit source",for example) via their own CSS, while leaving the defaults as is for newer editors. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

That doesn't address what the default labels should be. I suggest "Beta Editor" for the Visual Editor and "Stable Editor" for the wikitext editor.—Kww(talk) 16:26, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks learned some good Idea. Mahitgar (talk) 16:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Agree some consistent id's would be good. Also for the section edit links and section 0 edit links. A class .ve-edit for all of them could be handy. You might be able to use the following CSS selector to catch just the VE edit tab, its tricky as you get a different set of tabs for each namespace.

div#p-views > ul  > li#ca-edit:not(.istalk):nth-last-child(4) { display: none; }

The talk pages handily have the ".istalk" class so you can eliminate those. Being 4th from the end means it wont match the wikitext tab. --Salix (talk): 18:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

external link problem

I cannot figure out how to add an external link to a citation's source in this Visual Editor. -- NewzealanderA (talk) 16:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd suggest using wikimarkup for now. VisualEditor is extremely feature-light and buggy just now. To turn it off, go to Preferences (it's a link in the upper-right), switch to the "Gadgets" tab, and look for the one to disable VisualEditor. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:20, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

If you are adding just a plain external link, then you add it in the same way you do an internal link. Just type or paste the url into the box you would put the article title for an internal link. If you are using the reference template, then just type or paste the URL into the "URL" field in the template editor. Referencing does work in VisualEditor, but the user interface to add them does need some major improvement. Thryduulf (talk) 17:35, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Bulleted lists

I tried to delete one entry and a blue box appeared and I was unable to edit. Also, when I try to do an edit next to a wikilink it links my edited word as well. I'd like to comment too. I've been editing since 2006. I learned to edit by looking to see how others managed to get things to work. Which was not really hard at all. But I can say for a fact that if this system was in place when I started editing I would have never been able to become an editor. I'm not dumb, in fact my IQ is in the upper 5%, but I'm pretty old. I learned to type on a black Underwood. Even if all the bugs were fixed, I'd still not be able to use it except for things such a tweaks and copy edits. Gandydancer (talk) 17:54, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Bulleted lists do usually work fine. Looking at your contributions though I'm guessing you were trying to edit the one at Lac-Mégantic derailment#See also. If so then the issue is that it is in a two-column layout. VE can't edit multiple-column sections directly at the moment, but it can edit them using the "transclusion editor" (aka template editor). When the blue box appears, you should see an icon in the top right corner of the box. Click that and you are taken to the template editor. In the left column click the line marked "Content" and you can edit the source on the right. I know that's not very user friendly, but it's better than the last time I tried it so progress is being made!

Text being included as part of a link when you don't want it to is known, you can read about it (and comment if you wish) at Bugzilla:51531.

Visual Editor is still very much in development and not all the features are ready yet. The user interface will also be improved as time goes by, but I agree it isn't going to be for everyone and certainly isn't now. You can always choose to use the source editor (the one you've been using since 2006) either by clicking "edit source" rather than "edit" at the top of the page or on edit section links. Alternatively you can disabled VisualEditor in your preferences, details are in the FAQ at the top of this page and in the yellow box above the edit window when you edit this page. Thryduulf (talk) 18:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

No the list is at Hors d'oeuvre--you can try it yourself. As for the rest of your advise, and I don't mean to be snarky, but of course I am aware that I have a choice and can use SE--I'm using it right now. I am aware that I can delete it as well, but I do like it for small tweaks and copy edits. Gandydancer (talk) 18:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The list at Hors d'oeuvre is another example of a mutli-column template using divs, so the instructions above do work. The icon to enter the template editor though is placed at the right margin of the window (in this case over the image in the infobox) and so not very obvious. I'm sorry if I came across as patronising at all about turning the visual editor off, but its easier than receiving flack for allegedly trying to hide how you can disable it that I've received on a couple of occasions. Thryduulf (talk) 19:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I was curious and looked at this ... yes, it's a two-column list within {{div col}}, so VE refuses to let you edit the items in the list in any user-friendly manner. Particularly confusing as on my computer it displays as a single-column list when I read the article or edit it in VE, until I try editing the Section in Edit Source and it sets out in two cols (because it no longer has to share width with the infobox). I know I reported this problem a long way back, and it went into Bugzilla, where the developers seemed to say something like "It would be better if xyz (I forget what) was used for multicolumns", rather than taking the problem seriously. Yet another instance where VE does not provide the expected facility to do a straightforward edit: this is a bug, not an enhancement. I'll try and find the Bug number... Yes, T52182. Note comments 3 and 4, and the fact that it's listed as "normal enhancement", although it totally prevents a lot of perfectly normal editing. The tone from the devs seems to be "Well you shouldn't be trying to do that anyway...", rather than "OMG that's a serious problem because there are masses of instances of text being within templates and we need to fix this ASAP." PamD 19:39, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

See also the section "a sensible way to edit {{div col}} sections" above: same problem. PamD 20:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Layout breaks when I open article in VE

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53708

Gibberd Garden is a well-set-out little stub. But when I open it in VE (Firefox 22, Windows Vista) the second item in the External links disappears to below the infobox. When I save the edit, it reappears correctly formatted. Just another of those things which makes the editor think that they've done something wrong. Probably an existing bug...? PamD 18:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

On further investigation... if I widen my editing window so that the "External links" element is not being asked to wrap, then all is well. But VE refuses to wrap that entry, even though it has plain text in the middle between two links. Ah... it's generated by a single template, so presumably that's the problem - VE and templates being a toxic mixture! PamD 19:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I've done some testing on this and I think I've sort of work out what the bug is. If the template that is being transcluded produces exactly 1 line of displayed text then it will not word wrap. Two or more lines (even if one is just a single character) then it will wrap as expected. I've reported this at bugzilla:51708 but it's not the most elegant or concise bug report you'll even read! Thryduulf (talk) 20:40, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks to both Thryduulf for throwing it in, and Pam for reporting it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Please put categories next to existing categories

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53714

When I add a category to an article, I would prefer VE to follow the rules of WP:ORDER, that categories go before stubs. I know that's contentious, it's En.wiki-specific, VE is unlikely to be able to do it.

But please, when I'm adding a category to an article which has one or more existing categories, at least put the new one next to the old one. That's what any reasonably tidy-minded human editor would do, rather than stick to a rule of "categories go at the end" as it appears to have done here, so we have cat, stub, stub, cat (and no blank lines between any of them). As I've said before: the logical processing needed to get this right is well established within AWB's general fixes: it seems a shame if that existing logic can't be used in VE so that it gets things right. PamD 19:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This is a good point, and might be a nice workaround to the stubs issue. I'll throw it in and we'll see if it's doable. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Why can't VE support Wikitext?

Why, if I type, say: * [[Link]]

...can't VE recognise the Wikitext, and simply convert it into graphical display after a, say, 5 second delay, or when the user presses a "convert" button? Since it can already recognise Wikitext being typed, it seems like this should be a trivial feature. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:44, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It can recognise certain types of wikitext, because it's told to look for it. As I understand it having it converted would require, every time a user types markup, the VE/Parsoid to essentially go through the save and edit renders and conversions. This would be incredibly resource-intensive. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

So have a button to convert highlighted Wikitext as a temporary step? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

There might be a case for supporting the main link forms...

• [[wikilink]] and [[wikilink |anchor]]
• [URI] and [URI anchor]

...in a future release. - Pointillist (talk) 21:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Adam, other than requiring a user to manually say "I want this converted" that doesn't seem to solve for the underlying problem. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's about the only way I'd ever want to use it: if it let me easily switch to using Wikimarkup whenever I wanted to. So, you know, figured you'd want to hear what it'd take to get power editors on board. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:46, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): - Would it really require lots of computing cycles if an editor were able to click a "Wikitext" button, and in the resulting input box, type/paste some wikitext directly, then have Parsoid/VE go through the save and edit renders and conversions process just for that wikitext - inserting the results into the existing VE display? It would be tremendously useful, for example, for an editor to be able to use a tool that generates wikitext for a full citation (see, for example, Wikipedia:Cite4Wiki) and to use that tool's output within VE. Why make editors choose one or the other? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:28, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I just want to leave this here. It is a screenshot from a very early demo where you could have both. Chris857 (talk) 00:45, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#switch_editor.js might at least be a start. I prefer the prototype Chris links - was there ever any polling of anyone but brand new users to see which direction VE should go? Because that should have been the base. The columns'd probably need some work, but creativity could have got around it.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but the only user research the WMF talks about is on new users that have never edited before. What people want in the first 10 minutes may not be what they want later, and so I'm not really surprised that VE has failed to catch on so spectacularly. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 00:48, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikitext notice doesn't disappear when wikitext is removed.

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53701

When testing the new notice, I noticed that when I deleted the wikitext the new warning didn't disappear, which is a bit of an annoyance. Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 19:52, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I also noticed that the warning stayed at the top of the page, which, of course, isn't helpful. Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 19:54, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

The staying at the top of the page is being fixed :). The warning notice is a good catch; I don't know if it will be worked on (it's a low-priority dealie, compared to active bugs) but I can totally throw it in bugzilla. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Creating collapse boxes

I have experimented with creating collapse boxes in VE. Unlike many templates, collapse boxes require the use of two templates to produce one object: {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}. I have tried a number of different procedures, and have succeeded in creating a working collapse box.

Procedure 1: Hit transclusion. Add "collapse top". Add content "I like bacon." Add "collapse bottom". Apply changes. Before saving, I see Result 1. After saving, the collapse box does not appear. The wiki markup was saved:

{{Collapse top}}I like bacon.{{Collapse bottom}}

which doesn't work because the templates must be placed on different lines.

Procedure 2: Hit transclusion. Add "collapse top". Add content "I like bacon." Apply changes. Move down one line. Hit transclusion. Add "collapse bottom". Apply changes. Before saving, I see Result 2. After saving, success!

Procedure 3: Hit transclusion. Add "collapse top". Add content "I like bacon." with line breaks added before and after the text. Add "collapse bottom". Apply changes. Before saving, I see Result 3. After saving, success!

Two observations:

1. The problem with procedures 1 and 2 seems to be that, without padding the content, everything gets saved on one line. It should be easy enough to have VE do the padding automatically, yes?

1. Regardless of the procedure used, VE does not display the collapse box the same way it actually appears in the article (not WYSIWYG). Procedure 3 is close, but the box doesn't span the entire width of the page.

Using Firefox 21.0 on Windows Vista

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:59, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that's a feature, as (1) the {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}} are not supposed to be used in Wikipedia articles, and (2) The templates use unclosed HTML, and are not supported by mw:Parsoid. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:18, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

No "Wordstar" editing keyboard shortcuts

Those are in many editor's DNA, therefore every text editor ever made; includes them. One example: highlight desired string, - Shifted Del, Ins -- cuts that text, then puts it back (in effect instantly copies it to memory) ready to be pasted elsewhere (with another Shifted Ins). The keyboard parts takes about 1/8 second, the highlighting or cursor positioning is the time-hog here.

Shifted Del, Ins ...also works to cut (&copy) and past on every image editor I've ever used, as well as between different programs --it's universal. Other "Wordstar," & "Wordperfect" keyboard shortcuts: same-same.
--69.110.90.203 (talk) 14:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)Doug Bashford

I'm not completely sure I understand what you are saying (I've never extensively used either word perfect or word star), but is bugzilla:33080 the same as your request? Thryduulf (talk) 15:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Shifted Del does *not* work on Macs, for cutting/copying. Also, why not just use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V? Those are universal across operating systems (Cmd-C, Cmd-V for the Mac) and applications, I believe. (Also, just to confirm, you can't paste images or wikitext into VE, only text, yes?) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

You can't paste wikitext into VE (well you can, but it will just get <nowiki>s around it and it wont function as wikitext). You can't currently paste images in, but I don't know if doing so is something that is intended to be added later or not. Thryduulf (talk) 23:12, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It is not true that every text editor ever made; includes them; in fact, none of the text editors that I use includes WordStar keystrokes, nor would I want them to. As for Shifted Del, Ins ..., the last time that I used Wordstar the keyboard didn't even have an Insert or Delete key. Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz Username:Chatul (talk) 19:12, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Personally, I use vi much quicker than wordstar, and available through a firefox extension. My issue with the new editor was that my first edit completely destroyed the article and I got a warning for vandalism whilst I was working on reverting it. Got to laugh. RonaldDuncan (talk) 22:19, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Modifying a reference

With the exception of minor text changes, modifying a reference should be the easiest of all tasks in a user friendly editor. After many frustrating false starts and a couple of near disasters I have finally worked out how to do it, and I wonder how many newbies and not so new editors will have the same experience. For the record the process that works at present is as follows:

1. Click on the ref hotlink - the ref icon is displayed.

2. Click on the ref icon - the ref dialog is displayed.

3. Click on the ref details - the transclusion (??) icon is displayed.

4. Click on the trans icon - the template details and current parameters are displayed.

5. From here, proceed as for a new ref (within the limitations described in the previous two items)

Downsize43 (talk) 02:45, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately this only works if the existing ref contains "URL=" and "source=" as well as the actual URL and source name. If not the source name is displayed in the ref details as an active link, and the transclusion icon is NOT displayed when the user attempts to select (click on) the ref details. NFA is possible in VE for those links. Downsize43 (talk) 11:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Raised Bugzilla 51725. My guess - Enhancement request or lower priority. Suggestion: Write a bot to find the problem refs and put URL= and source= tags in them. No idea what to do with the other info in them, which is infinitely variable. Downsize43 (talk) 07:06, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Editor for TemplateData

Editor for TemplateData

Hi, I've translated a gadget created on frwiki for visually editing TemplateData. It's available at User:NicoV/TemplateDataEditor.js. To use it, simply add importScript('User:NicoV/TemplateDataEditor.js'); in Special:MyPage/skin.js. More explanations on how to set it up at User:NicoV/TemplateDataEditor. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 23:03, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I've implemented and will try it out. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:29, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've amended the instruction, since Special:MyPage/vector.js won't work for Monobook (etc.) users. The link Special:MyPage/skin.js automatically goes to the relevant .js file for your current skin. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:18, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Link creation "locks up"

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53404

Steps:

• (1) Insert a couple of spaces between two words, then position the cursor in the middle of the spaces.
• (2) Click the link icon; a dialog box opens up.
• (3) Click the small garbage can icon in the dialog box, to cancel the link creation.

The result is (a) initially, the dialog box - now blank - will not go away. Clicking near it will make it vanish, but - regardless - the link icon now is non-functional; (b) it's not possible to create more links; clicking on the link icon does nothing. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:05, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

This appears to be bugzilla:51404, first reported a few days ago but so far unprioritised. Thryduulf (talk) 17:54, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

"Clear formatting" icon does not work for links

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53756

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53757

When I click on a link, the link icon appears just below it (so I can click on that, to make changes). The "clear formatting" icon also activates - it changes from greyed out to its regular color. If I do not click on the link icon, but rather click on the "clear formatting" icon, the formatting (for the link) is not removed (that is, the text involved does not lose its link). Rather, the "clear formatting" icon goes back to grey, but nothing else happens.

If the clear formatting icon isn't intended to be able to remove links, it shouldn't activate when an editor clicks on text that has link formatting. If the icon is intended to be able to do such removal, then the code should be changed so that clicking on this icon actually does something. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:18, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Nowhere does the the clear formatting appear to work when no text is selected. e.g. if you place it in the middle of an italicised non-linked word it will not do anything. I've reported this as Bugzilla:51756.

As for the links issue, I don't think that the clear formatting button should remove links - I tried to de-italicise a sentence that had a linked word in, the italics and the link were removed which is not what I would be expecting. See Bugzilla:51757. Thryduulf (talk) 18:16, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

index?

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How do i edit the index menu? Tomgc (talk) 04:23, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

@Tomgc: I assume you mean the table of contents at the top of an article? That's generated automatically and is not editable. See Help:TOC for more info. Ignatzmice•talk 04:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

To be a little clearer, the table of contents is generated automatically, based on the section headings and subheadings in the article. Adjust the headings, and the table of contents will be adjusted automatically when the page is saved. Chris the speller ^yack 15:24, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

There are ways to modify the table of contents - for example, to put it on the right side, or to suppress sub-sub-section headings when the TOC is very long. That's done using templates. But for almost all articles, such changes aren't needed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:39, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that was my question, thanks! I found it out two seconds later, I should have kept looking instead of asking, sorry about that. I wanted to fix an incorrectly formatted title. For some reason, half of it was in plain text and the other half was in bold and italic; strange. Now is fixed. Thanks again for replying. --Tomgc (talk) 02:32, 21 July 2013 (UTC)User talk: Tomgc

Categorized Citations

Many instructional institutions do not allow the use of Wikipedia articles as valid references, but this may be circumvented by finding the required information on Wikipedia and using the source for the information as a reference. Unfortunately, not all links on Wikipedia are of scientific/academic standards which can make this quite time consuming.

In order to help make this process easier, I would like to suggest that you add a colour change to scientific article in-text citations which meet traditional academic standards for references (such as those with a pmid number or a number in another reputable scientific database). This will allow for the rapid determination of which articles can be cited in academic papers without spending time on those that can't.

A darker blue may be used to make it obvious that it is a reference (for those that don't keep up with updates), but something easily distinguished from the current colour (maybe a lime green or orange) would be even more beneficial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.99.241.125 (talk) 06:28, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Judging by the lack of responses, I suspect that other editors don't think this posting belongs on this page. It does seem like the sort of thing that could be posted at WP:Village pump (proposals), since it's really not so much about VE as it is about how links are displayed. That's a community decision, not just a technical question. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Space

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53758

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=RiddiSiddhi_Bullions&oldid=565020641 Could not remove space in the first line using Vedit.--Redtigerxyz ^Talk 15:42, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've done some more testing around preformatted blocks like that and submitted it as Bugzilla:51758. Until its fixed you can workaround it by inserting and then deleting a newline before the first character of the box. Thryduulf (talk) 19:15, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Sheesh

You get loads of money and run one of the most well-known wesites in the world, yet when your website changes, you don't have the common sense to update your help file? Sheesh. 86.19.115.227 (talk) 07:12, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't characterize the budget as having "loads of money". My understanding is that most of the money goes to hardware and large-scale meetings, with very very little allocated to content editing. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:28, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

(ec) There is, in fact, some documentation: WP:VisualEditor/User guide. As for all the other Wikipedia help pages, they are largely or completely written/updated by volunteers (regular editors), not the paid staff of the Wikimedia Foundation. I don't know of any plans to use paid WMF staff to rewrite these.

At the moment, speaking only for myself, I'm not willing to spend much time rewriting help pages (and there are hundreds of these) for software that is in beta, and has had scores of recommendations for user interface changes. When it's less buggy, and the obvious UI improvements have been implemented, then I think there will be a lot more willingness in the volunteer community to improve these help pages. Until then, the User guide and a few other things (I know there has been some work on the Tutorial) are likely to be the only documentation reflecting the existence of VE. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll add that one of the hallmarks of good user interface design is that documentation for basic functions need not be consulted to be productive; rather the primary goal of documentation for self-explaining interfaces is for development and historical decision making purposes. I'm not saying that the current VE is self-explaining, but that the aspiration should be that basic functions should not require consultation to documentation. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:46, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Another of the hallmarks of good user interface design is that designs are actually tested with real users, and their feedback informs the next iteration of the software, including making the software as self-explaining as possible. Unfortunately, that didn't happen with VE (or, at least, with many of its important functions - categories, images, templates, and references, for example). The best that can be done at this point is to provide some documentation for the software we have, as opposed to the (self-documenting) software we should have. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:38, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

VE displays excessive whitespace after a section heading

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49790

While editing Oregon Coast, some sections (such as "History") show excessive whitespace. It may be that this occurs only if the first item is a template ("See also", "See" or "Main"), perhaps followed by an image. This excessive whitespace does not appear in the saved page. I was tempted to try and adjust the whitespace, but using a reliable editor showed that there was none to remove. This is a serious shortcoming for what is supposed to be a WYSIWYG editor. Chris the speller ^yack 15:55, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• This looks like Bugzilla:47790. The whitespace is a "slug" (and I don't know why it's called that) that exists so you can insert text between adjacent entities that aren't lines of text. The linked bug is about making it more obvious what they are so people don't get confused by or try to delete the non-existent white space. Thryduulf (talk) 19:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. As for why it's called a "slug", the WP article Slug (typesetting) explains it. Chris the speller ^yack 21:10, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

And thank you for that link, I don't know why I hadn't thought to look it up! Thryduulf (talk) 23:31, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Bullet point drops to bottom of multi-line template output list item while editing in VE

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53760

If I open Leeds Festival (classical music) in VE, the first of the Sources is displayed with the bullet point on its second line, not the first. Looks very odd, comes into the category of "likely to make novice editor wonder what the hell is going on and what they've done to break the article".

It's reproducible: see User:PamD/sandbox for VE: looks fine until you go into VE, then items 1 and 3 in list show the dropped bulletpoint - they are {{cite book}} and {{cite web}} - while the flat text bullet points look normal. And making the window even narrower shows its the last line, not the second line, of a multiline entry which gets the bullet. PamD 16:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've reported this as Bugzilla:51760. In my testing I was able to reproduce this with citation templates but not with user:Thryduulf/bullet-template that I used to try and recreate it. Thryduulf (talk) 20:25, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Deleting an image?

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53764

I'm not seeing any way to delete an image other than (a) find (guess) where it is anchored on a page and (b) delete some characters (spaces included) around that anchor point. For a Visual editor, that's fairly lame. Am I missing something? (All help appreciated.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:41, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Odd, clicking on the image and then pressing delete or backspace deletes the image for me (Firefox 22 Xubuntu linux). The media properties dialog should have an option to delete it though. Thryduulf (talk) 20:33, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Don't know why I didn't think of that. And yes, multiple ways to do the same thing would be good, here. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:35, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've logged a request for that amendment to the media dialog as Bugzilla:51764. It wouldn't surprise me if it got merged with one of the several other bugs about changes to the media dialog. Thryduulf (talk) 23:28, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Infobox zapped

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49790

This edit, intended only to remove the PROD template from the top of a restored article, took out the infobox as well. Steps to reproduce:

• Start with this test page in edit mode.
• Click the template at the top to select it.
• Press "Delete". Template disappears, but there appears to be a spare blank line at the top.
• Press "Delete" again to get rid of that - and the info-box goes too!

JohnCD (talk) 22:23, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, does it for me too (FF22). The blank line doesn't actually appear to exist - if you just remove the template and press save, it isn't there. But it appears trying to delete it removes the first item on the page - which is of course the infobox. Black Kite (talk) 23:03, 20 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, this is Bugzilla:47790. The whitespace is a "slug" that exists for editor convenience (but is presently as much confusing as helpful. There is a little bit more about this in the section #VE displays excessive whitespace after a section heading further up this page. Thryduulf (talk) 23:08, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Some performance notes

Looking at the last two days (16 and 17 July) we see:

All registered user article edits using source (wikitext) editor	118,380	91.1%
All registered user article edits using VE	11,464	8.9%
New user (registered on or after 1 July) article edits using source	6,610	64.2%
New user article edits using VE	3,678	35.8%
Anon article edits using source	62,101	88.4%
Anon article edits using VE	8,153	11.6%
Older editor (registered prior to 1 July) article edits using source	111,770	93.5%
Older editor (registered prior to 1 July) article edits using VE	7,786	6.5 %
Change in total (daily) article edits since before VE became default on 1 July (comparison: 18-30 June)	-4.5%
Change in registered user article edits since before VE became default	-2.2%
Change in anon article edits since before VE became default	-8.6%

As shown, the individuals most likely to choose VE are newly registered user accounts. Anons are only a little more likely to use VE than registered users. This suggests that many of the individuals who edit anonymously were actually familiar with the source editor and continue to prefer it even though they edit anonymously. (That's rather surprising to me.) Even though new users are most likely to choose VE, they still go with source editing 2/3 of the time. Since the introduction of VE, article editing rates are down slightly. For the length of time considered, a change less than about +/- 6% is consistent with random variability, so these fluctuations are not necessarily indicative of anything. However, it will be interesting to look at changes over a longer time period. Whether or not there is a meaningful drop, we can probably rule out the possibility of any large immediate editing surge as a result of VE's introduction. Of course, this only looks at the short-term reaction to VE. Only time will tell whether VE ultimately becomes popular. Dragons flight (talk) 03:56, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

This is consistent with my cynical view that 64.2% of all new accounts and 88.4% of anonymous edits are sockpuppets.

On a serious note, if WMF's theory about the utility of VE holds any water, we should see a dramatic upturn in people with a low edit count, as people that previously gave up when presented with a screen full of wikitext instead proceed to make productive edits. Detractors would say that by the time an editor is making his fifteenth or twentieth edit, he's figured out how to get to the source editor because no one could survive to their fifteenth edit using VE. Can your data analyser sort people by edit count and place them in some kind of rough bands?

That -8.6% change in anonymous edits is interesting, though. I wonder how it corresponds to the A/B test results.—Kww(talk) 04:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Another interesting thing to find out (but I suspect it would require WMF help to find out) is how many of those new users using the source editor are people that previously edited anonymously, but created an account solely in order to disable VE using a gadget. That would contribute both to the strong preference for new accounts to use source and the decrease in anonymous edits.—Kww(talk) 04:31, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. Would you define "new user", and what is the comparison period (dates)? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:33, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

New user means user names created on or after July 1st (when VE was launched). Last two days means July 15, 22:00 UTC to July 17, 21:59 UTC. The baseline edit rates to measure the change since rollout are taken from June 18th to June 30th. Dragons flight (talk) 04:47, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you please measure bytes added instead of just edits made, as additional columns? I have a feeling that people doing the most actual work are using the VE even less than people making small edits. EllenCT (talk) 04:49, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't have any easy way to do bytes. I might look into it later, but not soon. Dragons flight (talk) 04:51, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

You can get a rough sample of magnitude byte changes with this unix shell command:

$ curl -s h'ttp://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:RecentChanges&limit=5000&namespace=0' \
  | grep class=.mw-line- | sed 's:^.*">([+-]\([0-9]*\).*userlink"\([^<]*\)</a>.*User_talk\(.*\)$:\1 \2 \3:' \
  | grep '^[0-9]' | awk '{if (/redlink/) {r=1; ru+=$1} else {r=0; bu+=$1}; if (/VisualEditor/) {ve+=$1; if (r) {rve+=$1} else {bve+=$1}} 
          else {se+=$1; if (r) {rse+=$1} else {bse+=$1}}} END {print ve, se, ru, bu, rve, bve, rse, bse}'

I've been looking at that over the past day and it shows that the magnitude number of bytes is about the same as the number of edits, with about 10-13% in the visual editor depending on time of day. The detailed statistics aren't particularly interesting. 97.124.165.240 (talk) 01:51, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Dragons flight: While VisualEditor is now enabled for IPs, it will only show up on pages whose cache hasn't been purged yet (via edits or otherwise). That's why IPs often still see the wikitext editor. The plan is to observe VE usage by IPs and potentially trigger a rolling cache purge if things seem reasonably stable. Also keep in mind that VE isn't enabled on all namespaces. Finally, browser blacklisting (IE etc.) affects this data. We've got a few dashboards in the works that track this data on an ongoing basis - let me confirm that these are sufficiently audited for accuracy to share. Eloquence* 06:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Erik, as noted above these are restricted to article edits, which should address the namespace issue. Also, are you sure about the caching? Isn't default Javascript cached separately from individual page HTML? I tried logging out, loaded 30 random articles, and didn't see a single example where VE wasn't present. Dragons flight (talk) 06:42, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I logged out and loaded 30 articles from special:recentchanges, and they all had the VE edit button. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:11, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I also run ?action=purge on these pages, and the VE edit button is still there after the purge. Is there anything else I can do to help test? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:22, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

@Eloquence:, do you have an estimate on how many pages on English Wikipedia have had their cache purged and therefore now have VE enabled for IPs? I've seen elsewhere that lots of pages have been purged by null edits to templates, which might help explain why we're seeing VE on almost every page we can find, including pages that havent been edited for years. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 04:03, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

New users won't come without a huge promotion campaign. I don't see any yet and I suspect they suspect that not everything is ideal. --194.44.219.225 (talk) 09:07, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I've done some rewording of the table, for clarity, and also calculated what "older" registered editors did ("older" is total registered minus registered "new" user).

