Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback

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Unclear whether one can switch back from source editing to visual editing

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T49779

I like the VisualEditor a lot. Occasionally, I'd like to be able to switch to source editing to do some specific work and then switch back to visual editing. I know how to do the former, but then I've not been able to figure out how to get the VisualEditor back. --RaymondYee (talk) 14:48, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Hello, RaymondYee. Thanks for your question. The answer is: This isn't currently possible, but it will be possible soon, maybe as soon as next Thursday (05 November). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:49, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF), for your answer. Is there some place to track when this future will be launched, other than look at the VisualEditor after Nov 5? RaymondYee (talk) 03:20, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

RaymondYee, the main task is at phab:T49779, but since it's already at patch-to-review state, then checking back after the usual deployment train next Thursday (around noon in California) may be the simplest. It may also be posted at m:Tech/News/Next. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:48, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): I think I saw somewhere that the process to go from the wikitext editor to VE is to click on the "Edit" tab. That assumes, of course, that the user has two tabs, "Edit" and "Edit source". What if he/she doesn't? (For example, the user starts VE with a shortcut key, when desired.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:04, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

They are aware of at least some of the issues related to having only one edit tab. I'm hoping that we'll be able to test your particular case soon. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:49, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Blank edit summary reminder after switching to source editing

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:
Steps to Reproduce:	Problem is reproducible with these steps: Check "Prompt me when entering a blank edit summary" in your editing preferences. Open a page in VisualEditor. Make a change, click "Save page", enter an edit summary, and click "Resume editing". Switch to source editing, keeping the changes. Click "Save page".
Results:	The blank edit summary reminder appears, even though an edit summary is there.
Expectations:	The page should be saved, with no reminder.
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Firefox 41.0.2
Operating system	Mac OS 10.10.5
Skin	Vector
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

—Granger (talk · contribs) 22:53, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Hundreds of hard spaces being added

If they is being done by VE we need to shut it down until it is fixed.

In this edit [1]

All these hard spaces have been added [2] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:19, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Fixed in this edit [3] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:21, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Are you sure they're hard spaces? And did you notice that it was replacing the link formatting? There used to be a lot of links in the lead, and now there are none. I have some ideas about what this might relate to. If my guess is right, then the editor is using Internet Explorer. I'll need to go find the old thread first to see whether it's really a match. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Reference names need to change

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52568

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T92432

The visualeditor reference names of ":0" and the like are causing problems for User:AnomieBOT, which has a routine that fixes orphaned references. Because of the thousands and thousands of references named ":0", Anomie had to edit their bot to ignore visual editor references, meaning that orphaned references created by visualeditor will not be fixed. The refnames used by Visualeditor need to be unique to avoid this problem. Perhaps the software could maintain a counter and name them "VE1" "VE2" "VE3", and have unique names for each references even on different pages. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 06:16, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussed here, in general: Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 7#Naming references after first creation

As was pointed out in one of these tracked issues, VE's simple-minded reference naming will inevitably cause problems when text with footnote(s) is copied from one article to another, because a named reference without footnote text could well end up conected [incorrectly]] to an existing, identically numbered citation. And if a named reference with footnote text is copied, there is now a significantly increased probability - because of VE naming - that there will be two citations with the same name.

A slightly more complicated VE naming approach (start with (1) last name; if no such field, then (2) first word in publisher field; if no such field, then (3) first two words in title; if no such field, then last ten characters of the URL, removing any special characters; then, if still a collision, add [concatenate] "1"; if still a collision, add "2" instead of "1", etc) would minimize collisions. Still, the best approach would be to either (a) rename ref=name collisions when a citation is pasted into a page, or (b) warn the user about the collision at the time of pasting.

Am I correct in saying that if a problem does occur with reference naming, it's not possible to fix in VE because VE lacks functionality to let users change reference names?

And finally - here's another task that is related, though apparently transient:

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T94712

-- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:19, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor doesn't retain the ref name when you copy a citation across articles.

VisualEditor no longer has the tools to set manual ref names. You can, however, easily remove the named ref (the <ref name="Wrong One" />) and replace it with the correct one. As far as the wikitext parser is concerned, that's what you're actually doing when you change the ref name.

I am definitely pro-sensible naming and pro-manual naming as well. I'm not sure that a string of numbers is entirely "sensible", though. Also, if each re-used ref (within an article) gets a new number, then we'll end up with refs that actually do match across articles, but that have different ref names. I'd much prefer that they used a ref name based on the contents of the citation template (assuming that a citation template is being used).

As a side note, I see that Chad, Thoroughbred, Japan, Bob Dylan, Ernest Hemingway and many more have a ref that is named (exact/case-sensitive) "NYT". My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that there are 2,000 such refs with that particular name on the English Wikipedia. It looks like there may be a similar number for "name=book", and more than 100 each for name=org, name=web, and name=Lee. User:Anomie might want to set the logic to exclude any ref name with three or fewer characters, no matter what the characters are, and blacklist name="book". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Switching between VE and wikitext editor

Is there supposed to be a limit to then number of times, within a single editing session, that a user can switch between VE and the wikitext editor? I ask because in doing a test, I found that after a couple of switches, I could no longer get from the wikitext editor to VE by clicking on the "Edit" tab. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:49, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

John, I did a series of six full cycles yesterday, with no problem. I'm not aware of any hard limit, but I can ask. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:12, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

I certainly didn't do six cycles. I'd try again, noting exactly what I did, and post here with my results. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:01, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Why can't I change alignment of text from centered to left?

