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

@3family6:Hello, do you still need help? I've seen that you added many references since your comment TeamGale (talk) 09:20, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

@TeamGale:I added them by editing the source code directly. I think the trouble I had with the references was splitting the second one (the Reach Lecrae biography link).--¿3family6 _contribs 16:33, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

@3family6:Oh! I see! The splitting is not difficult to do it if that was the problem. After you add the reference the first time, it's added on the list. So when you click to add a reference the next time, if you want to re-use a previous one you are just choosing it from the list and click "insert reference". You are not clicking on the "create new source" button. If the list is long and you can't find it easy, you are typing on the "use an existing source" box key words from the previous reference and it filters them for you. :) TeamGale (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

@TeamGale:That's what I tried. For some reason, it added <ref name="0" /> to both the first and second instances of the source, instead of just the second. I wanted to open a bug report for this, but I don't know how to do that.--¿3family6 _contribs 17:18, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

@3family6:Hmm...that's weird. The last time I tried it it was working fine for me! :/ I'll try to test it on my sandbox. I don't know how to open bug report neither. When one of the WMF's members is back probably can do it. I know there are reports about the "nowikis" thing but I don't know if that is the same. I'll try that on my sandbox to see if it happens to me too now. TeamGale (talk) 17:27, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

@3family6:Just did it here. It's working fine. I don't know what happened when you were doing it :/ Did you save the difference? TeamGale (talk) 17:33, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

@TeamGale:Yes, I saved the difference. That's what I have linked above.--¿3family6 _contribs 21:38, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

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

@Mdennis (WMF): I'm sorry, I don't know how to replicate what happened. I'm using Firefox on Windows 8.--¿3family6 _contribs 17:20, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, @3family6:. I can simply copy your initial report here to Bugzilla, unless you think by some miracle it was a one-off? (There's a term for that - somebody used it here a few days ago - but I can't remember what it is. :/) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF): It happened again, here. I attempted to split this reference: [1].--¿3family6 _contribs 12:34, 9 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): (or anybody else), do you have any insight into what's happening there? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

None; I'll poke the James. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): @Mdennis (WMF): If I understood, what 3family6 is trying to do is to reuse a reference. When she is trying to do it, then VE is replacing the "original" reference with the <ref name="test" /> too instead only the second reference and that destroys the source completely. I tried to do it on my sandbox, but it was not happening to me. If I am wrong, please @3family6: feel free to correct me TeamGale (talk) 19:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

@TeamGale: That's exactly it.--¿3family6 _contribs 21:14, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

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

@3family6: odd! What browser/operating system are you on? @Mdennis (WMF): where is this in bugzilla? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:49, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): I'm running Firefox 22.0 on Windows 8.--¿3family6 _contribs 13:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

That's very strange :(. Can you try to duplicate the problem? (also, can you give us diffs, rather than old revisions? It makes debugging easier :)). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): Here we go: Original version, and diff. The citation at the beginning of the paragraph should be at the very end.--¿3family6 _contribs 19:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

That's very strange; I inserted citations and it worked fine. Silly question, but: you are remembering to click where you want the citation to go? Sorry to sound like a dunce :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes. At first I thought the same thing, but the last two instances of this glitch (the latest being the test edit), I'm positive that I clicked the correct place. It only happens when I split a ref.--¿3family6 _contribs 23:11, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

That is, reuse an existing reference? Hmn. I've tried that too; no dice :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:08, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, it did the same for me. Now I'm really confused.--¿3family6 _contribs 13:22, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Most editors have just disabled it. I wouldn't even bother using it. Kumioko (talk) 04:15, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Kumioko, can you please provide a citation for your statement that most editors have disabled it? My data says otherwise, quite strongly.

@Patrickwooldridge: what do you mean by "insertion point"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:22, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Disabled or not, Okeyes, I'm still only seeing about 10% of edits by logged on accounts using it in my watchlist, so uptake isn't particularly high. I turned it back on just so that I could test some of the bug reports. What percentage of editors that have edited since it was turned are using it?—Kww(talk) 04:28, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

This I don't know. I'm actually building dashboards tomorrow to display the proportion of mainspace edits using the VE (I was hoping to work on it tonight, but it's dependent on me getting R's package constructor and git to play ball with each other). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Well first the fact that it has been disabled by several hundred editors (about 700 I think I saw somewhere but at least 500). Most of which are among the most active editors. Second, I have seen multiple statistics that show its usage between 8 and 10% of edits. About half by people testing it and then a large percentage of those show up to complain about it. Yes people are using it to various degrees. But spend a few minutes and do some analysis of those edits to complaints here and in other venues and you'll see the vast majority of the edits are time wasted that could have been better spent building an encyclopedia instead of testing an app that didn't get properly tested before it was released. I know you don't care to hear anything other than how wonderful the tool is, but that just isn't the case. As I said before, I'm keeping my editing to a minimum until this thing gets worked out. I'm not going to invest my time in something that breaks 90% of everything it touches. Kumioko (talk) 04:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Where did you see about 700? And where did you see these statistics? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:32, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

There all over the place, try looking over at the Village pump (technical) for starters. But just do the math. pull in the transactions for the day and then subtract out the ones tagged for visual editor (of course factoring out the non applicable namespaces). And you have access better access to the data than I do. Depending on how you cook the numbers its as low as 4% and as high as 10%. In any case, just look at the edits being done, then associate the discussions here to the edits. You'll see a lot of correlation and a lot of the same people using VE. Many of which are WMF staffers. How many people do you have on your list that disabled it? I'm guessing its well over 500. It may even be over 1000 by now. Kumioko (talk) 04:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

This thread covers some of this. I don't know where the 500 (or 700) disabled is coming from. Dragons flight (talk) 04:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Huh! I'll work on the dashboards anyhoo, just so we have consistent (and consistently updated) data, and fling a link out when I'm done. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 04:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

If you are dashboarding, you should monitor what percentage of Visual Editor edits are tripping filter 550. That would be an indicator of how many people are struggling with it.—Kww(talk) 05:45, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep; thought of that :). (anyone know where the 700 figure is coming from, still? ) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:13, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): Wikipedia:Database reports/User preferences#Gadgets, entry "oldeditor", suggests that 607 users enabled the relevant gadget as of 4 July. Probably much higher now. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:03, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure how that report is compiled; is it "count of the number of entries" or "count of the number of entries where the value is 1"? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The latter. Dragons flight (talk) 17:01, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The next scheduled update of that table should be around 23:00, 11 July UTC. Dragons flight (talk) 17:06, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Updated as scheduled: 1018 now. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

I generally agree that VE is not for the advanced editors or those who have been here for a while and know how to edit. I personally think VE is a great idea and will be agood tool. My problem is and has aleays been how the WMF did a half assed job of testing it and then threw it out for the every editor to use knowing it had multiple major problems, had virtually no support for references and only supported 2 namespaces. When they released a product that they knew caused unexplainable changes to articles and encouraged editors to not use references, that was a problem. As it is I have been tracking about 15 articles that have problems due to changes done by VE because I want to see if the WMF is really looking at the edits. I can confirm they are not. Kumioko (talk) 17:46, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

We didn't "know" that it would encourage users to use references, and it doesn't encourage users not to use references. And we have never planned to support more than article-editing for the VE proper. We are tracking bugs, but unsurprisingly we don't have the resources to review every VE edit - we're prioritising reviewing this talkpage for issues. If you've identified bugs, bring them to my attention and I'm happy to triage them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:49, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that's part of what irritates most experienced users who are complaining here: the VE team decided to widely roll out a version of VE knowing it was full of bugs, including some that were damaging articles, but don't even bother to deal with the damages that were done (and are still being done) on encyclopedic articles, rather relying on the good will of the same users that asked several times to postpone this roll out until VE was stable. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 18:26, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Precisely, I was all too happy to help test and identify problems but when the WMF decided that mass problems and broken articles were no big deal because the community would fix them, then they lost my support. I am here to volunteer to help to build an encyclopedia but if the WMF only cares about releasing software on time to make themselves look good and pat each other on the back about the grand job they did, when the community is cleaning up the mess, they can count me out and in fact I probably won't be editing for the next couple weeks at least. Maybe I'll check back in August and see if the mess is fixed. Kumioko (talk) 18:43, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

NicoV has it right, and that's the reason that I think VE needs to be put back on a true trial basis: opt-in only, and certainly not rolled out on a widespread basis or made the default for new editors. Putting a broken tool in the hands of our least experienced contributors on the expectation that the rest of us will cheerfully monitor the problems it causes and correct them for you is irresponsible.—Kww(talk) 19:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

"... we don't have the resources to review every VE edit ... - So why in world is VE going to being enabled as the default edit interface for IP editors, on the 15th!!?? That's going to generate lots more VE edits, and - apparently - the resulting increase in errors is going to be the problem of the Wikipedia community, not the VE team. Mind you, these won't be newly-identified types of errors, they'll be already-discovered errors, because IP editors don't come close to doing the varied things that experienced editors do. So there is absolutely no testing or feedback value from this expansion. Yet the VE team continues - with no clear justification other than meeting a looming deadline - to plan this expansion. This is just bizarre. Is someone afraid of losing their job - or their annual bonus - if the team does the right thing and just focuses on the problems that registered editors continue to bring to it, plus the huge list of already identified problems, deferring the IP rollout until VE is in much better shape? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:42, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Could someone from WMF please answer this in their official capacity? There's been a number of messages along these lines in various places, from experienced editors, and ignoring or evading them as you have does you no credit - David Gerard (talk) 22:52, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

We're not ignoring or evading them, David, we've got two staffers working EST and BST respectively, and it's midnight. John, to answer your question in reverse; to my knowledge staffers don't get annual bonuses. I appreciate things are a bit het up, but I'd appreciate if we could keep our concerns in good faith. I say our concerns because, yes, the impact that IP editing will have is something I'm worried about too. We've got quite a few dirty diff bugs, which we need to get fixed, and which I've surfaced as "things we need fixed, pronto". We've got smaller problems technically but bigger problems in practise, like the lack of a notification if a user uses wikimarkup - this, also, I hope will be addressed. But actually there is a lot of value from deploying to IPs: IPs might do less-varied things than experienced editors in wikimarkup mode, but we don't know that the same is true for the VisualEditor. When we release to registered editors, we largely get "the bugs people discover when they're familiar with wikimarkup". Quite a few newly registered users, I have no doubt, haven't experienced wikimarkup editing, but quite a few have, and all experienced users have. A logged-in deployment only gets us those bugs that occur when someone applies their experience to a new interface. What we haven't discovered - and what we desperately need to - is what happens if you apply a group of people who generally-speaking don't have an existing frame to compare the VE to. It's vital that we find this out, because the entire point of the VisualEditor is to make things easier for novices to markup. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:59, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

You've already found more bugs than you can fix in the near future. Recall the deployment, fix it, and then redeploy once it's fixed. Don't go searching for another new pile of bugs when you haven't fixed the first pile yet.—Kww(talk) 23:31, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

"What we haven't discovered - and what we desperately need to - is what happens if you apply a group of people who generally-speaking don't have an existing frame to compare the VE to." With all due respect, what you desperately need to do is to fix all the important, known bugs in VE.

"... the entire point of the VisualEditor is to make things easier for novices to markup." Okay, but you're contaminating the test by giving them a version of VE that (a) has significant bugs; (b) lacks documentation; and (c) can't do everything they might want to (copy a citation from one article to another, to name just one thing). There is absolutely no way that you can draw anything resembling defensible inferences if you provide IP editors with VE as it is now. In a month or two, quite possibly. In three to six months, when you've worked with more experienced editors to improve both functionality and the user interface, most definitely.

"A logged-in deployment only gets us those bugs that occur when someone applies their experience to a new interface." Really? Logged-in editors include those with essentially no editing experience (say, less than 25 edits) as well as those with more than 25,000. Moreover, IP editors just want their edits to survive. IP editors don't use complicated templates. IP editors don't do piped links. IP editors don't use "group" types in references. IP editors don't think about creating new tables. In short, experienced editors do everything that IP editors do, and more. And experienced editors understand what should happen; IP editors lacking wikitext editing experience don't have a clue as to whether what happens to them in VE is "normal" (and they just screwed up) or is a software bug. IP editors also lack the incentive to spend much time reporting errors - they don't have a commitment to Wikipedia, unlike experienced editors.

So here's a question for the VE team: If you turn on VE editing for IP editors, and you get essential no reports of new (undiscovered) bugs in, say, the first 48 hours, does than mean you'll turn off the expansion, since it won't have helped with identifying problems? Or will you just leave it on, forcing the Wikipedia community to clean up the additional messes that IP editors create every day as they use a bug-infested beta version of VE? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Refining David Gerard - Q: Could someone high up like User:Jdforrester, the VE lead, answer the community's questions?--Salix (talk): 01:17, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@Jdforrester:, same request. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 07:09, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton: (and everyone else),

Sorry if we have been unclear to date; the purpose of encouraging people to use VisualEditor is not primarily to find bugs - it is to make it easier for them to edit.