What's interesting to me is:

• The "uptake" for "older" registered editors is only 6.5%. Yes, that's affected by those using IE and other web browsers who won't see VE at all, but if they represent 30% of all "older" registered editors, and would edit with VE at the same rate as other web browser users, the 6.5% would increase only to 10%. And offsetting that 6.5% (or 10%) is the number of edits (in the hundreds per day?) that older editors are doing, in VE, for testing/experimental purposes. That's a vote, in my opinion, that most editors either don't find wikitext editing so difficult, or that all of the existing defects of VE (including UI/UX mistakes) make it a poorer choice than dealing than just dealing with the learning curve for the (non-buggy) wikitext editor.

• As pointed out above, the use of VE by anon (IP) editors is so low, barely more than by registered editors. If you put that together with the drop in IP edits, perhaps that means that a lot of IP editors, when introduced to VE, find it so intimidating that they either figure out how to get to the wikitext editor, or decide not to edit at all? Or, alternatively, IP editors aren't, as we usually think, mostly brand-new to Wikipedia? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:15, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

• My experience is that the IP editors are generally quite experienced. They edit anonymously by preference.—Kww(talk) 22:41, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Do the stats differentiate between browser 'edit source' edits and other edits from Huggle/Twinkle/AWB/bot/API, or does the headline 91% include all of those? Rjwilmsi 21:48, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Flagged bots were excluded from all counts, no effort was made to differentiate other kinds of tools. Dragons flight (talk) 17:58, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• It is really badly broken. Could you produce stats for the number of articles that immediately had to be reverted after being destroyed by the new editor. I got warned for vandelism whilst I was trying to fix up my first edit. RonaldDuncan (talk) 22:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Strange Diff

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53772

Posting this here in case anyone else has found any other diffs that look similar. Recently while reading about Polycarbonate I discovered something that Visual Editor seemed to have broken. This is the diff in question. I'll be filing something in Bugzilla about this too. I'll link to the bug report when I do that. Zell Faze (talk) 13:32, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

That is very strange and I don't recall seeing anything similar. If the user changed the {| to |} then the visual editor nowikifying it makes sense, but that doesn't seem likley. Thryduulf (talk) 14:33, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

@Zellfaze:, did you wind up filing it? That's a strange one. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mdennis:, not yet. I'll file it tonight when I get home. My AC was broken the past week so I've not been doing anything really at my apartment, we finally got some cold last night (around 1 AM). I've not really had the time to file the bug at work. I'll report back with a bug report before 9PM EST. Zell Faze (talk) 20:13, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Broken AC sounds pretty wretched. :( Glad you got some relief at last! Let me know, please, @Zellfaze:, if you don't get around to filing it; I'll be happy to help with that. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:53, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Derp.... forgot. I'm doing it right now that way I don't forget again. Got caught up reading Wikipedia... a nasty habit of mine. Zell Faze (talk) 14:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Bug report filed. Zell Faze (talk) 14:19, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a good habit to me. :D Thank you! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:28, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

meta:Research:VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors/Results

The A/B test, June 25-28, showed that new users using wikimarkup made more edits, more "productive edits", spent more time editing, and were far more likely to start editing compared to those using the VisualEditor. Newcomers with the VisualEditor were ~10% less likely to save a single edit than editors with the wikitext editor.

A number of severe bugs with the VisualEditor, which were not solved before launch, are likely to blame for these results. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:03, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for politely pointing this study out, Adam. It would be nice to hear from Jdforrester to find out why given the profoundly negative feedback this product has received combined with empirical evidence that in its present condition it doesn't achieve any of the goals, he doesn't withdraw this deployment and delay all future plans for deploying this on other versions of Wikipedia. This is intended as a polite question, so I would appreciate it if detractors didn't pile on with insults. I'm told that the deployment schedule is Jdforrester's decision alone, and I'm extremely interested in understanding his reasoning.

The study is flawed in one way: it measures only edits reverted instead of edits that required correction. Most responsible editors, confronted with the common defects of VE, would choose to correct the edit by removing extraneous nowikis and similar glitches rather than completely revert them. That renders the conclusion that the editor creates "no additional burden" extremely suspect.—Kww(talk) 17:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Most responsible editors, confronted with the common defects of VE, would choose to correct the edit by removing extraneous nowikis and similar glitches rather than completely revert them just as they would for syntax errors made by editors using the source editor. My gut feeling is that VE will produce more errors that need fixing, but without any data it is impossible to draw any valid conclusions. Thryduulf (talk) 17:24, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

This study was meant to be run for about two weeks, it got compressed to three days. I'm willing to give them some slack on a very-hard-to-evaluate metric for which they got far less data than they were supposed to. I agree the burden is likely underestimated, but the team was independent from VE, and likely never even considered VE itself could cause burden when designing the study. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:33, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It was never planned to run for two weeks; what is your citation for that? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:01, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

It actually was. See [1], which gave the timescale as June 17-31st (Although this wasn't the best planning: June doesn't have a 31st). Likewise, [2], when the delay was noted, but before the schedule was updated, gives the start date as the 18th, with the second half of the experiment beginning on the 25th, and the experiment ending on July 1st. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 21:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, no. If you look, you'll see that one of those two weeks is for experiment deployment - in other words, gathering background data. The original plan was for 1 week of bucketing, and 1 week of data, not 2 weeks of data: it eventually worked out as 86 hours of bucketing, 72 of data. I know because I was involved in the design of the testing conditions (I just checked with Dario, our lead researcher: he confirms my memory is accurate). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Hence "extremely suspect", not "flat-out wrong".—Kww(talk) 17:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

As an idea off the top of my head, would "time taken to edit page" divided by "size of diff" be a useful measure of productivity to compare the efficient of the editors? So for example if VE took on average n minutes per 1k of diff and the source editor took 2n minutes per 1k of diff then would it be fair to say that VE was twice as efficient as the source editor? I know it's not something we have the data to do at the minute would would it be worth compiling it? Thryduulf (talk) 18:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Not unless you can subtract 17 characters for every pair of nowiki tags in the output.—Kww(talk) 19:17, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, the study has another major flaw: the reduction in completed edits by new editors was not 10%, as stated, it was 43%. If 27.5% of editors were able to successfully make an edit with the wikitext editor and only 15.7% were able to make an edit with VE, that's a 43% difference. The formula is 100*((27.5-15.7)/27.5) , not 27.5-15.7.—Kww(talk) 05:36, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

The results of this A/B trial are actually less depressing than they might appear, because (as with everything to do with this release) it was premature. It is not surprising that new users presented with a buggy, confusing and undocumented prototype edited less and gave up sooner, and it tells us nothing about what the result of a comparative trial with a fully-functioning VE might be. JohnCD (talk) 21:57, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

In terms of long-term effect of VE, I agree that testing a buggy version doesn't help a lot. But in terms of short term effects, especially given the release of the software immediately after the completion of the study, but before the generation of results, it remains depressing. - Bilby (talk) 00:45, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

why is beta so buggy

I get a weird api error message. 31.126.193.88 (talk) 20:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh dear :/. Can you copy-and-paste the message? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Because it really wasn't ready for Beta yet, but it was deployed anyhow to get feedback to help get it there. Zell Faze (talk) 14:33, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

FAQ- copyedit needed

Moved to Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor/FAQ

 – Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Why is this change being made? The wikimarkup text in the old editing window is so complex that people who could become productive, experienced members of the community if the editing system were simpler are turned off upon attempting their first edit; read our longer explanation for more details.

Do we mean

• The wikimarkup text in the old editing window is so complex that people, who could become productive experienced members of the community if the editing system was simpler , are being turned off while attempting their first edit; read our longer explanation for more details.

• The wikimarkup text in the old editing window is so complex that people, who could become productive, experienced members of the community were the editing system simpler, are turned off attempting their first edit; read our longer explanation for more details.

Using the KISS principle, are we trying to say.

• We think that the existing wikimarkup system is too complex for new users. These users don't come back after their first attempt at editting so never become part of the community. Read our longer explanation for more details.

What ever you want to say keep the sentence structure simple- and avoid long words.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 15:55, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I've copied this over to the FAQ talk page, since that page is for discussing changes to the FAQ and this one for issues that need developer attention. The developers are generally uninvolved with writing the FAQ. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Known Problems?

What's the status of Wikipedia:visualEditor/Known problems? Who is supposed, or encouraged, to add to it? It doesn't give any indication. Is it where editors are supposed to look before reporting problems on the feedback page, to avoid duplication? Is it a list of acknowledged problems in a more user-readable form than raw Bugzilla? Or what? I note that the very important topic of the inability to see hidden comments or {{Use British English}}-type templates doesn't seem to be listed. PamD 16:37, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Its a page I put together which I though might be a good idea to get an overview of the state of the visual editor. About three or four people have contributed to it and anyone else is encouraged to add items to it. Feel free to add anything or reformat. Its very much a work in progress. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_07#Known_issues for when the page was first discussed.--Salix (talk): 18:09, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I was thinking of helping out with the page (I transcluded the "Limitations" section from the main WP:VE page so we could reduce some duplication). But, quite frankly, the ever-increasing number of reported bugs, and the slowness in fixing them (hidden text, for example, or the botched warning message about entering wikitext) are really discouraging.

And yes, the page could be used as a way to find out what bugs have been reported, and even to see if the bug reports accurately reflected what was wrong and how it best could be fixed, particularly for "enhancements". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:30, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've used it that way myself. I could help by adding issues I track, but really don't have capacity to update it generally. Would it be helpful for me to just add my items, or would that just result in stuff added by other than me being overlooked? I don't want to break its function. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I think any additions to the page are helpful. Its not got the same purpose as bugzilla, more a way of highlighting the main problems and maybe making it easier to find the appropriate bug numbers.--Salix (talk): 16:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

don't know how to add info...was on page about bronc burnett

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add to Bronc Burnett story the following:

Was pleased to find one of my favorite boyhood heroes on here...can add something to article, which is the origin of name of character "Fibate" Jones...which appears to me to be derived from phi beta kappa, since Fibate was the smartest one in the school, prototype nerd! Rae13164 (talk) 22:32, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Note at your talk page. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:46, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Feedback on Visual Editor by old-school/long-term member

I am (or rather, I must confess :D) an "old school" Wikipedia editor (registered in year 2005) and this new Visual Editor is simply confusing to me... I understand though that it might enable new members easier editing. Though my "complain" still stands that if you choose to edit just a section of an article (i.e. with Visual Editor by clicking [edit] and not the old way, as I just figured out it's possibly by clicking [edit source]...) there is no clear to an editor that he is editing just a section (and not the whole article). Wayfarer (talk) 00:01, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It's a pretty big leap for those of us familiar with wikitext. :) I'm a little confused about your issue, though - are you saying that you'd like for the "edit" button next to sections to indicate that it is section specific? (At the moment, it actually isn't, unless you're doing it the old way. You are directed to the section you selected, but can actually edit anywhere on the page. But users have requested that be altered.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It probably didn't occur to him that anyone would intentionally put a link with a false title by every section header, Maggie, and he's presuming that there's something about "edit section" that actually limits the edits to that section.—Kww(talk) 15:06, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't really understand your perspective there. It says "edit". You hover over it, and it says "edit section." You press it, and it takes you to the section you want to edit. "Old school" editors may expect that editing a section will be limited to that section - and there may be good reasons, from a performance standpoint to so limiting it - but I think it's a bit much to call that "false." :/ The expectation that it will edit that section and that section only does not seem automatic to me, and it is taking you to do exactly what it says it will. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:09, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Saying that new users will expect see the whole page, and to be able edit the whole page, when the popup says "Edit section:" is a bit of a stretch. Chris the speller ^yack 16:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree, it's not exactly false. It is misleading, and leads to increased edit conflicts. But that might be a feature of VE. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 16:34, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Maggie, that comment saddens me, and makes me concerned that defending VE for so long is beginning to have an effect on your judgement. "Edit section" means just that: "edit section". Not "allow me to make changes to the entire page, but start my cursor out here". "False" is not only not a stretch, it's precisely descriptive.—Kww(talk) 16:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Obviously I disagree, and I find your statement about your concerns on my judgment rather out of character for Wikipedia discussions...at least, the goal for Wikipedia discussions. :/ I'm all for making the software work as well as possible, but I do not see "edit section" as promising that I will be restricted to that section. When I click a section link in a table of contents, it does not restrict me to reading that section - I'm still able to move around. When I use my word process and search for a term to edit, it still lets me edit other areas of the page. This seems entirely reasonable to me, although it differs from the behavior of the existing editor and, again, it may not be the best behavior of the software for other issues. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:18, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

My "goal" is to help you understand that your comments seem to play into a recurring theme: instead of treating feedback from experienced editors as well-placed and on-point, the very fact of the experience is generally treated as a reason to view the feedback skeptically, and relatively unreasonable definitions of English are employed to defend current behaviour. This has been the most frustrating part of dealing with VE so far.—Kww(talk) 18:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe I can amply demonstrate that I have treated feedback from experienced editors as well-placed and on-point many times on this page. I've reported them and advocated for them - the experienced users offer some of the most salient suggestions for improving VE. However, that doesn't mean that I have to agree with your terming this language false. We are familiar with section editing meaning one thing, but newcomers may not share that expectation. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Your past history of reasonable behaviour is precisely why I attempted to give you a light nudge about the reasonableness of your position on this topic. You have, indeed, been the most generally reasonable WMF representative on the topic of VE.—Kww(talk) 18:47, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm fine with being told my perspective is way off, but I really do worry that when such things are voiced as concerns that I'm losing my neutrality, it puts me in an awkward position of feeling I either must agree or hold my tongue. :) I'm here to support VisualEditor in terms of helping make it the best software it can be, but it's not my goal to be an apologist for it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Small text

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53614

I'm sure someone has brought this up, but how do you create small text like this in VE?--¿3family6 _contribs 01:09, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

You don't. Html-like tags, including blockquotes, not only aren't supported by VE as additions to text, they also aren't editable by VE if they are already in the article. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:48, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

You can use the template {{small}}. Click the jigsaw puzzle icon, type small in the add template box, press the button, fill in the text for the first parameter, and press apply changes.--Salix (talk): 04:49, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, @Salix alba: I think at some point a simple menu including font resizing should be developed.--¿3family6 _contribs 12:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It is a good idea, and there is already a request for it at Bugzilla:51614 "Tool to set/unset text as small". Thryduulf (talk) 14:28, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I went to try it out, and got it to work on the second try. But on the first try I managed to apply the change with no text. After clicking anywhere else on the page, there was no way I could see or get a grip on the template to change the "text" parameter or remove the template. I'll know for next time, but this doesn't seem like a clean way to handle a template with zero-length text. Chris the speller ^yack 16:47, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I had an experiment in may sandbox and found the way to pick up a zero-length template is to click near it and then move the cursor with the arrow keys. When the cursor is at the position of the template then the transclusion editor icon will appear, you can click on that icon to edit or remove the template. It's not really intuitive but I'm not sure what would be better, but possibly bugs Bugzilla:50747, Bugzilla:49806 and/or Bugzilla:49603 will help though. Thryduulf (talk) 17:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

No, it's not intuitive, but it's pretty cool. Chris the speller ^yack 19:14, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Progress on template editing (mostly)

The good:

• You can click on a parameter, and it automatically gets added to the left side of the dialog box.
• The descriptive information about a parameter is displayed above the input box when you start entering information for that parameter.

The bad:

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53739

• Scrolling still doesn't work; this is very irritating for templates with lots of parameters. But search does work.

   Comment: search does work, but sometime necessarily returns a list which needs scrolling; for instance, "at" as a parameter in some citation templates. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:16, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

• Double-clicking on a parameter seems to add and then delete it, leaving the parameter list unchanged.
• In Firefox (22.0, on a Mac), the font in the dialog box is too large (the dialog box, for me, is the same size in Chrome, Safari, and Firefox); as a result, fewer parameters (three, rather than six) are visible in the list, and some text is cut off on the right side of the dialog box.

Still, progress. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:15, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll make this comment here: It would be handy for complex templates, like Template:Track listing, to list the parameters in the order they are given in the documentation, not by alphabetical and numerical order. For instance, while Template Track listing gives the following: | title1 = | note1 = | writer1 = | lyrics1 = | music1 = | extra1 = | length1 =

However, VE lists the parameters as

| extra1 = | extra10 = | extra11 = | extra2 = ... | length1 = | length10 = ... | lyrics1 = ... | music1 = ... | note1 = ... | title1 =

Personally, I would rather fill out all of the info one track at a time (title, note, writer, extra, length, in that order) than by type of entry. Perhaps allow users to toggle which listing style they prefer? And the numeric sorting problem with 10, 11, 12, etc., coming before 2 needs fixing.--¿3family6 _contribs 01:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The template need to have its parameters documented using Wikipedia:VisualEditor/TemplateData, when that section is added it will list the parameters in the order given in the documentation. There is some delay between adding the template data and the dialog working correctly. --Salix (talk): 05:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The lack of scrolling in the parameter list is noted as Bugzilla:51739; I can't reproduce the double click bug you mention using Firefox 22 on Linux. I agree the font size is on the large size in Firefox 22 but having not seen it in any other browser I hadn't thought about it much. what do others think? Thryduulf (talk) 14:55, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Pressing "enter" in edit summary

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40042

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T44139

In the edit summary box, when I press "enter", the expected result is for the page to save. Instead, a new line is created, which is particularly weird since edit summaries don't support multiple lines. Line breaks appear as spaces in the actual edit summary. So, when writing edit summaries, VE treats "enter" as a slight different spacebar. I don't need two spacebars. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:37, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

In the wikitext editor, pressing "enter" in the edit summary box does result in a page being saved, all things being equal. It's not clear that this is always the desirable outcome, however, since some people may want to review their changes first.

It would be nice to have a gadget, "Save page when edit summary is completed", that would allow people (I'm certainly someone who would sign up) to eliminate a mouse click (on "Save page") by just pressing "enter" after completing the edit summary box. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't see why this should be a gadget. You edit a page, you click "save", you type a summary, you press "enter". You've already indicated that you're done editing by clicking "save" once, and there's no reason why you would want to insert a line break into the summary. The only reasonable interpretation of "enter" here is to finish saving. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 11:04, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Bugzilla:48042 is asking for exactly the same regards to saving and Bugzilla:50897 is relevant to that too.Bugzilla:42139 is about it not being WYSIWYG. Thryduulf (talk) 14:39, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

wikilink previews and redirects

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If you edit with NavPopups activated, you can check out a preview of a wikilink that you want to insert, and see whether it goes to a redirect, a main page or a disambiguation page. I don't think it would be necessary for the visual editor to show actual previews, but an indication of what type of page you're linking to would help a lot. Slashme (talk) 08:35, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Brilliant idea - it would give us a useful part of the functionality of NavPopups, and shouldn't be too difficult to code...? But really, the full NavPopups is what we need, eg for sorting out entries on dab pages etc. PamD 08:51, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Bugzilla:50593 is asking for part of this (previews on links). I can't find where it was stated, but as NavPopups are a gadget the VE team regard it as the job of the gadget maintainers to make them work with VE rather than for them to make VE work with popups. I don't understand why they haven't been moved into the core though as they are so damn useful! Thryduulf (talk) 15:15, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Another link problem

Going through disambiguating links to the America dab page, I found the [[United States of America]][[America|. ]]He [3]. I'm not sure what JCGDIMAIWAT did there as it's in the middle of a block of text added in that edit. My guess is that they initially wrote "America" with the full stop and trailing space included in the link by VE, but they subsequently attempted to change or delete the link to the full United States of America, not realising that the full stop and space were included in a different link. Thryduulf (talk) 09:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

For those that understand how edit filters work, would it be possible/useful to track visual editor edits that include a trailing space in a link? ie. where the code " ]]" appears? I can't think that it will be something intentionally entered with any great frequency? Thryduulf (talk) 20:32, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes. It's complicated by the fact that the trailing /nowiki tends to be delayed, but that should be able to be handled with appropriate regex coding. How many other cases are there where we can specifically point at it being a result of an editor struggling with VE? It would probably be best to combine a few cases and replace Filter 550 with it.—Kww(talk) 20:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

In this case it didn't add a nowiki tag at all, I don't know whether that makes a difference? As for other cases, I've seen several mentioned on here but I can't remember the details off the top of my head. Thryduulf (talk) 22:00, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Block quotes

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53009

Picking up a point made by John Broughton under #Small text six items up: a block quote enclosed in <blockquote> ... </blockquote> tags cannot be edited in VE - you get the green stripes, the prohibition sign and "Sorry, this element can only be edited in source mode for now".

It is possible to enter a block quote by using the template {{quote}} with the "Text" parameter. Editing the content of the block quote has to be done by clicking the template and editing the parameter. When entering or editing the content of the text parameter, VE does not offer options like bold and italic, but you can enter wiki markup for them, and even wikilinks in [[ ]] brackets, and they are accepted and work.

There needs to be a more natural way to deal with block quotes. JohnCD (talk) 09:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes there does, and this is recognised in Bugzilla:51009. It looks as though work is in progress to fix this one, although no target date has been set yet. Thryduulf (talk) 15:19, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Image size

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53628

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na_Chvalech?veaction=edit, the edit view seems to ignore the "40px" parameter from {{CzechRepublic-sports-venue-stub}}. --ŠJů (talk) 13:45, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes this is a known issue to do with the way the image is specified in the template. See Bugzilla:51628 and a related discussion from earlier this week at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 1#Giant icon in cornwall stubs. I'll adjust the template in a moment so you wont need to wait for the bug to be fixed. Thryduulf (talk) 14:20, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Messed up unrelated table

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53786

I edited the lead sentence of an article; a table in the next, unrelated section of the article was modified and broken by VE. -Pete (talk) 20:51, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to be that when VE perceives there to be some sort of problem with a table it deletes all the table markup. My guess about what happened there is that it didn't recognise :{| as the start of a table, which would explain why it didn't remove that. This would be consistent with what it did in my userspace to an unfinished table [4]. However, a quick test in my sandbox didn't reproduce it [5] so it's obviously more complicated than that. I'll report it now. Thryduulf (talk) 21:36, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I've reported it as Bugzilla:51786 but it might get merged with bugzilla:50104 and/or Bugzilla:51172. Thryduulf (talk) 21:55, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Apparently strange behavior from VE

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53217

I don't use the editor, but I found List of True Blood characters in a mess from a couple of people who'd used the editor. While I was trying to clean it up someone else used the editor and the result was a mess. Using old editing I fixed the mess, but I notice the problem I corrected involved the VE adding nowiki tags and duplicating material, though it seems the last editor simply edited a few numbers. This might be related to a previous note here "Messed up unrelated table". As I don't know wtf is going on (and it mightn't be the VE), perhaps someone here might look into it here. Thanks. -- I.Hutchesson ► 05:45, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The article before VE had this table syntax problem, which was tripping up the VE. With that fixed, the article wont have this problem again. This is essentially Bugzilla:51217, which deals with any broken table syntax causing the VE to spit out essentially a partial copy of the table. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:17, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Minor redisplay glitch

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53565

I noticed that when editing Radiocarbon dating#Calculating ages, the math formulae don't redisplay correctly after I save a Visual Editor edit. For example, instead of

$N=N_{0}e^{-\lambda t}\,$

I see

$ N = N_0e^{-\lambda t}\, $

The wikitext is fine; a redisplay fixes the issue, so it's just a redisplay glitch. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:51, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you have MathJax enabled ? In that case, this is a well known problem (collapsible and sortable tables also don't work after save). This is being worked on and should be resolved within the next few weeks. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

If I do have it enabled, I'm not aware of it. I looked in my gadgets and .js files and don't see anything that looks like it. Where should I be looking? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this is due to T53565. There is a problem with VE stopping javascript from working after and edit has finished. It also affects popups, the wikimini atlas any other javascript based addon you may have. Basically you have to reload the page to get anything working again. See also Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_1#javascript_does_not_work_after_a_save--Salix (talk): 17:53, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, it doesn't 'stop' making it work. These scripts just get initialized when you load a page, and here we 'replace part of a page', so after replacing, there is nothing to give these scripts the information that they need to do their initialization step again. So it doesn't 'start' making it work :D. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:28, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It is, however, a bug :p. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:06, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Significant editing problems now (20 July 11:40 AM EST)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53739

Seems the following are manifesting at the moment (Chrome 28)

1. inability to complete a save operation; the animated bar runs, then stops, but the article does not go back to the viewing state and the changes are not being saved
2. inability to scroll in the Template Editor dialog (no scroll bar; no movement of content if manually down-arrow moving through parameters).

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:42, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Your second issue is bugzilla:51739. Can you give any more information about what you were trying to do with your first edit? Do you know if there were any database locks at that time (if there were, then it would likely be Bugzilla:51536) or anything like that? Thryduulf (talk)

@Ceyockey: thanks for the feedback :). I echo Thryduulf's question. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

References

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Adding references is confusing. 129.25.22.253 (talk) 18:23, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I've revised the User guide to (hopefully) be more clear about this as well as other topics covered by that guide. Please take a look at the section on editing references. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:44, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks John :). I'm sitting down with James F this week to talk through rebuilding reference and template editing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Cut and paste refs?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T45936

I wanted to cut a ref and land it elsewhere in the page. Clicking the numeral display the contents of the ref, but this is not copyable either. Does VE support my purpose? trespassers william (talk) 21:57, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

According to Bugzilla:43936 if you select the text either side of the reference as well, this works the way you want it to. I haven't tried this myself though, and the last comment on that bug was a fortnight ago so something may have changed in the meanwhile. Thryduulf (talk) 23:14, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

@Danny lost: does that make a difference for you? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Fucking awesome

The way forward, definitely. Keep up the great work Wiki peeps. 109.76.87.94 (talk) 22:22, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

is beautifull , a a lot much easier than the previous one ,

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hi there , I want to say that this visual editor is beautifull , a a lot much easier than the previous one , simple . outstanding Job . Thanks guys Zenhabit (talk) 08:52, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

@Zenhabit: thanks! Let us know if you find any bugs :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Transclusion

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I am puzzled by the hover text that reads "Transclusion". It's not clear what it is or what it does. 85.250.92.26 (talk) 11:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

This means "reuse content from another wikipedia page" (see Wikipedia:Transclusion). I think that using the term "transclusion" will confuse new editors who don't know what the term means, as it is a wikipedism.