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2490.80 Safari/537.36

I added Red5 content to the page below but for some reason the text in the first column is centered throughout the edit whereas the existing content is aligned to the left. Is there a way to fix this? URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_streaming_media_systems?veaction=edit

JamesMaynard (talk) 21:23, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi JamesMaynard,

Thanks for aksing about this. That table sets the formatting for the whole table: class="wikitable sortable" border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" style="font-size: 85%; border: gray solid 1px; border-collapse: collapse; text-align: center; width: 100%;". The "text-align:center" part says that the contents of all table cells should be centered. The right-aligned cells have been individually and manually set to right-alignment, via the {{rh}} template (which only adds that long string of gobbledegook again, this time for the individual cell only, but it's quicker to type). VisualEditor does not support changing the formatting of individual table cells. Therefore, this cannot be done in VisualEditor at this time.

Looking at the article history, I saw several changes in close succession. Did you ever get a warning about an WP:Edit conflict when you saved the page? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:27, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Flashing blue dots???

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T118219

When I opened the VE interface to start editing Elizabeth Palmer, there were suddenly two large flashing blue dots under the link and cite points. What in heaven's name is that about? Risker (talk) 02:57, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

What I saw (elsewhere) were two slowly flashing dots, and not particularly large ones. But yes, odd. I have both a screen shot and a video. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 05:06, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Try clicking on them, and see what happens.  :-)

You might want to subscribe to the newsletter, which covers recent and upcoming changes like this.

Last week's newsletter also mentions a new feature that reached the Wikipedias less than 24 hours ago, and I'd really like your POV on it. As John noted in a section above, it's now possible to switch back and forth between VisualEditor and the wikitext editor. You can do this multiple times in the same session. Can you figure out how to do it (without someone telling you, that is)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:33, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, the point is that they were annoying and distracting when I didn't want to do anything with the links or citations in the article. On many other websites, when you click on those kinds of distractions, you wind up on a different page instead of where you started, so I was not inclined at all to click on them, quite the opposite. It feels like clickbait. If I have a chance to putter around in content in the next few days, I'll try the switchback - I've accidentally clicked "EDIT" before when I meant to "EDIT SOURCE" and have just clicked "EDIT SOURCE" to switch, but that's not included situations where I've been in the middle of a session. Honestly, I shouldn't have to need to read the newsletter to know what those dots are for, they should be obvious to the editor. Risker (talk) 16:52, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

• Okay, so I went and clicked on the flashing blue dots, and guess what happened? Nothing. At least nothing that didn't happen before those blue dots were there. In other words, they're not doing anything other than being annoying. I have to ask...does the person/team that came up with this idea actually edit Wikipedia articles? I think you need some actual editors pointing out what's useful and what's just design geekery. (Standard info: Win7, FF41.0.2) Risker (talk) 05:08, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

  Thanks for the report. It's phab:T118219 now.

  I don't know who came up with the design. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:20, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd call them "beacons"; regardless, they are not a standard icon/feature/approach on any software or web page that I'm aware of, and appear to violate the Principle of least astonishment. If these two are really important, then a blue, circled "i" (as in "information), not changing intensity, is a much better choice.

Why is this important? Because at least some percentage of potential editors are going to think that something is wrong; many of them are not going to click on the beacons to see what they mean, but rather will just close the page to get rid of the "weird things". And as for experienced editors, these beacons are going to be another indication that the VE developers just don't understand user design - something we don't need if we want to convince experienced editors that VE has significantly matured. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:17, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

• I did some work tonight with Krenair (thanks for taking the time, Krenair!) and we worked out that there were a few things happening. First, it appears that my anti-virus software (Kaspersky) was blocking the popups that should come from the blue dots. I did a bunch of tweaking with that and with the browser, and eventually found a combination that allowed the popups. I don't think I'll leave things at these settings, though; they're less protective than the "factory settings" and in just the few hours since I did that I've had quite a bit more spam and other junk showing up. I also haven't had any problems with other popups on Wikipedia, which were able to show up through the AV software, so it is odd that these particular ones got caught. But, and this is an important but...even with all that, clicking on the blue dots did nothing for me. However, clicking on the actual link symbol or the word "cite" resulted in a popup. The popups had a brief bit of text describing that one can make links to internal or external web pages, or that citations improve your content. Neither described how to use the button, though, and I needed to click "Okay, got it" to dismiss the popup. I could, however, edit with the popups in place, just as long as I didn't want to edit anything that was covered by them. These were also pretty big popups and most of the space seemed to be taken up by images that weren't great illustrations, but I realise this is an early iteration. (I won't even go into my usual tirade about live content production being not the right place for alpha testing.) But this needs a lot of work. And the flashing dots still don't do anything, the popup is actually on the button. Note: I'll copy-paste this over to the phab task so it's there too. Risker (talk) 06:45, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Save Edit won't work