We are not rolling this code out as​ ​some scientific test of what happens when people use it, though data that we collect is valuable (and you can see some of that charted on the public dashboards). There is no concept of "contaminating" the test results here - this is far more important than some metricated experiment, this is about providing actually-useful editing tools for everyone.

Obviously there is tremendous value in experienced editors giving us feedback as to where we have fallen short of our aim to be the easiest, most obvious and natural way to edit. We know that we have not yet met this in many areas, and without the community's assistance, we could never hope to achieve that goal​; ​it would be ludicrous for me to pretend otherwise.​ ​ But we also know that VisualEditor provides a profoundly-better editing experience for new users in terms of their ability to understand how to edit, and I think it would be inappropriate of me to discount the many thousands of new users who struggle each week and turn away from our community for good because of the difficulties which Wikipedia's editing system provide (though note that the wikitext barrier is not the only one; VisualEditor is not, and never has been, a 'silver bullet').

As we have said a few times now, we will of course turn off VisualEditor, or delay its wider availability, if we are concerned that it is endangering the site - by technological demands, by wide-spread content corruption, or by placing a burden upon the community that it is unable to handle. As you know, I delayed the A/B test, and postponed the release to anonymous uses based on the second item. However, I do not think we are currently encountering significant issues on any of these three criteria. I would be keen to hear of evidence to the contrary - nothing is set in stone.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I would say that every hit of Filter 550 is evidence to the contrary, Jdforrester.—Kww(talk) 18:48, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

@Kww: I disagree. I see a lot of users mistakenly using wikitext in an inappropriate context, and VisualEditor/Parsoid rescuing those users from themselves to avoid breaking their edits. I don't see any corruptions at all any more - we squashed a number of them over the past two weeks. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

"Rescuing those users"? Are you serious? Visual Editor is failing to notice that they have inserted markup, and, instead of following the markup, is corrupting the article by inserting spurious nowikis. Every article that filter trips on needs to be fixed, so no "rescue" is occuring, Jdforrester.—Kww(talk) 19:02, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Jdforrester, are you serious ???? I thought the principle of Visual Editor was that inexperienced users could contribute easily without damaging articles unintentionnaly. Filter 550 is just an example of Visual Editor clearly failing in that area, frequently and on many articles. If you just looked at the filter results, you would see that many users triggering this filter have no user page, so a good chance they are inexperienced users. And filter 550 is only a portion of the damages currently done by VE on articles. Many editors here are tired are saying the same thing over and over... --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 19:23, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

While I remember, I will simply note the irony of the reason behind Filter 550 not blocking the faulty edit being that Visual Editor can't display errors generated by the abuse filter.—Kww(talk) 21:06, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

This is actually a fault of AbuseFilter not integrating with MediaWiki in the usual way. It's not really VE's fault at all. — This, that and the other (talk) 01:09, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

@Jdforrester: VisualEditor is triggering filter 550 every minute or two, per Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#What_shall_we_do_about_all_VE.27s_.22nowiki.22_tags.3F. This is due to usability failure in the VE, not the users being foolish or whatever. You may not consider it a problem, but I think it's clear that's actually a wrong opinion and the VE is causing damage to articles that wouldn't be happening without it - David Gerard (talk) 21:04, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think James meant to imply that the nowiking wasn't a problem - more that not nowikiing would cause bigger snarl-ups at the VisualEditor end. The unintentional damage it's allowing users to cause is certainly an issue, and it's assigned and noted here that we need to have a better way of fixing it (and assigned with a high-priority, I'd note). Hopefully it will be resolved soon. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! Best wishes DBaK (talk) 07:58, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

• So, in order:

  Is the wrapping problem still appearing? We pushed some patches last night that hopefully resolved it.

  Well, you can scroll; the point of the long bold parameter heading is that it's human-readable. You can filter by either the parameter name or the human-readable title. The greater problem here, I think, is bugzilla:50773.

• What do you mean by "open its value dialog directly"? Surely that's doable from the left toolbar in the template inspector.
• I would argue that actually the form should be ...value2 | name3 = value3 | name4 = ... if we're going to change it at all. So, to go mea culpa for a minute; I explicitly requested that normalisation should normalise with, rather than without, spaces. This is because ultimately normalisation is for the sake of markup-editors; name3=value3 is somewhat hard to read for long templates with lots of values. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

There's going to be a serious conflict here between source editing and visual editing. When source-editing a long complex template such as an infobox, it becomes very difficult unless each parameter is placed on a separate line. But if that is done for every template, it becomes very awkward to work with templates that are inserted in text. One possibility might be to normalize "freestanding" templates (that is, templates that appear as the only element of a line) differently from "inline" templates. (Incidentally, the setup I usually use is ...value1 |name2=value2 |name3=value3 |name4=....) Looie496 (talk) 13:59, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Not really; the situation I'm talking about is, say, efn or sfn, where putting it on one line is commonplace. The one-lining of big infoboxes is a bug, rather than a feature :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:01, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the responses. I have looked again, using shift-refresh in Firefox to get, I hope, the latest version. Please see File:VisualEditor template dialog 20130712-0245.png.

• Wrapping, scrolling: The description of each unused parameter is still truncated. There is no horizontal scrolling.
• Item names: I can though now see light grey buttons to the right of the entry for each unused parameter. They show the parameter name. Light grey is bad for accessibility, see below about active/inactive.
• Filter: If I type "author" the list contains every entry with "author" in the long name, description or parameter name button, seems correct behaviour.
  • If I type "author name" I get an entry saying "unknown parameter". A bug.
  • If I now hit enter, the value box opens for this unknown parameter: presumably another bug.
  • There is no cancel function which will take me from the value dialog to the parameter list dialog. I can only close the whole template editor dialog with the "X" or "Apply changes" buttons. Missing functionality.
  • Opening the template dialog again, I now type "authorlink" into the filter. Three related items are displayed, "last name", "first name" and "author link": I can see why, but "author" is in this case already defined... However the highlighted entry is "last name" and even if I hit enter with the focus in the text entry box I am taken to the wrong parameter in the value dialog. Another bug.
• "Open its value directly": These parameter name buttons are light grey which normally means inactive. I would expect them to be active and cause the value dialog to open. At present nothing I do activates them. Yes I can open the value dialog for an already-present parameter from the left-hand pane by clicking on it but the right-hand pane is not implemented in the same way. Inconsistent functionality.
  • If I click on one of the items, such as authorlink in the linked image, it is highlighted in blue as shown, but nothing further happens even if I click again or double click. I discovered today that if I click on an unused item and then hit enter, the value dialog opens. Thus there is a way to use the dialog but it is not obvious to someone who normally uses the mouse with a GUI. Missing functionality.

I can upload more screenshots if anything above is not sufficiently clear... --Mirokado (talk) 01:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

That's really helpful :). So is "author name" a recognised alias for a parameter, then? We have to have the 'unknown parameter' option until all of the templates have TemplateData, really; it's unfortunate, but necessary behaviour :(. I agree the interface, as it is, is pretty counterintuitive; there is a "remove parameter" button, that does it, or you can go back to the 'parameters' list by clicking on the cite web icon - but really you shouldn't have to. It shouldn't send you off to a parameter until you've included all of those you want to. Great minds think alike on double-clicking; bug 51143 :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

unknown parameter: author link is not a valid parameter in ((cite web)), it gives a nice red error message: Unknown parameter |author link= ignored.

as long as direct human source input is possible, it will be necessary to handle templates without the necessary json definitions (or with incomplete definitions). Thus the handling of such parameters is not a short-term issue. The real problem here is:

• Filtering on the full parameter title (as displayed in bold) does not correctly identify the corresponding parameter. That I think needs to be fixed.

I have to agree with bug 51143: I never did find that button! --Mirokado (talk) 22:15, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Oliver, that "lazy" was sarcasm. It certainly wasn't directed at you. I wrote large portions of the modern citation system, and probably understand it better than nearly anyone, and I still haven't been able to muster up the resolve to try working on the TemplateData for it. Dragons flight (talk) 19:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Ahh :). If you know anyone who might be good for template-editing, please do drop me a list so I can get in touch with them; the more experienced template writers we have using TD, the better! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:52, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

When editing a template:

1. I want to add a parameter.
2. I see a list of recommended parameters.
3. I click on one that I want to use. Nothing happens.
4. I double- and triple-click. Nothing happens.

• I would expect either the parameter to be selected, or at least filled in for me.

1. I enter the full parameter name and click enter. It is selected.
2. I notice that the description for that parameter is not shown above the dialog box. It was shown when choosing the parameter.

Also, initial capitalization of the parameter names seems to act strangely. -- Ypnypn (talk) 02:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I find your first points confusing, too, User:Ypnypn. :) There's a request in to enable addition via double-clicking (T53143). It's been marked high priority and looks targeted to deploy late next week. It might be a good idea to enter your second point (2) in that bug, or in T53188, which is about general improvement of template workflow. (Happy to help with that, once I clarify the following. :)) Can you identify what the issue is that you're encountered with initial capitalization of the parameter names? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to have an obvious way to sign or leave a note about what you've changed. Celia Kozlowski (talk) 10:51, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

@Celiakozlowski: The visualeditor is and will only be enabled in the article namespace, and you wouldn't want to leave any signatures or comments inside these pages in any case. You can still add an edit summary detailing the edit when you save the page though. Talk pages use the old source editor that contains the sign button, though in the future the editor on talk pages will likely be replaced by WP:FLOW Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 11:02, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor is enabled in both articles and userspcace. I see you haven't saved an edit yet with VisualEditor. After clicking Save page you get an option to write an edit summary before clicking Save page a second time (this system has been criticised). PrimeHunter (talk) 11:16, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Just used it for the first time today, on Apixaban. It seems intuitive enough but I had a problem when I tried to fix a wiki-link that I thought I inserted wrongly after looking at my edit. When I tried to remove the wiki link, it deleted a whole section. I tried it a couple of times, cancelling to avoid saving changes each time it went wrong. After about the fifth attempt, it seemed to reload and show my original wiki-link was okay. I'm assuming it's just a small bug that will be fixed in time, but it's a bit confusing. Red Fiona (talk) 13:52, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit to add Fram has removed a no-wiki mark up which might have been the root cause of the problem.

Thank you, Redfiona99. I've put a note at your talk page with a more complete explanation, but basically this is a known issue that occurs when people use wiki markup in edits. I believe they're working out a way to make this work smoothly to avoid confusing people. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

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

---

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53252

Editing Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907#Criminal proceedings I added two cleanup templates, ((update)) and ((prose)). In the visual editor the two templates were differently left-aligned and different lengths, despite saving and displaying correctly. Reopening the page in the visual editor, the templates appear at their correct size and alignment, but do appear with an apparent blank line between them. Thryduulf (talk) 14:04, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Seems to be Firefox specific - I could replicate it on that but not Chrome. Glad you specified your browser. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:40, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

This new version is really confusing and it has barely half the functions of the old editing capability. I'm not able to make a table, and many other things. J. A. Zwierzcowski (talk) 14:11, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, J.A., for your feedback. It really can be difficult to transition between the two, and it certainly can't do everything the other system can yet. It's functions are being expanded and issues corrected by developers, based in part on feedback we receive here. You may have noticed that you can use the old editor at any point, by choosing "edit source." You can also hide the VisualEditor, using a gadget that is not supported by the Wikimedia Foundation in the gadgets tab of your preferences. You can access it in the section marked "Editing" and enable it by ticking the box labeled "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface", then scroll to the bottom and click "Save". You can reactivate VE access at any time by unticking that box. (Please note that this gadget can break and has broken in the past, but it will probably be reenabled swiftly if it does.) I hope you will not disable it, though, but keep helping us figure out how to make it better. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Please read: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#VisualEditor tag not working correctly

It appears that that "Tag: VisualEditor" label on revisions made with Visual Editor has been (accidentally?) deleted from all older edits. As a result, we presently have no way of tracking most of the VisualEditor edits made during the first week of deployment. Dragons flight (talk) 17:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Further discussion is at WP:VPT#Revision tags not working correctly. This seems to be a quite technical problem that affects non-VE tags as well, so I suggest that further discussion continue at that other page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:49, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm on a relatively good computer (the one I use for all my Feature Pictures work) with a good internet connection (BT Broadband).

I thought I'd see if VisualEditor had improved at all. Just scrolling down a largish page was jumpy, awkward, and laggy, even now, after supposed improvements.