Suggestion Maybe change the hover text to read "Transclude (add template)", which is not 100% accurate but reflects 99% of the use of the wikimedia feature. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 11:57, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

There is an active proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposal)#Replace the term "transclusion" in VisualEditor about this very issue. I encourage you to share your views there. Thryduulf (talk) 14:15, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, and I suspect it'll come up in my conversation with James this week. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:34, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Texts included through template parameters

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I have some troubles at the Czech Wikipedia when trying to edit articles like this list of cultural heritage monuments. When the content is included through formating templates as their parameters, the text seems to be not editable through VisualEditor (or it is too difficult). However, directly included tables are OK. Maybe, some similar problem can be also with infoboxes etc.? --ŠJů (talk) 14:14, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

@ŠJů: Has the Wikimedia Foundation said where it prefers other language Wikipedias to offer feedback? I ask because while you're welcome to post questions here, you might consider posting at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback instead. — Preceding unsigned comment added by John Broughton (talk • contribs)

We're trying to set up a network of volunteers and liaisons across most major projects; I'll find out who is handling Czech :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:38, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, volunteers and liaison both :). @ŠJů: we're getting a talkpage set up on Czech as we speak. I've forwarded your query to Patrick, who is the lead there. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Partly subjective response

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Unfortunately, my initial gut reaction is that VisualEditor is horrible and detestable, even if a lot of developer time has gone into it. I can just about tolerate CKEditor if I absolutely have to, but it's the best of a bad bunch. All these JS WYSIWYG editors seem to to have the intention of making simple things simpler, at which they fail, while making difficult things almost inaccessible. (OK, maybe referencing could be made easier, but the focus should be on that alone.) One of the reasons MediaWiki has been successful software is that it hasn't gone for annoying, unresponsive AJAX interfaces, and the markup system is easy to learn and not intrusive (as compared to Textile; or to the VE beta, or to Facebook timeline).

As an example of a simple thing that doesn't "work" (in a usability sense), you can think you've changed a wikilink as the dialogue closes, but in fact all your typing has done is produce a suggestion list so that you don't save the changes. What I type is what I mean, not the basis for the system to do an expensive lookup of all possible alternatives. On a 1 GHz laptop with Firefox, it's taking over 10 seconds for the edit box to appear, during which time the CPU fan has to run continuously. (While we're at it, I also dislike the big blue submit button on the login screen, which is not in keeping with the style of the site, and is redolent of Twitter. Part of my revulsion is from agreement with Jaron Lanier about intelligent agents, but also about trying to keep up with an aesthetic of low-content screens.)

It's also not clear how to turn it off, since there isn't a preference for it. I might use NoScript to turn off JS, but that will stop some extensions working.

I don't think the survey cited supports any additional layer of complexity. Sorry, but my honest opinion is to abandon VisualEditor as misconceived. Cedders^tk 14:40, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

The turnoff switch is under "gadgets". You can also disable it using AdBlock.—Kww(talk) 15:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

More precisely, the gadget to disable VisualEditor is in Gadgets tab of your preferences in the "Editing" section (note this is not the "editing" tab, which would be the logical location). If you're not sure how to set/unset gadgets then the FAQ at the top of this page should help you. Thryduulf (talk) 15:23, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, thanks, that seems to have done it. I wish it were more obvious. Sorry if the rest comes over as intemperate. BTW, when I mentioned references, I forgot that WikiEditor's help with cite book, cite journal etc already made these harder to understand areas easier for editors. The thing that was a bug report was:

Change to wikilink is ineffective

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50789

• To change the destination of a link, is seems you have to click on the link, click on the link icon, change the text, and click elsewhere. The expected result is that the wikilink is changed when you save the page. The actual result is that it isn't, presumably because of the pop-up autocomplete, and you apparently need the additional step of choosing from that list. (The autocomplete also must produce accessibility problems.) --Cedders^tk 18:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Yes, this is a known problem. It's been noted as part of several other issues, but Bugzilla:48789 seems perhaps the best single one to point you at. Thryduulf (talk) 19:01, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Typing a template parameter name - FAIL

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53670

So VE users have learned that the only way, in the Transclusion/Template dialog, to add a parameter is to type the parameter name, then press Enter. But that just changed - now you click the parameter name to select it. That's more obvious - but if, for some reason, having learned the old way, you continue to use it - that's trouble.

Example: Cite web. Let's suppose I want to add the parameter "Month of publication". I type that, hit Enter, and there it is, on the left. Except, not really. VE thinks this is a parameter not on its list - you can tell that because there is no description just above the input box where you enter the value of that parameter. (Compare to entering a value for the parameter "Source title").

Under the hood, here's what happens: VE knows that "Source title" is the label (via TemplateData) for the parameter "title". (Similarly, "URL" is the label for the parameter "url" - and yes, parameters are case sensitive.) But VE doesn't know that "Month of publication" (typed) is the label for the parameter "month". So the template code that VE actually stores is this:

{{Cite web|url = http://example.com|title = Whatever the title is|Month of publication = June}}

That doesn't cause a visible problem on the VE edit page. However, in this case, after saving the page, what is displayed to readers is "Unknown parameter |Month of publication= ignored (help) "

Recommendation: If a person types the name of a parameter and presses Enter, VE should check the typed name against the list of labels in TemplateData, for that template, and if there is a match, handle the new parameter just as if the person had clicked the matching parameter rather than typed it.

I note that I didn't check to see what happens for a template where TemplateData has not yet been set up. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:42, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

You've confirmed something I suspected when I reported Bugzilla:51670 a couple of days ago. I've adjusted the bug summary and copied your report as a comment. Thank you. Thryduulf (talk) 16:18, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, John and Thryduulf both :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:55, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Feedback from scientists

Hi, I just wanted to relay some feedback I got from new editors at a scientific conference I'm attending. I just ran a workshop for new editors and taught them how to use the traditional editor and the VisualEditor and they vastly preferred VE. One of the participants said it was intuitive for her and she liked how the interface was familiar. Another said she liked Visual Editor a lot but that she thinks scientists who use LaTeX a lot would prefer the wikimarkup editor. Just another data point for you. I'm doing another one tomorrow so I'll come back with more comments. :) Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 17:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure I buy the idea that the first five minutes' of use are actually representative of preference, particularly if the functions currently poorly-supported by VE are avoided. Try to get them to add a reference, with both the Wikimarkup reference tool, and the VE "practically no support" option. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:44, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: Yeah, I thought of that too - one of them did add a reference and thought it was okay actually. I'll see what they think of it tomorrow, I think that'll be a better gauge. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:20, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Adam: I would agree, and would note that would apply to experienced users too - moreso, in some ways, since they'd have to actively un-learn as well as learn. We are planning on redoing template and reference editing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

VE doesn't provide text for reference if it was defined in a note group

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52749

I noticed when adding a reference to radiocarbon dating that the "reference" button followed by "use existing reference" would bring up a list of references, but that one reference had the reference name but no text showing the reference itself. The first use of that reference was in a note group; I tried switching it with another location (diff} and the "use existing reference" list then provided the text correctly. I've reverted so the bug can be reproduced: edit radiocarbon dating, click "reference", click "use existing reference", and scroll to footnote 20 (currently, anyway), which should show Goudie & Cuff. You'll just see the name on the right (GC_128-9). Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:31, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

To say the same thing differently: footnote 20 is a citation within a footnote in the note group. In fact, VE is not displaying footnote 20 correctly, in the full/main editing window. If it did that, then it would presumably show the footnote text correctly when "use existing reference" is selected. So this looks like a rendering (Parsoid) bug, not a dialog box bug. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Huh, interesting. I'll throw it in bugzilla; thanks both :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Article creation

If I search for a topic which doesn't yet have an article, I get a red link offering me the chance to create an article. (You may create the page "Aassddff".) If I click on that red link, I'm starting to edit the article ... in Edit Source.

If our new editors are being made accustomed to VE, what will they do when faced with an empty box into which to start creating an article? Is there a mechanism which will let them choose to edit in VE instead? If not, then in the short term, perhaps there should be an edit notice which says something like "The new Visual Editor has not yet been set as the default editor for page creation. If you would like to use the Visual Editor to create this page, please type at least one character into this box and then click "Save page" below, and then click on the "Edit" tab to re-open it and edit it. Sorry for this inconvenience - we are working on it." PamD 23:06, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Good Point! --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 23:15, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not going to switch English on just for this, so I don't know what the tabs are named. When I do it, I am immediately placed in source editing mode inside a tab labeled "broncode aanmaken" (roughly "create source code") and there is a tab immediately to the left labeled "aanmaken" ("create") that will take me to the visual editor. This is in the Monobook skin. Don't you have something similar?—Kww(talk) 00:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The edit notice for new pages is MediaWiki:Newarticletext. I've mentioned this at MediaWiki_talk:Newarticletext#Mention_VE. (Kww, there is a 'Create' tab in Vector, but that isnt a very intuitive way to switch. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe not intuitive, but clearly better than saving a one-character version and reopening it as Pam suggested.—Kww(talk) 01:00, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Kww. I do see the create tab and clicking that takes one into the VE mode. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:52, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I do hope the redlink isn't made no-way-to-not-have-it-be-VE, though. Please give us a choice. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 06:49, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

No, MediaWiki:Newarticletext is not the editnotice seen by editors creating an article in English Wikipedia.

I'm not sure whether it's changed since last time I looked, but I now see there is a "Create" tab alongside "Create source", in the page which opens when you click on the red link. If you click on that "Create" tab, then after a disconcerting pause with the "Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name" display, it opens up VE to let you create the article.

For the sake of our new editors who we've led into using VE as a default, we need to make this much clearer. The message box already has 5 bullet points, but we surely need to say, very clearly, separated out from the other five, "To create an article using the Visual Editor, click the CREATE tab above this box". It's not obvious, especially to new editors who are, presumably, not really supposed even to know about the old editor.

Of course, in VE they don't get to see the words of wisdom displayed in those five bullet points ... perhaps the info about the CREATE tab should be at the bottom, below them, so they can be assumed(?) to have read that information? PamD 09:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

What message you see when you arrive on a page that doesn't exist depends on the method you use to get there. There is also MediaWiki:Noexactmatch and Template:No article text (transcluded by MediaWiki:Noarticletext). Thryduulf (talk) 10:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The one I'm talking about is the one you reach if you search for a topic (eg "aassddff") and get search results and a message saying " There were no results matching the query. You may create the page "Aassddff", but consider checking the search results below to see whether the topic is already covered." Clicking on that red link, you get the Edit Source box opened and a message which says:

• Before creating an article, please read Wikipedia:Your first article.
• You can also search for an existing article to which you can redirect this title.
• To experiment, please use the sandbox. To use a wizard to create an article, see the Article wizard.
• When creating an article, provide references to reliable published sources. An article without references, especially a biography of a living person, may be deleted.
• You can also start your new article at Special:Mypage/Aassddff. There, you can develop the article with less risk of deletion, ask other editors to help work on it, and move it into "article space" when it is ready.

The above all in a box (with a few links), followed by:

Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions.

I'm suggesting that somewhere in that lot should be a large and friendly message for new editors to alert them to the "Create" tab above which will take them to the Visual Editor to which they are accustomed. They may not even know about the existence of the other editor, if they have been seamlessly introduced to VE from the start, so are likely to be confused! PamD 14:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

That is Mediawiki:Newarticletext, it just doesn't look like it because it has a different appearance depending on the namespace. Rather than directing people to a tab above, we could just include a link along the lines of "You can create this page using the visual editor" (although with dynamic urls rather than one hardcoded into my userspace). This would need discussing at MediaWiki talk:Newarticletext though. Thryduulf (talk) 15:05, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Substituting a template

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51904

The process of substitution of a template, at least as described at WP:VisualEditor/User guide (section 7.2) is non-visual - the antithesis of what VE is trying to accomplish. I suggest having a checkbox at the top of the dialog box, when selecting a template, that allows the user to check the box ("Substitution?) to specify that the template will be substituted. Then, if that box is checked, when the template is added to the main editing page, it's in "subst:" form.

Besides being more visual, this approach also deals with the problem that the current process (at least per the User guide) breaks the autocomplete ability of the dialog (when searching for a specific template). It also opens up the (eventual) possibility of TemplateData specifying that a template will normally (or always) be substituted: TemplateData could be read by VE as telling it that this checkbox should be filled in by default. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:32, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

That makes a lot of sense. It looks very similar to the request in the existing bug :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:30, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Template parameter addition problems

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52354

I've managed to use the templatedata editor to add templatedata to a minor template I know well as I created it some years ago: {{Genukiwry}}. (Yes, title is obscure: add link to genealogy/history service GENUKI for a parish in the West Riding of Yorkshire!)

I've successfully added an instance of this template to my sandbox... but only after a struggle. There seem to be two main issues:

1. Required parameters: It has one required parameter and two optional parameters. So, I click the transclusion icon, I select the template, and I get a display offering a box to type "Parameter name" and a choice of two parameters nice and clear below it. But the one required parameter is only listed by name, no description, and only in the left-hand column, not conspicuous. Surely the required parameters should appear at the top of the list under the box, as the most important ones to be completed before any of the others.
2. Next parameter: Second grumble, which I've made before: having added the data for one parameter, we need to have a button (just below that input box, to reduce mouse movements) for "Add another parameter". It is completely unintuitive to have to click the template name each time, and tedious to move the mouse that far each time even if you know where to go. The more likely action is to hit "Apply changes", which is bad news.

PamD 08:39, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure prefilling the required parameters was actually requested behaviour, although I can't find the relevant bug. The next parameter issue is I think Bugzilla:50354. Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Article title overlaps header bar in slightly narrow edit window; article title letters lost in narrower window

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53820

I've noticed in several articles today that the article title has displayed, in VE, on top of the lower border of the editing header bar. I've not noticed it before. I prefer to edit in a window less wide than my laptop screen, as reading long lines of text is a pain.

On investigation: if I reduce the editing window to the point where the Question mark in a circle to the left of BETA is underneath the greyed-out "Decrease paragraph indentation" icon, there's a critical point where reducing the window width a little more moves that Question-mark back slightly to the right and jumps the article title up to display on top of the lower border of the editing bar.

And a second problem: if I reduce the width even more, then the article title is displayed in a very narrow column. Look at Sengattuppatti, reduce the width, and at a point where the lines of text are still perfectly workable (perhaps you're working from a text open in another window on the screen), the article title is reduced to the extent of losing letters. Reduce the window so that "Tiruchirapalli" is the first word of second line (that's about 50% of my screen width, and a likely width for consulting a source document on screen beside the WP page I'm working on), and note that the article title now displays minus its last four letters. Not wrapped, just disappeared. Ugly. In multi-word articles, it displays as a column but again truncates long words - try Thomas Lumley-Saunderson, 3rd Earl of Scarbrough.

I'm using Firefox 22 on Vista. PamD 10:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you post some screenshots? I can't reproduce any of that using Firefox 22 on Xubuntu Linux. I guess this might be skin-dependent also, I'm using Monobook. For example I can't get any words in the title to truncate until the width of the editing area between the left column and the right of the window is narrower than the width of the word, even for something like Sesquipedalianism that's less than a quarter of my screen width. Thryduulf (talk) 10:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I've made a couple of screenshots but don't know how to post them - do I need to use the full File Upload procedure, in which case I can't work out which of the copyright boxes to tick because the software etc isn't my own work. PamD 15:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, following an example above I've decided these are "own work", so:

Here's the top border problem

and

Here's the truncated title word

. Hope that helps! PamD 15:16, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) The easiest thing to do is to got commons:Special:upload which gets you to the simple upload form with a blank template, delete that template and replace it with the one below, filling in the description as appropriate, assuming you are using Firefox. If the screenshot doens't show any of the firefox bits (window decoration, tab bar, scroll bars, etc) then {{MPL}} can be omitted:

{{information
|Description=
|Source=Screenshot
|Date=2013 July 22
|Author=Mozilla developers, Wikipedia Authors
|Permission={{Wikipedia-screenshot|1=en|logo=}} {{MPL}}
|other_versions=
}}

If your screenshot shows the Wikipedia logo put "yes" for the logo parameter, if it doesn't put "no". Thryduulf (talk) 15:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Ah, so I got it wrong... but unless anyone's bothered I'll just leave them as is. Will note the info for another time! PamD 15:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
  • I've cropped the images to show only the Wikipedia bit. The Windows desktop and window decorations are non-free and can't be uploaded here. I've got no idea of the copyright status of your desktop background, but it's not needed anyway. You should really delete the old un-cropped versions as they are I think not allowed, but I don't think a CSD applies (I may be wrong on that) so it's simpler if you delete them yourself :). In her non-WMF guise Maggie is copyright guru Moonriddengirl so she may have a better idea than me :) Thryduulf (talk) 15:38, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
    • I just stopped in for a quick "housekeeping" rev deletion. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:04, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Hi Maggie, I didn't realise your other identity! It's a pity the rest of the screen has to go, because the screenshots show that I'm not using unreasonably narrow windows, at least to my mind: when working on serious article content (umm, how long ago did I last do that...?) I might well want to have two 50% width windows, one for the source and one for my article. But do what you want by way of cropping etc - it stretched me enough to work out anything to do with a screenshot. (Is there any documentation somewhere to help users with this, because "Post a screenshot" is a non-uncommon request? Neither the technical nor the copyright issues are at all clear to the novice!) PamD 16:15, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Hi, Pam. :) I learned myself from this handy website which I hope is not full of evil. I don't honestly know if we have one here - if we don't, we probably ought to. I can restore it as an earlier revision if necessary, at least until the developers see it, although we might be able to communicate in text about it. It doesn't talk about copyright at all. Given my area of work, it probably won't surprise you to know that I am myself probably overly cautious about that - I usually link the history of the article if any of its text shows and give copyright information on any images that might be caught in it. And I usually try to whack off at least half of the puzzle globe. :) (I was just trying to figure out how to report this, by the way.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:20, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Reported using your words verbatim plus some paraphrased and quoted content from your followup. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Where is the Edit Source button?

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540

The new interface is extremely disturbing. And I can’t find any button or preference to turn it off. That’s doubly disturbing. Al12si (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

To edit using the original editor, which has not gone away, just click "edit source" rather than "edit" at the top of the page or as a section link (you have to hover momentarily to see the edit source link for sections). You can also disable visual edit by going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets the gadgets tab of your preferences and choosing "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" from the editing section (note not the editing tab). Full details are in the FAQ at the top of this page or the yellow box you see when editing this page. Thryduulf (talk) 15:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

You can also disable the need to hover to see section links if you want, see [6] for details. Thryduulf (talk) 15:48, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Show the type of template at the Transclusion tooltip button

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53824

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53827

The tooltip with a "puzzle" icon that appears when clicking on a template should contain the name of the template used. This would allow readers to be aware of which template they're about to change and would make the Templates interface self-documenting, teaching by example the existence of the most common templates.

For example, the first screenshot would contain the word "Chembox" besides the puzzle icon: Diego (talk) 16:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

In the same way, the link tooltip (see second screenshot) should contain the text of the linked article, which for piped links is different than the article text. Diego (talk) 16:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Good suggestions. I have reported them as Bugzilla:51824 and Bugzilla:51827. Thryduulf (talk) 17:10, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

"Use an existing reference" issue when there is more than one group of footnotes

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53838

When there is more than one group of footnotes, as in the article Radiocarbon dating, VE should offer the ability to pick from any group when the user wants to (re)use an existing footnote. That is, if the user enters, in the "Options" section of the Reference dialog box, name of an alternative group of footnotes (in the case of this article, that would be note"), then clicking "Use an existing reference" should display the list of footnotes in that group.

Currently, VE ignores what is typed in the "Use this group" box, in the Reference dialog box, when the user clicks "Use an existing reference". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Aha; clever :). I'll stick it in as an enhancement. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

No workable way to remove this subheader

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53829

See [7]. Attempt to remove the subheader duplicating the name. Some things I try remove the preceding template. Others screw up the following paragraph. Is there a workaround? --j⚛e decker^talk 18:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

This has just been reported as Bugzilla:51829 (was that you?). As for a workaround, you can convert the heading to paragraph text and then delete it - but that's effectively identical to deleting the header and then converting the following text back to a paragraph, so no real saving. Thryduulf (talk) 18:38, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably was me, I'd forgotten, I've filed quite a number of issues in the interim. Yep, that's the same bug, thanks. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:42, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. It's good to note bugs here as well as on bugzilla, as it helps reduce duplicates - particularly when I half remember something the two often use different words making something easier to locate. Thryduulf (talk) 18:47, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

What Thryduulf said :). (dude, do you ever sleep? ;p) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Pressing delete switches me to Edit Source

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This is a little surprising, I don't recall having seen this before, but perhaps I'm looking at a new deployment.

Edit [8], double-click "Professor" at the start of the second sentence. Press delete. Note that you've been taken to the traditional wikimarkup editor. Mac Chrome Version 28.0.1500.71.

(Hold on, this might be at an old OS revisiion, will update in a bit.) --j⚛e decker^talk 18:28, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm not seeing it in Firefox 22 on Linux. It is an unusual bug though! Thryduulf (talk) 18:44, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, 10.8.4. I'll try Safari, and my laptop. Back in a few minutes. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:45, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

And it's gone. Nevermind, that .... feels more like a local environment issue (e.g., keyboard brain anuerism, software glitch on this end) than a VE bug. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:49, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Hurm. Let us know if it turns up again? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:46, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Layout

This is horrible Bladez636 (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@Bladez636: is there anything specific that is causing you problems? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:50, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Part of template box not visible with long TemplateData descriptions

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53739

When you try to add templates with long TemplateData descriptions (such as {{coord}}), you can't see the bottom of the template box:Jay8g [V•T•E] 00:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

That is a known one - T53739 to be precise. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

"nowiki/" inserted even though no wiki markup added

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53751

In this edit VE introduced a single stray <nowiki/> even though the edit added no new wiki markup. Another example here. JohnCD (talk) 09:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that those editors added some wiki markup that tripped on of the many 'nowiki' bugs, and then removed the wiki markup, but the VE didnt undo the side-effects. Steps to reproduce would be good... ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 10:27, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Trying to reproduce, no joy so far... JohnCD (talk) 14:07, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Along the same lines, since the introduction of VE I also come across a lot of <nowiki></nowiki> on my Recent Changes patrolling. Some vandalism, some well meant but obviously completely wrong. If that's the same bug it's a very active one.  Yintan  11:36, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

@JohnCD: - This edit I did resulted in a stray <nowiki/>. For me, it was caused by putting text adjacent to a wikilink, then trying to insert a space without VE deciding that space belonged to the link. I was just doing cut-and-paste (rearranging a sentence, basically), not adding or deleting wikitext. What was irritating about my edit was that VE displayed a space between the wikilink and the next word, so I thought things were well, but after the save, the space disappeared (the nowiki tag was still there). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton:. Something is giving people difficulty in entering wikilinks - look at this. I have been experimenting and, while I haven't reproduced that, I have found some ofddities which I will write up tomorrow. JohnCD (talk) 21:43, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

There was a WP:Village pump (miscellaneous) discussion about this a while ago, I believe, and someone at Bot Requests made it possible to fix these changes in WPCleaner. There's also a tag on it now, but some of the nowikis are breaking the wiki syntax, which concerns me. kikichugirl ^inquire 23:35, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I opened a bug report over the weekend when I tripped this in volunteer mode. T53751 I was removing text and merging two paragraphs into one. I had added nothing. You can see the screencap here: File:Wikimarkup_warning_without_case.png. Obviously, this is still area that needs work. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:48, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual glitches in transclusion editor

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53755

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53771

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53880

Problem 1 screenshot

Problem 2 screenshot

Problem 1: Upon opening the transclusion editor, or upon moving a component up/down using the arrows in the bottom left, the Wikipedia search box and accompanying buttons occasionally appear in front of the transclusion editor. The behavior does not occur consistently.

Occurs in Firefox v21.0, cannot replicate in Chrome v28.0

Problem 2: Open the tranclusion editor, then shrink the width of the browser window such that it is narrower than the transclusion editor. Alternatively, use Ctrl + to increase the font size. In either case, using the left/right scroll bar at the bottom of the page causes the background to scroll, but not the transclusion box. This can hide features.

Occurs in Firefox v21.0 and Chrome v28.0

Problem 3 (semi-related): If I click directly on a collapse box (created with {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}), the transclusion button appears and works correctly. If I highlight a collapse box by clicking and dragging my cursor through it, one of two things happens:

• A: A transclusion button does not appear
• B: A transclusion button does appear. Clicking on it opens a new template window, rather than editing the existing collapse box.

Occurs in Firefox v21.0, cannot replicate in Chrome v28.0

Meep. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:27, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• I can't reproduce Problem 1 in Firefox 22 on Linux, but maybe that's because it's just intermittent.
• Problem 2 happens with all dialogs (media inserter, page settings, etc). I've reported it as Bugzilla:51755
• Problem 3. If I select only one template the transclusion button appears, if I select more than one template or a template and something that isn't a template, then it doesn't work. I imagine this is by design, as otherwise your intentions are ambiguous - which template do you want to edit? Thryduulf (talk) 17:48, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• Perhaps I should clarify. In Problem 3, I believe we agree that outcome A is the correct outcome. My question is this: Why is that behavior not consistent? Why does a misleading transclusion button sometimes pop up? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 01:03, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

• I've tracked problem 1 and listed the bug number above. I was also able to drag through the collapse top template using Firefox and trigger similar behaviors to the ones you report. In my option B, however, I got the expected template editor, which allows editing the existing template or adding a new one. I'm not sure that outcome A is the correct outcome, though, as it allows you to remove the template without even notifying you that it is doing so. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:21, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

• Anybody else have an opinion on which is the correct outcome? I'd like to track the issue, but want to be sure that I suggest resolution as most appropriate. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• I was about to say that there is exactly one template in a selection then the transclusion button should appear and should open that template. However, then I thought about how it would be good if you could do something like selecting part of a page and apply a template to that. For example for explicitly marking what needs a citation, putting in a blockquote, or a collapsible section. The last would obviously be more useful on a talk page here on Wikipedia, but it would have mainspace use on Wiktionary and this sort of behaviour shouldn't vary by wiki/namespace. If that idea is remotely plausible then I think that the present behaviour should be to not show the transclusion editor or to show an error. Where there are multiple templates in the selection then again either nothing, an error or a choice of which template to edit. That last one could get complicated though in terms of identifying which template is which, particularly if there is more than one of the same type in the selection. This probably wasn't the answer you were looking for though, sorry! Thryduulf (talk) 14:05, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

• Only in the sense that I have no idea how to report it. :D It sounds like showing an error might be the best choice, given all variables? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Yeah, It's probably best to not show the tooltip icon and give an error along the lines of "Multiple items in selection. Please select only a single template to edit it, or deselect all templates to insert a new one" (note I do not suggest using this verbatim!) if the toolbar button is pressed. Thryduulf (talk) 17:56, 22 July 2013 (UTC)
    • I wound up just reporting the issue without recommended outcome - when I tested on other templates, it seems that not launching the template editor is meant to be the default. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:13, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Slow and useless features

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When I click on "Edit this page," the screen grays out and stays that way for about 5 - 10 seconds. The new editor may be taking up too much memory or for some reason slows things down.

As for the visual editor itself, it seems to have mostly useless features. It's not common to need buttons for bold, underline, bulleted or numbered lists, external links, adding media, etc. The "Page settings" option is misleading since it only shows categories, not settings of any sort.

In general, it takes me longer clicking buttons to get to a basic edit screen. I think the minimum change should be to let an editor decide if he wants that menu-toolbar up top. Light show (talk) 16:40, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Just found the way to turn it off from the Preferences - Gadgets :)--Light show (talk) 16:47, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

@Light show: what sort of machine/os/browser are you using? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

XP,Chrome. --Light show (talk) 00:07, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmn. We are doing our best to speed it up; at the moment it's a focus area. Sorry about the slowness in the interim :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:14, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor causes Wikipedia to violate the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

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The hover buttons required for Edit source in sections are [http://tutorials.tessathornton.com/2011/08/08/screen-reader-accessible-dropdown-menus/ inaccessible to those who use screenreaders. As there is also no officially-supported way to turn VisualEditor off, we need to get accessibility right.

Wikipedia has committed to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, but by making the edit source sections inaccessible to screen readers, it violates at least one core principle.