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.8; rv:41.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Ukulelle/sandbox&veaction=edit&vesection=4

Markdarryl (talk) 01:35, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Works for me. Could you try again, to make sure that it wasn't a one-time glitch? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Bizarre Link Behaviour

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Add a link to Alison Cerutti from Martins Plavins.
Steps to Reproduce:	I was updating the text on Martins Plavins and wanted to add a link to Alison Cerutti. I did what I normally did, which is select the text by mouse and then going up to the link button in the toolbar. Because I'd only put Cerutti's surname, he didn't come up, which was expected behaviour. I therefore type his full name in and saw that an article did indeed exist for that player ( Screenshot of Plavins page ). However, when I select that link it only gives a redlink Link to Cerutti comes up as a red link . I did the same thing for Reinder Nummerdor and Richard Schuil just after so it's not a repeatable issue.
Results:	Gave a red link
Expectations:	Links properly to Alison Cerutti.
Page where the issue occurs	Martins Plavins
Web browser	Chrome 46.0.2490.80
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Any additional information. Can you provide a screenshot, if relevant?
Workaround or suggested solution	I opened the page in source editor, saw that it had linked properly and saved. Opened Martins Plavins in a new tab and it worked fine.

Red Fiona (talk) 04:04, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I believe that this happens when the search engine is being a little slow. VisualEditor only "knows" what the search engine tells it about links. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:36, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. I'll try to be more patient in future :) Red Fiona (talk) 05:37, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Captchas not accepted?

Since Friday 6 November I have seen six reports from VE users that they just keep being asked for captchas:

1. Wikipedia:Help desk#Editing Fairfield Presbuyterian Church
2. Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#How do I save my changes to the article?
3. Wikipedia:Help desk#Having issues SAVING page after making minor changes
4. Wikipedia:Help desk#CAPTHCA malfunction
5. Wikipedia:Help desk#CAPTCHA doesn't work
6. Wikipedia:Help desk#VisualEditor Sandbox Save

PrimeHunter (talk) 06:27, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: This should now be fixed (phab:T118052). Much thanks for the compilation. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

deleting all but the current section

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T117713

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	fixing a wikilink to point to Maryborough railway station, Queensland
Steps to Reproduce:	Clicked on "edit source" (rather than "edit" -- my mistake) on the section "Heritage listings" in Maryborough, Queensland. It opened in the source editor, I realised I had intended to use the VE, so I clicked Edit at the top of the screen and I switched into VE mode. I made my little change and then Saved.
Results:	Deleted all the other sections of the article except the Heritage listings
Expectations:	Editing a section doesn't delete the rest of the article!
Page where the issue occurs	diff
Web browser
Operating system
Skin
Notes:	It looks like doing section editing with the source editor and then switching into the VE (even if you have not made any changes) gives the VE only the current section to work with. Any SAVE then destroys the rest of the article. Kerry (talk) 07:25, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Workaround or suggested solution

Kerry (talk) 07:25, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I hope that this will be fixed soon. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Update: Code is written and will be deployed this week. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:24, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

edits

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:42.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/42.0

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nic_Marks?veaction=edit

It won't let me save my changes - I'm stuck in a captcha loop

Stolenchild66 (talk) 20:40, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

@Stolenchild66: Thanks for the bug report. This should now be fixed. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 20:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Displayed page title after an editing with wikitext then VE

I've a odd problem. If I start editing and article with the wikitext editor, then switch to the visual editor and save the page. The displayed page title will be "Editing ....". To be precise

1. Start editing a page with the wikitext editor. Say the page User:Sandbox edit link. The main heading at the top of the page will be Editing User:Sandbox.
2. Now switch to VE, using the tab. The main heading will not be changed.
3. Make and edit and save. This does not change the main heading it is still Editing User:Sandbox.
4. Reloading the page sets the title back to normal.

Note it also temporarily changes the <title>...</title> tag, of the page.

Not a great bug, but it did lead to some confusion. After editing a page I switched to another tab, then looked backed at the old tab, which was still saying Editing ..... This confused be for a bit as I thought I had finished editing the page but the page title was indicating I had not. --Salix alba (talk): 10:09, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization problem for links written in situ

Try adding a link to ionic compound (click the link button before you have written the words). Like here Ionic compound. In the link box, type "ionic compound" (all lowercase). It gives you two options to link to, the lowercase "ionic compound" and the capitalized "Ionic compound". Click to choose the lowercase one. In goes the link, but its always capitalized and you then have to go back into the word and edit it. It should give you the capitalization you chose. 99of9 (talk) 12:44, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Lost reference cleanup edit upon saving

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:
Steps to Reproduce:	Used automatic URL filler. Saved results. Opened cite again to add additional fields and edit it. Did it again with a second cite. Saved page.
Results:	Code show up in the diff for the references, URLs are still bare.
Expectations:
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linda_B._Buck&diff=prev&oldid=690132280
Web browser	Firefox 42.0
Operating system	Mac OS X 10.7.5
Skin	Vector
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Djembayz (talk) 14:31, 11 November 2015 (UTC)