Jumpy, awkward, and laggy are just going to put users off. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 23:36, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you in "edit" mode? The size of the VE stuff loaded on all articles has decreased substantially, so it shouldn't affect normal reading. If you get this without clicking "edit", I'd guess it's ULS (Universal Language Selector). πr² (t • c) 03:45, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

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

OH and the parset for template data has a rather uninformative error message. All you get is "Syntax error in JSON" lets guess where in the 100+ lines the error is!--Salix (talk): 11:16, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, there's a bug for that. Drop the JSON on my talkpage? I'll try to debug. Can you give an example of something too complex to explain? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

OK some wierd buggy jason there. As to complicated documentation ((Infobox World Heritage Site)) as parameters which should take ((coord)) which is a lot to explain, it also has a "locmapin" map parameter which is passed to Template:Location map which has complex instructions as to the name of the map to use which involve looking at Template:Location map/List. Links to those pages would be nice.--Salix (talk): 12:07, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, linking would be good :). So, Krinkle's approach with TemplateData was to deliberately build something barebones. This was because he didn't know precisely how it would be used in practise, and thought it would be better to build a system that can be expanded in line with how people need it to work (for example - linking, a dropdown box or something) rather than building features and hoping people use them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

I've now made a enhancement request on bugzilla T53311.--Salix (talk): 05:41, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

(@JohnCD:, apologies for my unclear language. :) What I meant was that the ghostly image trails my cursor, but the original content remains in place, and when I release my mouse button the ghostly image disappears, leaving the original unmoved. I see this is tracked and updated, but I just wanted to clarify! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 12 July 2013 (UTC))

@Mdennis (WMF): I understand. With Firefox, when the button is released the content appears to have moved. I gather from the response to the bug that it's only with Firefox, and the fix is to prevent that appearance until drag-and-drop is actually implemented. JohnCD (talk) 11:13, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

This is just terrible. Way to complicate things and make me never want to edit. FogDevil 16:52, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, that's certainly not its intention. :/ I assume you didn't save your change, because I don't see that you've actually used it on any edits, so I don't know what specific issues you've encountered, but it can be challenging especially for people who are familiar with wikimarkup, when so much of what we're used to doesn't function the way we expect. There are also some things that it just can't do yet, or can't do as well as the existing process, but work is underway to improve it. I hope that it will serve you better going forward. In the meantime, you can always use "edit source" to edit the way you're accustomed to and can follow the directions in the FAQ at the top of this page for hiding the VisualEditor altogether if you need. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure that wasn't its intention, but that is what it is doing. And this is why it needs to be reversed immediately.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:38, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I spent a little time tweaking a screenshot of VE using GIMP, to show some thoughts about the direction the UI might go in. I'm adding a picture at right. This is not a product of deep thought, more an attempt to provoke some sort of planned design process rather than the haphazard evolution that seems to be taking place. In particular, I expect there might be a need for additional "Edit" and "Tools" menus. Experienced editors will recognize that I've placed the CharInsert gadget on the second line. That gadget wouldn't be usable directly (even if gadgets could be used in VE), because it includes markup functionality, but its UI seems to me very similar to what is needed for inserting special characters. Looie496 (talk) 03:18, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I find your suggestion really useful. We need more tools on VisualEditor UI. Jacopo Werther ^iγ∂ψ=mψ 11:00, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Character insert is T40029 which may reuses the char insert from WikiEditor. You might need to venture into bugzilla for the developers to take note, as few read this page.--Salix (talk): 12:50, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Sure, but I think it's best to start a discussion here -- there are certainly members of the WMF team who watch this page. Anyway I've added a comment at that bug report -- not clear how much it will accomplish. Looie496 (talk) 14:23, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I do, at least :). I really like the idea of integrating the special characters tool, but it doesn't really scale; if you check out some of the more, ah, extensive, options in that menu, you'll find it would pretty much make the interface explode with buttons. I think we need a way of doing this, but a better way than the existing tool. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:29, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

It's certainly not exactly the right thing, but I think it's close enough to the right thing to be a good starting point. Looie496 (talk) 15:21, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I've added a link to your image to the enhancement request at T52296. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

The village of Follifoot is approximately 4 miles from Harrogate not 2 miles as stated in the article. My attempts to edit and save the alteration have been unsuccessful. Perhaps someone with more knowledge could correct the article for me. Janebly (talk) 11:44, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I have made the change for you. As the distance is included as part of the conversion template (that automatically calculates the distance in km) the change needs to be made in the template editor. Where you able to figure this out and get to the template editor, or was your problem in understanding the editor itself? (this is one of the most complicated templates on the encyclopaedia and so human-readable descriptions for the editor interface have not been written yet, so don't feel bad about it!). If you can let us know what you did and didn't manage to do then it will help improve it for the future. Thryduulf (talk) 13:04, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

• Showing a nutshell overview of template parameters: In general, trying to remind users of the various parameters, and their basic options, can be a challenge to display in a nutshell overview, as a condensed box of parameters and their format. Currently, for the Wikitext editor ("Edit source"), a person can insert a {Convert} unit-code parameter as "help" and the template will display the condensed parameter nutshell help-box, as formatted by Template:Convert/help. Perhaps the VisualEditor could display that nutshell help-box in a pop-up window or such. -Wikid77 (talk) 18:57, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

  T51772, which asks for links to the full documentation, is another suggestion to address the difficulty of providing detailed documentation in a nutshell. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

FlashSheridan (talk) 16:30, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not completely sure what you are asking here, but all edits can be previewed by clicking on "Save this page" and then "Review changes" (this is not a great design I know, but there are open requests for improvement). Thryduulf (talk) 07:51, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If you're using VisualEditor, then it ought to be displaying automatically and instantly. If you're adding it into the main part of the page, then you should see it as soon as you add it (with the puzzle icon/template tool). If you're adding it inside a <ref> tag, then it should display in the "Reference content" part of the reference tool. It should also be visible immediately in the <references /> at the end of the page. I just did it, and that's what happened. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

For the template data for Infobox species Template:Taxobox/doc I want to indicate in a parameter description that two single quotes should be used around an argument e.g. ''H. sapiens'' however I can't distinguish this from double quotes e.g. "H. sapiens" when looking at the produced template data.

When displayed its impossible to distinguish this from a double quote in the wiki doc page. In the VE dialogue box its also impossible to distinguish the two.--Salix (talk): 16:47, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

My gut feeling is that this is most likely to be a font issue. On my screen I use the DejaVu Sans font and there is a small, but noticeable, distinction between '' and ". Looking at it in Links, which uses DejaVu Sans Mono (as that's what I use in my terminals), the difference between the two is immediately clear. I'm not sure there is any way around this? Thryduulf (talk) 18:04, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

• Use <code> font to show multiple apostrophes: The typical style for showing users the use of multiple apostrophes is to display the text in monospaced font by using code-tags, as in: "<code>''italic''</code>". With the switch to HTML5, the code-tag is still being supported ("forever") in wikitext, but I am unsure how the VisualEditor could recommend the use of code-tag font in these cases. -Wikid77 (talk) 20:12, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

  At present, TemplateData does not allow for the inclusion of any markup. In addition, the dialog boxes live in their own iframe beyond the reach of community controlled CSS, so there is essentially nothing we can do without developer intervention. My personal recommendation would be to allow wikimarkup in TemplateData descriptions so we can have more control of the content displayed. Dragons flight (talk) 20:16, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

  I've added this request to the related bugzilla:51311 requesting links in TD documentation. See #Add a link to template documentation page further up this page. Thryduulf (talk) 07:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I want to go back to the old way, please. I don't see this option in my account settings (under "editing"). Startswithj (talk) 05:32, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

@Startswithj: See the FAQ box at the top of this page, just above the table of contents. Ignatzmice•talk 05:42, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Maggie and the WMF crew have just spent half of their working week politely explaining to the world and his neighbour how you disable this beta test. I think that is proof enough that this is a priority bug- disabling needs to prominent and obvious. There are two places that are intuitive and impossible to miss.

• On the top-bar of the visual editor next to the help icon, just add a further icon in red with the word 'Disable', Hover would display the message 'Thank you for taking part in this beta-test, to disabling the visual Editor will take you back to the Classic Editor' or just 'get me out of here!"
• Change the Edit|Edit source into Edit|Classic editor|Remove visual editor. I don't think anyone would need further help on that one

I have posted this not because I need a recursive reply- but so you can pass the comment directly to the dev team for immediate implementation.

If you are not at the London or Oxford Wikimeet- you are all most welcome to come and share a bottle of wine with me beyond wifi range in the garden. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 08:29, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

There is actually a proper off switch for VE. It was chosen to disable the off switch for en:wp, and instead have a half-hidden option that the VE breaks every now and then. Enabling the off switch is apparently an "enhancement". The patch is awaiting deployment. Anyone from WMF have an idea if/when this change will go through? - David Gerard (talk) 08:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedians:

• I wasn't aware I was consenting to a public post on this page when I clicked the "leave feedback" button, thus I was not aware of the FAQ at the top of this page (@Ignatzmice:). If the nature of this feedback method could be made more transparent, I think that would be more appropriate.
• Thank you for your responses. I eventually discovered after searching the web that the beta editor can be disabled in the "gadgets" section of my user settings. I would suggest moving this setting to the "editing" section, or else turn it off by default (it seems gadgets would be things I would opt into).
• I also have come to realize that the "edit source" button is sometime available as a hover option, however when the system is unresponsive, hover-reveals don't always work (@David Gerard:). I would suggest showing two links without hovers, more clearly titled as "beta editor" and "classic editor" or "visual editor" and "code editor." That, or having the choice of editing methods appear after clicking "edit," rather than defaulting to the choice of beta (@ClemRutter:).
• My tech specs (if helpful): Downstream 20 Mb/s; Safari 6.0.5; Mac OS 10.8.4; 2.7 GHz Intel Core i7 (64-bit); 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3; Flash 11.8.800.94; Java 1.6.0_51. Very occasional WP contributor.

Cheers, Startswithj (talk) 17:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

• • Regarding the section edit links, see bugzilla:50540 for the request to developers about it. I'll add your comments to that bug in a moment. Meanwhile, this section on the Village Pump explains how you can get both permanently displayed. Thryduulf (talk) 20:10, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

At User:Thryduulf/Hierarchy of content decisions I have an incomplete table (it's part of an unfinished user essay) with the table opened, some headers and rows defined but no closing syntax.

When making an unrelated edit, VE deleted all the table syntax apart from the the opening line [3] e.g. changing !Level!!Process!!Appeal process!!Notes to LevelProcessAppeal processNotes.

I know VE doesn't deal with tables properly yet, and this is an unusual use case, but there is no reason for it to be deleting syntax. As in the example above deleting the exclamation marks (and pipes on other rows) doesn't even result in cleaned up plain text (replacing them with space instead might do). Thryduulf (talk) 08:05, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Dealing with malformatted tables seems to be a nightmare for the devs, but my suggestion is that you file the bug report, just so they know that it happens. In theory, this shouldn't be a problem for the mainspace, and equally in theory, it should become even less likely to happen once VE provides decent support for creating and editing tables, but... Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Anish7 (talk) 11:02, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Did this get lost? — LlywelynII 11:40, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Most likely it's the issue noted at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 07#The easiest way for a new editor to ask anything about wikipedia is this page. Thryduulf (talk) 12:08, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

In case of Doubleclick on the template, should show a Transluction dialog. Rezonansowy (talk) 20:00, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

• This has been suggested before. I think bugzilla:51176 is the relevant request to the developers to add this. Thryduulf (talk) 20:24, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
• I like this idea. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

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

You are not the first to say this. See for example Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 07#Mystery meat navigation, which was seemingly archived without resolution. Thryduulf (talk) 17:40, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I figured it was brought up at some point. Interesting that those other commenters found even mouseover text inadequate, but at least that would be more than what we have. I have no clue what the icon for inserting a reference is even supposed to look like (a bar graph? wtf?), nor do I know what a puzzle piece has to do with templates. And the three books icon between them doesn't even have a discernible function after you click on it. I also don't know why anyone would expect to find categories under "page settings". I could go on...

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

The reference editing icon is pretty counterintuitive to me, too, and it's in bugzilla as a thing that needs to be worked on. I'm not sure how the linking icon is confusing, mind; it's a chain link, and matches the linking icon in the existing editing toolbar (and gmail, and wordpress, and...probably other services I'm not familiar with). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:02, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

It was less obscure, in that I was able to figure out what it probably meant before actually experimenting on it. I've never seen that particular icon before (I don't use gmail or any of those other services), and I have to assume that a new user will find it even more confusing than me if they're faced with just that little picture. And if it's used in other services, it would have to be for web links, correct? So a user familiar with that icon would then presume it's for inserting external links, rather than wikilinks to other articles. postdlf (talk) 19:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The buttons do have mouse-over text. Or at least I see it, do you not? Or is the complaint that the existing mouse-over text isn't very good, which I more or less agree with. Dragons flight (talk) 18:24, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

No, I don't see any mouse-over text. Firefox v. 22.0. postdlf (talk) 19:41, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

I just tried Firefox 22 and I did get the mouse-over text on the main icons. It seemed a little sluggish for some reason, but it did work. Does anyone else find that the mouse-over text isn't working? Dragons flight (talk) 02:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Firefox 22 here, mouseover works fine. Postdlf, what OS? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:15, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Windows 7. I even tried letting the mouse-over hover for awhile after Dragons flight's comment that it was "sluggish," but ten seconds and nothing for any of the buttons. postdlf (talk) 13:22, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

This is puzzling. :/ I have Firefox 22 on Windows 7, and the mouse-over text works for me. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Postdlf, do you see the mouse over text in other parts of the interface. For example, most (though not quite all) of the interface links at the left and top of the page have mouse over text. How about on pages that don't use VE? Also, are you using the Vector skin or something else? Dragons flight (talk) 16:55, 11 July 2013 (UTC)

Monobook. And no, I don't see mouseover text in the other interface links (I assume you mean the links under "interaction" or "toolbox", for example, or the tabs like "history" or "edit this page" along the top). I have navigation popups enabled, if that might make a difference. postdlf (talk) 17:27, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Well the good news is that it doesn't appear to be a VisualEditor problem, but rather some more general issue. I'd suggest you start by temporarily blanking User:Postdlf/monobook.js then clear your cache and see if you can see the mouse-over text then. If that works, then it is some issue specific to the scripts you have installed rather than a Mediawiki issue. Dragons flight (talk) 17:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

I've made a mockup of one idea, at File:VisualEditor - Toolbar - Reference-edit1.png - That image includes the original, and two adaptations that use a snippet of grey text and a blue superscripted number [1]. The grey text could be made into abstract letterforms (rather than the letters REF) in order to make it usable by all languages. Or could use a grey + sign and the blue number. (Only problem is RightToLeft languages. Not sure how to solve that.) Just a thought. –Quiddity (talk) 05:49, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF) and Okeyes (WMF): Is there an existing bugzilla entry for this (improving the icons)? I tried searching for a few keyword combinations, but could not find it. If there isn't one, I can add it. (I've got a list of the previous threads it was mentioned in.) Ta :) –Quiddity (talk) 18:15, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

@Quiddity: No, I talked to the development team and they said icons are not carved in stone but requested that people suggest changes. I asked for ideas, but don't think I got any. (If I did, I missed it!) As you've got a suggestion, this would be a great time to add it in. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Maggie. I've created bugzilla:51372 with my own suggestion, and a list of the previous comments.