Worse, it does this to no purpose: VisualEditor is not currently able to edit sections, but must load the entire page. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

For examples of specific requirements broken, [9] [10]. Obviously, the requirements are written in general webpage terms, not wiki-specific, but it's clear that this violates both Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Discussions about wording of this issue in Wikipedia:VisualEditor are at that document's talk page. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I would note that we are changing the hover setup. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Exactly what is the proposed change to the hover? This affects both VE and non-VE editors. It does seem like the solution to both this and Wikipedia_talk:VisualEditor#Can_there_be_an_option_to_make_Edit_Source_permanently_visible_for_sections.3F is to have both options permanently visible if VE is not suppressed. Eventually we may get used to "edit" not doing what it used to, but replacing it with "Visual Editor" for a transitional period could be considered. --Cedders^tk 19:02, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Bugzilla:50540 is a request to get rid of the hover, in the mean time you can disable it for your account - see [11]. Bugzilla:50402 is about renaming the tabs, although it doesn't mention changing "edit" to "Visual Edt". I'm sure there has been discussion of that, but I can't immediately find it. Thryduulf (talk) 19:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

What Thryduulf Said (I need to have that as a macro). 50540 describes the bug as currently assigned. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:17, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Time to take a long, hard look at WP:CITEVAR.

Up to now, complying with this somewhat over the top guidance has been relatively painless as any existing refs are visible in the edit window, and in many cases become the source of the new ref (copy, paste, change as needed). Now that refs are (almost) working in VE most editors will simply construct a new ref using the mandatory parameters in a template. Just for fun I tried the copy, paste, change method in VE. The result is a fail for at least three reasons:

1. No way to enter the new URL.

2. Cannot be sure what parameters the existing fields represent.

3. No way to enter new fields in such a manner that they will display something useful to a reader.

Downsize43 (talk) 02:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@Downsize43: When you edit an existing citation, whether or not you created it by copying a citation already on the page, there are three possibilities: (a) It's "raw" text - no cite template was used; (b) it uses a cite template, and TemplateData has been set up for that; or (c) it uses a cite template, and TemplateData has not yet been set up for that. For (b) and (c), you should see, when you click on the text of the citation, a boxed, blue background, and a new icon (for me, to the bottom right of the box). That's your clue to use the template dialog box ("puzzle piece") to edit that template. When you go into the template dialog, it will tell you (upper left) what template you're editing.

To distinguish between (b) and (c), take a look at WP:VisualEditor/User guide#Editing references, where TemplateData has been used - case (b).

It sounds like you may have situation (c), based on (2), but I can't tell for sure - and even then, (1) and (3) don't necessarily follow. If you do have situation (c), what is the template name? (For that matter, what is the article name, what footnote number did you copy and then try to edit, and what operating system and browser are you using.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:57, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Using Google Chrome Version 28.0.1500.72 m on Win7. Editing Kidman Way. Copying ref 3 (which shows as 1 in VE) pasting it to another location and wishing to change the items.

Ref 1: <ref>[http://www.kidmanway.org.au Kidman Way - Where the legend begins], ''Kidman Way - Backtrack to the Outback''. Retrieved on 11 May 2008.</ref>

Display in ref window in VE: Kidman Way - Where the legend begins, Kidman Way - Backtrack to the Outback. Retrieved on 11 May 2008.

(with the title as an active link to http://www.kidmanway.org.au) Note that the double quotes have gone.

After copying the displayed text and pasting into a new ref window it displays as above without the active link. Changing some text results in (for example): Hillston Way - Where the legend ends, Hillston Way - Track back to the Outfront. Retrieved on 11 May 2013. Without a URL attached to the title this is merely garbage, so where does one go from here? Downsize43 (talk) 06:17, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

This thread was intended to start a discussion about how WP:CITEVAR will be less likely to be complied with by both new and experienced editors using VE. It was not intended to be about the bug reported as Bugzilla 51725, but they are now inextricably linked, because user John Vandenberg has, in "testing" bug 51725 without understanding its implications, breached WP:CITEVAR in exactly the manner I alluded to at the top of this post. Downsize43 (talk) 00:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

No place for new editors/IP's to test VE?

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I just gave an IP a uw-test1 warning which directs them to the sandbox. It occurred to me to check if VE works with the sandbox - it doesn't. So how can we direct these editors to a place where they can play with VE? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 20:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Well registered users can use their own sandbox but that doesn't work for IPs as they cannot create pages. User:Sandbox is a redirect to Wikipedia:Sandbox at present as it was apparently causing a lot of confusion with a user sandbox and the page it was redirect to. Perhaps the VE team could register user:VEsandbox or something for this purpose? Thryduulf (talk) 21:08, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I strongly encourage the VE team to look into this as right now new editors (who are supposedly the target audience for VE) have no place to test or are being directed to a page where the editing UI is completely different. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 21:13, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

This problem was brought to their attention before the roll out to IP, but as you can see in many discussions about VE, rolling out seems to be more important than anything else. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 21:25, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Why not this page]? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Well presently it is redirected to Wikipedia space, so it would need unredirecting, unprotecting and a bunch of people watching it. But other than that nothing stands in the way afaik. Thryduulf (talk) 22:24, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

 Done User:Sandbox can now be used as a sandbox. Needs some more watchers.--Salix (talk): 07:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Watched. Have you asked whomever operates the sandbox cleaning bot to get it to add this page to its tasks? Thryduulf (talk) 10:16, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. Can we create a new template that removes "If you want to start editing in a clear sandbox, click here." as it dumps editors into the old interface? Also, please chime in here, Wikipedia_talk:Template_messages/User_talk_namespace#uw-test_series, if you have any thoughts. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 14:10, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Salix! :D. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:41, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

External links to Wikipedia pages

May I suggest that VE translate (what appears in Wikitext as)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X Y]

by

[[X|Y]]

The concept of "external link" vs. "wikilink" is complicated enough if you can see the Wikimarkup; if you can't see it, we really can't expect new users to understand it. It would be nice if it would also fix links to other Wikiprojects. (And this is not only of use to en.Wikipedia; any other Wikiproject using VE is likely to have the same problems.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:10, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I assume they both appear as Y with a hook? — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:15, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

They appear as Y and Y. So, clearly the second one is better. Some tools are already proposing editors to fix the replace them when found. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 04:22, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

One needs to be a little bit careful with this. As I recall, there is a convention that in the rare cases where an article needs to reference a non-article space wikipage (for example, the user page of a notable Wikipedian referenced from his article, or a Wikipedia space page referenced in an article discussing Wikipedia), then those links are supposed to be maintained as external links. The reason for this is that most reusers don't copy pages from non-article spaces, so in the rare cases where an non-article space wikilink is valid as a reference within an article, it recommended to use an external link to make sure the link is still accessible for reusers. That said, the transformation would seem to be fine for the example given above of a wiki article linking to another wiki article. Dragons flight (talk) 05:59, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

No, the editor should not translate external links to internal ones. As Dragons flight notes, it could only safely be done with non-permanent links to current article-space pages, and it is not guaranteed that every wiki will have the same policies. It also should not be up to the parser to determine the target of an external link before deciding how to parse it, and anyway having silently different behaviour for different links is a Bad Thing. Far easier and far better to just educate users about the difference between internal and external links. Thryduulf (talk) 11:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Regarding The concept of "external link" vs. "wikilink" is complicated enough if you can see the Wikimarkup; if you can't see it, we really can't expect new users to understand it, I have to disagree - VE is easier to understand than wikitext. (If I had a dime for every time that someone used a pipe to separate the url from the text to be displayed ... ) Please take a loot at WP:VisualEditor/User guide#Editing links; basically one pastes an external link and one searches for an internal link, and there is no need to worry about wikitext format at all. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:50, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the case where you need an external link to wiki content is enough of a rare case that it should be saved for editors who "know what they're doing". What I'm missing is the Visual Editor UI/UX perspective here -- how is it that editors are making these external links to wiki content? We should make it so that the "most natural way" to make a link Does The Right Thing. There can be a checkbox somewhere to say, "make this an external link even though its wiki content" for power-users to use, but the default thing should be correct. In order to be inclusive and welcoming to new contributors, we should avoid having to lean on the "educate the users" trope. Let's make the easy thing the almost-always-correct thing. C. Scott Ananian (talk) 18:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

In reality, only power users are going to know when and when not to link in an external form (http://) to what could be an internal link (wikilink). On the other hand, we are likely to have a lot of inexperienced editors pasting in external links by mistake. This is the sort of thing that a bot or AWB or TW or similar is best at dealing with, rather than adding complexity to the UI with yet another box.

Still, it would be great, when that mistake (mostly) is made, if VE would pop up a dialog box, as, for example: "Your external link, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974_South_Australian_Tennis_Championships_%E2%80%93_Singles, probably should be an internal link - 1974 South Australian Tennis Championships – Singles. Do you want to change that? (yes) (no)." -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

No horizontal scrolling on wide pages

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53867

There is no horizontal scrolling when editing pages with very wide tables. a5b (talk) 04:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed and tracked as Bugzilla:51867, thank you. Comparison of container formats is a good example page if anyone wants to test this themselves. Thryduulf (talk) 11:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Purpose of "page title" font size?

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In the drop-down menu for font sizes / header levels, why is there an option for "page title" size? This is literally never used in articles. As I see it, this option increases the possibility of user confusion without adding any real utility. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:40, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't find the previous discussion on this, but I have a vague recollection that it is used on some wikis and so the editor needs to include it. I've added Bugzilla:51864 as a request to be able to disable/remove it on a per namespace or per wiki basis, but its not going to be a high priority item. Thryduulf (talk) 10:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICERS

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I kindly request those who are concerned to update the local member officers, as per the last election. I really wish to edit but I do not have the full name yet. thank you. 2.50.66.86 (talk) 08:43, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello there. Just to let you know, you are at the wrong place to ask to such thing and I can't point you in the right direction because your request is too vague (local government officers from where?). Insulam Simia (talk) 08:57, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Add warning on feedback feature

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Because of things happening like above - I recommend adding a note to the feedback feature so we don't have people sending misplaced requests. Insulam Simia (talk) 09:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I now added a bug T53875 and changed the edit notice for the page to help direct people to the right page.--Salix (talk): 13:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Delete my account

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Pls delete my account.............. Shanthkumar S.B (talk) 10:32, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Replied on the user's talk page. Thryduulf (talk) 11:52, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Kudos for the reference-selector

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It is so much easier now to handle pages with many references; and to check for duplicate refs. Thanks! – SJ + 10:44, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

No problem :). Still needs some improvements, but I think it has a lot of potential. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/#/c/73565/

Can this finally be launched? There's been a unanimous poll and a near-unanimous poll, and it's not what hidden preferences are intended to do.

You're giving the very strong appearance that the WMF doesn't care what the users say. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:21, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Vanishing page content

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53893

When I attempt to Vedit Typographer (typewriter), the whole page disappears aside from the lead image. Do other people have the same experience? No idea why. Dragons flight (talk) 15:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I've fixed it. I started by removing "px" from the image size specifications, a known bug, but that bug only makes the image ballon up, it doesn't prevent editing the rest of the page. In this case, the problem was a <center> tag inside the image caption. It probably doesn't happen very often, but I guess VE (Parsoid?) should be revised to handle such exceptional cases. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:00, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually it's an unclosed html element specifying horizontal text alignment in the caption for an image that is not a thumbnail and not in a frame. I've reported it as Bugzilla:51893. A rather specific set of circumstances needed to see this one, so well done for finding it! Thryduulf (talk) 17:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Possibly related: vector navbar scrunching in Chrome

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T22234

I opened Wikipedia in Chrome v28.0 while not logged-in, which put me in the Vector skin. As I zoomed in or shrunk the width of the window, the user navbar at the top got scrunched. I had never seen this happen before, so I suppose it might be related to the new VE tab, but it might also be a more general display glitch. It seemed reasonable to report it here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I see the same when logged out (so using Vector skin) in Firefox 22 and Konqueror 4.8.5. The latter is not a VE-enabled browser so I don't think it is directly related to the presence of the VE tab, but it might be a change introduced when adding the facility for that tab (if one as needed, I don't know how to tell). I don't use Vector when I can help it and usually edit with a very wide window, so I don't even know how new it is. My gut feeling is that it's more likely to be a bug with the vector skin than with VE. I think Bugzilla:20234 is the relevant one, so you may wish to comment on that. Thryduulf (talk) 17:53, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Some negative feedback

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This beta editor FUCKING SUCKS.

How the fucking fuck do I add an image?

You people are cunts. No wonder wikipedia is losing editors. 31.127.29.115 (talk) 18:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

To add an image in the visual editor, you place the cursor where you want the image to be and then click the "insert media" icon as shown in the adjacent image:

Then you can enter the name of the image you want to include, or search for an image if you don't know the name. Full details are in the Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide, specifically the section Editing images and other media files.

If you would rather not use the visual editor, then you can just click "edit source" rather than edit at either the top of the page on on the section links. If you have an account then you can disable the visual editor by following the details in the FAQ at the top of this page. Unfortunately that is not possible for anonymous users (as we have no way of reliably associating you with your preferences). Thryduulf (talk) 19:04, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

DEFAULTSORT should drop diacriticals

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53907

Editing Pikku-Vesijärvi I noticed that VE's suggested DEFAULTSORT was exactly the title. VE should be set to drop the diacriticals when suggesting DEFAULTSORT - should have been "Pikku-Vesijarvi" with a plain "a". PamD 19:03, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the articles about Édith Piaf (the first person I thought of whose name includes a diacritic) on some other Wikis I noticed that the Czech and Estonian wikis apparently do use diacritics in DEFAULTSORT names, while the Spanish and Esperanto ones might also (it wasn't immediately clear to me as someone who doesn't speak those languages). Other wikis might also as I only looked at ones with language codes starting A-F that use the Latin alphabet and have an article about this French singer that includes a diacritic in the article name. So this needs to be configurable on a per-wiki level, which will possibly make it harder to code. See Bugzilla:51907 anyway. Thryduulf (talk) 20:03, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Red links

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T39901

Once the editing interface pops up, all the links turn blue, so I don't easily know which need retargetting. Tazerdadog (talk) 02:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That is a known issue - T39901 to be precise. As the number suggest that one has been around quite a while which is rather unfortunate, since it is quite an annoying issue when working on links. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:18, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

slow

The loading is slow on pages with tables El Otro (talk) 11:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe that the VE is still picking up speed after all and hope that you will find this less of an issue going forward. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:04, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Pawn

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53762

I found it really slow earlier this evening. It was so slow that I pulled up top to see if my machine had crashed, killed some add ons and other firefox windows and came back to find it still messing around. Apart from that it also completely broke the article deleting a large chunk and saved something I had already deleted and did not insert the stuff that it was showing on screen. Just a complete disaster all round. RonaldDuncan (talk) 22:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry; it looks like you encountered one of the pawn bugs. :( I've heard of these, but have not encountered one before. Can you tell me what you were trying to do? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:50, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Is there an edit filter for pawn ♙ and snowmen ☃? I'm guessing that it doesnt appear often except for this bug. If the edit filter eliminates article that mention 'chess', or 'pawn', I'm sure we'll have nearly zero undesirable hits. Unfortunately I can see how many articles have this character because of bugzilla:51790. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:08, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know, John, but I'll ask. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:29, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Seems like there's not, but that this could be a very good idea. :) I've asked User:Reaper Eternal if he can help out. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

User:Reaper Eternal has helpfully created a temporary edit filter pending correction of this issue in the software, @John Vandenberg:. :) See [12]. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

It appears the pawn is used as a placeholder by VisualEditor; other bugs pop up when you actually try to use the pawn legitimately in an article, as well. I'm surprised that the VisualEditor people decided to use a visible character with legitimate use in content as a placeholder like that. (The developers really ought to read up on the inherent issues with in-band signaling.) Fran Rogers (talk) 13:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Image feedback

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53823

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T40129

1. When you double click on image when selecting it from "Insert Media" gallery, 2 images are inserted
2. How to choose between frame, thumb etc.
3. On what basis is size populated? When I added Lesya image in Karma in Jainism, it was 150x150px by default. How to edit size? --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 06:06, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

@Redtigerxyz: The first item you reported is a bug (not sure if it has already been reported). For the second, you can't choose in VE - it automatically sets up an image as thumb, right. If you want to change that, you'll need to use the old wikitext editor. For the third, you can resize an image within a page by clicking on it; that puts dots in the corner of the image, which you can use for resizing. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:21, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton: Thanks for the replies. About point 3, why does the Lesya image look smaller in Vedit? If we want users to edit size in Vedit, they should be of same size in Vedit view and the real article after editing. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 15:48, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I would suggest that the 2nd item be relegated to deep in the backlog as a _nice to have_. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

On the second item, at least the ability to select (or change) right or left alignment definitely needs to have fairly high priority. It's also not that difficult to implement - the dialog box where someone adds or edits the caption is the perfect place to show/change the left/right alignment. (And center alignment, for tables; not sure how to stop editors from doing that outside of tables.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:35, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I would argue for basic "content is king" purposes, right/left alignment is not a priority. For advancement to Class C status and above, attractive formatting is essential. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 15:40, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

• I am unable to reproduce issue 1 in Firefox 22 on Xubuntu Linux, what systems are you using? I can't find that it has been reported but I'd prefer to be able to point to how to reproduce it before putting it in Bugzilla. Issues 2 and 3 are noted in bugzilla:38129. Thryduulf (talk) 18:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

  Iceweasel 17 and Debian gets it - reported :). @Redtigerxyz: what browser/OS are you using? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): Chrome Version 28.0.1500.72 m. Windows 7 Home. Redtigerxyz ^Talk 04:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Added to the bug. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

save page

each time I press the 'save page' button it keeps saving, but nothing happens. If I close the page, the changes aren't saved. HeroPsycho22 (talk) 07:52, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@HeroPsycho22:, which page did this occur on? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:55, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

user:HeroPsycho22 commented on my talk that it was this edit, and it worked OK, but was strange. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I've just edited that page in VE to tweak the wording in the lead and it was very slow to load and slow to save. I'm starting to think there might be a correlation between pages that have lots of references and pages that are slow to load and save in VE. I'm not certain yet though, if anyone can think of any short articles with lots of references and long articles with few that would be useful. Thryduulf (talk) 10:25, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion I have not tested this, but using null edits might be a way to assess this without revising any content.

 Question: This is, if null edits are supported by VE - not sure of that. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:25, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, VE does support null edits [13] Thryduulf (talk) 12:31, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

This is not a true null edit, a whitespace character has been added. With the wikitext editor, you can do a true null edit. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 12:37, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

In that case no you can't, as if there have been no changes the save button is not enabled. Thryduulf (talk) 12:51, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Well it isn't just related to the number of references. I was unable to get the editing interface to load for List of United States counties and county-equivalents - first time it crashed firefox with the error "###!!! ABORT: OOM: file /build/buildd/firefox-22.0+build2/xpcom/string/src/nsTSubstring.cpp, line 348

" on the terminal. So I tried again with a single window and no other tabs open (I normally have ~90 tabs open over three windows) but after waiting 13m 39.322s I gave up. Along the way though I got the following warnings about scripts running slowly. I chose to let them continue each time:

Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:130
Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:130
Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:7
Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:30
Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:38
Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:38
Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.base%2Cmediawiki%2CviewPageTarget%7Cjquery.visibleText%7Coojs%7Cunicodejs.wordbreak&skin=monobook&version=20130719T023752Z&*:122

(duplicate lines mean the same error was received more than once). I do appreciate this was an exreme test (that article is number one at special:LongPages), but for comparison the source editor opening it in 7.680 seconds. I'll keep testing :) Thryduulf (talk) 18:05, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems that the only reliable page load/save time correlation is with the size of the page (bytes rather than length). Citations and tables add a lot of characters to an article relative to plain text so I suspect that's what lead me to my earlier observations. Larger pages taking longer to open is not exactly an illogical correlation and should make it easier to test (if not necessarily to fix). Thryduulf (talk) 21:35, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Fail to save

Running on Chrome 28.0.1500.72 m. Edited a 600 word article, Uzbl. Clicked save repeatedly. I got the working graphic, but when it stopped, the save dialog was still displayed. Made my changes the old-fashioned way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lfstevens (talk • contribs)

Hmm, assuming you made the same changes in the traditional editor you were attempting the visual editor, there is nothing there that should cause any problems afaics. Thryduulf (talk) 19:21, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@Lfstevens: does this happen consistently? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:49, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

No. I've edited several articles with VE without a problem. Lfstevens (talk) 21:18, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

user:HeroPsycho22 reported something very similar ~12 hours ago on this page, however they found their edits had been saved. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:05, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Very strange; a temporary blip, maybe? If people see it again, please do let me know, with a timestamp if possible - maybe we could try and trace it through the logs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Saw it again today editing Amiga software. I had clicked edit on a section header rather than at the top. Made changes in about 10 paragraphs. Lfstevens (talk) 05:08, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmn. I just tried the same and it appeared to work. What time did this issue crop up? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:32, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Just before I added the update here. Lfstevens (talk) 17:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

You have to type something after a word before attempting to wikilink it

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53531

I have been seeing a number of peculiar wikilinks where a space or extra characters are built into the displayed text e.g. here. These display OK but will cause problems for editing in future, e.g. if someone wants to add an item between [[Link1|Link1, ]][[Link2]].

I think the reason for these is probably an awkwardness in the process of entering a wikilink which I ran into myself when trying it out. Initially, I tried typing until I reached the point for the link, then clicking the Link item and entering the link. I think many others might also do that, but it gives trouble. Reading the fine manual, I see it says "You should first select (highlight) text, or place your cursor on a word, then click the Link icon"; but that is actually not enough: unless you type at least an extra space after the link word before attempting to link it, you still encounter a frustrating and annoying problem. Steps to reproduce (Win7, FF22.0):

• Type "Let us make a Wikilink to London"
• At this point you can leave the cursor where it is just after the "n" of "London", or click in the middle of "London", or select the word "London" - it makes no difference to what follows.
• Click the Link icon. The dialogue box opens, offering options including "London"
• Click the option "London". The options disappear and the reduced dialogue box sits there. It's not terribly intuitive what to do next, but pressing Return, or clicking the "less-than" icon, or clicking outside the box all work. The dialogue box disappears, and the link is blue.
• Now carry on typing, and you are still adding to the link. If there is a way out of this, it is certainly not intuitive. Clicking the Link icon again reopens the dialogue box; "Escape" does nothing; "Return" removes the link icon but puts you on the next line where you don't want to be, and then "Backspace" to get back to the line above puts you back in link-create mode again; clicking the dustbin icon undoes the link. The only way out I found was to press "Return" to get to the next line, type something there starting with a space, then put the cursor back at the beginning of the line and press "Backspace" to join it up. This is not at all friendly or intuitive.

These experiments very often left the link as something like [[London|London and]], and I think this problem accounts for the funny links I am seeing, and no doubt for a number of confused and frustrated users. JohnCD (talk) 21:56, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I see what you mean. What would the ideal solution be? I mean, the alternative causes quite a few problems around attempts to modify links. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The ideal solution would be for VE to not treat the cursor being immediately to the right of a link as selecting that link. VE doesn't do that when the cursor is immediately to the left of a link. This change would eliminate the problem JohnCD has so well pointed out.

That approach would also eliminate problems when a user simply wants to edit close to an existing link - for example, to put a period immediately following a link. Here's what happens when I do that (the existing link, let's say, is "London"): [[London|London.]] What I get is a piped link, when I didn't want to change the link at all. And while one can shrug at this (a reader won't see any problem and the link works as expected), the diff that the VE user gets (when he/she reviews the changes) is not what he/she expected, so now we have to deal with confusion on the part of a (new - or maybe not-so-new) editor about why that funny coding resulted from just adding a period and doing other minor copyediting. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

If possible, I think the best way to handle this would be by having a different behavior depending on the character added at the end of the link : if it's an alpha-numeric, add it inside the link, if it's any thing else (punctuation, whitespace, ...), add it outside the link. Basically, use the same reasoning as MW parser for characters after a link (letters after a link are displayed as being part of the link). --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 04:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

The same problem occurs with piped links and external links. (Incidentally, the User Guide had no instructions for piped links. I have boldly added them: please improve or revert if that was not a proper thing to do). My suggestion is that once the link has been entered it should be regarded as complete and therefore, so to speak, "bounded" on the right, so that a cursor immediately to the right of the link (whether because it has been placed there or because it has been left there after creation of the link) is not regarded as being "inside" the link. I think this is the same as John Broughton's suggestion, and it seems to me the most natural and intuitive approach. NicoV's suggestion would also work, and has the advantage of following existing practice, though new users might find it puzzling. JohnCD (talk) 09:27, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

This has been noted at Bugzilla:51531, the current behaviour is problematic because there is no way to end a link placed at the end of a line other than starting a new line entering a space and then deleting the new line. Thryduulf (talk) 10:11, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Thryduulf :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Identified as duplicate of Bugzilla:Bug 51463 and fixed! Problem no longer occurs. Thanks! JohnCD (talk) 19:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Stub template wording changes in VE - just the one article (so far)

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When I open Joutjärvi in VE, the {{stub}} displays with an icon of a jigsaw piece with a "W", and the wording "This short article can be made longer. You can help Wikipedia by adding to it." "Short article" and "adding to it" are links, but as it's in a template in VE I can't see where they go. When I come out of VE, the message reverts to the usual "This article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.".

I've tried a couple of other random stubs, and this isn't happening with them. I can't see anything unusual about the stub tag in this article.

This comes under the category of "VE doing very odd things, which perhaps the devs should know about in case symptomatic of something, though it doesn't do much harm to editors except to make them wonder whether they're going slightly mad when they see the unexpected." Undesirable, possibly symptomatic of something, but not in itself very important. But weird.

... Further: I edited it to add a tag, saved it, opened again in VE: consistently I see the normal stub message when viewing the article, and the different one when in VE. Have now stub-sorted it. PamD 19:33, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I can still get the same effect by opening an older version of the article in VE. PamD 19:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I see the {{stub}} tag was added in AWB: I've just looked at another article the same editor stub tagged a couple of minutes earlier, and it doesn't have this same problem. Very weird. PamD 19:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

That's just odd. Time to confuse the devs :D. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:10, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I concur with the assessment as "odd":) When I've been playing around in my sandbox I've found that it would sometimes transclude an older version of the page in the editing screen but I figured that was just my being quicker than the cache (and I could get around it by moving the page to a different name). However as far as Wikiblame is aware the word "short" has never appeared in any version of template:stub and there is no obvious mention of that wording on any of the template talk archives either. I'm glad it's not my job to figure out the cause! Thryduulf (talk) 20:18, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Devs confused. Try now? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:25, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't reproduce it now, so seems fixed. Thryduulf (talk) 20:38, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Great! Fix worked :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks good: thanks, Oliver. If it happens again I'll let you know! (If there weren't so many other pressing issues I'd ask for a non-techie explanatation as to what on earth was happening, but I won't distract you from more important stuff. Like redlinks.) PamD 07:12, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Frankly I don't understand the techie explanation and so can't translate (something something parsoid cache, something something). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:34, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

TemplateData not integrating

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52372

I added template data for Template:Bibleverse and Template:Bibleverse-nb on July 10th. The Data for Bibleverse-nb shows up in the VE, but not for Bibleverse. How long should it take for it to be integrated? --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 02:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

You probably need to do a WP:NULL edit on the templates (not the documentation). I waited over a week for {{coord}} to be updated, I did a null edit and it worked the next day.--Salix (talk): 06:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

As a sidenote: An earlier discussion mentioned that templatedata is refreshed every 24 hours, so that would be the maximum amount of time one would ever have to wait for it to appear inside the visual editor. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:26, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid thats complete nonsense on the TemplateData refreshing. {{Taxobox}} which was edited ten days ago had not updated. I then the null edit and it quite quickly updated. {{Wikibooks}} had template data added on the 14 July 2013 and is still not updated see for example AWK. This seems to discussed on Bugzilla:50372 and from what I can make out the advice is do a null edit. The system has been recently changed so null edits don't take so many system resources (i.e. the job queue).--Salix (talk): 13:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Exactement :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't reach all Transclusions

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53933

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53930

Currently editing Where Does This Door Go, the Mayer Hawthorne album. There is no way to use the visual editor to select the "Professional Ratings" template box. It is covered by the "Track List" transclusion. Jairuscobb (talk) 04:00, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I also note if displays the arguments of {{tracklist}} in the wrong order. Its using a alphabetical sort rather than a sort which respects numbers, so track10 comes before track2.--Salix (talk): 06:24, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I've tracked these as Bugzilla:51933 and Bugzilla:51930 respectively, although I have a feeling the first might be a duplicate of something. I've certainly seen it discussed here before but I can't locate those discussions and can't find any relevant bugs. Thryduulf (talk) 08:45, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Jairuscobb and Thryduulf both :). Yeah, I remember the same bug, but I thought it had been fixed (and can't find it now). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:47, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Pending changes revision dropdown mangled with Page settings

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53926

Bug highlighted

When I edit a page with the pending changes revision dropdown, and I am scrolled to the very top, the dropdown and the VE page settings link become mangled. See highlight in included image. Firefox 22 on Win7 Pro SP1. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 04:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed this in both Firefox and Chrome - the issue seems specific to the monobook skin. I can see no existing bug dealing with this, so this is now reported as T53926 Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 06:41, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

]] inside link anchor moves.