Anyone else who has a specific suggestion should make a comment there explaining their suggested design, or link-to/attach an image of a sketch. HTH. –Quiddity (talk) 16:54, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

A warning is really a different solution than a selectable preference. This interface is complex enough that is surely merits a dedicated preferences screen anyways, why force editors used to Wiki markup to slow down and click buttons if they wish to opt out of the nowiki tags? VQuakr (talk) 21:32, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Typing Control+K or ⌘ Command+K to enter VisualEditor's link tool shouldn't really be slower than typing double square brackets. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:21, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

For a new editor who is unaccustomed to doing either, probably true. But you are missing the point. VQuakr (talk) 04:00, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

+1 Ignatzmice•talk 04:09, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Anyone who wants to use wikitext only needs to hit "edit source". Brackets will function as expected there. It would be great if we could have the option to use both forms of editing at one time, but I don't know if that's possible. :) -Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:12, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this is the first goddamn time I've said fuck on Wikipedia. It's a great idea for quick ce edits and like a goddamn fucking idiot I just keep trying to make it work only ending up, as often as not, spending twice or more time on an edit. One time I reviewed an entire article with ce edits and more complicated reorganization of material only to find, when I was all done, that nothing had actually been processed. I never did that again, but I still, like an idiot, keep using it--that's how it goes when one is the eternal optimist. If you can't fix this goddamned thing please admit it and throw it out. Please accept my profanity in the same lighthearted spirit in which it was used, but for christ's sake, this is just plain nuts. Gandydancer (talk) 18:32, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Here's an example: At the BP article I used VE to change " sustained cellular damage resulting organ damage" to read "sustained cellular changes resulting in organ damage" and it did not work. So I instead used the regular method and to my great surprise I found that the "fix" appeared then when I went to do my edit even though it had not yet appeared in the article. Gandydancer (talk) 20:57, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Don't feel bad. I had my first "R-Rated" entry myself at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 07#Beta for new edits because of this. It is infuriating, and what's worse the people behind it don't seem to care one bit.--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:42, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Gandydancer,

Thanks for your note. I'm sorry you lost that complicated edit. I lost a rather minor one yesterday (I think VisualEditor objected to a couple of hours elapsing between when I started the edit and when I finished it), and just dealing with a couple of sentences was irritating enough.

Your example in the second paragraph is about this edit. I just wanted to make sure that I understood correctly: as far as you could tell, did it not seem to close VisualEditor, or did it apparently save just fine, but when you were reading the page, it was the previous, un-edited version of the article? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

About the "complicated edit", yes I was going through an article to get it ready for a GA so I was being very fussy. I had done 2 edits and was about 2/3 done and was just amazed to find that without any sort of warning none of them had registered. I was also having some sort of other problem--I don't remember what--and I came here and found that another editor was having the same problem and was advised to change something in "preferences", which I did and that seemed to clear it up. But then I started to get an 'error' sign of some sort at times and one time, to my amazement, when I when to do it the "old" way, my changes appeared on their own--though looking at it now I see that it is tagged VE, so I guess it worked even though I got an 'error' signal. I do know that once after getting an 'error' I hit it again and that time it worked. I don't know if I'm making this very clear... The next time I have a problem I will be more careful to note what happened so that I can report it correctly. Gandydancer (talk) 00:20, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, to be candid, I'd like your next report to say something like "VisualEditor has completely stopped misbehaving for me". I am just mystified about the error-but-saved-anyway thing. I'll see if I can find something in Bugzilla that's similar. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It looks to me like T53319 is a match for this problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:11, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I seem to be having difficult in addin a web link so going back to normal editor Glh54 (talk) 08:40, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that it wasn't intuitive for you. I think it's probably a little more difficult for those of us who know the old way to adjust to than those who've never edited before. :/ If you decide to try it again, the user guide might help. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:25, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

The user guide for VisualEditor doesn't include external links (last I looked). However, it works the same as adding a wikilink: Type the label you want to display (e.g., "Official website"). Select that, then use the link tool (click the chain-link icon, or use the shortcuts Control+K or ⌘ Command+K) to add a link. Instead of typing the name of some Wikipedia article into the box, paste in the URL. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:41, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

<blink> A new entry on my to-do list today. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:36, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, phew. :) It must have been updated since you last looked. :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

• Classic "marked as answered" means "hope they'll be able to fix that one soon" -- really? That's what we have now for the "default editor" that is "so great" ?--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
  • There is nothing more that Maggie or anyone else here can do. The devs know the problem exists and it's in their queue of things to fix, so the report here has been answered, even if the response isn't ideal.
    As for whether the VE is "so great", not yet it isn't but many of these bugs would not have been found without the wide testing being employed currently (e.g. the one lower down this page which requires leaving a page open for many hours before editing it), so this is a necessary step. Personally, I would have waited until it was more feature complete and all the critical bugs found during opt-in testing had been fixed, but that doesn't change that this report has been answered. Thryduulf (talk) 07:31, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Yes there is something else to be done. Shut it off.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:53, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
      • I generally view more things as critical than the devs seem to (based on bugzilla importance ratings) but even I can see that this bug is not in danger of damaging the wiki so disabling VE as a reaction to this bug is way over the top. I don't know who has the ultimate decision about whether VE should be disabled or not (user:Jdforrester (WMF) perhaps?) but its not something that will be taken lightly. You can choose not to use it - click edit source rather than edit, or disable it for your account - see the FAQ at the top of the page. There is also the related bugzilla:50929 that you may be interested in. Thryduulf (talk) 06:27, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
        • I've already chosen not to use it. My concern is the other editors that are run off and will never return because of it. This makes the encyclopedia much weaker and not stronger. The decision to turn it on was clearly made lightly because the blamed thing isn't ready yet. I feel like I'm talking to Nancy Pelosi here... "you gotta turn on the Visual Editor to find out what's in it" and now we're stuck. That is the wrong way to run a volunteer-user-driven system.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:28, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

This is all very confusing and counter-intuitive, and it doesn't even seem to work the same way twice. I can't help but think that something isn't working correctly! There doesn't seem to be a way to add new references, for example. Yes, there's a "create new reference" tab, but all it does is create a blank reference that can't be edited - presumably it isn't meant to do this!

Templates sometimes let you add new parameters, and sometimes don't, and the ones I've tried to use (convert and cite journal, so far) either output gooblidigook or nothing at all. It doesn't even behave the same way with the same template on repeated attempts. Obviously, I haven't saved any of the edits I've produced so far with VisEd, because nothing I've tried to write with it was functional.

Something is clearly screwy (and possibly at my end, not yours), but I can't figure out what. I get that wikimarkup isn't intuitive for new users, but I can't help thinking that neither is this.

At the very least, the instructions on the Help page need to be greatly improved. Half the time, I can't figure out what they mean. "Add parameters", for instance, isn't really sufficient as the entire description of a particular step. Add parameters how, exactly? Anaxial (talk) 17:03, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Does the 'create new reference' tab not pop up a window in which to type text? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Clicking on the "Insert reference" icon and then "create new source", and finally "insert reference", does get to a dialog/pop-up box where a new source can be added, but the UX is poor. The shadow text in the search box should be "Search for an existing source"; "Create a new source for the reference" [the "a" should be added, as well as "for the reference"] and "Use an existing source for the reference:" [the colon should be added] are parallel options and should be in the same font (the second is now bolded, the first is not); the list of existing sources should be indented, so it's clear that they fall under the second option, rather than being options in their own right. The "insert reference" button should be on the upper right, not the lower right

Anyway, after those three steps, sometimes the "Reference" dialog box does not come up to specify what the new source should be. I didn't see that behavior initially. But after opening and closing it a number of times (without action; I was working on understanding the process), and similarly with the "Insert Reference" dialog box, I do indeed see the same thing as Anaxial - the clicking "Insert reference" no longer produces the "Reference" dialog box; the software simply inserts a reference that has no content. And then it gives errors after the save occurs: "Cite error: The opening <ref> tag is malformed or has a bad name (see the help page)." That's because it inserted <ref/> (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:John_Broughton/sandbox&diff=564179205&oldid=564134153 this edit).

And no, I can't get figure out how to get VE to do that again. But I'll add two another problems that appear to be related:

During the edit session, at the place where VE had inserted two adjacent blank citations, the text looked like this "[1][2]". But looking at the diff, there was only a single instance of actual wikitext that had been added: <ref/>. And when I went back to to edit the page in VE, it now only displayed this "[1]".

In that edit session, and in a following edit session for the same article, if I (a) make a change to the article - say, just a bit of text, right after the problem footnote; (b) go to the edit summary box, put in some text there; (c) return to the article [and maybe add some text - not sure if that is needed], and (d) return to the edit summary box - then I can't backspace over existing text - I can only go forward (continue to type text).

I really didn't think that VE was unstable, but I'm beginning to have my doubts. Also, for Anaxial's question, "Add parameters how, exactly?", I had the same puzzlement, and I'll comment separately about that. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:51, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

John has pretty much covered it there. In short, yes, sometimes it brings up a pop-up box, and sometimes it doesn't. There doesn't seem to be any pattern to this that I can discern. Anaxial (talk) 07:44, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

This is weird; I've tried it 10 or 15 times in a row and it always comes up (although I did discover an unrelated, and kooky, bug by doing so). John, how many times did you have to click? What browsers/OS are you on? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:57, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, dear colleagues!

Add the parameters form template to see all the options. For example, you can add a button to "All parameters", then he is not with regards to TemplateData, or not come to all the template parameters (in brackets (({))}). I still need to add the ability to edit the template TemplateData, once in this form with the words: "This parameter has no description ',' This template has no description ',' This parameter is not specified "required", "Please, add them", ... . --Xusinboy Bekchanov (talk) 04:38, 14 July 2013 (UTC).

Which template? The code to specify/document all the parameter needs to be added to the individual template documentation page. Work is in progress to document the most important template Wikipedia:VisualEditor/TemplateData. If there is a specific template you need it might be possible to speed thing up. However there is about a day delay before the documentation can be used in the visual editor.--Salix (talk): 11:07, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If not <TemplateData>, the program itself can not determine the parameters?

Well, then, we are using a bot will add <TemplateData> </ TemplateData> for each template.

Inside <TemplateData> impossible to use interwiki? https://uz.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Andoza%3ABilgiquti_aholi_punkti%2Fdoc&diff=1576912&oldid=1576911 --Xusinboy Bekchanov (talk) 17:22, 15 July 2013 (UTC).

No links or other markup are currently permitted in TemplateData. See Bugzilla:51311 for a request to alter this. Thryduulf (talk) 18:27, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Attempted to make this fairly simple edit, the VE spent ages trying to save and came back with "Error: Invalid error code". I pressed the second "save" button again, it came back with the same. Gave up and did it in wikitext - David Gerard (talk) 09:06, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

It is known that this error is generated when your session times out (see bugzilla:50424), with the session starting when you open the page for reading. Is it possible this happened here? Thryduulf (talk) 09:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Pretty plausible, it's a cite-heavy and hence complex page. Wonder if there's room for optimisation there - David Gerard (talk) 10:28, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

James commented that they hope to have the fix for that bug finished and deployed tomorrow, so hopefully that will at least help. There probably is scope for optimisation when dealing with cite templates given the plethora of bugs surrounding citations and the UI for adding them. Bugzilla:50475 seems potentially relevant as well. Thryduulf (talk) 10:37, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I have had the same experience several times. The last time it happened my edit was saved when I again hit the edit button. Gandydancer (talk) 11:00, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't know if this is related, but I've just opened brand new bug T53319. I got that message when trying to test the bug reported in the section immediately below this one and realized that even though VE hung up at the save stage, it actually did save. Since yours did not save, David, perhaps these are not the same issue? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Possibly this is related to the server issues I've just discovered we're currently having. I understand they aren't related to VE, but will certainly impact it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

I also attempted a simple edit (this) which failed. I proceeded to copy the source text to my sandbox, then edit using VE, save & copy the source back to the target article. Just wanted to let you know that this actually worked. Perhaps the problem is due to the size of the original article (seeing as the sandbox edit did work). CRC43 (talk) 11:48, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Oi. :/ On the plus side, I was able to edit that page with VE, so it does work at least sometimes. :) What happened when you tried? Did you get the same message? Can you check to see if it happens if you try a similar edit again? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:29, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Moments ago, while I was editing an article using the editing tool that works properly, the properly-disabled mess misnamed Visual Editor restored itself as my default editing tool. It seems to have been returned to its well-deserved grave after I resaved my "gadget" preferences, but why should any editor have to watch out for this dysfunction to recur? Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 12:59, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

This also happened to me this morning. I do not like the Visual Editor for adding or changing categories but prefer to use "HotCat". I used HotCat to update several articles and then that option disappeared and VE was back. I have changed my preferences in the Gadgets tab several times (which I would never have found except for a mention in a previous feedback talk), but VE keeps coming back and HotCat is still not available. VE takes MUCH longer to edit categories compared to HotCat. Jllm06 (talk) 13:10, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

See two sections above this one. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:13, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

It just did it again. Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 13:19, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we are having problems with the servers right now that are being worked on. These may affect the performance of any and all gadgets (and non-gadgets) and is not directly related to VisualEditor. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:28, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

And when "Gadgets" came back, "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" had been unchecked"! That's certainly a VE-specific error. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 13:46, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not a VE-specific error unless VE is causing the problem. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:47, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

So if the lousy kludge that supposedly turns off VE doesn't work, that's not a VE-specific error? What next,will you argue about what the meaning of "is" is? Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 15:16, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

The argument is about the meaning of "specific". If all gadgets are affected by the same error then the error isn't specific to one of the gadgets. An analogy: If your city loses power and your toaster stops running then the power loss isn't a toaster-specific problem. It can still be annoying if you wanted toast. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:45, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

And when the only one of my "gadgets" whose marking is changed is the one that relates to VE, that isn't VE-specific? You folks are really in denial. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz (talk) 16:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If its needed again the following css can hide the visual editor.

div#p-views > ul  > li#ca-edit:not(.istalk):nth-last-child(4) { display: none; }
.mw-editsection-link-primary { display: none; }
.mw-editsection-link-secondary { visibility: visible !important; content: "source"; }
.mw-editsection-bracket { visibility: hidden !important; }

It's supplied with no warranty, expect it to mess up on some namespaces and hide normal edit links as well, kill section 0 edit links. It may also break if you have any custom css js or gadgets or if any software changes.--Salix (talk): 17:23, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Hullaballo, we're in denial. Because of the hundreds of opt-out users, you are literally the only one reporting this problem persisting beyond the gadgets issue.Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:05, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

There are now two sets of apparent endnotes in this article, created by different forms in the WYSIWYG editor. Please update the help to make it clear whether to use Transclusion for citations. Thank you. Mragsdale (talk) 16:04, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mragsdale: What is the name of the article with two sets of apparent endnotes? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:42, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

His only edit in the 30 days prior to this message was here, and there is no problem with the endnote formatting, so it must be an article that he didn't edit. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:10, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

@John Broughton: I was working on Burning of Washington. I was confused because some of the endnotes are transclusions and others are citations, and I was uncertain which to use.

It looks like it is using WP:REFGROUPs to separate out the explanatory footnote from the bibliographic citations, and ((sfn)) for the Help:Shortened footnotes. It's an uncommon style on Wikipedia. If those pages don't help, then you can find people at either WT:CITE or at WP:Help desk who will be able to explain it all. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe there is any situation where it's acceptable to have two identically-named parameters within a template ("url=", "url=", for example). But VE doesn't prevent that from happening. It should. -- John Broughton (♫♫)

There does not seem to be any checking of parameter. Setting the "required" field to true in the templatedata means the parameter is is automatically added to the list in the lhs of the dialog box, but it does not force any checks than the value is actually set. This might be desirable behaviour as many templates have some default if no parameters are set. Required could be taken to mean "should" rather than "must".--Salix (talk): 20:46, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

If, for example, in the ((cite web)) template, the title parameter is left blank, then the template generates an error message into the wikitext, "Missing or empty |title= ". That's what I mean by "required" fields - the template fails if any required field is not completed.

It's possibly a good idea to have three categories of fields - required, suggested, and optional, but if so, someone should start a separate thread. This thread is really about multiple, identically-named template parameters, and I'm going to stick by my claim that VE should prevent that from happening, until someone presents a counter-example. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

There is a bug for ensuring required field are fill in. T52747--Salix (talk): 21:37, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a template with multiple identical parameters? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:11, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

@Okeyes (WMF): There is no such template possible, what he means is that the Dialog lets you create a template call which has two identical parameter calls which breaks the template or ad least renders one of the values useless so it should not allow you to do that.

Aha. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

People do it accidentally in the old editing environment. I'd be happy to have a technological solution that would prevent this, or at least flag it for review before saving. If no one has started a bug report, then please let me know. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I didn't find one, so I opened one. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:38, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I just wanted to point this discussion on MediaWiki which would indicate that we will, once again, be unable to disable VisualEditor once Flow arrives to replace our current talk pages.—Kww(talk) 21:46, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Sad :-( Good way to make some active editors find something else to do. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 22:04, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

This message needs straightening out without delay. @Jdforrester:, is Brandon's statement there accurate? The claim all along has been that the visual editor will not be made mandatory - if this has changed, when and why was it changed? - David Gerard (talk) 22:24, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

We'll (always, I believe) be able to use regular markup on articles. They're going to be forcing us to use Flow (i.e. VisEd) on talk pages—user talk pages for a while, but eventually all talk pages, I believe. Which sucks. Just for the record. Ignatzmice•talk 22:48, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

So new users using AfC will be using Flow to create article drafts? How entertaining. --j⚛e decker^talk 00:34, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

This comment (from the person leading the Flow project at the moment) is particularly interesting: "Parsoid does not do well with templates. Ergo, we are designing with the assumption that we can't use templates." And for performance reasons, consideration is being given to not storing talk pages as a set of edits (diffs). I'm not sure how all this will impact bots and automated tools like WikiEd, but I do know that those are used a lot outside of articlespace. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:07, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

• I can't speak for the Flow team, and I don't think James can either. His job is to build the VE itself, and deploy it as the mainspace editor. Our statements there remain true; wikimarkup will remain available. What is happening with Flow is outside of our remit - we simply build the code and make it work. Other teams who use it are doing so at their own recognizance, under their own parameters. Having said that, I suspect the wikimarkup/VE/stripped-down-VE/whatever question is going to come up internally, and is going to be informed by what users have said about it so far. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:17, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

All we need is a commitment that Flow will not be rolled out if there isn't a "source" or "Wikimarkup" editor available for "messages", or if templates aren't available. I realize neither the Flow team nor the VE team can make such a commitment, but it needs to be made. I also realize that this isn't the correct forum, but comments to that effect in the correct forum are being ignored. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah; I can't make that commitment myself, but I agree the need for it is something that should be surfaced. I'm going to be in the office for 3 weeks from Thursday (visiting for personal business, actually) and I'm going to chase it up when I'm there if it hasn't been sorted. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:12, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Let be honest, it's pretty rare that the nowiki tags are used. The Visual Editor should allow the contributor to use wikicodes. In my opinion, the more simple would to have a tick box where one can tick it on or off if he wants the Visual Editor to assume "nowiki" for its contributions or to allow wikicodes (i.e. mainly [[ ]] or (( ))) to work for its contributions. Thanks, Amqui (talk) 03:20, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

That might make the most sense, but then again it might not. The relevant bug has been "resolved"—as of tomorrow, there'll be a little warning if someone does enter wikitext (defined as two or more square brackets, two or more curvy brackets, two or more single quotemarks, or three or more tildes in a row; two or more equals signs, one or more asterisks, or one or more hashtags on a new line.) Ignatzmice•talk 03:37, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Having the nowiki tags is very deliberate, and it's not because we assume users who type wikimarkup in want it to be rendered as rich-text - it's because typing markup into a rich-text editor and having it render can cause all sorts of breakage. I think it would generally be a Bad Thing (tm) for us to go back on that. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 05:51, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

If the purpose of the excessive nowiki tags it to protect VE from its own bugs, does that mean it is temporary? It seems pretty obvious that the vast majority of the time an editor types "[[" or "((" into VE, they do not want it nowiki'd. VQuakr (talk) 06:07, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

To my knowledge it's not to protect against bugs, it's because markup going into the VE causes bugs - it's a design decision, and a perfectly sensible one. Building a rich-text editor is....an incredibly difficult problem: building a single surface that could handle rich-text and markup editing is harder. Having said that, it's possible I'm misunderstanding, and I'll poke people to work that out. But I wouldn't describe it as a temporary band-aid for bugs, because it's neither temporary nor to cope with existing bugs; it copes with the bugs not-having-it would introduce. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I can see it potentially as being sensible, particularly given the WYSIWYG concept. However, it seems reasonable for there to be a tool within VE to change entered raw Wikicode to a properly formatted VE display (with an error message if it's not properly formatted, or if VE can't handle it). The code is there in VE, as VE can read articles not generated by VE. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:39, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

That sounds workable, certainly; my one concern would be that the development work could distract. By that I mean, obviously we have a fixed number of hours developers can put into a large number of bugs, and so we have to prioritise. One of the long-term suggestions is to have it made easy to switch between VE and markup mode, with changes brought across. I'd worry that fixes like this, which are an interim solution, will slow down the fixing of other bugs or the development of a replacement tool. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

@Arthur Rubin:: You can already do this: add a transclusion, but instead of adding a template, click the "add content" button in the lower-left corner. See if that makes you happier. — This, that and the other (talk) 11:03, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

• This suggestion has been made before, and it's reasonable, but what needs to be understood is that it would be very difficult to implement. It isn't even clear how a visual editor ought to handle it. How should the editor react if the user has entered [[ but not yet the closing brackets? Should the next stretch of article be shown as a link? There are probably ways of handling such issues, but no solution that wouldn't consume huge amounts of developer time, which is a very constrained resource. Looie496 (talk) 15:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Perhaps what is needed is a specific module or something that can be called (clicked on or with a keyboard shortcut) that tells VE to treat everything that follows as wikitext until the user closes or otherwise concludes the module (clicking the icon again or repeating the shortcut). VE would not attempt to render anything in that module (with the possible exception of syntax highlighting) until it is concluded. At which point the code would be parsed and either rendered or give an error.
    From a power user point of view though, the absolute best would be for VE to just have a setting for how it deals with wikitext. In mode 1 it would do as now and assume the user wanted to enter the literal string. In mode 2 it would parse it as wikitext when saving or previewing (assuming a wysiwyg preview). At no time in either mode would the editor display it as anything other than the literal text entered until the time of saving - no on-the-fly rendering or anything like that - if a user wants to see it as wysiwyg they use the wysiwyg tools. The mode switch needs to be configurable per edit, with a wiki-wide default overrideable by user preference. Thryduulf (talk) 15:40, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

    And then we'd have people doing wikimarkup for half and edit but not for the other half. I think you'd need something that you can toggle as you go, like ctrl-foo and I type in wikimarkup for a while; ctrl-bar and I'm back to VisualEditor mode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

    • Do you mean on-the-fly switching between editors while preserving the in-progress edit? If so then that would be good. Thryduulf (talk) 21:11, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

      I was thinking of something simpler (at least, I think it'd be simpler), which is to stay in VE but to let people type wikicode for a minute, without having to have everything in that edit be treated as wikicode.
      Switching between editing environments (while preserving in-progress edit) has been proposed. It's supposed to be very difficult, but a one-time, one-way switch from VE to the old editor didn't seem to make the devs as nervous as the infinitely-back-and-forth idea did. So perhaps we will someday see something like this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:28, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

      Ah right. I suppose a simple way would be something like a <wiki> tag that told VE to treat everything between it and </wiki> as wikitext (i.e. do the exact opposite of <nowiki>). Thryduulf (talk) 22:41, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

The way I imagined it being coded is that the non-default "power user" mode would behave exactly the same as existing, except that after the user clicked "save changes" the program would remove any nowiki tags from the change before saving. Since this behavior would only be for users that requested it, there would be no need for changes to the on-the-fly rendering. Intentional use of nowiki is pretty uncommon; a "power user" that wanted to add them could use the "edit source" or temporarily change their preference settings. VQuakr (talk) 22:56, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

The ((coord)) templates makes heavy use of Function overloading with a variety of different syntaxes:

• ((Coord | 57 | 18 | 22 | N | 4 | 27 | 32 | W | display=inline)) 57°18′22″N 4°27′32″W / 57.30611°N 4.45889°W / 57.30611; -4.45889
• ((Coord | 44.112 | -87.913 | display=inline)) 44°06′43″N 87°54′47″W / 44.112°N 87.913°W / 44.112; -87.913

the format depends on the arity of the unnamed parameters. The template data for this is quite awkward but simplest to have the 2nd, 3rd and 4th parameters as optional and the 5th parameter for longitude degrees. There is a T51743 for this but its been closed as WONTFIX with a suggestion that we split coord up into a number a separate templates with a different syntax for each. Argh.--Salix (talk): 07:21, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah :/. That article notes "If a method is designed with an excessive number of overloads, it may be difficult for developers to discern which overload is being called simply by reading the code." This is evidently true for code, as well as devs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and ((convert)) is arguably worse. The underlying issue is that the VE developers want each parameter to have a fixed meaning and the community clearly hasn't been enforcing that. Prior to TemplateData, it was relatively easy to give multiple examples of different input styles on a doc page, and it seems most people were okay with that. Now, the restrictive TemplateData format doesn't allow for that and there doesn't appear to be any easy solution. Dragons flight (talk) 07:39, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I added ((unref)) to PRITV: while in VE, it sent the content of the article right to the bottom below the infobox and the existing ((uncat-stub)) template. Looked ridiculous. I saved it with appropriate edit summary - and on saving the page the result was poor but not as bad: the "unref" template was appearing level with the top of the infobox, so centred within a narrower area rather than across top of whole article, but much better than it had appeard while editing in VE. So two different problems:

1. VE is not being WYSIWYG: the effect of adding the template looked a total mess while editing, though it was not as bad when I had saved the page
2. But it is difficult/impossible to add a template at very top of an article, above the infobox, when this is the appropriate place.