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53944

If I type "Fra]]nce" and then select that entire text and make it a link to France, after I save it, the link anchor ends up appearing just as "France" followed by a non-anchor "]]". --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:13, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Did you get a warning about using wikitext at all? Thryduulf (talk) 08:17, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Nope. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Well I can confirm both that closing markup "]]" "}}" etc doesn't produce a warning about wikitext although opening markup does; and the France thing. Reported as bugzilla:51944. Thryduulf (talk) 09:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

nowiki left behind

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53950

If in the source code there is <<nowwiki/>blockquote>, and in VE I select "<blockquote>" and delete it, when I save the <nowiki/> is left behind in the source code. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 08:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed as also happening when any text or element surround a <nowiki/> tag is deleted.[14] Reported as Bugzilla:51950. Thryduulf (talk) 10:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Review changes does not show undos

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53947

If I make 2 changes, review changes, exit review/save dialog, undo last change, and then review changes again, the review shows both changes, though saving only saves the first. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 09:09, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Well spotted. Reported as Bugzilla:51947. Thryduulf (talk) 10:15, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Quick guide to uploading screenshots

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I have written a quick guide to help anyone who wants to upload a screenshot to illustrate their problem. The guide is at User:Thryduulf/How to upload screenshots of Wikipedia, feel free to improve it. Thryduulf (talk) 09:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Excellent, thank you! I have been wondering how best to do that. JohnCD (talk) 13:32, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

+1! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

A layout option suggestion

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53951

It's o'k one has an option to choose the way now.
The new method can be useful. Still I've encountered a sort of inconvenience which is the following: while editing, the toolbar occupies a significant area in the upper third visually and otherwise blocking the text, when we, at the same time, usually have an unoccupied area to the left (where the navigation column is which is often empty much below the existing items); the question is why not to devise a possibility, an option to change its place — I mean the toolbar could be opted to place it either where it's offered to be now – or, otherwise, on the left side of the pane – where it should not be blocking an essential area of the text to edit, in this case the text available without scrolling will be by, approximately (depending on your zoom), a half more than it is now. Josh, linguist (talk) 10:27, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That's a good suggestion, as the navigation panel isn't much use while in editing mode. I've added it as Bugzilla:51951 although I don't expect it to be regarded as a high priority while there are still content bugs to be fixed. Thryduulf (talk) 10:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Editor attempting to reformat information

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53959

I was attempting to correct a minor error at Class 455. Although I was only attempting to change one word, the editor changed,

...in common with the Classes 313 / 314 / 315 / 507 / 508 units."

into

...in common with the Classes <a href=tel:313 / 314 / 315">313 / 314 / 315</a> / 507 / 508 units.

and then complains of a formatting error and refuses to allow the change to be saved. The editor seems to be interpreting the list of class numbers as a telephone number. 86.144.88.156 (talk) 11:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Very odd. I can't reproduce that but I've reported it anyway as Bugzilla:51959. What browser/operating system are you using? Thryduulf (talk) 12:40, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Ipad IOS6 with Safari. 86.144.88.156 (talk) 12:54, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Do you have Skype click-to-call installed? If so, try unistalling it. It f*cks with the page content. Do tell if it worked. 86.30.129.146 (talk) 12:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

No. 86.144.88.156 (talk) 12:54, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Ok, it looks like something in your browser is reinterpreting the "313 / 314 / 315" text as a phone number and converting it into a "tel:" hyperlink, which is usually used by external software for making calls. It could be a browser plugin or gadget that is doing this. If you have any addons installed in your browser, try disabling them one by one (or half at a time if you have a lot) to figure out which one is doing it. Otherwise, I guess it's something specific to your browser/OS combo, so please provide versions! Thanks. 86.30.129.146 (talk) 13:00, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I do not have any (known) extra plug-ins for the browser. I believe that the iPad Safari identifies strings of digits as telephone numbers by default (though it only seems to do it for part of the string in question). Tapping on a string of digits takes you to contacts inviting you to add a name. 86.150.67.86 (talk) 15:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The bug on this was closed as "invalid" as it is caused by a broken third party plugin/extension/browser/or something. They are looking into ways to try and insulate VE/parsoid from broken third party stuff like this though. Thryduulf (talk) 21:18, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Fantastic way to disable Visual Editor completely

Hi, I know a lot of people are interested in getting this out of their face, including myself (and I mostly edit without being logged in), fortunately I found a way to do it if you are using Chrome and have AdBlock installed, it makes it completely go away, works even though I'm not logged in, and I love it :) Steps:

• Click the AdBlock icon next to the Options menu (a white hand on a red background, right of the URL bar)
• Click "Options"
• Select "Customize" tab
• Click "Block an ad by its URL"
• Under "Block URLs containing this text", paste the following (without the quotes): "/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor"
• Under "Domain of page to apply to", type "wikipedia.org"
• Click "Block It!"

Yay, no more VE. As far as I can see it fully fixes this bug without any adverse side-effects. 86.30.129.146 ([[User talk:86.30.129.146|talk]]) 12:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

For those who do edit while logged in, opting out of VE via preferences is much cleaner. (Today, that's done via the editing section of the Gadgets tab; starting tomorrow, that will be done via an option on the Editing tab.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Using "Modern" skin

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For a while I have been puzzled because I was not able to use VisualEditor even though I run a supported browser (Firefox Version 22.0). It turns out to be related to the skin I was using ("Modern"). When I changed my Preferences->Appearance to use the "Vector" skin I had the option to "Edit" and the option to "Edit source" whereas previous I only had the "Edit this page" option which opened the traditional editor. I just thought you should know. Thanks, Dusty

Transient interface issue

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For a few minutes just now I had the experience that all Wikipedia pages were showing the VE interface links (i.e. [edit | edit source] at sections and both tabs at top), even in namespaces where VE is not supposed to be enabled. I was just starting to try and diagnose the issue when it stopped happening and everything went back to normal. Maybe the underlying problem was fixed, I don't know. However, I wanted to leave a note here in case other people start seeing the same thing. Dragons flight (talk) 16:46, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

There are a whole load of VE related patches that have just been implemented. It's not unlikely related to some initialisation working its way through the database. At least that's my lay-persons guess! Thryduulf (talk) 16:52, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it was a temporary problem while the updating process went on; should now be fixed :). I saw it myself editing here, actually, and ran down to 3rd to go "waaaaargh!" at people. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Re: My ID

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Hi,

Link titleWhen I try to log into Wikipedia, I keep getting a message stating I've entered the wrong password, I've been thru' all the pass words I've used online, but Wikipedia insist that there is no email address associated- with my username which is B1N4RYGH0ST, so I cannot I reset my password, please help me rectify this problem as soon as possible.

Regards,

B1N4RYGH0ST.

P'S I look forward to a speedy response, thanks again. 86.41.17.123 (talk) 18:30, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Try putting this in the search box (without the quotes): "Help:Reset password"

This page is for VirtualEditor developers to get feedback on it recent release, not for general-purpose help. Chris the speller ^yack 18:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Unintended consequences for inexperienced editors

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Is there any way that the VE can help prevent newbies from adding reference numbers in manually? There doesn't seem to be any help or guidance for information about doing it right: the icons are inscrutable, but there's no other help, either. EllenCT (talk) 18:51, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps when [#] gets placed on a page in the VE, there should be a pop up box that asks the reader if they mean to create a reference and walk them through the process? Sadads (talk) 19:22, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That's frustrating, but I'm not sure it's a VE problem. In this case, the user added "[27]" to the body of the text, and then added "27" plus a url in the "References" section. That could well have happened in the wikitext editor too.

Having said that, VE could, in theory, pop up a warning message when a user tries to put information directly into the "References" section, telling him/her that it should come from adding footnotes (references) to the body of the page, and show the icon that is used for this. I'll note, first, that VE now doesn't have any warnings (that I can recall, anyway) unless a user's preference for warning about no edit summary has been enable. So warnings aren't baked into the existing philosophy about what VE does. Second, it turns out that one style of footnoting at Wikipedia does put information directly into the "References" section - see, for example, this. So now we're asking VE to figure out, before warning, exactly what kind of footnoting is in use, and apply the appropriate warning. And that raises the issue that VE isn't just for the English Wikipedia, it's for all language Wikipedias, so now we're asking that VE be tailored, language-by-language, for how footnoting is done in well over 200 different language Wikipedias. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:23, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

In theory, yep. I think this is the sort of thing the VE team would like to work on eventually - not for the time being, however :(. fwiw, as a new page patroller I recall seeing this kind of mistake a lot. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

"Add template" should behave the same as [Return]

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53812

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53989

Example: I want to use "Cite web" as a template. I start typing "Cite web" into the search box, in the template dialog. By the time I've typed "Cite w", I see that the "Cite web" (below the search box) is highlighted and has a checkmark below it. So I press [Return]. That works fine.

But if I were to press "Add template" at the point where I've only typed "Cite w", two bad things happen.

• VE decides I want I want to use the (non-existent) template "Cite w", puts that on the left side of the dialog box, and prompts me to add parameters. What should happen: Clicking "Add template" should use the highlighted, checkmarked selection.

• Secondly: I see the mistake, and it's easy to fix: just click "Remove template". Except now I have a completely blank dialog box?!? What should happen: Clicking "Remove template" should re-initialize the dialog.

P.S. As long as I'm reported bugs related to "Remove template", I suggest that the button not be functional when the dialog box has just been initiated, and "New template" is highlighted. I realize that it's unlike the a user will press this button; still, it's a bit unexpected that it works, and the result (again) is a blank dialog box with "X" and "Apply changes" as the two options. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:02, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Bugs highlighted through bugzilla; thanks! :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Speed

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Page takes significantly longer to load the editor and save the alterations. 177.200.105.2 (talk) 19:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep; sorry about that :(. The VisualEditor team is working on making it load faster. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

unable to edit footnotes

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53992

The Unit of Alcohol page has a transcluded footnote. There is a simple typo in that footnote. It is impossible to edit that typo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_of_alcohol

The visual editor is very very frustrating. 149.254.49.84 (talk) 20:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

It does seem to be impossible to grab it. Since you edit anonymously, the normal methods of disabling the Visual Editor are not available to you. If you use a browser that supports AdBlock, adding a filter rule that blocks "modules=ext.visualEditor" will disable it cleanly for you.—Kww(talk) 20:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Which one is transcluded? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Reported as T53992 including a test case.—Kww(talk) 21:29, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Kww :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Android (operating system)

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53993

This page and its archives are ridiculously long so forgive me if something similar has been reported already, but there appears to be an issue with the visual editor which, one the above article, adds the following wikimarkup to every edit:

;
{| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:right"

[15] [16] [17] (not an exhaustive list of diffs) – Steel 20:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Ew. Thrown in bugzilla; thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

A table full of pawns

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T46498

I think the user here was just trying to change some numbers in a table, but VE added pawns galore, including splitting the table in two to create a table with no cells. [18]

Usually when VE messes with tables there is some sort of formatting error there. I can't see one but I'm not very god at spotting them so I'd like others to take a look. If there is formatting errors it's probably a known bug, if there aren't then I'm less certain. Thryduulf (talk) 20:53, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks to me like a consequence of editing a table that's afflicted by T46498. Once Parsoid is confused (as it gets by some of our most common templates, such as {{won}}, {{nom}}, {{n/a}}, {{singlechart}}, {{albumchart}}, and virtually every other template structure that goes into making an article about pop music), all bets are off if you proceed to edit the table anyway.—Kww(talk) 21:05, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeurk :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

It almost works for blocked users!

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53999

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54004

Editing anonymously from my school computers is blocked, and for fun I tried editing a page using VE. It lets me edit the page fully, until I try to click the save page button. No matter how many times I click it it doesn't save, but there's no notification telling me why it doesn't save. A bit weird really. -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 22:27, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I've just tried blocking my alternate user and tried editing my sandbox. "I saw the message: Error loading data from server: Unsuccessful request: You have been blocked from editing." I'm on a shared connection so I don't want to test ip blocks. I've reported it as Bugzilla:51999. Thryduulf (talk) 23:50, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Even for users who do get a message, it is all-but completely inadequate. I've reported this spearately as Bugzilla:52004. Thryduulf (talk) 00:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing normally gives the something like this, but using the VE doesn't do this. However, that one time I tested it I was using an iMac with Safari, don't know how it works on the other school computers which have Windows 7. -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 00:28, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I can infinitely click the save page button... but it just does nothing without telling me what's going wrong. -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 00:33, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I will try it in Win7 Chrome later and see what happens. -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 00:34, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, I just tried it on Win7 Chrome. When I pressed save page, it gave the error about it me being blocked from editing. Don't see why it didn't work in iMac Safari -- ^t numbermaniac ^c 03:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Why ?

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Why are you letting people change information on here ? its dangerous and crazy! Every time I try to get information for my research, I can't trust this sites information! SO ...... Goodbye wikipedia ! This site sucks ... 108.33.77.23 (talk) 00:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a problem with the principles behind Wikipedia rather than Visual Editor feedback. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Answers to questions like this can be found at the Wikipedia:FAQ. Thryduulf (talk) 00:30, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

VE use stats - one article and a suggestion

another recent thread on usage stats for VE → Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 2#Some performance notes

I took a quick look at the editing history of University of Delaware. The first VE edit was done on 20 June ...

 Question: is there a good release date value which we can use for baselining?

...and since then this is the editing pattern where 12 of 26 edits have been created using VE:

editor type	editor count	editor choice
ip	2	Classic
ip	1	VE
new account <50 edits	1	VE
user	1	Classic
user	1	Classic & VE
user	1	VE

Suggestion might there be a method whereby one could take a look at 1 week or 1 month slices across article histories and return some statistics about a) proportion of edits contributed using VE, b) user types vs. editor choice. This combined with c) number of edits during period, d) article class (e.g. start, stub, FA) and e) main topic classifications, might provide a pretty useful look at the dynamics of VE adoption over time. This data, in fact, could serve as part of a peer-reviewed publication on the release and impact of VE. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:07, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

The VE navbox (see, for example, at WP:VisualEditor/FAQ) has, at the bottom, a new section, "Live analystics", with links to WMF dashboards that show hourly editing activity, for VE and the wikitext editor, by type of editor (IP, newly registered, prior registered). This was added, without much (any?) publicity, a couple of days ago. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:41, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Very nice. Thanks for pointing this out. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

weird error

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54036

this error occurs when trying to edit my sandbox (the contents were swiped from a page found when searching for certain userboxes):

Warning unresponsive script.

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.base%2Cmediawiki%2CviewPageTarget%7Cjquery.visibleText%7Coojs%7Cunicodejs.wordbreak&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:124

Firefox 22.0, Windows 7 Starter SP1 (netbook). this error can be reproduced by simply clicking "edit" on my sandbox:

Warning unresponsive script.

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:7

Warning unresponsive script.

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.base%2Cmediawiki%2CviewPageTarget%7Cjquery.visibleText%7Coojs%7Cunicodejs.wordbreak&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:122

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:32

good luck with this new project, and i hope the bugs get worked out soon. :) Octalpuss (talk) 18:17, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

The error messages look like they come from the NoScript add-on for Firefox. I can't speak to why that add-on might object to the specifics listed. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:26, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

you are correct that NoScript is installed, but it is set to allow all wikipedia scripts. for what it's worth, it seems to work after i click "continue". behold:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.base%2Cmediawiki%2CviewPageTarget%7Cjquery.visibleText%7Coojs%7Cunicodejs.wordbreak&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:121

... but then, the first line i typed got linked to something that was linked in the top of the userbox box. Octalpuss (talk) 21:14, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

this one came up today:

Extended content

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.centralNotice.bannerController%7Cext.centralauth.centralautologin%7Cext.uls.displaysettings%2Ci18n%2Cime%2Cinit%2Cinputsettings%2Cinterface%2Clanguagenames%2Clanguagesettings%2Cpreferences%2Cwebfonts%7Cext.uls.webfonts.repository%7Cext.wikimediaShopLink.core%7Cjquery.client%2Ccookie%2CdelayedBind%2Ci18n%2Cime%2CjStorage%2Cjson%2CmwExtension%2Ctipsy%2Culs%2Cwebfonts%7Cjquery.uls.data%2Cgrid%7Cmediawiki.Uri%2Capi%2Ccldr%2CjqueryMsg%2Clanguage%2Cnotify%2Cuser%2Cutil%7Cmediawiki.api.parse%7Cmediawiki.language.data%2Cinit%7Cmediawiki.legacy.ajax%2Cwikibits%7Cmediawiki.libs.pluralruleparser%7Cmediawiki.page.startup%7Cskins.vector.js%7Cwikibase.client.init&skin=vector&version=20130721T171645Z&*:272

i am not good with computers so i will just leave this here. ¯\(°_o)/¯ Octalpuss (talk) 18:28, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

@Octalpuss: I note that the scripts you cite are coming from wikimedia.org, not from wikipedia.org. You need to set "allow all" for both those domains, if you've not already done so. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:40, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton:: yes, it is set to allow all. fwiw, when i click "continue", it does allow me to edit using VE, despite the error. here are the last two:

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.base%2Cmediawiki%2CviewPageTarget%7Cjquery.visibleText%7Coojs%7Cunicodejs.wordbreak&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:121

A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete. Script: http://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=vector&version=20130719T023752Z&*:30

what i am now curious about is how to reduce the size of the font on the top line of my sandbox using VE? i see that it is surrounded by <big></big> tags, and i don't see a way to adjust font size (without editing source). Octalpuss (talk) 03:20, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

@Octalpuss: - VE can't edit html tags (big, small, blockquote, etc.) That will (I assume) not change for quite a while (except blockquote, which is common in articles, and is a higher priority). So, for the moment, you don't have any choice but use the wikitext editor if you want to edit these. There are some workarounds for adding formatted text, by using templates; I don't believe anyone has put together a systematic list (which may be a good thing; I'm not sure we want to encourage that). -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:17, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

lol thanks John Broughton. Octalpuss (talk) 01:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

when clicking edit on this section, this error is returned: "Error loading data from server: novenamespace: VisualEditor is not enabled in namespace 4. Would you like to retry?". okay that aside, i just tried to blank my sandbox, and it ended up placing a bunch of weird characters and some images randomly. Octalpuss (talk) 21:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The first error was a temporary bloop where VE was enabled everywhere (oops) and should now be resolved. The second is...odd. I'm going to throw in a bugzilla entry. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:41, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

No scroll bar in template editor

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This afternoon I am finding that the scroll function on the parameter panel of the template editor is not working for me (Chrome 27). As a result, I can't see or click on any parameters in the add parameter dialog beyond those that are at the top of the list. Obviously, this pretty much castrates my ability to use complex templates with many parameters like {{cite web}}. The same problem occurs whether I add a new template or open the dialog after selecting an existing template. Dragons flight (talk) 00:10, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I can confirm on Chrome 28 running under Ubuntu Linux. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC) P.S. I wanted to upload a screenshot, but the file upload dialog effectively disallowed me from uploading a non-free image (as a screenshot of wikipedia would be) to a non-article page (which this is) unless I lied and said it was free and entirely my work. A very high bar has been set when one cannot honestly upload a screenshot of Wikipedia to a discussion where the subject is shown in the screenshot.

The upload form does need to be a better way of handling screenshots. Screenshots of Wikipedia are free and there is a template for them {{Wikipedia-screenshot}}. I'll write a quick guide to how I do it and link it here.Thryduulf (talk) 08:50, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The guide is now at User:Thryduulf/How to upload screenshots of Wikipedia. Feel free to improve it. Thryduulf (talk) 09:32, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

This is T53739, with a status, as of July 23rd, of "RESOLVED FIXED". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Should be going active on 25th per the last Bugzilla entry. GermanJoe (talk) 08:55, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep; should now be fixed. Let me know if it isn't :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): Scrolling is working with Safari, and Chrome (I assume). But - as I reported previously - in Firefox (at least the Mac OS version, 22.0) the dialog box has (for the last few days; it was okay previously) an apparent problem with font size. And now it's a significant problem - the issue is preventing the scroll bar from being visible, so the new functionality essentially still isn't available to Firefox users. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:22, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Urk; not appearing for me (Firefox - well, Iceweasel - Debian). Is it in bugzilla? I'm afraid things have been kinda hectic and so I may have missed it :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Works for me on Chrome/Firefox 22 on Mac OSX, I can't see a font size problem. Perhaps a reload?--Salix (talk): 19:53, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Works for me too using Firefox 22 on Xubunutu Linux. Thryduulf (talk) 20:57, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF), Salix alba, and Thryduulf: Right you are; I reloaded Firefox and I'm good to go. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:44, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Awesome! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Shortcuts for Saving and Preview

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52897

I can no longer use the alt+c, alt+s and alt+p shortcuts to view the changes and bring up the saving options. Especially for copy and textual edits, which the visual editor is focused on, these kinds of shortcuts ensure that my editing experience is quicker and doesn't require that I use my mouse or some type of complex series of button pushes. Can we re-institute those please? Sadads (talk) 17:17, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

In bugzilla :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I initially read this posting as saying that VE had these shortcuts, but no longer does, and could they be put back. For anyone else with the same impression, that's incorrect; what is being asked for here is that the equivalent (or duplicate) of existing wikitext editing shortcuts be added to the existing VE software. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:49, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

+1 to that. Better described was having trouble figuring out how to add the frustration :P Sadads (talk) 18:10, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

On the bug, you said the user mentioned ctrl+alt+s, for me in chrome, it's just alt+s. When I highlight the the button in the browser it says that it is shift+alt+s. I have never held down the shift though... 18:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Nevermind, didn't read that thoroughly not Okeyes, Sadads (talk) 18:23, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused by the flow of this conversation, I'm afraid :(. What's the current situation/concern/question? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't figure out how to save changes

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54008

I tried VE again. I don't see any buttons to save or cancel the changes. If they are hidden somewhere, I can't find them. Gigs (talk) 17:52, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, this should be obvious - see WP:VisualEditor/User guide#Saving changes. If it's still not obvious after you look at the user guide, what operating system and browser are you using? -- John Broughton (♫♫)

Gigs (talk) 18:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Ubuntu Linux Chrome up to date (not the distro version, the real Chrome) Gigs (talk) 19:02, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's weird as heck. Have you tried hard refreshing? It might be an issue with old JS being served. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:33, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

This, or something similar, is also happening in Firefox on he.wiki, so if hard refreshing (?debug=true) of the JS doesn't work, we'll get it fixed one way or the other. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:42, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I figured it out, it was the "Kill Evil" extension, used to prevent clipboard hijacking and other nasty tricks. Make VE less evil. Gigs (talk) 20:59, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

That extension kills about 4 things that the Visual Editor needs in order to function. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll have you know it's got 0 percent evil (and 40 percent titanium) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:00, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Removing template subpages from the template selection list?

If I'm searching for cite web, I also see, in the list, cite web/doc, cite web/sandbox, cite web/today, cite web/old, cite web/testcases, and more. None of these are templates that users are likely to need; the list would be much cleaner if they were excluded.

Given that occasionally users may want to use these templates, in VE, I suggest a checkbox, checked by default, in the dialog for "New template". The checkbox should labeled something like "Exclude subpages". That way, if a user does in fact want to see these, he/she can do so by unchecking the box. The checkbox could be part of the "Options" area; if so, it should be visible only during the "New template" part of the dialog. A better place probably would be below the "Add template" button, so it's still visible during the search process, and can be checked or unchecked during that. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:19, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd worry about the possibility of wikis where things are stored as subpages. So cite web would be cite/web, cite/journal, cite/book...etc. Is anyone aware of projects that do this, or that have subpages that are templates in their own right? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Have you seen Wikipedia_talk:VisualEditor/TemplateData#Need_some_way_of_categorising_template_data_usage? It's probably not a complete solution, but a first step in the right direction imo. I agree, that template "management" and selection need a bit of improvement. GermanJoe (talk) 20:30, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: While I can see the value of categorising templates by whether they have TemplateData or not, I'm not sure it's on point - I thought one could edit templates in VE even if they lacked TemplateData. (Personally, my suggestion for figuring out which templates are a priority for adding TemplateData would be to create a bot to monitor RecentChanges; every time a template was added to an article, the bot would (a) check it against a master list, and (b) if not on the list, check the template itself; if both tests fail, then the bot would add the template to a "to do" list, perhaps with a count of how many times the template is used in articles, to give a better sense of priority.)

@Okeyes (WMF): Point well taken. I'm going to stick with my suggestion that there be a checkbox, but am modifying it: whether the checkbox is on or off should be a setting that is controlled by each local project. Or, if one wanted to be extreme, each local project would have the option of hiding the checkbox and its caption, entirely. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:38, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I strongly support this suggestion - will make the list of templates much more user-friendly. Great idea. PamD 08:29, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

There are a handful of templates on en.wp that use a /, e.g. {{convert/3}}, so simply turning off all subpages isn't the answer. Thryduulf (talk) 08:44, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Urgh :(. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I can think of three ways round this (listed in the order I thought of them):

1. Set an explicit "I am not a template" statement on pages in the template namespace that are not templates. VE would just not display in the list any page with that statement on it. I think it's reasonable to assume that any page in the template namespace is a template unless it says it isn't. Perhaps something like __NOTTEMPLATE__ at the top of a page, it would need to be either automaticaly never transcluded, meaningless when transcluded or manually surrounded by <noincude>...</noinclude>tags. Ideally it would be able to be included as part of {{documentation subpage}} but I don't know how that is compatible with it not transcluding from the doc subpage to the main template.
2. Same as above but use a category rather than a magic word. Pages in that category would not be included in VE's list.
3. The inverse of the above - exclude all template subpages unless they are explicitly marked (by magic word or category) as being user-facing templates.