PamD 07:43, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmn; I'm looking at the article now and it renders fine. Odd :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:52, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Well it would - I went back into the article and cleaned it up in Edit Source, as usual often! PamD 09:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Aha! Okie-dokes, I'll investigate more thoroughly. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

So, it works for me. I added it to the whitespace at the very top of the article; how did you do it? Having said that, it really shouldn't be placing it on the same line as the infobox. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I've looked at T51603 but that seems to be inconclusive discussion which hasn't been added to since 17 June. Is there any progress anywhere on this vital facility: the ability to leave messages in an article, as Hidden Comments, which will be seen automatically by every editor who goes to edit that article, or that small section of that article (so, no, an edit notice popping up for the whole page does not do the trick)? This seems to me to be a very important feature we mustn't lose, but the discussion at that bug seems extremely relaxed about it. Is there another bug I'm missing? Is it regarded as a priority? Is it likely to get fixed anytime soon? PamD 08:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Not that I can see; I'm going to chase it when the SF people wake up. I surfaced this to James and the people making the go/no-go as something that needs resolving before the IP rollout, which makes me hope it's in the Monday deployment, but I'm not sure. I'll find out. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:08, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I've figured out how we could add templates to Wikipedia pages that would only be visible during VE's edit mode. That could be applied to accomplish the same purpose as hidden comments, but it would mean an entirely new system for adding hidden comments. So possible, but probably not desirable. Better to have the devs figure out how to show the current hidden comments, if at all possible. However, if there is an urgent need for a solution at some page, we can discuss the hack I have in mind. Dragons flight (talk) 08:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it's a general fix we need - really, the use case for hidden comments ("do not touch this bit!") is widespread - Kashmir, BrEng versus AmEng, Jerusalem... Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:20, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

There are two separate requirements: (a) Templates like ((Use dmy dates)), which are standard notes for the eyes of editors, and (b) freehand Hidden Comments like "Please do not make significant changes to the lead without discussing them first on the article's talk page." in London. We need a solution for both categories. PamD 10:26, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, bugzilla:49806. Also reported as an important/critical thing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:39, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) A way to combine them would be to make a template, perhaps called something like "Note to editors" that took an unnamed parameter as a freehand note (e.g. ((note to editors|Do not change this to KBE, see [[Knight Bachelor]]))) or a named parameter for a standard message, e.g. perhaps ((note to editors|msg=Use British English|date=July 2013)). VE could be configured to display this template in editing mode, maybe: Note to editors: Do not change this to KBE, see Knight Bachelor.

Alternatively it might be better to have a defined class of templates display in VE mode only. This would allow more than one template and would probably be much easier for internationalisation purposes. So the ((Use British English)) and similar templates would just need this class applied. Is that something that TemplateData could do (I don't know much about TD)?. User:Thryduulf 10:54, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, hidden text is still not showing in VE - which means that lots of instructions to (new) editors who are using VE are invisible. For example, personal sandboxes contain this instruction: <!-- EDIT BELOW THIS LINE --> I hope that was not an important instruction, because it's likely to be overwritten, a lot.

Overall, this is, well, frustrating. It really wouldn't have taken a lot of programming for Parsoid to find invisible text, make it visible (as with the example above), and either prevent it from being edited in VE, though still deletable (easiest) or allow editing, with zero length text strings resulting in deletion by Parsoid. Instead, we've got the potential for a lot of stealth damage to occur to articles (either violating instructions, inadvertently, or just inadvertently deleting them. Then the choices are (assuming recent changes patrollers find these edits), either lots of reverts of otherwise fine edits, or lots of manual, tailored edits to put back the hidden comments but keep the rest of an otherwise good edit. Very frustrating. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It's nothing like as important as the hidden comments issue, but it was annoying on day one of VE and is still b****y irritating for a regular wikignoming editor:

• Open stub in VE (Prelude to a Million Years)
• Open transclusion dialog box, remove ((stub))
• Start to add ((novel-stub)), then remember that there are decade divisions
• Think "No, I can't remember which year the article says the book was published", and can't see the article because the dialog box totally obscures it
• Swear at VE
• Close transclusion dialog box
• Read the publication date, 1933
• Re-open transclusion box
• Re-delete ((stub))
• Add ((1930s-novel-stub))
• Continue, finish edit, save page.

Is it un-reasonable to ask to be able to see the content of a page while choosing stub templates or other transclusions, or while choosing categories (eg Category:1937 births or Category:Villages in Żyrardów County)? T51969 isn't showing much/any progress. PamD 09:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Not unreasonable to me; I've left a comment asking for an update. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:54, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Superb! Much better and easier and visual. Super48paul (talk) 11:37, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Great to hear! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:33, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

VE was working as expected in Safari on an iTouch, despite it not being a supported browser yet. (Until Safari decided to crash, that is. But I am using an iOS 7 beta.) Ignatzmice•talk 12:29, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yay :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:33, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

While making this edit, the added parameter (website=[[iOS 7]]) showed up, once I'd changed it in the transclusion-editor, in the ref-editor. However, clicking "Apply changes" in the ref-editor did not make it appear in the WISYWIG displayed text; I thought I'd have to go into source and add it. It did show up once I'd saved the page, though! (Note: I could not reproduce the problem with these edits to my sandbox—the new parameters did appear after applying changes.) Ignatzmice•talk 12:58, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hum. That's very strange :/. Let me know if it repeats? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

See edit. Is there a way as yet to add text to an external link, rather than dropping a bare link into an article? I couldn't find one in the interface - David Gerard (talk) 13:51, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

The workflow, as I understand it, is:

• Add the text you want displayed
• Select that text
• Hit the add link button
• Enter the URL you want for that text
• Hit Enter.

Dragons flight (talk) 14:00, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

That's ridiculously undiscoverable - David Gerard (talk) 16:34, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Agree. JustAnswer uses a similar workflow, but it has it noted in the FAQ. (Twice, or more.) — Arthur Rubin (talk) 17:17, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It's the same process as adding an internal link, and this fact is noted in the documentation at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide#Editing links. It needs to be at WP:External links#How to link as well. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

where do i write my edit summary? Kingturtle = (talk) 15:23, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

You can find the "edit summary" when you click on "save page". A dialogue opens where you can also see your changes. TeamGale (talk) 15:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Good luck with the visual editor... the users I support have been hoping for this or years! I just hope this doesn't hide things like using templates and other more advanced functionality too deep. But I like that the regular edit is still there. Tenbergen (talk) 19:17, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, Tenbergen. :) There's still obviously a lot of room for improvement, but I think that the community is coming up with some great suggestions for better workflows, in addition to finding bugs that need to be repaired. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

In adding geocoordinates to Brooklyn Preparatory School I failed for half an hour to understand how to do it with VE, and finally fell back on Edit Source and did it the old way as outlined in MOS:COORD. Will someone add the links from there to whatever page tells how to do it with VE? Jim.henderson (talk) 19:41, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Based on #Template data for coord and other templates using overloading, it sounds like the geocoodinates templates will have to be re-written before they will get along with VE.

Have you tried adding any other templates? I found it easier to figure out the process when I was working with a very simple one, like a ((fact)) tag. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:19, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes sorry for that. I wrote the doc for that template only the other day and was not sure how it would work. There is a delay between writing the documentation and it being live in the VE system. Looks like its just gone live and does not work. Currently the only way to get it to work is to specify every parameter so you would have to use the degrees minutes and seconds for both latitude and longitude. I've created a new template ((coordDec)) which lets you use signed decimal degrees and works with the visual editor.--Salix (talk): 22:34, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Not sure if this has been reported already. Noted on an IP's edit[4] Risker (talk) 00:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I think it's this one: [5]. Thanks, Risker. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:31, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

After saving an V-edit on Shiva, I saved the page. From contents, I clicked on a section. Instead of going to the section, it went in Vedit mode. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 09:48, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Although I found another bug when testing this, @Redtigerxyz:, I could not replicate it. :) Can you edit something and see if it happens again? If so, can you let me know what browser and operating system you are working on? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

using Chrome. I could not replicate it either by simple testing. I removed and reorganized/copy-paste sections in the previous edits. May be it led to the behaviour? Didn't test that again. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 13:53, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mdes nni(WMF): Replicated on Narayana Gosain Temple, copy-paste and reorg of sections caused same effect. --Redtigerxyz ^Talk 18:27, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:Redtigerxyz, I also tried to replicate this, and couldn't. It's a very odd behavior. Can you tell us your web browser and operating system information? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:39, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Chrome Version 28.0.1500.72 m and Windows 7 Home edition. It happens only when I remove/reorganize sections. Redtigerxyz ^Talk 15:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

That's about as different from me as you can get, since I'm using Safari or Firefox on a Mac. I'll go search through Bugzilla to see whether anyone else has reported this, and if not, then I'll add a bug for it. Thank you for telling us about this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The dustbin/trashcan icon doesn't seem intuitive for "unlink". An icon of a breaking link (on the lines of the one here) would be more natural. The dustbin seems as if the linked word or phrase might be deleted completely. I remember seeing someone complaining about this, and Maggie asking for ideas for a better icon, a while back, but can't find it in Bugzilla so not sure if it went any further. Sorry to be vague. PamD 17:59, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Pam, another editor did bring this up recently. His/her feeling also was that a "broken chain" icon was more self-explanatory than the trashbin. Anyone else have preferences on this? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 18:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Pam on this, a dustbin suggests binning the whole thing rather than binning just the link. Thryduulf (talk) 18:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

A broken chain is also used in other visual editors to mean breaking a link - David Gerard (talk) 19:14, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

What about this icon with the link icon in the background? TeamGale (talk) 20:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Ooh, that could be nice. And how about the rollover? "Unlink" instead of "Remove"? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

"Unlink" is perfect for me. Kind of makes more sense. If others agree it's a "go" for me :D TeamGale (talk) 20:20, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

"Unlink" gets my support too. Thryduulf (talk) 20:41, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

"unlink" is the right text - David Gerard (talk) 20:43, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, looks like it's leaning in the direction of either broken link/crossed-out link as the icon, and "unlink" as the rollover text. I'll wait a day or so before making the request to let anyone else weigh in. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 20:52, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

*weighs in* I totally support the modification as proposed above. Theopolisme (talk) 21:03, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Always nice to see everyone agree. Entirely support this change. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 22:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the weighing in and such, folks. I've made a request for this change. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

What is going on? How come I can't see the markup on this page? Please, turn it back to the simple system that previously existed. I've made thousands of edits and I don't know what to do here. The old way was so user-friendly.

Please do not make this the default editing system. I really enjoyed working on Wikipedia and would rather not quit. 69.125.134.86 (talk) 21:50, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:69.125.134.86,

The old system is still there. Just look for "Edit source", right next to the "Edit" button. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

If you log in, you can set a preference to disable the new visual editor for all your edits. The FAQ at the top of this page gives the details about how. At present I don't think there is a way that you can do that without an account. Thryduulf (talk) 22:47, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Did WMF actually turn this thing on for all IP editors on schedule despite the amount of opposition that plan has received?—Kww(talk) 23:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Why did I ask? A quick peek at Filter 550 shows the answer.—Kww(talk) 23:23, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

100 hits in 8 hours and it's allegedly perfectly safe and doesn't harm the wiki. This is obviously some strange usage of the word safe that I wasn't previously aware of. Thryduulf (talk) 23:53, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

34 of those are in the last two hours, when they seem to have turned it on for anons, roughly a 50% rate increase. I'd like to make filter 550 block until the storm passes: see Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Filter 550 should disallow.—Kww(talk) 00:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

34 in two hours? Let's put this in perspective; we get a good 200 bot and automated reversions alone per hour, not to mention the hundreds of manual ones. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

This sucks, change it back! GGib (talk) 21:56, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi GGib,

Thanks for your note. It is a very different system and takes some getting used to. If you want to use the old system, all you have to do is choose "Edit source" rather than "Edit". If you want the edit buttons covered up, then see the directions in the /FAQ or in the box that appeared at the top of the page when you edit it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I strongly agree that this sucks and should be changed back. I thought I was following the discussion closely enough, but I had never understood that this was going to be forced on us; as I had understood it, this was simply to be available as an opt-in for those too lazy to bother with wikitext (which takes a lot of laziness, but whatever). I damn near threw my computer against the wall before finding the blessed relief of the Gadgets section. Impose this on newbies if you must, but there is no conceivable justification for making this the default for established editors. -- Visviva (talk) 03:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm really sorry to hear that this was so frustrating for you. :( Because the gadget has broken in the past, please do keep in mind that if it stops working you can still use the familiar system simply by pressing "Edit source" instead of "Edit." The choice of which editor to use is yours every time you edit. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

So, I'd like to be able to figure out whether I like VE - but I can't, because I've never seen it, and I don't know why. I've still got a single "edit" button, which still leads to the wikitext editor. I don't have the gadget to suppress it checked off in prefs. I'm using a browser that, according to the FAQ, should be supported (Firefox 22). Anybody have any ideas why this editor doesn't exist for me? (I suspect, based on the description, that I wouldn't like it, but it'd be nice to be able to confirm that). Nikkimaria (talk) 01:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess it just doesn't like you, Nikki. ;) Are you using a strange skin? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:40, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Happening for me too. There is no VE option anymore. No special skins or weird settings, nor have I turned VE off with the Gadget. I just get the normal editing interface and no "edit/edit source" option. Has the WMF decided to silently turn VE off while it responds to all the bug reports? Wittylama 02:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If they did, nobody told me. Mine's still here. This is Odd ... PEarley (WMF) (talk) 02:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Did you disable Javascript, perhaps? Dragons flight (talk) 02:25, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Odd... I just tried to edit on my iPad and the VE was there. Back on the desktop and it's gone. I'm using a university (shared) desktop right now, so that might be something in their settings - but Javascript is on/working. I don't know what I'm looking for in terms of diagnosing this problem. Please advise what you'd like me to test to make this replicable. Wittylama 02:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Does http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?veaction=edit start it for you? PrimeHunter (talk) 02:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

No. This shows the traditional editor. I'm using Firefox 10 by the way. Wittylama 02:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Try purging the cache on a page load and see if you get it then? Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 02:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Just cleared the cache of the whole browser. No change. Wittylama 02:41, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Firefox 10 would be the issue for you, Wittylama. It's not supported unfortunately ( see browser matrix. Nikkimaria, on the other hand, is using a supported browser. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 02:43, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah! Sorry for the confusion. I'd simply assumed that the browser installed at the university would be up to date. But, knowing universities, I should have assumed the opposite :-) Wittylama 02:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Demand a tuition refund. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 02:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I think they'd prefer me to be listening to the lecture I'm in rather than testing the VE... What would you like to know about The Designs Act (2003) of Australia[6]? Wittylama 02:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Generally they run about 12 months behind. The uni's tend to use old browsers, as updating pools during semester is a Very Bad Idea, and the testing process is protracted because of the problems of killing computers relied upon by students just before assignments are due. :) I found it funny that the pools I work with finally were upgraded to Windows 7 last week. - Bilby (talk) 02:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Javascript is enabled and working for me AFAICT, and PrimeHunter's link above still shows a single edit button leading to the wikitext editor. I'm using Modern skin, if that matters. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks like VE only supports Vector, Apex, and Monobook. (And no, I don't know what Apex is.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:48, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Modern isn't supported. My link was supposed to start an edit with the VisualEditor but only in supported skins. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?useskin=vector&veaction=edit instead. Or change skin in preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It was a nice attempt, but please get rid of it, also, if you are going to have a public beta, don't make it the default edit option as it is now. Sephiroth storm (talk) 04:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, Sephiroth storm. Nobody is required to use VisualEditor who doesn't want to. You have the option of simply choosing "edit source" to use the old system at any time. If you want to hide the VisualEditor, there is a gadget that is not supported by the Wikimedia Foundation in the gadgets tab of your preferences. You can access it in the section marked "Editing" and enable it by ticking the box labeled "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface", then scroll to the bottom and click "Save". You can reactivate VE access at any time by unticking that box. Please note that this gadget can break and has broken in the past, but you should always have the "edit source" option available to you. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

In VE, adding wikitext (let's say, for example, an asterisk at the beginning of a paragraph) results in a warning popping up. That's preferable to no warning at all, but:

• The warning appears in a box in the upper right corner of the entire window. If the editor has scrolled down a bit before the wikitext is entered, or if he/she is editing two or more sections below the lead section, the warning is totally invisible. And the "Save page" button is not obscured by the warning, so that an editor can click on that button without ever having seen the warning.

The warning should pop up over wherever the cursor/focus is, or, if that's too difficult, in the middle of the screen, similar to the positioning of the "Add media" or "Add template" dialog boxes, but smaller, of course.

Even if an article is so short that scrolling won't push the warning out of sight, if an editor is focused on what he/she is typing, it's quite easy to not notice the pop-up as it appears. When it eventually is noticed, the editor may well have difficulty figuring out what triggered the warning.

Obviously fixing the positioning of the warning is critical, but there are other ways that the warning could be improved; I'll list those for the sake of completeness:

• The warning is in black text (no color), which makes it harder to detect.

>> The warning should have a graphic (the standard warning icon is, what, an exclamation point?) and a light yellow background.

• There should be an "[okay]" button for the editor to click to confirm he/she has seen the warning.

>>Right now, clicking anywhere in the warning box results in it disappearing.

• The message should say "You are using VisualEditor: wikitext, such as squared brackets for links, is not used here. Click "Edit source", instead of "Edit", to edit the page in wikitext mode. (Unsaved changes will be lost.)

>> Proposed changes are bolded: (1) an example is provided; (2) the "instead of" addition gives the editor some context as to why he/she is in VisualEditor rather than the more familiar wikitext editor; (3) the parenthetical "unsaved changes will be lost" is better separated from the rest of the message.

• Linking "wikitext" to Help:Wiki markup is unnecessary if an example is given, as in the proposed text. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I brought up a much less in-depth concern at bugzilla:49820; I'd suggest linking there to this section. Ignatzmice•talk 04:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed, I'm reopening that bug as it seems to be the best place to track it. We definitely want to make sure that everyone sees it. Jalexander--WMF 05:07, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

This may be a bold idea, but why can't it just turn Wikitext into Visual displays of what the Wikitext would look like? With, perhaps, a button you can toggle to turn off that functionality, in case you want '' to show. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

burn the visual editor, dont want to click edit source every time Cake (talk) 06:11, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

While I hope you give it a chance as it gets better If you go to your gadget preferences there is a gadget (at the top of Editing) which will hide the visual editor buttons. Jalexander--WMF 06:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

md_5 (talk) 08:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi there, can you please tell me where this happens? Thanks! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:40, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I've noticed changes in the behavior of the Template Editor. Now, required parameters are already selected for value addition. This helps quite a lot. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 09:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Glad you like it; this is an example of feature that was implemented based on the feedback and suggestions of users, so if you have other ideas to improve the template editor (or other parts of VisualEditor), please do let us know. guillom 10:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Now that you mention it - a link to the selected template's documentation page would be of great help, as well as a selection of the most common templates, and maybe a link to Wikipedia:Template messages#Article-related namespace. Diego (talk) 12:35, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Diego, where should such links appear? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 16 July 2013 (UTC) PS: I am assuming you mean, "in the template editor after I selected a template". But what about the selection of templates and the other link?

The idea is to have a way to explore the templates documentation space.

• When creating a new template the Transclusion dialog appears empty with no hints of what it does of how to fill it. Near the "New template" title, a link to WP:Template messages will allow a new editor to find out what kind of templates exist. The current interface assumes the reader already knows what "transclusion" means, and knows the template she wants to use by name.
• Templates already have a description text in the interface, but it only appears after you have selected a template from the search results. That doesn't help the user to select the right one. Simply provide the same text at the New template dialog along each template in the list.
• When editing an existing template, a link to the selected template's main page will allow the user to learn more about how the template is used by reading the whole documentation. Diego (talk) 12:58, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Also, the results list at the template search box should contain the template's first paragraph of documentation, just like the parameter's list contains each parameter description. Diego (talk) 12:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I believe that some of these things are superseded by Wikipedia:VisualEditor/TemplateData. When a template has TD, it works like a charm and there isn't even any need for people to look for the documentation. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

You said it - some of these things, but not all :-) Template pages contain much more information than what is available at TemplateData. A link to the template page will allow users to find out that additional information for the cases where TemplateData is not enough. Think of this as a fallback mechanism, just like Edit source, for those use cases that are not supported by the Visual Editor (for documentation in this case). Diego (talk) 13:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that if TD is there, there should be nothing else you'd want to know in order for the template to work properly: you know which parameters are compulsory and what to write. I can certainly verify if something like this was requested before at Bugzilla. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Links in TemplateData descriptions have certainly been requested. See Bugzilla:51311 and Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 1#Add a link to template documentation page. In a nutshell, for some templates there just isn't enough space (or the formatting available) to give a full understanding of all the things a template cab do, what is required for each parameter, how it should be formatted, etc. Look at Template:Taxobox#Parameters for example. Thryduulf (talk) 14:18, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for the links, it might also address some related concerns at itwp. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Another one that might be nice to know: Some templates have a range of values they accept that aren't entirely logical on first sight (Eg: Numbers 1 to 5 are allowed as parameters, while those numbers actually represent different settings) T52760. There is also a fair share of templates that are complex (or complicated) to a degree where a manual page is preferable over a short template data description. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 14:31, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

See bugzilla:49772, "Transclusion dialogs panes should include a link to the template's definition page (for further documentation)". Vote/CC: or comment there. :) –Quiddity (talk) 18:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

And I've added Bugzilla:51436 to request the template's description at the search results. Diego (talk) 14:36, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Do any of them make VisualEditor look bad?

I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if some of them did, and, honestly, if so, it's probably not because of anything inherent in VE, but because it was extremely, extremely buggy at the time of the A/B test. I still can't scroll the screen using VE without it lagging, and that's after some speedup-bugfixes.

The results are apparently known. I know they won't be written up yet, but I think we have a right to know: Does VE actually look good in them?

If it doesn't, I do think we should continue work to debug it; it's reasonable to presume it *will* be better in future. But, given the results were meant to be released before the deployment to IPs, I have to ask: Where are the results? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Firstly, a big thanks to you Adam for having the patience and perseverance to research and write such a clear summary of this misguided launch. The results of this A/B test are vital. I would hope that the WMF team and the dev team have already devised a strategy on how to use the results. The omens however are not good. Perhaps they could publish the management document that describes how they intend to reverse the roll-out if the study points that way. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 10:09, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

In all honesty, I think the study was fundamentally flawed by two things:

1. It had very little time. A few days is not long enough to get anything like long-term data, and the subsequent launch of VE ruined any attempt at followup. Particularly as short-term survival rate was defined as percent of editors editing in their second week: According to [7], the first good data was the 25th, and the test was abandoned when VE launched at the start of the 1st. That's not a week of data, likely ruining one outcome. They should have either come up with an alternative metric - before data analysis, to be rigorous - or delayed VE's launch so they'd actually have data to back it up.
2. VE was so incredibly buggy at the time that I'd be shocked if they got positive results for it.

There's a bit of screwiness in that they count edit time from when the page fully loads, which gives a bit of an advantage for VE, since it has a very long load time, but that may be justified if they think they can get the load time under a second or two in the near future. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 10:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If results were to be posted, they presumably would be at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/A/B test. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

• Adam, I want you to go away, and come back and ask this question when you've both (a) read any of the threads that relate to the A/B test (which you clearly haven't, because if you had, you'd have seen my message a day ago that said I was chasing the results up) and (b) demonstrated you're capable of assuming good faith. I don't know why I haven't been allowed to release the results yet, but if I had to pick an answer, it would probably be "because everyone is busy and the emails have got buried". It wouldn't be "because vast conspiracy". Your recent statements undermine the work of those people trying to keep the VE team honest, and that's not a good thing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I was aware of that. And I called it a conspiracy theory - a.k.a. was poking fun o f myself for even asking. However, this should be influencing future rollouts, but now one new rollout (to IPs) has happened without the data: that rollout should not have been allowed to go forwards without the data first. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 17:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Does leave feedback work anonymously? 63.255.24.6 (talk) 12:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi there. If you are talking about the option to leave feedback for articles, please see Wikipedia:Article feedback, it is not related to VisualEditor. If you were wondering if you can leave feedback about VE without logging in, well, of course you can :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:02, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Relevant discussion, perhaps, at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 07#Wikilinking to a section of an article?. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:40, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, thanks for the link, good sir. Resolving the bug should clear up the issues in the GUI to make section linking as intuitive as page linking. Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:18, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

@Keegan (WMF) and 203.194.42.58: - It is possible to link to a section of an article. The trick is, after you enter the section information, you have to click on the area ABOVE the input box, the area containing the word "Hyperlink". Hitting Return/Enter or the close icon, or just clicking elsewhere on page, will result in VE removing the section information that has been typed in. I've updated bug 50881 to be clearer on this, and I'm going to update the VE User guide to document the current process. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

@Keegan: - sorry, didn't see your posting before I posted the above. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:25, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

:D Keegan (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Every time I click edit, it's crashing my computer, crashing the internet browser (Firefox) or simply doing nothing. Not a fan of this at all. 217.42.46.111 (talk) 15:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry to hear that. :/ I've tested, and "edit" is working fine for me with Firefox. What operating system are you using? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:36, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

And what version of Firefox? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:41, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, good question. Thanks, John. I forget that software has versions. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:43, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I understand, as you are obviously unaware what 'beta' means. ;) Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 16:44, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Good thing you added an emoticon, or I might have just thought you were being impolite. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi,

I just tried to edit a page on mediawiki.org, and the behavior of VE was really strange. I don't know if it's relevant because mediawiki.org is probably different, and I don't even know if they use the same version of VE.