I don't know which is best, but I'm leaning towards option 3 as I've also just remembered that there are a gazillion subtemplates that {{convert}} users that the user doesn't need to know exist list {{Convert/LoffAoffSj}}. If subtemplates are used more frequently on other wikis that might make a difference though. Thryduulf (talk) 17:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Would excluding pages in Category:Template_documentation_pages, Category:User documentation pages, and Category:Template sandboxes be a start? Failing that, editing {{documentation subpage}} and {{Template_sandbox_notice}} would let you easily add whatever code you do want to use to exclude templates. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 18:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

If we go down the exclude route then that is the sort of thing I was thinking should be possible. Thryduulf (talk) 18:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Addition of hidden categories

Category:Commons category without a link on Wikidata is added to any article that transcludes Template:Commons category whenever anyone uses VE, e.g. [19]. The category should not be added per Template talk:Commons category#Edit request on 24 April 2013: Check Wikidata errors. DrKiernan (talk) 20:26, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I couldnt reproduce this at [20] or [21], so I tried on "that page" and it didnt happen then either. There must be some additional ingredient to cause it to happen, or the bug has been fixed. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

More on Android

I edit using a Droid RAZR, on desktop not mobile. Starting today, I am seeing VE error messages on user talk pages. The "edit source" option pops up, but my browser crashes when I try that option. I am not consistently able to edit existing sections and have to open a new section to continue a conversation. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 22:27, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

On user talk pages, there should not be an "edit source" option. VE isn't enabled for talk pages, and the label for the edit option is supposed to say "edit", as it always has. What exactly is the VE error message you're seeing, and (sorry to ask) are you sure you're seeing it on a user talk page, as opposed to a user page? (VE is enabled for user pages, though you still shouldn't get an error message.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:34, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

It could very well have been the bug where both buttons displayed in all namespaces temporarily. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I am 100% sure, John Broughton. I comment on user talk pages all the time, but I don't edit other people's user pages. If I see the error message again, I will write down the exact wording and report it here. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 19:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I encountered this yesterday, too, but I haven't seen in since. I think it was a temporary glitch. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Right-aligned image shown left=aligned in editor

At [22] the image of the train is shown left aligned. When viewed in read mode it is right aligned. This might be because the infobox means it can't be shown on the right in the section where it is included, and if so I don't know what would be better. I'm just about to go to bed and haven't got the mental energy to do any testing or reporting. Thryduulf (talk) 01:12, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

VE (or Parsoid) is apparently programmed to keep an image close to where the "File" link is on the page (in this case, the File link is the first wikitext in the "Reaction" section). So it's willing to put the image on the left side of the page (despite the "right" parameter) to keep it roughly in the "correct" place in the section.

By contrast, the Wikimedia software that decides where images go always follows the right/left parameter; if that means that an image isn't visible within (or, in my browser, barely within) the section where the File link is located, well, that's what happens when an editor lays out a page badly.

So yes, Parsoid/VE and the regular display software are handling the image differently. I don't think that's desirable in a visual editor, but perhaps this is the best of a bad situation? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:09, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I 'feel' like more images are being placed on the left in VE than was the case yesterday. It would be good to know if the VE team has made a related change, and why? I agree with John Broughton ; there is no good solution that will work all the time, as lots of images are float'ed right and they appear a long way down from their place in the wikitext.

A small overlay icon in the corner of the image to signify "will float right" would help writers ignore the left placement in VE. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

This seems like a bug. I do know that image alignment is what the team is currently working on, but it wasn't getting deployed until today?? It might be that a change preparing for that has accidently broken something in the deploy from yesterday. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:58, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Mockup of how I think it can be done better

Now I'm awake and have had time to think about it, I reckon that the poor-quality mockup I've added here would be better. That is render the image in the editor where it will appear in the view, but place the slug where the image is called in the source and have a dashed line linking the two whenever either is selected. Thryduulf (talk) 09:53, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Loading never finishes

Problem: I click "edit this page", the VE begins loading, but never finishes. At first I thought this might be a problem with a particular article, but I've tried many different articles—big ones, small ones, with images, without images—and it's the same thing every time.

I've used VE on other computers with no problems, and I can edit source on this computer with no problems, but for some reason VE just doesn't like this computer.

• Browser: Chrome v28.0.1500.72
• OS: Windows 7 Ultimate
• Puter: Com Fixer eMachines D640

Could there perhaps be some browser settings I'm not aware of that could block VE? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 04:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

@Cryptic C62:, Can you open your Chrome JavaScript Console (Under Tools->JavaScript Console), load a page, and tell us what error is in the JavaScript console? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Vandenberg: Here's what I got:

Uncaught TypeError: Object function (selector,context){return new jQuery.fn.init(selector,context,rootjQuery);} has no method 'getVisibleText' load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEditor.base%2Cmediawiki%2Cvi…t%7Coojs%7Cunicodejs.wordbreak&skin=monobook&version=20130725T023359Z&*:16

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 06:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

That is odd. The method 'getVisibleText' was added ages ago. I've tested on Chrome/Win7 Enterprise and dont see the problem. Do you have Chrome addons? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 07:01, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I've also got the following error message:

Blocked a frame with origin "http://www.superfish.com" from accessing a frame with origin "http://en.wikipedia.org". Protocols, domains, and ports must match.

At first I didn't think it was relevant, since the error appeared before I tried to open VE, but I'll let you be the judge now. Extensions list:

• iLivid New Tabs 5.0
• GoPhoto.it 1.5
• Skype Click to Call 6.10
• Smiley Bar for Facebook 1.0
• SpecialSavings.com 2.0

Meep. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:02, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

@Cryptic C62:, could you try disabling all of those addons briefly, and trying again. If it is an addon causing the issue, we'll look at the source code of those addons to find the problem. If it isnt an addon, we'll have to look elsewhere for the problem. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 01:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Vandenberg: I tried VEditing with extensions enabled one last time; didn't work. I disabled everything, it started working! Hooray! I re-enabled them one at a time to try to figure out which one was causing the problem, and it continued working, even when I had all of them enabled again. Very weird. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Heck; the gamma rays win again. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:33, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

VE thoughts

I'm of the opinion that VE is a great idea, but on fundamentally the wrong track. It's far too mouse-based for something based around editing an encyclopedia: The last thing you want to do while typing up text is to lift hand from keyboard and use the mouse to fill in forms. It'd need huge amounts of keyboard shortcuts to be viable... and the VE team seem oddly convinced that using the pre-existing wikimarkup shortcuts is somehow moving backwards.

If I thought the VE team cared about the views of older users, I'd be more optimistic, but the preferences fiasco killed that belief. As such, I have little faith that VE will ever merge in enough wikimarkup-as-shortcuts to ever be practical. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 04:48, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I on the other hand think that VE is a great idea, on the right track, for the limited scope of assisting novice users, for whom it is designed. It is well known that expert users have different requirements than beginners, and that tools designed for performance are usually not user-friendly; it's very difficult to get both, and the VE is not trying to do it. For efficient edit, typing+autocompletion will always be faster than a form-based interface. Fortunately the source editor will never be disabled, so experienced editors can have their expert tool and edit quickly through wikicode. Diego (talk) 05:33, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Except that the VE team have made it extremely clear they want it to be used by old and new editors alike. You don't block the preference to turn VE off if you think it's just for new users. Hell, the whole method for editing sections defaults to VE so strongly that it's an annoyance to anyone who doesn't want to edit in VE, and breaks screenreaders. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 05:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what the VE team want old users to do. Volunteers can't be forced to use tools that they don't like; we are not wage earners that must swallow whatever their bosses decide them to put them through. Those that don't find the new interface practical would simply abandon the project, or find workarounds to disable the new tool (which is exactly what happened with the alpha VE). If the VE developers at some point decide to listen to the veteran's needs and build a tool that support them (either within the VE or as a separate tool), they will entice some experienced editors to start using it. If not, they will keep wondering why the VE has a low adoption rate and people prefer using the "obsolete, old way" of doing things instead of the shiny visuals. Since they've promised that they won't remove the source editor (for now), I don't care. Diego (talk) 08:54, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• VE is expensive extravagance but inspiration to write about WYSIWYG or other topics: Well, now many people can see how difficult, and expensive it can be, to write custom-tailored WYSIWYG software based on partial understanding of the customers and issues for knowledge workers. I think these discussions are interesting, and this is a goldmine opportunity to get people writing articles about all the related issues: WYSIWYG interfaces, "creeping featurism", macro scripting languages, power keys to set text formats, "customer-driven management" versus "Management by Objective" (MBO) or Management By Wandering Around (MBWA), "customer-driven quality", "crisis management", "software disaster", "computer mouse fatigue", "carpal tunnel syndrome", "paralysis of analysis", "secretarial pool" of typists, etc. Plus, in combining the edit-counts for new usernames and long-term usernames, there is the need to explain a "mixture problem" in algebra. As for the users, most will eventually find a way to update pages, perhaps using a combination of different tools, or asking others to do some of the work when too frustrated. Then there are the issues about encouraging the passing strangers to write articles, upload a photo from the phone used to edit a page, and the "Facebookization" of a scholarly computer system. -Wikid77 (talk) 06:45, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe we should move this thread to Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor? These topics are fascinating, but they are not providing feedback on how the current VE works. Diego (talk) 09:53, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Moving my comments to there... -- The Anome (talk) 10:08, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• I have copied my comments as "WT:VisualEditor#VE as inspiration for related articles" as a broader form of high-level feedback, not bug-report level. -Wikid77 (talk) 13:38, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

nowiki around whitespace

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54035

I don't know what the editor did, but he got a <nowiki>...</nowiki> around a whitespace in the middle of a paragraph on this edit. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:54, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Other strange nowiki inside a ref on this edit. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I have raised two for fr.WP (bugzilla:51877 and bugzilla:51961), but they dont look like your diff.s This looks like it is worth raising as a bug. This one looks more similar to cases from enwp. On enwp we have two editfilters catching VE issues: Special:AbuseFilter/550 & Special:AbuseFilter/577. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:05, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I see fr.WP has fr:Spécial:Filtre_antiabus/171 for nowiki ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Here is another instance, the same as the first of NicoVs. What VE didn't like was a space character between the end of a word and a following colon character. JohnCD (talk) 14:21, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I've reported the space-before-colon issue at Bugzilla:52035. If there are other issues that are consistent then keep reporting them. Thryduulf (talk) 15:59, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you sure about the bugzilla number ? 52035 is about Math extension. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 17:24, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I got it both right and wrong! Bugzilla:52035 which I put in my previous comment is " Parsoid adding nowikis around colons preceded by a space", but in the tracked template up top I tranposed the second and third numbers (now fixed) an linked to Bugzilla:50235, which is something about a maths extension that means absolutely nothing to me! Thryduulf (talk) 18:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Article creation: show how to close the popup

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52799

I decided to create an article for Wikipedia:Most_wanted_articles, using VE.

First experience: there's no indication how to close the popup window about creating a new article! Eventually, you find that clicking on it makes it go away, but that's not obvious. How about a conventional "X" or "Acknowledge"?

This will probably be the first of a series of reports! PamD 10:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Being worked on :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

References: a desideratum

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Task T54028

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Task T54029

Wouldn't it be nice if today's date was the default setting for "URL access date"? PamD 11:31, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

For some citation templates, the current date appears in the documentation where an example or skeleton is provided to support copy-paste into the wiki-text of an article. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 12:41, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

You can't copy and paste skeletons into VE though. I can imagine that there are other cases where having a default value is something that would be useful and that is something that sounds more like a job for TemplateData to set and VE to read. I've put these in bugzilla as Bugzilla:52028 and Bugzilla:52029. Thryduulf (talk) 14:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't add anything between templates

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Task T54032

I've got a list of refs; I've added a stub template; I want to add External links. Can't do it in the right place. Tried adding an EL heading in the wrong place, but because I didn't prepare any blank lines after it before formatting the heading, I can't add anything below the heading.

But Mother wants lunch so the experimenting has to stop for now. Stubby little article at Tyson R. Roberts for now (masses of incoming links as authority on umpteen kinds of fish). Hard work in VE. PamD 11:45, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

It took me a while to work out what you meant as there is a blank line if you go back and edit the page again. I deleted that and the stub, re-added a stub-template and came across the problem. There is a workaround though - select the references block, press the right cursor key once, then press enter and a new line is generated. Far from intuitive though so reported as Bugzilla:52032. Thryduulf (talk) 15:14, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

What to do: "(Tags: potential VisualEditor bugs)" in edit summary

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Task T51839

Hi, it looks like this edit has resulted in some kind of formatting error. Should I notify someone of this problem, or just revert to previous version?--FoxyOrange (talk) 14:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

First fix the problem with the article (by revert if necessary), then report the error on this page. I've fixed the article now, but this is probably one of the known bugs with VE and tables - not worked out which one yet though! Thryduulf (talk) 15:21, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure this is either Bugzilla:49839 or Bugzilla:44498, but I'm not sure which. I've reported it at the former as I think that's more likely. Thryduulf (talk) 15:33, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposal for site notice about how to turn VE off

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Proposal:_English_Wikipedia_should_set_up_a_sitenotice_explaining_how_to_turn_VisualEditor_off.
Just a heads up. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 14:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I've moved the link outside the header and given this section a sane title. Thryduulf (talk) 15:35, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Copy and past wikilinks?

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Task T50720

Hi is it really not even possible to move wikilinks around by ctrl x ctrl v? It only inserted the lable but not the Link! This is definitely not an luxury feature but core functionality.--Saehrimnir (talk) 14:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

This is Bugzilla:48720, which has been marked as high priority since the end of may. It was targeted for inclusion in three consecutive deployments in late June/early July. It seems that when it became clear that it would not be ready for the deployment on 11 July the target was removed and a new one not set. @Okeyes (WMF): could you get a status update on this one please. Thryduulf (talk) 15:49, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Certainly :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Answer is that it's being blocked on general copy-and-paste improvements, which necessitate a rewrite Roan is doing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, any idea of timescale yet? Thryduulf (talk) 18:33, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I just spoke to Roan; he estimates "roundabout Wikimania, but no promises". From the explanation it's kind of a complex issue, so I understand their thinking there. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:50, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

On flow conservation

Isn't it supposed to be the equation \sum_{u \in V} f(u, w) - \sum_{u \in V} f(w, u) = 0? Rodichi (talk) 16:13, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

You appear to have posted this in the wrong place. This is for feedback on the VisualEditor rather than on article content which should go on an article talk page. I've copied your question to Talk:Flow network as I think that is relevant place. Thryduulf (talk) 17:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Cut and Paste whole sections

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T35105

So I needed to change the order of two sections in an article and tried cut and pasting a whole section. Shall we say it was less than successful. It does not preserve references, links or formatting. My first attempt put the whole section in the heading style.--Salix (talk): 18:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah :(. It's known, and is one of the big bugs, imo. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

how do I turn this off?

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

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This really gums up editing, leaving me twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to catch up. How do I turn it off? — kwami (talk) 18:25, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

• Go to the "editing" tab of your preferences, tick the box marked "Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta" (it's near the bottom of the page in the "Usability features" section), and click the "Save" button in the bottom left. Thryduulf (talk) 18:36, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

  Alternately, just hit "edit source" and get the old editor, of course :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I've updated the edit notice with the opt-out message, but I've not touched the FAQ. I'll do that when I come back later if nobody has beaten me to it! Thryduulf (talk) 18:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Opt-out question, invalid token

This doesn't work and while I appreciate it is a beta version, why is there no link to get rid of it? I get an error relating to an invalid token. GPSJane (talk) 18:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Look at the bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing for the opt-out option. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:06, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Opt-out

I've roughed in a page giving instructions on how to turn VisualEditor off. Additional editing is welcomed. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I welcome this. However, I do hesitate to stop using the hide gadget and instead use the official opt-out. My hesitation is based on these words: "This option is recommended, as it will automatically give you a chance to try VisualEditor again when it's more developed and fully-featured." As I don't want to try VisualEditor ever again, the official opt-out might not be for me after all. Manxruler (talk) 23:19, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Right Side Bar

Not sure why it disappeared when I was trying to edit the population. Please help and I apologize for the error. Eddiz (talk) 23:23, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

this edit was reverted by another editor because the information added by Eddiz was already in the article - which the Eddiz would have seen if he could see hidden text. Which he could not, because he was using VE. He also managed, via that edit in VE, to totally munge the large infobox on the right. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

@Eddiz: Just to make it clear, John Broughton is expressing frustration at the limitations of VisualEditor, not at your edits. Don't worry about the glitch, and thank you for taking the time to tell us about it. If you have any other feedback about the visual editor, we'd love to hear it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

And, just to be clear, I also pointed out to Eddiz that VE was problematical, and thanked him for posting at VE/F. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Renumbering of references

Noted when editing the Toronto Star article. References 1-5 are in the infobox. When clicking "Edit" anywhere on the page (i.e. by clicking either the "edit this page" button or the "Edit" link at any section header), the references all renumber to exclude the references in the infobox, and the reference list drops the references in the infobox. Risker (talk) 05:52, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I've forgotten the number, but that one's already been spotted. I believe it's covered by T52474.—Kww(talk) 06:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

"Opt-out" option being re-enabled

James D. Forrester wrote on the mailing list last night:

Because I understand the level of concern that this matter is causing, I

am changing my mind on this. For the duration of VisualEditor's "beta" period, there will be an opt-out user preference. This will be deployed tomorrow morning, San Francisco time. Once VisualEditor is out of 'beta', this preference will be removed.

As others have explained better than I, we think that users will be ill-served by this opt-out, and I hope that as few users as possible will choose this way to degrade their experience and deprive the community of their input. Instead of endlessly arguing the point about this, I'd rather

my team and I spending our time working to make our sites better.

I personally would like to see this option enabled indefinitely, but this is better than the current situation! Zell Faze (talk) 13:28, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Yay! Resentful push-back is enough to move people who is not listening. I'm making a note here: big success!!1! Diego (talk) 13:43, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, the option to disable while in beta is there in the "Editing" tab, but it didn't disable it. Also, there are both "edit" and "edit source" links for sections on this page, but VE's edit link gives a namespace error. Pseudonymous Rex (talk) 16:22, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, it works now. Huzzah! Pseudonymous Rex (talk) 16:34, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

@Diego: that's the wrong conclusion to draw. The decision was not made because of resentful pushback; it was made because of sustained, reasonable complaints from reasonable people. If you want to take note of that, feel free. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

The "making a note" phrase Diego used is from Still Alive which was a bit of a meme a couple of years ago. It's difficult to judge in what tone it was being used. Thryduulf (talk) 16:45, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

For the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:56, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

This is why I need to work <14 hour days sometimes; I have no idea about pop culture. I got introduced to Archer and Venture Bros yesterday, however, which makes me happy. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

This one of only about 2 video game reference I know (certainly for anything newer than Sonic the Hedgehog), and that's only through having a couple of friends who were very into Portal (the other being Team Fortress 2)! Thryduulf (talk) 17:31, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it's unlikely that so many editors will "deprive the community of their input", by opting out, that the VE team won't find out about problems, or won't get a good understanding of their impact. I've seen a lot of sustained work here, by volunteers (not to mention the stressed WMF staff), to help make this project a success, and I don't think that's going to slacken off as VE gets better. If (say) half the community opts out - well, that leaves the other half still helping on the VE project. It also means more time (and less irritation) for the half that opted out to do their regular things at Wikipedia, improving it, which is a good too. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:20, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you, and this is the argument I made; that most of the people providing useful bug reports (you, Pam, Thryduulf, Excirial) etc are not looking to hit the button, just for the button to be available for those who are. I'm tremendously grateful for the work you and others have put in. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Now we just have to work on making this the default setting for new accounts until VE works. It still frustrates me that we insist on exposing new editors to a tool that our own experience and WMF's quantitative research both demonstrate doesn't achieve the objectives for the project. VE may be the wave of the future, it may be wonderful next year, but it isn't functional enough to expose newbies to right now.—Kww(talk) 19:06, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Okeyes - I like the way you try selling this as you listening to the editors. To me taking so long and requiring so many people to say something is not something to be proud of. Consensus on this matter, at least amongst en.wiki editors has been clear for some time and yet only now does this happen and only then "temporarily" despite most editors wanting the option permanently. Am I against VE, no, I think it's a wonderful idea and will help a lot of people. Do I want to use it, also no. I'm a computer person who codes, spends hours looking at data text files etc. I would much prefer editing raw wikitext to the VE - I can work out what's happening with the first much better than the second. I accept I'm probably in the minority on this but I don't like VE being pushed down my throat like it was. It's not like you had to do much extra to cater for us that don't want to use VE - the capability to edit wikitext was already there. Yet there was a WMF / developers know best attitude which seemingly ignored the views of many editors who are happy editing wikitext and who also happen to be a lot of the experienced editors that keep this site running. This method of deployment of WMF / developers know best followed by eventually backtracking after a large backlash (which has always needed to be much, much larger than it should need to be to get attention) has to stop. The backlash here was very predictable but WMF / developers either didn't bother to find out or didn't care. I don't think you can now take any credit for the very late correction. Slightly ranty but I'm fed up of being dictated to by WMF / developers. Start listing to the editors more. How long do you think you'd be able to keep en.wiki running for without the senior editors / admins? I reckon you'd struggle to last 24 hours but this is the very group you're annoying most. The WMF would do well to remember that and try to at least engage us more else there will be very few left. Dpmuk (talk) 22:49, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not trying to sell it as anything, Dpmuk. I'm saying that I as an individual argued for it for those reasons. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Just to be clear I was referring mainly to your first comment the one starting "that's the wrong conclusion to draw" which seemed to be a comment about WMF / developer thinking as a whole, not your personal thinking. Your personal thinking on this seems sensible, WMF / developer thinking, as a group, seems extremely misguided - there seems to be an obsession with getting new editors on board while not caring about existing editors or tools to make running wikipedia easier. Dpmuk (talk) 14:16, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, and could you explain how finding out what users want is wasting time, that seems to be implied by the original mailing list post, and getting users on board if that's not possible, is a wate of time - "Instead of endlessly arguing the point about this, I'd rather my team and I spending our time working to make our sites better." I suspect part of the problem here may well be communications issues but statements like that hardly help editors to feel there opinions are valued. Dpmuk (talk) 14:20, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't, because I didn't make the statement; James is speaking for himself, and I encourage you to ask him directly about that for greater transparency :). My first comment was largely personal, but I've been here for two years, and I don't think I've ever seen a decision made because of sheer outrage. Outrage from reasonable points, yes, but the reasonable points are what swings it. The outrage is, at best, superfluous. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to continue this on your talk page as I think we're moving away from VE feedback to more communication issues which is a slightly different subject. Dpmuk (talk) 17:26, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I thank the WMF for finally listening, but do think that the announcement of this is, at best, rather tonedeaf. Also, while I fully expect and encourage the WMF to turn VE back on for everyone when they're sure it's ready, I really don't think it would help anyone if they remove the ability to disable it again.

For one thing, the VE actively rejects even the most basic wikimarkup support. That means that many, perhaps even most old users will never accept it. In the example linked, the WMF is rejecting a choice between a keyboard-based "type [[link]]" in favour of a mouse-based interface, a choice that will never be as fast as keyboard alone. This seems counterproductive, petty, and frankly, a sign that the WMF don't understand what people actually like about Wikitext. As such, I have strong doubts VE will evolve into anything I'd want to use anytime in the next three years.

By keeping the option to disable VE, the WMF may cause a lot of people who dislike VE to choose not to use it, but the alternative is to force the people who dislike it to use it anyway - and that's a good way to make people hate VE and you.

So far as I can tell, the VE development was done based solely on the desires of new users. Whilst they're an important audience, by cutting out older users from the research, the VE team have basically assured that old editors would be dissatisfied. Until that changes, I do not see myself ever willingly using VE, and would stop editing Wikipedia if given no other option. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:50, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

@Adam Cuerden: It's incorrect to say that we're rejecting markup inside the VisualEditor "in favor of a mouse-based interface". In the case of links, for example, the keyboard shortcut is the same that's used as in many other rich-text editing environments: Ctrl+K.

Adding a link to the page "Ten Commandments" in wikitext:

1) Use search to ensure I'm linking to the right page

2) Type [[Ten Commandments]] into wikitext editor

Same result in VE:

1) Type Ctrl+K, followed by "Ten Co", cursor down, enter, enter

As a nice plus, if I want to view the page I linked to, I can right-click (yes, mouse) the link in the editor and open it in a tab. No need to preview or run a search in a new tab.

No need to search at all, and number of keypresses for the link reduced from 20 to 10.

There's still more room for optimization, but I hope the point comes across that the goal is very much to build interfaces that are efficient and discoverable. Yes, tying wikitext into VisualEditor would be moving backwards. Yes, there are cases where VisualEditor is slower -- e.g. if you use certain templates frequently, and have the parameters memorized, or if you're using the citation toolbar in the old editor. But our goal is to continue to improve on all fronts.--Eloquence* 07:18, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, if Wikuitext isn't tied in, I will never even consider using it. I see absolutely no reason to learn a whole new set of shortcuts if the VE team bizarrely think that using the shortcuts already there is "moving backwards". That's an insult to everyone who worked to make Wikipedia what it is today.

If the Visualeditor team cared about bringing in new users, they'd make the transition easy. Instead, they'd rather create something with no connection to Wikimarkup.

And let's presume for a moment that VE succeeded in replacing Wikimarkup for a majority of new users. (although the tests say all it does is drive users off). Who, then, would be able to maintain templates? Handle tricky issues like the maths code - you're never going to wean mathmaticians from LaTeX, you know - or deal with all the structure and maintenance that needs something more powerful than VE could ever be? VE can't train users to use Wikitext, anything learned on it is wasted training when it comes time to skip over to the editor that actually has all the features - and if you really think coding templates will ever be practical in VisualEditor, I'd like to see a short plan for how you'd handle that.

A user compared VisualEditor to New Coke a while ago, something that everyone involved in the creation of thought was great, but which only served to let them know how much people cared for the old product.

VisualEditor was a good idea, that was strangled at birth by a misguided desire to be different from what came before, and a stubborn refusal to ever listen to editors (or even to consult editors) that have been on Wikipedia for years. My first Featured Article was seven years ago now, and, through thick and thin, I keep coming back to Wikipedia because I support its goals of free content. And I'm glad the WMF are experimenting, but for god's sake, stop only polling people whose first experience with Wikipedia is five minutes into the testing. That's one important dempographic. The people actually editing Wikipedia are another demographic you seem to think are worthless. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:30, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Erik, by the time the VE developers finish making an efficient and easy to use interface, it will by necessity resemble Wikitext a lot. You seem blind to the fact that wikitext is a very good tool for the problem it solves; this is what has allowed Wikipedia to grow this size - its base is a really sound one. Every time you say how wikitext is obsolete or hard to use, I die a little death inside.

There are tasks for which the simple approach of a visual editor are simply not adequate, and one based on editing a stream of tokens is superior. See for example:

• How would you efficiently create a table with all the links to the different treaties of Paris, changing the first letter to lowercase?
• How would you quickly reformat this table into this list with the VE? I can do it fairly quickly with search-and-replace techniques on the source code.

Of course Wikitext has drawbacks, and the VE would do well to improve templates' discoverability and copy the previous reference tools; but that shouldn't be at the cost of creating a whole new way of creating articles just for the sake of novelty. Visual editing is so 1980's, and better interaction models have been invented since then. VE should grow towards WYSIWYM (where M=mean), not WYSIWYG, i.e. a tool allowing editors to type semantic tags directly or through wizards, not an editor based around syntax pretty-printing.

By the time the VE is able to support all tasks that wikicode support today, it will be nearly as complex as wikitext, and much less welcoming in many ways (some complex tasks are made more discoverable by the VE, true, but also much less efficient by the new interface). Hiding all markup complexity from newbies is making them a disservice, since learning templates and categories is needed to become an experienced editor, and templates and categories are best edited as raw text (i.e. good old copy-paste), rather than through wizards and slower form-based dialogs. This is not incompatible with making them discoverable, but modal dialogs are discouraged for a reason, and they're not the only way to get a usable interface. An Archy-type project is what you should be trying to achieve (minus the ZUI), as it's the best model for the kind of semantic-text-oriented editing that a wiki requires. Diego (talk) 11:11, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

new editor is creating artifacts

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54107

in the 'Karma in Hinduism' page every time i edit the page using the new cool uber-awesome fantastic (but slow to load) editor it changes an unrelated paragraph next to an image. You can see the edits and artifacts around this time:

8:32 PM Thursday, July 25, 2013 (UTC) 201.27.126.60 (talk) 20:32, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

This one is very wierd. Here are the diffs from 201's editing[23][24]

I've been able to reproduce this[25][26], ... intermittently: [27]. I havent seen any other junk-insertions that insert different junk each time, and sometimes don't insert junk at all. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 05:53, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks both :). Now in Bugzilla. A regression after yesterday's deployment, maybe? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:09, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

This is caused by an image followed immediately by a wikilink. I suspect this doesnt happen too often, but often enough it is going to be problematic. It would be good to do an impact analysis to identify all pages with this syntax and fix them all at once, taking the pain out of this bug and letting the dev team work on the bigger problems. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:00, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Wrong tab-order on the "Edit summary" window

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

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54080

Edit page, then click save to get "Edit summary" Window. Don't touch mouse, put some description, using the keyboard. Then we want to change checkboxes "minor edit" or "watch page", without using the mouse. Press <Tab> key, and you will be directed to the link "minor edit" not to the checkbox. second Tab - is "Save Page" button. Next - "review changes". Next three tabs - for links in the footer of this windows.

Is it possible to change tab order to this (e.g. using tabindex argument or via rearranging divs and other elements):

• 1. "description"
• 2. "minor edit checkbox"
• 3. "watch page checkbox"
• 4. "Save page"
• 5. "review changes"
• 6. anything else

Or even move "save page" and "review" to be just after "description" — Preceding unsigned comment added by A5b (talk • contribs) 26 June 2013

Looks like a new new one. Tracked.--Salix (talk): 05:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Salix :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing infobox followed by inability to edit references

If this was reported / dealt with earlier, thanks for saying so and pointing. Sequence of events with VE ...

1. started editing University of Delaware with VE
2. opened the main infobox template for editing
3. found that the reference I wanted to update had been added with ref-tags and template in the 'endowment' field as text in the field
4. edited the text to introduce archiveurl, archivedate and deadurl parameters
5. closed the infobox to return to editing the rest of the article
6. found that selecting ref elements did not call up the edit-reference icon, thus making it not possible to edit other references / citations on the page.
7. saved the page with just the infobox / referenced edit having been completed
8. confirmed save OK -- the diff

Regards --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:41, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That's odd. I can't reproduce that in Firefox 22 on Linux, which browser/operating system are you using? Thryduulf (talk) 08:00, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Chrome 28 on Linux. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 20:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Strange reference formatting change

Anyone got an explanation for this one, where VE apparently decided it didn't like the reference tag formatting?—Kww(talk) 06:06, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The parsoid topfails is full of examples of the parser standardising ref names and removing spaces inside ref tags that only have a name parameter. The parsoid team call that a stylistic change rather than a semantic change. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:15, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Is there a bugzilla? Dirty diffs are unacceptable.—Kww(talk) 14:35, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Just so it is clear, as I clarified in this wikitech-l mail, stylistic changes show up as dirty diffs only when refs/templates are actually modified. Even there, we have started to track original whitespace to restore it. But, at this time, it is not possible to completely eliminate all stylistic changes. Our goal has been to limit the scope of such changes only to modified sections. That said, for this particular example that Kww linked to, this is a bug in VE (that we identified couple days back and Roan is working to fix) where occasionally, <ref>s show up as modified when it reaches Parsoid (even when it is not). Since it shows up as modified, Parsoid uses the full serialization algorithm and introduces the diffs. Once that VE bug is fixed, these kind of diffs should go away. Ssastry (talk) 15:49, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing sections

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T50429

When wanting to edit a section of an article, it is highly frustrating to wait (what feels like ages) for the entire page to reload with the microsoft word-style buttons. Can we make it possible to just edit individual sections like with the original editing style?--Coin945 (talk) 08:44, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That is an often requested feature - see T50429 for the current status. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 09:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

You can continue to use the original ("source") editor to edit sections, just click the "edit source" link rather than the "edit" link by the section title. At present you have to hover over the title line for a second or so before the edit source link appears, but you can disable this by using the code shown in the #Edit Source is upsetting. When reading is upsetting section a few sections above this one. Thryduulf (talk) 09:29, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I can't help but feel that section editing and VE are and should be mutually exclusive. If you want the WYSIWYG effect then you have to see the whole article to see how the section you're amending changes the overall structure and appearance of the whole article. I know it can be a bt of a pain to have to manipulate a whole article especially large ones but I think the benefits outweigh the downsides especially as sections are easier to identify in VE rather than walls of wikitext. NtheP (talk) 09:47, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The developers plan for VE is that clicking "edit" should be instantaneous and without a reload, and therefore performance should not be a problem when you want to edit a single section. Unfortunately the architecture required to achieve this won't be in place for at least one year. Diego (talk) 09:50, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

hey!!!

i dont feel good with this new sistem of edition. simply not good Cheposo (talk) 12:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

@Cheposo: You're not alone. Is there anything in particular that you would like to see changed? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 15:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The ↵ character

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54096

This edit added the ↵ character, as well as screwing several references and removing some wikilinks. --Redrose64 (talk) 12:14, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That is caused by copy and paste between VE's. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 14:38, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

To elaborate - you can copy/cut and paste within a page when editing in VE, but you can't copy/paste between pages using VE, at least not yet. That's on the (long) to-do list of the VE development team. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

Well, I thought VE could do a cut/paste within a page, but apparently not even that, per this posting, above. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:06, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Per #Copy and past wikilinks? this should hopefully be fixed around the time of Wikimania. Thryduulf (talk) 21:40, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Link formatting trick

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54103

• Case 1a: Find or create a piped link of the form [[Title|'Anchor']] (including the apostrophes). VEdit the page, highlight Anchor and hit Italics. When the page saves, the result is [[Title|'''Anchor''']], which produces a bolded link.

• Case 1b: Find or create a piped link of the form [[Title|'Anchor']] (including the apostrophes). VEdit the page, highlight 'Anchor' and hit Italics. When the page saves, the result is [[Title|''<nowiki>'Anchor'</nowiki>'']], which produces an italicized link.

Interesting. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

This is a parsoid serialization bug. Thanks for the report. Will work on a fix. Ssastry (talk) 16:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual editor slow

I think the visual editor is slow and it never saves the edits I make until I press the " Return" button. I mean it definitly needs alot of improvement.--BabbaQ (talk) 16:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

It is slow. On long pages it takes two minutes and more before you can modify anything and it takes way too long to store the changes (mostly because of the fact that with VE so far it is not possible to edit a section only, so the whole article must be transmitted to the servers. It is so slow that I believe WP will loose editors because of this. --Matthiasb (talk) 19:14, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The underlying issue is that the new system requires a great deal of local computation, and so performance is dependent of the speed of your personal computer (as well as the efficiency of your browser's javascript). Old computers and browsers will be slow under this framework, though even modern computers are rather sluggish on large pages. For some features also requires many back and forth HTTP requests, adding a layer of latency for slow connections. Under the old system, most of the computation occurred on the WMF servers, which made the experience more consistent than it is now. Better optmimzing what is computed, when, and how should offer potential for improvement, but I don't think this system will ever be as responsive as wikitext for most use cases. Dragons flight (talk) 19:32, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Example with an 88 kb article. Many if not most editors are contributing with hardware like was used in this example – or even older, I think. --Matthiasb (talk) 21:27, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

"VisualEditor: The present and future of editing our wikis" at Wikimania

[28] lists this rather interesting event. I look forwards to hearing about the inevitable booing and chaos as they try to sell this idea to a hostile room. I can't imagine the VE team can have even the minimal humility needed to keep the editors on their side.

And I really do think it's important that they have to face editors face-to-face on this one. They're never going to listen to editors who write in text. They're going to need to experience personally the users' opinion on how poorly they've handled the launch, the planning, and, most of all, how their dismissal of wikitext is backwards and unacceptable. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Adam, I don't think it's necessary to use the word "fuckup" here. In person at Wikimania, yes. Here, no. (I don't really mean that to be sarcastic. The WMF people and Wikipedia editors who read this page already know what you think. Most of the Wikipedia editors already agree with you, but not entirely with your wording.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 19:34, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

My apologies, I've replaced it with a description. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:11, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting, especially the submission. By Wikimania, we hope to have set VisualEditor to be the default way people edit all Wikipedias : is it the explanation many editors asked trying to understand why the schedule was so important ? --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 21:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I hope, in the Q&A at the session, this statement comes up (from that submission): "We expect the VisualEditor to be a better way to edit not just for new users, but also for experienced community members – whether it is with templates, references, categories or other areas." It will also be interesting to see, by August 9th (the start of Wikimania) what percentage of all edits are being done using VE, versus the wikitext editor. And perhaps an up-to-date count of how many editors have opted out would be informative. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:14, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Something odd

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54124

The top part of this diff with the duplication / breaking of the <br> tag is rather odd. Dragons flight (talk) 19:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed that is rather odd. I've reported this as Bugzilla:52124 (although it might be a duplicate of Bugzilla:51304). Thryduulf (talk) 22:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Panel tint

I want to mention it here in case anyone else likes it. For a while now I have been using:

.ve-ce-surface { background: #F8FFF8; }

To tint the entire VE edit space a soft green. I find this very helpful for making obvious when I am in edit mode and when I am in reader mode. Dragons flight (talk) 20:07, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Which page do we add that to? Our personal css or something more specific? Thryduulf (talk) 21:44, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Personal CSS. (Unless of course you want to discuss doing that for everyone.) Dragons flight (talk) 21:56, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I wouldn't object to doing that for everybody, but having read James' comments at Bugzilla:48008 about how the design philosophy is that there is no difference between reading and editing I suspect there would be serious "push back" about doing so. Thryduulf (talk) 22:14, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) T50008 relates: devs don't like the idea, feel that edit mode and reading ought to be seamless...? Sounds daft to me. It's been ranked as "Lowest enhancement", which is presumably only one step up from "No". Others might like to contribute to the discussion there. I favour a red bar down left margin, but pale green surface would do fine too (perhaps would need to be configurable by editor, for colourblindness and other visual impairments?) PamD 22:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for this tip, though for me the color change was too subtle. I tried #000000 and found it's great for finding and working on just links, and it keeps me out of all kinds of other trouble ;-) Chris the speller ^yack 02:13, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

#000000 is, well, a bit harsh, unless you really do want to limit yourself to link editing. I tried #F8FFF0, which provides a light pink background that I like. The suggested F8FFF8 was too subtle for me as well. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:27, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I've changed mine to #FFFDD0 which is a yellow shade that contrasts sufficiently for me and is nothing like the pink of a protecteed page. Thryduulf (talk)

existing error

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53915

While putting in stub templates in article "Zhang Shi (prince)" using the visual editor, when trying to save I got the text

"Error loading data from server. Unsuccessful request: Invalid token."

This appears to be an existing bug.

will try using the Edit source. Successful Rpyle731^talk 22:25, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this is Bugzilla:51915 which has been assigned and marked as high priority. Thank you for the report as it makes devs aware of the scale of the problem, Thryduulf (talk) 22:35, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual editor is still a disaster

Its obvious at this point that the WMF isn't going to admit the huge mistake they made in releasing this piece of crap but its clear that's how the vaste majority of people feel. Its been more than a month since its beta release and more people are screaming for the madness to stop than ever before. People are flooding talk pages with bugs, complaints and comments. I took a break for a couple weeks to see if things got better, they haven't. The application is garbage and needs to be removed until its fixed. I'm logging back off now since this is no longer about helping editors but the WMF being pointy. Visual Editor is officially driving away editors because the WMF doesn't want to do the right thing. What a shame. Kumioko (talk) 00:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it is important that people continue to flood "talk pages with bugs, complaints and comments." Without that, we could be ensured of a total failure to advance VE from beta to pre-production. It is when people stop talking and just walk away, leaving a silent wasteland, that things are truly over. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 00:44, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Still, it's disappointing to read this (from a July 17th meeting of WMF executives and VE staff):

Sue [Gardner]: Jimmy [Wales] might cover VE in his Wikimania keynote. My general sense: we are getting less pushback than I personally expected. Time has passed for a mere "help us test this" message

Trevor [Parscal]: What convinces community members is us reacting to their concerns and needs, incorporating feedback

Philippe [Beaudette]: Yes, we fixed ~200 bugs. also: this whole project has been a reactive one from the very beginning, taking up concerns/needs that were voiced in the community for a very long time

Sue: Imagine all the awful things (breakages etc.) that *could* have happened, but didn't. Do we have some illustrative examples of people whom VE empowered? Of "wanted" editors, e.g. subject matter experts?

Erik [Möller]: We have some, ID'ed by community liasons. e.g. comments on feedback page

Erik: Most contentious issue: made a conscious decision not to offer an "off" switch

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:17, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That's part of the problem with things in Wikipedia these days. The WMF is so full of themselves and their "accomplishement" of VE that they are hearing the comments and not listening to them. They are clearly trying to justify a decision that was bad when it started and getting worse by the day. Yeah they fixed 200 bugs but there are double that still to be fixed. That also eludes to what many of us have been telling them. That this early release had so many problems is a testemant to the poor planning and implementation. The WMF can deny it all they want and continue to pat themselves on the back but this is nothing but crap and the way the WMF is going about it is just piss poor. Kumioko (talk) 01:37, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

The visual editor is completely useless for anything other than the simplest tasks and its design is fatally flawed. Until the WMF wakes up and acknowledges that unpalatable truth nothing is going to change. How many years have they been working on this crock for now? Eric Corbett 01:43, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

That link to the minutes goes nowhere. Can you fix it?—Kww(talk) 01:50, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

It's meta:Metrics and activities meetings/Quarterly reviews/VisualEditor-Parsoid/July 2013. John accidentally linked mw: instead of meta:. I have fixed his post. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:00, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Sue stated, "My general sense: we are getting less pushback than I personally expected". Really? With all the comments, questions, complaints and bugs and dozens of venues by hundreds of users. This was less than they "expected" and they still went ahead with it? They trully are as stupid as I thought. The release of VE was nothing short of an F'ing disaster and they thought it would be worse. Simply appalling. Kumioko (talk) 02:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if your "dozens of venues" knocks the nail on the head. They can't get a full of idea of the response as it's too fragmented and they seemed to have overlooked developing methods of effectively communicating with editors and vice versa. Dpmuk (talk) 04:54, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, VisualEditor is not targeted at the thousands of users who've made it through the gauntlet and figured out how to edit with wikitext; we know it, and we're not all that likely to change. I have the sense that the WMF isn't the least concerned that about 95% of "old user" edits are done using wikitext. That, to me, is a problem, because it creates a serious social gap between generations of users. We're not that far off from having only a small percentage of "old hands" being able to explain what we consider to be basic editing practices to new users, and we don't know very much about the new users who are joining at this point and won't for a while. The last time that we had a major gulf was around 2006-07, and we have never really got past the problems with socializing a large group of new users whose activities were "different" from other editors. It was at about that time that so many of the issues relating to "civility" and mutual respect started to erode. It concerns me that there's little evidence of thought on the part of the WMF as to how these new editors are going to be socialized into the communities. Of course, I could be wrong, and there could have been lots of thought about this, but that thinking hasn't been shared with us. I just keep pointing to the fact that they've got half a dozen short-term community liaisons, and once they're out of the picture, there's no reason to believe that the community is going to be in any position to support all these new editors using software that is largely terra incognito for the rest of the community. One thing that I know for a fact much of the developer community (both staff and volunteers) hasn't realised is that most of what they are doing now is as much social engineering as it is technical engineering. The code that they write isn't just keeping the servers running. It's intended to directly affect socialization and interaction on the projects. They need to own that fact, and to be willing and able to deal directly with the human effects of their work. Risker (talk) 05:05, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

What worries me even more is that the new experience has such profoundly inferior capabilities. How can we explain to editors that a table is the best way to go for certain kinds of data when they can't edit tables? That using templates like {{singlechart}} is better than manually coding links to charting sites when VE can't display the output of the template correctly?—Kww(talk) 05:19, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, it's extremely irritating and having to click back all of the time because of habit of clicking the edit button and it going to the visual editor. I've hidden it in my preferences at least. It is very worrying to me that the foundation seem to think that this has been well-received.. Tibetan Prayer ^᧾ 11:31, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Risker, from reading the various WMF messages and the some of the long-term planning documents, I believe the WMF's likely response to your concern about having two communities is that they ultimately want there to be only one community united in their use of VE. In other words, VE is intended to be the future for old and new users alike. In the short-term, that means adding more functionality and tools to VE in the hope that it will eventually have usability and features sufficient to entice old-timers like us to use it (at least part of the time). In the medium term, VE will be enabled on most non-talk namespaces (aside from specialty spaces like Template and Mediawiki), while Flow will be bringing a VE-like experience to talk pages. This will make it harder to avoid using VE. We would also start seeing features, via Flow (and possibly in VE as well), that are hard or impossible to replicate without using visual editing. The long-term plans calls for completely replacing wikitext with HTML+RDFa as the primary storage medium for page content. Wikitext would still be available, but only to the extent that Parsoid can convert HTML+RDFa to and from Wikitext. At that point, any wikitext constructions that Parsoid still can't represent would cease to be possible. In addition, Wikitext editing could become slow due to the need to do HTML+RDFa to wikitext transforms on demand, while VE would become faster as it would no longer be required to generate wikitext. It is clear that WMF sees VE as the future of the interface and HTML+RDFa as the future of the backend. The WMF has no plans to eliminate wikitext, but if they follow through with their plans as currently outlined then the side effect is that wikitext would become a legacy product that doesn't support all the features of VE and possibly has a degraded experience due to added conversion overhead. The WMF plan is for a future where ultimately most users are using VE for most things. That would avoid the two communities problem, but getting there will require both a VE experience that is much better than today across many classes of users and also getting the existing user base to accept and use VE (hopefully because they want to, but possibly because they have to). Dragons flight (talk) 18:50, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

They claim to want two communities united in VisualEditor, but flat-out refuse to provide even the most basic compatibility options, like '''bold''', ''italic'', and [[Link]] wikitext support. The whole lot of them are mad, bad, and dangerous to be in charge of the project. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:01, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Adam please try to tone down your words. While that is a quote, and the actions of the VE team are clearly not to the liking of many people, they are not "mad" and both they and VE are far from "dangerous" ("bad" is subjective). You have made your point many times, and while I agree with some of what you say the way you say it is frequently bordering on offensive. Thryduulf (talk) 21:36, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Why tone it down. Editors all over the project have been saying the VE wasn't ready for months. There are still major bugs and missing functionality. The WMF refuses to accept that VE is a failure and stonewalls or ignores comments to the contrary. The VE project has exhausted virtually every friend they have in the community and have turned supporters of the project against them because they rushed it. I wished I could be at Wikimania to see all the complaints and comments in person. The VE and the conduct of the WMF is a perfect example of why Wikipedia is a ailing project. Kumioko (talk) 16:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Why tone it down Because people are far more willing to listen to reasoned, rational arguments and because insults and personal attacks are likely to be counter-productive. I agree it's far from ready, that it has been pushed far too soon and that they have been ignoring this for months, I disagree that acting like a child about it will help. I too wish I could be a Wikimania to see if they finally grok the community's view that VE is alpha software still. Thryduulf (talk) 16:37, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

But the developers of VE, the WMF nor the people that are acting as community liaisons aren't listening. The nice way or otherwise. It doesn't matter what we say or how we say it. They flat out do not care what we think, do or say. They don't care about the community or the project. Its just a job to them and they show it in their actions. They want us to tell them what a great job they did and pat them on the back. But the VE is garbage in its current state, continuing to be a nice little editor and sitting quietly in the corner is neither my style nor is it helpful to the project. The developers and the WMF may have good intentions but their piss poor planning and implementation of VE is doing more to destroy this project than any vandal ever did. I didn't edit for 2 weeks because of this crappy app. I'm not the only editor that stopped editing over it either. I'm not going to clean up the WMF's mess. Kumioko (talk) 17:09, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

subscript

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53612

need ability to set subscript for ECG leads, e.g. V4 eug (talk) 05:42, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, this has been noted. See Bugzilla:51612. Thryduulf (talk) 12:15, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Workshop for newbies using Visual Editor

Just wanted to record the salient points of using VE at a workshop for 40 newbies (35 women, 5 men) at Sophia College, Dept of Social Communications and Media, Mumbai on July 13. The Mumbai community ran this 3-hour workshop on request from the department.

• Editors conducting the workshop need to plan to use VE in advance, and themselves be comfortable with using it. While 4 of us conducted the workshop, only the two of us who were comfortable with VE did the demo. We agreed on this in advance.
• Check that the laptop being used has a non-IE browser. We forgot that VE is not enabled for IE and spent 15 minutes puzzling over this - we were using the department's laptop.
• Demonstrating the VE is a huge time saver. We had 2 hours for a hands-on experience; it took us only 15 minutes to demo VE, after which the students broke into groups and edited. They got much more editing time using VE; the back-end was more intuitively familiar than wiki markup, so they immediately got it. They created their first stubs within 15 minutes, and most of that 15 minutes was spent looking for references. (We had already introduced them to guidelines and policies in an earlier session.)
• It is difficult to add references using VE. We did not manage this successfully and went back to wiki markup, and while we managed to demonstrate how to insert a ref using markup, this was confusing for the students. Shuttling between two editing modes was also confusing.
• In sum, while there are pros and cons, this experience makes me hopeful that we can successfully use VE with newcomers in future workshops. One thing, though - we have to put ourselves in a newcomer's shoes and accept that this interface is instinctively more comfortable for a beginner: it facilitates quick, easy learning. (Even if we love markup, we need to accept this and start from here). Fully agree that a whole bunch of bugs and glitches need to be sorted out before we can take on VE lock, stock and barrel. Bishdatta (talk) 06:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

• Please teach students how markup is hypertext: While introducing students to VE is one aspect of using Wikipedia, please also teach them that wikitext markup is a form of special "hypertext" as textual data which transcends the literal text on the page and can concisely reformat, or cross-connect text with other pages, images, graphs, videos or sound recordings. Many computer scientists, such as myself, have worked hard for many years to create and improve hypertext interfaces and provide multi-word, search-engine searches, rather than just finding text-strings in a file. Please teach students how searching the wikitext for "[[" can find each wikilink inside the page, and searching for "{{" can pinpoint the use of each template, and putting hashmark '#' in column one can generate auto-numbered lines. In general, explain to students how wikitext is a text-formatting language which the computer can also read, or generate, even though the computer cannot, itself, change pages with VE, the computer can expand portions of pages by generating sections of wikitext as the result of computer processing. In a sense, the wikitext markup is a universal interlingua as a common language, beyond English or Latin or French or German, which both the computer and people can read or write to produce formatted pages. Computer scientists have worked decades to reach that level of communication between people and computers, and the hypertext can be multi-word searched, as with a search engine, for the hypertext keywords, such as "ifexpr" or "formatnum" or "nowiki" or template parameter names. As Plato said, "Those having torches will pass them on". Please spread the word, so the students understand how and why the wikitext form of hypertext was developed, and its connection with the multi-word search used by search engines. Thank you. -Wikid77 (talk) 12:35, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed report. I hope the User guide (rewritten since your workshop), plus the VE fixes done since July 13th, will make similar workshops even more successful.

Having taught a couple of workshops on editing with the old wikitext editor, I fully agree with you that VE is much better for those who have never edited Wikipedia. I also agree that as editors gain more experience, they should learn more about wikitext editing - if only to understand what "Review your changes" (otherwise known as a diff) is actually showing them, and to know how to use page histories to find out who did what, and when, and (sometimes why) to that particular page. But for teaching absolute beginners, it's great to be able to concentrate on "You must have a source when you add information to an article; you must have several good sources when you create an article", and not on saying "remember, it's two squared brackets before and after text to create an internal link". -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:56, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

MS Word compatibility

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T35105

Here's an experiment I conducted: In source, I wrote a sentence which employed strikeout, subscripts, and a {{citation needed}} tag. I entered VE, cut the sentence, and pasted it in MS Word 2007. To my pleasant surprise, all elements of the formatting and hyperlinking survived the journey. I then cut the sentence and pasted it back in VE. None of the formatting survived. I found it somewhat curious that formatting can survive the journey in one direction but not the other. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 06:26, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

There isnt a bug specifically about MS Word, but there is a request for the paste operation to work, properly, irrespective of whether copying from a webpage, a wordprocessor, or from a different Wikipedia page. See Bugzilla:33105. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:55, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Ctrl+Y: Y u no work?

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54140

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54143

I tried using Ctrl+Y, which is the shortcut for 'redo' (the opposite of 'undo'). It didn't work. Much sadness, as this is a very handy shortcut. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 06:26, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

• The shortcut for redo is Ctrl+Shift+Z, which is also commonly used (of the applications I routinely use about half use ctrl+y and half ctrl+shift+z). I've adde a bugzilla request for Ctrl+Y to be added as a shortcut as well, see Bugzilla:52140. I've also started Bugzilla:52143 which is a request to allow susers to customise shortcuts to their preference. Thryduulf (talk) 13:36, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Duplicated categories keep coming

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53217

Every change to episode list causes chaos: [29], [30], [31] and there were more examples. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:15, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The category that keeps coming in dozens in Category:Episode list using the default LineColor -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:21, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

In this one we have Category:Commons category without a link on Wikidata -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:26, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Maybe a duplicate of Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback#Addition_of_hidden_categories. -- Magioladitis (talk) 11:27, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

user:Magioladitis thanks for the report, with lots of examples. A comment has been added to Bugzilla:44498 about a previous case of Category:Episode lists without episode numbers being added to articles. The 'duplicating categories' feels like it might be a separate problem, and yes it might be the same as the cause of the insertion of Category:Commons category without a link on Wikidata. We'll need to find the root cause of these. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Another example (8 July 2013) again for Episode lists without episode numbers. -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:35, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Ugh, so many. I have raised bugzilla:52141 requesting some way to disable VE on pages that it corrupts. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 20:52, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

This is actually another instance of fostered content from a table (this time, category links from the Episode list template). This will be fixed once T53217 is deployed (probably Monday/Tuesday). Ssastry (talk) 04:34, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

That's easily enough done, John. See the page change and the edit notice for details of how.—Kww(talk) 05:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Made it a little simpler to understand: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_X-Men_(TV_series)_episodes&diff=566110003&oldid=566108560 . Those should really only be used with an appropriate edit notice.—Kww(talk) 05:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Kww; {{disable VE top}} will be handy for the cases which havent been solved yet, which are hopefully going to be fewer soon thanks to Ssastry (and team) working so hard on this underlying problem which has such a large impact! John Vandenberg ^(chat) 06:14, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Spell checker

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54166

Hi I have a idea why don't we add a spellchecker on the editor? Tiswaser (talk) 12:59, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Which version(s) of English should it support and how would it take notice of templates or other variants of English already in use in articles. In theory a great idea but for practical purposes it's unusable. NtheP (talk) 13:11, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Most web browsers include spell checkers these days, so in addition to NtheP's comments it isn't seen as worthwhile spending the time to duplicate that. Thryduulf (talk) 13:39, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@Tiswaser: What browser are you using? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I have added bugzilla:52166 to request support for language variants for the page content, which should then allow spell checkers to pick the right dictionary. This could be a rather trivial gadget, which detects the category "Category:All Wikipedia articles written in xxx English" and fixes the @lang attribute on content div and textarea. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:44, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Sort in tables appears to be broken by VE, turns out not to be, but the handling isn't ideal

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53565

I have little experience with VE, so apologies if this is know, but I did search the TOC and see nothing about sortable table.

I tried an edit using VE, and observes that a table in the section, which had been sortable, was not longer sortable after the edit. (Read on, as it turns out to be less serious than I first thought)

(As an aside, is there a place to test these things other than live articles? I was going to create a sandbox, but VE isn't enabled for sandboxes.)

On the chance that I did something wrong, I tried again.

In this edit, I used VE to add the word "test" to the Coaches and results section. After the edit, the table was no longer sortable. (Not just the table in this section, but the table in the subsequent section as well.)

Oddly, if you go to the linked diff, it appears to be sortable, however, the saved version was not.

I wondered if there was a delay, so I tried again. Again, after the edit, the table is not sortable. However, if I click on the article button to reload the article, it is sortable, so this turns out not to be a major issue, but it may be troubling to editors who think that the VE edit removed the sort feature.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:40, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The sortable tables issues is almost certainly Bugzilla:51565, which has a patch that appears to be just waiting deployment. VisualEditor is enabled for User space pages, so you can create your own user subpage to use as a sandbox or use the common VE sandbox at User:Sandbox. Thryduulf (talk) 14:26, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@Sphilbrick: If you look on the upper right of the window, in Wikipedia, you'll see .... Talk Sandbox Preferences ... The "Sandbox" link (red, until the page is created) is to User:Sphilbrick/Sandbox, which is (in my opinion) the best place to do testing, since it's so accessible. Just use the wikitext editor to copy all the text from a page (except the categories and interlanguage links!), and then use the wikitext editor to paste that text to your Sandbox, save, and you're good to go. (Right now that page is redirect to a template.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:55, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Thryduulf Yes, that looks like it. Thanks John, I thought I checked that but apparently not.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 23:20, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Swapping out images

Task: Using VE, Change an image while preserving its caption and positioning.

Method 1: Click on image. Click on media popup. Nothing helpful here.

Method 2: Click on image. Click on media button in toolbar. Select new image. Position is preserved, but caption is deleted.

So how would one do this? Is it even possible? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:41, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I've added a new subsection, at WP:VE/UG#Editing images and other media files, that addresses this. Basically you need to copy the caption before you replace the image, then paste the caption text (from your clipboard) when you edit the caption for the new image.

That's a bit of a kludge, admittedly. When you're in the replacement process, the dialog box should show the prior caption and either allow you to edit that, or at least check/uncheck a box that says "Keep the caption used for the previous image/media file." -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:38, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Article text inaccessible while editing media/templates

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T51969

Scenario: Editor is using VE. Editor adds an image of a person, then writes a caption. Editor says "Shoot, how is this person's name spelled? I'll just copy it from the article text." Editor cannot resize or move the Media settings window, and even if that were possible, the editor cannot highlight the article text anyway.

Ideally, it would be nice to be able to resize and move popups to make it easier to read the article while editing. The ability to highlight would be an added bonus. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:48, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

That all dialog boxes are fixed in location has been mentioned at least once before, with regard to the Page settings dialog - not being able to move the dialog box means it's impossible to look through an article for possible categories to add, while in the middle of the dialog (forcing one to try to remember, for example, the year an organization was founded, which determines exactly which category to use). And yes, it would be even better to be able to copy/paste from the main editing window, though this has potential ramifications for loss of focus - it would be undesirable for the dialog box to disappear "behind" the main editing window. (Is it possible, with VE, to force a window to be on top and still permit it to be moved and to not be the focus? Mac OS X does this, for example, with its "Force Quit Applications" dialog box.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:50, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

See T51969, raised 5 weeks ago but ranked as "low enhancement" (ie not far about "wont fix"), with discouraging response from devs who seem to think it's unreasonable or bad practice to want to be looking at the article at the same time as adding categories etc. Have any of them actually edited an article, I wonder? Not just adding brilliant prose but gnoming around adding categories, image captions and such like? It doesn't feel like it. Depressing. PamD 21:04, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia VE versus Wordpress VE

It has recently dawned on me that the Wikipedia VE is to a substantial degree modeled on the VisualEditor used by the Wordpress blogging system (see http://en.support.wordpress.com/visual-editor/ for an overview). However the Wordpress version does quite a number of things that the Wikipedia version can't, such as special character insertion and switching between visual and source mode. It seems like it would make sense to set a goal of replicating those features (of course implementing them would take time). Is there a reason why that can't be explicitly set as a goal? Looie496 (talk) 17:02, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, the VE team has, as an objective, "Be a great general editor for non-MediaWiki users too (e.g. WordPress), encouraging an ecosystem of reusers", so one would think that most or all WordPress features might eventually make their way into VE. However, it's still probably better to post specific suggestions for VE improvements to bugzilla (mentioning WordPress, as a nudge, wouldn't hurt), since I think that the VE team pays more attention to those (at least for the moment) rather than more general objectives. (For other mentions of WordPress, see the notes of the July 17 meeting from which I just quoted.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:39, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

reference problem

ref tag is not okay 188.230.2.168 (talk) 17:21, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@188.230.2.168: Can you give us more detail? I see this diff, but it isn't entirely clear what you were trying to do. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 17:25, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual editor

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It's pretty much terrible. ForwardObserver85 (talk) 19:54, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@ForwardObserver85: Fortunately, only editors who want to keep testing VE, or prefer it, should be in the group that continues to use it. Everyone else can opt out. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:17, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton: Thanks!ForwardObserver85 (talk) 03:07, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Wonky placement of new parameter values

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53925

Anyone seen the parameter values in a template jump to the next line? At first when I saw this I thought it had to do with the parameter content. Happens if I just do it with a single character though: see simple case.—Kww(talk) 20:26, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Yup :/ In addition to the bug, I also raised this on wikitech-l. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:51, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Editing transclusion box....

Sorry, but I simply couldn't figure out how to do this using the VisualEditor. Thanx. 132.216.109.173 (talk) 20:57, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Have you looked at the VE User guide (in particular, the section on templates)? If not, please do and see if that explains things. If you've looked and it still doesn't make sense, please let us know at what point the User guidel wasn't helpful. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:58, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit wiki on the fly

Hello again, not sure if this is the right place/time to suggest this but here we go: I wish I could edit the plain wiki just by clicking a section... sort of a instant edit but without all the VE WYSIWYG items. Maybe this would need a all new dev but since current VE is full of resources, maybe could be a "lite version"? Thanks a lot. Dianakc (talk) 22:16, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@Dianakc: You can edit just a section using the old wikitext editor. At the section title, hover over the "edit" link (or over the section title itself) until you see an "edit source" link appear; when it does appear, click on it. Yes, it's not the most intuitive thing, but the VE development team is determined to make the VE editing option more prominent than choosing the old wikitext editing, even when - in this case - VE cannot edit just a single section. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:03, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton: Yes I can edit a section but not without changing the screen, I'm suggesting a VE feature to edit plain wiki text on the same screen, withot WYSIWYG features, just a text editor. I think this would be helpful to ocasional users correcting small errors and when adding references.Dianakc (talk) 04:41, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Infobox was deleted.

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

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When editing the Athlon 64 X2 article, I have only a memory of deleting one line in the external links, yet somehow the infobox was deleted. It is possible I did this inadvertently and didn't notice when saving the edit, but I usually do notice these things.

Also annoying is the "General Unconstructive Edits" warning left on my user talk page by some inconsiderate, presumptive operator of a bot. It would be nice if developers of these bots would be more kind to users using tools that are in beta, as we may either be mistakenly using the tools incorrectly or the tool itself may have created the issue. When I read the post left on my talk page, I didn't feel that such automated tools do well to promote activity on this site. MadenssContinued (talk) 01:28, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

It probably was the result of using a buggy editor. It never occurred to the writer of the bot that WMF would release an editor that mutilated pages, so it assumed that you did so intentionally. I'm sorry that you had an unpleasant experience, and strongly encourage you to go here, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click "Temporarily disable VisualEditor". That way you can have a stable and relatively bug-free editing experience.—Kww(talk) 01:38, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to disable the visual editor until it is out of beta. I had already switched to using the edit source option. I feel I'd rather not take part in any beta. I'm not normally the beta-testing type. MadenssContinued (talk) 01:53, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Would not save

VisualEditor wouldn't let me save an edit I was trying to make with it. After clicking the Save button, and waiting awhile (1 to 2 mins), the following error message came up: "Error loading data from server: Unsuccessful request: Invalid tokin". I tried saving numerous times, including after return to make more changes with the edit, and the same thing came up. In the end I clicked the Review your changes button, copied the diff to a file on my computer, and the made the edit [32] in source mode. Not being able to save edits is a really huge bug – I doubt most people would think to save the diff, and thus would lose their edits. I am using Chrome v28 on Windows 7. - Evad37 (talk) 02:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

We've had a steady stream of reports of this problem, but it is vital that the reports keep coming. I believe that the devs have fixed a few of the causes of this problem, but it seems there are more causes yet to be found.

user:Evad37, which browser are you using. Is there anything you can recall which might have caused this? e.g. Did you spend a lot of time working on the page before pressing Save?

As I mentioned above, Chrome v28. It may have been a timeout issue, as I did spend some time editing - which sounds like Bugzilla:50424, which was supposed to be fixed. The only odd thing that happened was that TemplateData failed to load for one instance of {{cite web}}, and so I entered a couple of parameters manually, but all the other templates I edited before and after loaded the TemplateData normally. I didn't think it would be related, and I can't think of any thing else that would have caused it. - Evad37 (talk)

I suggest you install user:John Vandenberg/switch editor so you can bypass this problem when it happens (without resorting to copying the diff). John Vandenberg ^(chat) 02:56, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, brilliant idea. If only the VE team could get that, and hiding the VE section links, and other workarounds built into the product, rather making us use custom CSS and javascript. - Evad37 (talk) 03:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Refnames with VE?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52568

I added an existing citation that did not already have a "name=" value to a second location within an article. VE added a default name to the reference to allow it to be cited twice, I think the value was ":0". Is there a way to assign a more meaningful name to the reference within VE? VQuakr (talk) 18:43, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, VQuakr. Do you have a diff handy? It's always nice to put one in, if there isn't already a bug report on this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:03, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually I do not; I did not click "save" the second time after viewing the changes. I will see if I can recreate it later; I ended up making the change in the Wikitext editor here instead.

Just so I understand - is what I described the intended functionality? Is there supposed to be a place to enter the ref name on the references interface in VE? VQuakr (talk) 00:33, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

@VQuakr: - No, VE does not ask (or allow) a user to specify this parameter when he/she clicks "Use an existing reference" and then selects one, in the Reference dialog. Presumably this is something the VE team will consider adding at some point, and/or getting VE to suggest or specify something more human-friendly.

@Whatamidoing (WMF): This reference naming approach is standard VE behavior - see this edit, for example. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:03, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah :/. In bugzilla; hopefully they'll at least come up with an explanation for why this has been done. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Even if the devs add the ability to change ref names, VE will still need to automatically assign refnames, and ':0' is definitely not a good ref naming convention. On enwp we have, or had, a bot that automatically merged refs together. To do this, it will have automatically assigned refnames to refs. It would be helpful if we can find the developer and see if they can provide some suggestions on how to automatically name references, based on feedback they received. p.s. VQuakr, shameless plug: if you use User:John Vandenberg/switch editor, you can finish your VE edit in the source editor when you find VE has created an unsatisfactory diff. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

My default name for reference is the primary author's last name followed by the year of publication. I am not sure if there is any standardization of this, however. If citation templates are used, it should be trivial to pull a similar ref name out of the reference to use as the ref name. VQuakr (talk) 00:10, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The bot is User:Citation bot, operated by User:Smith609, and the code is open source at Google Code. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 03:31, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit Source is upsetting. When reading is upsetting

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52540

It is VERY unpleaseant for me to read with the new feature. When I pass the mouse over the edi button, appears a new button saying edit source. I know these things are great for editors. But they are really distracting because one scrolls the mouse accidentally, in all the horizontal white stripe, i mean one scrolls the mouse over any place at the same height of the screen that Edit button, then Wild Edit source button appears. This is horrible. Please, make it harder to find. This distracts the eye a lot, i'm tottally serious. Plase, don't take this for a joke, i'm serious, the editors may have another way to do that, for example clicking on a small STATIC button for visual editing, that would be GREAT! Thank youSantropedro1 (talk) 01:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Santropedro, it appears that English may not be your first language. I will attempt to summarize your concern in a way that may be clearer to the developers and other contributors. Please let me know if I make a mistake.

It is very unpleasant for me to read articles now that VisualEditor is enabled. When my mouse passes over an "edit" button, a new button appears which says "edit source". I know these things are great for editors, but they are really distracting for readers: if one accidentally scrolls the mouse anywhere at the same height as an "edit" button (even on the other side of the page), then the "edit source" button appears. [...] One possible solution would be to incorporate a small static button for visual editing, as this would be less distracting for readers.

Thanks for the feedback! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

This is interesting feedback, really. You might consider using Safari (the section target contains mention of the reader mode) to read Wikipedia if you can. This browser has a "reader" mode which renders web pages in a way which would likely eliminate the behavior your seeing. When I read Wikipedia on the iPad using Safari, I often switch over to "reader" mode as it does improve the readability dramatically. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 03:11, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Several people have requested this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:18, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Millions experience this constant flickering. Just readers. --93.75.134.116 (talk) 03:33, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

You could try adding the following CSS to your Special:MyPage/skin.css

.mw-editsection-link-secondary { visibility: visible !important; content: "source"; }
.mw-editsection-divider { visibility: visible !important; }
.mw-editsection-bracket { visibility: hidden !important; }

It changes the way the edit links appear so they no longer flicker with the mouse.--Salix (talk): 05:59, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the current default behavior for section needs to be improved. We're assessing various options.--Eloquence* 07:02, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I have taken User:Salix alba's idea a step further to provide IPs with an opt-out. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Opt-out#Options_for_IP_users The CSS will need to be optimised with funky selectors, but the basic CSS should work on any browser. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:10, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Credit should go to User:Dragons flight for this: [33].--Salix (talk): 08:58, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Can we bring this back in focus. A user responds (good)- do we agreed to change it, no we tell him to change his browser instead (bad). We then suggest how he can be helped with his little problem- by making some arcane changes to his skin set up (worse). For an editor that is supposed to attract the masses by making things easier-- this is barking mad. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 08:55, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, and that is a point that should be made on the linked bug report. It seems that the VE team are slowly starting to understand that almost everybody thinks they made the wrong decision with regards to these links. They obviously registered that there was disagreement but they previously didn't (and I think they still don't fully) grasp why people didn't like it. The more evidence there is of it causing actual problems the more likely it is that they will understand that people would rather have the "cluttered" appearance than the sleeker hovers and the reasons why they prefer that, and so change it. Thryduulf (talk) 09:24, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

Alternative approaches are being discussed on the design mailing list.--Eloquence* 01:37, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Eloquence (Erik Möller). I note that in this message you agree with Trevor: "The hover effect is easy to drop - if we are all willing to take the hit on the clutter." I agree with you on this: "If we want experienced users to test it every once in a while, give feedback on how it can be made better, and have them see the improvements, finding a solution that poses the least burden on them will give us the biggest win."

It needs to be emphasized that there are many experienced users who edit anonymously (IP edits). They will not be able to go to preferences to choose other options. I think both hover and dropdown will irritate those experienced IP editors. I think the least cluttered longterm solution for them might be an "edit" link for the visual editor, and an icon for the source wikitext editor. --Timeshifter (talk) 02:23, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

"think the least cluttered longterm solution for them might be an "edit" link for the visual editor, and an icon for the source wikitext editor" least cluttered perhaps, but an nightmare from a usability perspective. Either make both an icon (with alt text and tooltip) or both text links. Usability is far more important than avoiding a tiny bit of clutter. Thryduulf (talk) 12:07, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Thryduulf. I don't understand. How is it difficult to click a static icon that is there all the time (without having to go through any hovering)? There is a star icon at the top of almost every page for adding or removing a page from one's watchlist. If clicking an icon to get to the source wikitext editor is a nightmare, then how is making both links icons (as you suggest) better. I agree that the icon for the source wikitext editor should have alt text and tooltip. I should have stated that to begin with, but I assumed that would be done, just as it is for the watchlist star at the top of the page. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

It would make more sense to use an icon for VisualEditor and text (preferably, just "edit") for the Wikitext editor. In fact, I would insist on text for the wikitext editor. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:02, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

If the goal of VE is to make things easier for new editors, then it would seem more logical to make the "edit" link default to VE. Experienced editors won't have any problem figuring out that the icon is for the wikitext source editor. Especially since it will have a popup tooltip saying "edit source" or "edit wikitext". You can insist all you want, but you and I do not decide. We just put in our votes and opinions.

Other options might be put in preferences. The more the better as far as I am concerned. Happy editors means more editing. But the setup of the default edit links is very important to reversing or slowing down the decline in the number of edits and editors. Eventually, the VE might also increase the efficiency of editing so that more gets done faster, and more gets done with each edit. --Timeshifter (talk) 05:38, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

If the goal of VE is not to discourage infrequent editors, who have seen Edit links before, then the Edit link and tab should link to the Wikitext editor, and a different link, tab, or icon should link to VE. Furthermore, if VE is designed for more (looking for an appropriate word which doesn't mean "illiterate") modern editors, those editors should be more familiar and comfortable with icons than those of us who started with Atari-OS and DOS. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 09:10, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

No, I believe the goal of VE is to encourage new editors to try editing, and see that it is WYSIWYG, just like their email, blogs, etc.. And then to continue editing because it is easy due to it being WYSIWYG. So the edit button needs to go to VE. Nearly all editors whether new or old are familiar with WYSIWYG editing since it is what we get in our email and blogs. Keep working on trying to sound authoritative and admin-like. Underlining and insisting and all that. That ol admin groupthink. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:12, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

This is the comment I came here to make. Perhaps not so emphatically but, yes, I too find the dynamic links to be really distracting. One of the reasons I love Wikipedia is the cleanliness of its interface; dynamic things detract from this. Perhaps modifying the trigger area so it only changes when hovering the 'edit' link (vs current behavior: when the cursor is anywhere on the same line) would be sufficient. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.0.31.239 (talk) 01:52, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Please keep the Edit Source on each section as accessible as possible, since many of us (probably the majority) prefer it to the Visual Editor. Dynamic as it is now is ok, and two permanently visible tabs on each section would be even better. Just don't remove it, as Visual Editor is frankly too frustrating to work with, especially for long articles. Dirac66 (talk) 19:45, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Turn OFF this F**king Editor

This editor sucks. Not only is it different, it fucks things up like wikified links - it displays the brackets rather than wikifying. You guys are fucking idiots.

I can't express how fucked up you folks are. I specifically set my profile to *NOT* use the new editor weeks before it went online, and you still fucking forced it down my throat. Jeffrey Walton 01:11, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

It's obviously crap and unfit for purpose, but to say so is politically unacceptable here in the best of all possible worlds. Eric Corbett 01:18, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. Its too bad the WMF refuses to admit that VE is garbage in its current condition and they need to quit[e] forcing broken garbage down people throats until its fixed. Kumioko (talk) 01:22, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I have warned Jimbo of potential VE hostilities to rise at Wikimania. I think WMF managers had imagined some grandstanding or showboating to have VE widely deployed before Wikimania, but even a prima donna knows to sing in tune and get *all* the words right in the song, before prancing to center stage. Beware, "Pride goeth before a fall" (<KJV Proverbs 16:18). I think WMF needs to face the music.... -Wikid77 (talk) 04:20, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

See bottom of Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. There is now an option to "Temporarily disable VisualEditor while it is in beta". --Timeshifter (talk) 01:47, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

For a comprehensive list of options, see WP:VisualEditor/Opt-out. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:28, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

We need a petition to request shutdown of VE until fixed for basic functionality. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:12, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Personally I would be happy to sign such a petition if I thought it would mean anything but the WMF doesn't care what we editors think. No matter how much and how many people complain or how obvious it is that it needs to be disabled, they have their minds made up. The only way they are going to listen is if we stop editing until its fixed. If enough editors stop editing for a while, they'll get the hint. Kumioko (talk) 14:22, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

What future does a website have if it doesn't listen to the people who use that website? The answer is it doesn't have one. If changes are repeatedly pushed through that wikipedia users don't like, they're not going to use the site anymore. My edit count is seriously down and I have to admit VE is just so un-user-friendly I just can't be bothered to edit. Plus the sites constantly glitching, the sites taking longer to load so I'm going to other sites when I'm searching for information, and avoiding wikipedia all together. And it seems I'm not alone; talking to friends who include from registered users, anon-editors and casual browsers, the reply is a unanimous "WFT is wrong with wikipedia?". Its sad to see something I have enjoyed and valued falling apart before my eyes whilst whoever's running the shop seems blind to criticisms saying that they know best. Every time I've made a suggestion about improving this shambles its been put down in the rudest manner; and reading though these pages, I'm obviously not alone. When will this shambles end? When wikipedia has no visitors anymore? --Rushton2010 (talk) 18:26, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Deleting a section heading only deletes the heading, but the section remains.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52100

I have made two edits in my sandbox to demonstrate this. Here [34], you can see me inserting a heading called "Demo". Here [35], I delete the heading called "Demo". I had expected the section to be deleted with the heading, but the section remains there, without a heading. I think this would be particularly baffling for someone unfamiliar with the text editor.OrangesRyellow (talk) 10:21, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi user:OrangesRyellow, on bugzilla:50100 there is another user saying that "you have to highlight an invisible area *preceding* the heading" to delete it. Maybe try that? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:08, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Vandenberg I think there are at least two is at least one way in VE to do it. One is to delete the section heading and hit the backspace. The other is to select the heading and hit the deformat button, and then delete heading. But I feel this should be fixed because it can be confusing otherwise.OrangesRyellow (talk) 12:17, 27 July 2013 (UTC) I could not highlight the preceding area and delete it.OrangesRyellow (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

I noticed the "trick" that John Vandenberg pointed out: highlight the heading, hit backspace to erase the text, hit backspace again to remove the heading. I was tempted to report this, but after pondering it, I think this is actually the way it should work.

	Task 1: Change heading completely	Task 2: Remove section
Protocol A: Deleting header text removes section	Method 1A: Highlight heading. Backspace. Select header level from drop-down. Begin typing.	Method 2A: Highlight text. Backspace.
Protocol B: Deleting header text creates blank section	Method 1B: Highlight heading. Backspace. Begin typing.	Method 2B: Highlight text. Backspace. Backspace.

Methods 1A and 2B are the most inefficient methods, and it seems clear to me that 2B is the lesser of the two evils in terms of efficiency, and perhaps user frustration. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 16:29, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the chart, there is a reasonable case to say that this is the way it should work. This is very true in case the user does not want to delete the section and only wants to change the heading. But the confusion creeps in when the intention is to delete the section with the heading. I think the problem may be solved by inserting some mechanism to delete the section when the heading is empty. It does not look like a severe problem as it is, but still...OrangesRyellow (talk) 01:14, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Does not show Template:tl

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

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52704

VisualEditor does not show {{tl|foobar}} correctly. For example, User:Bgwhite/Sandbox has {{Fb footer}}, {{quote}}, and {{cquote}}, which are not visible in VisualEditor edit mode. GoingBatty (talk) 14:12, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Iterestingly {{tlx}} etc work as they should [36]. Reported as Bugzilla:51247. Thryduulf (talk) 16:00, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

Bug number for this seems wrong. Following the link gives a bug about Special:Ask a semantic wiki feature.--Salix (talk): 06:01, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, type. Closed as dupe of bugzilla:50704 btw. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

VE drop?

If you look at [37] and look just at the VE parts, there appears to be a somewhat abrupt drop in VE edits of perhaps 20% during the last day or so. Assuming this is accurate, then one might want to investigate whether some recently deployed update to VE is making it harder to edit. I'm unaware of any specific likely cause, but it seems a bit more than one might expect from random variation. Dragons flight (talk) 22:43, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The absolute number of VE edits per hour will, of course, vary significantly by time of day and day of week. But what Dragons Flight pointed to is the proportion of edits that are done with VE versus the proportion that are done by the wikitext editor. That ratio should be much more stable. In fact, it has dropped off significantly for all three groups (IP, registered after 6/30, and registered prior to 7/1).

I'm not seeing more complaints at this page (VE/F), and certainly not complaints about not being able to complete VE edits, or preferring VE but running into new problems. I wonder if the recently added opt-out option has made that much difference? I'd think it would take longer than a day or two for the word to get out, but of course I don't know all the ways that the change might have been communicated. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:15, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

A preference option shouldn't have any impact on anonymous editors (unless they magically all decide to register, which seems unlikely). Dragons flight (talk) 23:34, 27 July 2013 (UTC)

The proportions looks pretty constant over the last day: 6% edits for established users, 35% for new users, 18% for IPs. I'm seeing that the ratio of accounts stays pretty solid once you apply any level of smoothing, but the IP ratio is somewhat more variable. Nothing looks too out of whack, though.—Kww(talk) 00:02, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Way too much variability in that for any meaningful conclusions to be drawn at this time. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:15, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Smoothing by 24 or 48 datapoints gives a better sense of trends (that's smoothing by daily or 2-days of editing). This shows that Anonymous editors started showing significant % editing mid-month and peaked at the end of this past week and has dropped off over the weekend ... but there is really only <2 weeks of data, so stay tuned to see what things look like after a 3rd week. For new registrants, there was a slow rise peaking at ~2% around the 18th and it's stuck around that since then. For established users, there was a peak around the beginning of the month and there has been a slow decline from a high of 4% down to current around 3%. So ... I don't see precipitous changes here. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 17:58, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting to compare new registered users at wikitext vs. VE ... wikitext is consistently higher, about double the proportion (~4% vs. ~2%). --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 18:02, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Something's wrong with your math, Ceyockey. The percentage for established accounts has been hovering between 5% and 6%, and the percentage for new accounts has been roughly 35%. I use an 8 hour smooth.—Kww(talk) 18:07, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

The numbers on the vertical access are % ; these are the two lines for new registered users.

Twice the proportion of new accounts using wikitext versus Visual Editor. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:19, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Exactly: you are mixing proportions and absolutes. If twice as many newcomers use wikitext as use use VE, then 66.6% of edits made by newcomers use wikitext and 33.3% use VE. Actual statistics are closer to 65% and 35%,—Kww(talk) 19:26, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not mixing up anything ... I just hate to use proportions out of context. The 35% figure is out of context from all edits, and I would prefer to consider things in their proper context. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 21:01, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

It depends on what you are trying to talk about: that 3% of edits are made by new editors using VE doesn't say anything about its acceptance among new editors, and to say that 35% of edits by new editors are made with VE doesn't say anything about how many edits those editors make.—Kww(talk) 21:39, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Reference - no way out

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

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Tracked in Phabricator
Task T54187

I just lost over half an hours work when I tried to add a reference. I pasted in my google books reference and looked for an OK button. On my Chromium browser with a 1024x768 screen there was no way to accept or reject the reference that I could see and I ended up having throw away the entire edit.TwoTwoHello (talk) 08:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

G'day TwoTwoHello. When you pasted in the google books reference, did the reference window become bigger? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think so. I've just tried it again and found that if I reduce the font size from the default (CTRL-) I get to see an insert reference box. Having this box at the far right of the screen seems unwise. TwoTwoHello (talk) 09:07, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

@TwoTwoHello:, could you take a screenshot of your browser window with the problem visible, and upload it, or email it (jayvdb@gmail.com) if you'd prefer that. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:53, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Uploaded as File:Ve-ref.png --TwoTwoHello (talk) 10:16, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thx; I was able to reproduce this at 150% zoom, so I've raised a bug. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:57, 28 July 2013 (UTC)