Try editing mw:Help:TemplateData/fr :

• With the classic editor, you end up with on a "View source" page, which seems normal.
• With VE, you can edit the page without any notification, and when you try to save, nothing happens (no message, ...)

--NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 17:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

That page is supposed to be edited with the translation tools. I'll check to see whether there's a bug for this. It probably shouldn't let you open the page in VisualEditor at all. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

In this edit, <nowiki>...</nowiki> has been added without even wiki markup... --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 18:36, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

This one also... Please stop that! --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 18:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Eek! Reporting, both through bugzilla and by shouting at people. Thanks :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:05, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The first one appears to be the leading-space problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:06, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Another instance of this. Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 19:09, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

In the figure, the original carbons are numbered, but not the products. It would help to number the product carbons. The text reports 3 negative charges at both ends, but plainly shows only 2 negative charges at each end. Lrunge (talk) 20:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Is that a bug with the software? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:21, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that its misplaced feedback about an article, but I don't know which one. glycolysis oxidoreductase step and glycolysis oxidoreductase don't exist, oxidoreductase does but contains no diagrams. glycolysis contains several diagrams, and one does mention oxidoreductase but not carbon afaict. I don't speak chemistry though so I might be barking up completely the wrong tree! Thryduulf (talk) 20:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm going to keep this short, mostly because I assume someone else has already brought this up. (I didn't read through the archives or the 70+ entries in the Contents.) As a programmer and Vim user, I personally don't plan on ever using the VisualEditor. Still, I've ran into a problem. Talk pages, Wikipedia policy pages and similar pages have an "Edit" tab where other pages use "Edit source". This is inconsistent. If I don't pay close attention and accidentally hit "Edit" where "Edit source" exists, I'm entering a world of pain. Not only do I not get what I want, but the VisualEditor is so slooow... even when editing a section I need to waiiit, and when it's finally done, I still need to go back to select the correct tab. Yeah, it's all new and I'll get used to it I'm sure, but it's inconsistent - which it shouldn't be. --82.170.113.123 (talk) 23:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the inconsistency in what "edit" means has been reported as Bugzilla:50402. The slowness is very annoying and the devs are working on improving that, but I can't find the specific bug report at the moment. Thryduulf (talk) 23:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, the delete button and arrow keys had no effect. It was still possible to add characters though. Tommy (talk) 23:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I had exactly the same briefly. Chrome on a mac. I reloaded the page and it worked fine.--Salix (talk): 23:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

May I suggest that if VE recognizes it cannot understand an edit, it shouldn't save it. The < nowiki> examples above are among the best examples, but some of the quasi-math HTML errors could also be corrected that way. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:21, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

What do you mean by "an edit it can't understand"? As far as I can see, those things that aren't understood by VE can't be edited at all. — This, that and the other (talk) 02:25, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Examples seen to include malformed tables and ''x''_''i''0. A proper implementation would fail, rather than modify it something just wrong. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:09, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

When viewing an article you have permission to edit, you see two tabs at the top - "Edit" and "Edit source". When viewing an article you don't have permission to edit, you see only one - "view source".

This is not good UI design There needs to always be the same number of tabs displayed. Ideally there should be a view-source equivalent so that people can see the page as if the could edit it. It should allow them to interrogate things like template, so they can find out which template is producing what they see and how it does that. When VE can cope with copy+paste, then this will also allow them to copy and paste the relevant image/template/whatever to whatever article they are working on.

If the read-only editor is not possible (and given the workload of critical bugs it will likely be a while) then that tab needs to pop up a message saying that editing is restricted currently/until xx:xx for <log entry> and that they can view the wikitext source if they want (linked to an explanation what that means). Thryduulf (talk) 02:38, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I've tracked this as Bugzilla:51547 for the visual source viewer and Bugzilla:51549 for the number of tabs UI issue.

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

To quote Douglas Adams:

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

Hairy Dude (talk) 00:16, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

The issue was answered. Until 2-3 days ago we had a centralnotice up; clicking on it sent you directly to the page that contained the big notice. "unknown to the entire affected audience" is a misnomer. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:11, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Not a very good answer. What's missing is why wasn't it handled correctly in the first place?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:18, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

Because we thought the FAQ entry would, for an opt-out, suffice. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

Let me get this straight: the reason that the rollout wasn't handled correctly in the first place was because you thought an FAQ entry would suffice?--Paul McDonald (talk) 03:34, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

No, Oliver did not say that a single FAQ entry was enough. Oliver presumably hoped that messages to forty or fifty high-traffic pages, three separate watchlist notices, two or three CentralNotices (that's a sitenotice with extra bells and whistles for scheduling), bi-weekly updates at VPT, face-to-face sessions at the Hackathon, stories in The Signpost, announcements at many of the help pages that need to be updated, and announcements at all of the new-user help forums, not to mention months of people casually mentioning it, might suffice.

If you've got ideas about what else to add to that list, then please do let us know. For example, if you think that people would have tolerated a bot spamming every single user talk page, which I've always assumed would be too disruptive, then please say so. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:54, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Notifying every individual registered user was clearly the right way to go from the beginning for a major site-wide change such as this. I've said that for some time now. It's not "spam" to inform the user base that the software has a major change coming up--it's the right thing to do. Further, it's not "spam" for the foundation to post anything on "my" user talk page because it isn't "my" talk page but theirs. Perhaps you should go read your user agreement and come back. Oh, and Okeyes did post "Because we thought the FAQ entry would, for an opt-out, suffice." I just cut-n-pasted it.--Paul McDonald (talk) 00:18, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

In your mind, is filling my personal watchlist with 300 bot-delivered messages to user talk pages the only acceptable way to put a message in front of every individual registered user? Do you think that if I started an RFC about adding any message, no matter how self-evidently important, to 46,869,931 user talk pages, that the proposal would actually be supported by the community? That's how many "individual registered users" there are at the English Wikipedia. Because if you think that would have been acceptable, then I'm willing to start the RFC to get documented community consensus for the next time any major software change is planned. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes I do. Go for it. By the way, it's not "your personal watchlist" it's Wikipedia's watchlist and they grant you access. "Banner ads" are totally unacceptable ways to notify users of major software changes. The only way to notify 46,869,931 users is to ... wait for it... notify 46,869,931 users.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:13, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

The last thread above makes me think it would be useful to add a class of Echo notification which produces a highlighted banner (similar to what happens when your user talkpage is edited). While the effect for each user would be the same, their talkpages would not be updated (just a single "notify all" page of messages would be updated) so there wouldn't be 19 million page edits, RC/watchlist updates, &c. Most sitebanners are less personal than this and might not trigger such a notice. But "message everyone personally the next time they log on" messages -- such as major interface changes, major licensing changes, a sea of fire, &c -- could be handled this way. – SJ + 07:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I like this idea. I've cross-posted it to WT:Notifications so that people involved in that project will be more likely to see it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:14, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

While we're on the subject of banners .... there's an "opt-out of fundraising banners" gadget; I don't know if that opts you out of all centralnotice banners? It seems like we need to work on banner-triggering code. I too like the idea of an echo notification, though. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 21:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Sitenotice would have been a better idea: Sitenotice persists until the user chooses to dismiss it; centralnotice cannot be remoed until it's scheduled to end, at which point it disappears. Further, Centralnotice can take up to four seconds before it gets added to the page (on my computer, not a particularly old one) Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 20:35, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

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

I don't believe that one click disabling is in the plan at this point, although you can hide the feature. To quote a few points from the FAQ

and

I hope that these will help you. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:25, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I am not talking about myself only. I am talking about giving editors easy way to choose the way they want to edit wikipedia. What prevents Wikimedia from adding a simple shortcut on the info panel to disable visual editor at least temporarily? I should mention that creating better content is the main goal of wikipedia, and creating useful visual editor is not the main goal, so let's not compromise the main goal of having better articles for having a visualy compelling editor that is bloated, slow and counter productive. And yes, Linus' law works, but he is talking about volunteers, nobody is forced to edit, compile and debug Linux kernel by default when using an Android phone. --Qtguy00 (talk) 11:33, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Nobody is forced to assist with testing. The easy way to choose the way they want to edit is simply to pick which button to click (although labeling might be more clear on those - there's a feature request for that. :)) The goal is to have a VisualEditor that is not bloated, slow or counter productive, and having yesterday had the opportunity to talk to developers, I am very aware that they are reading bug reports and feature requests in order to refine VE into the tool that the community wants. This is the way our collaborative process works. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

If nobody was forced to assist with testing, why were we forced by default to use the VE utility to test it? Why is it the default setting now?--Paul McDonald (talk) 15:21, 10 July 2013 (UTC)

The default is that both editing environments are equally available to all users. You are not being forced to use either of them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:56, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Qtguy00 wrote: "I am talking about giving editors easy way to choose the way they want to edit wikipedia." This is a common request. This is one solution: bugzilla:50540: VisualEditor: Display both "edit" and "edit source" links for sections without hover. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:15, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

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

We're working on a static 'edit source' link on sections. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:45, 12 July 2013 (UTC)

no, the common sense solution is to have edit source as the default, leaving the VE for editors who CHOOSE to use it. when I signed in for the first time in months to edit an article, I wasnt presented with a choice, I clicked edit and had to use VE. Now it only took 5-10 seconds to see the other button and try it, but there was no guidance, and it shouldnt be the primary for editing. Sephiroth storm (talk) 04:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Why shouldn't the "easy" one be the first option? Imagine that you're a new user, rather than someone who's been around since 2007 and has already made thousands of edits, and therefore has preconceived ideas about how this website "should" work. Which one would you expect to see first if you were a brand-new user? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to say a genuine thank you to whoever put the yellow box at the top telling me I can enable a gadget to disable VE. However, I'd also like to say that editors shouldn't have to rely on an unsupported third-party extension to do this - instead, there should be a check box in the Editing tab in Special:Preferences (which is where I first looked, and is the obvious place) which if CHECKED means that VE is turned on and if UNCHECKED means that VE is turned off and inaccessible just as if we turn this gadget on. I don't mind whether the default is on or off - but ticking a box to disable a feature is counterintuitive, as is having to go to an "experiments" page to do so. ~ Keiji (iNVERTED) (Talk) 18:38, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Follow-up: Two things. One, I've just noticed and read the "Why does no standard user preference to disable VisualEditor exist?" box and it doesn't really answer its own question! It just goes on about how Wikipedia wants to please people who like VE... erm, well, how does putting a checkbox in Special:Preferences that defaults to enabling VE harm that cause? Secondly, while going to write this comment, I middle clicked the [edit] link to try and open in a new tab, lo and behold because it's badly JS'd it insisted on replacing the current tab. The author of the gadget probably overlooked this and this is ANOTHER reason why there shouldn't be a third party gadget to disable such functionality. ~ Keiji (iNVERTED) (Talk) 18:46, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much everyone except for the WMF agrees with this. See Wikipedia:VPT#.22Opt_out.22_of_VE_needed_under_preferences for unanimity. See User_talk:Eloquence#I_need_a_way_to_turn_off_VisualEditor_globally._Please_give_us_a_way. for the WMF's reaction. They honestly don't want anyone to be able to turn it off. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:56, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. I don't see an option to go back to normal editing mode. I just want to make a quick change and prefer not to deal with a visual/WYSIWYG-ish mode. An option to use the "bare-metal" original syntax would be nice. My original edit would take 30-45 seconds this way. That's a good thing. It is a wiki, after all. Wantnot (talk) 10:30, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

You can always go back to the normal mode by clicking "edit source" instead of "edit", either at the top of the page tabs or in section edit links. You can also disable the visual editor in your preferences - see the FAQ at the top of this page for details. Thryduulf (talk) 10:41, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Another option is to disable the software completely. In "Preferences->Gadgets" click "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" and save. Editors who make requests like this should be given the WHOLE information and not just a little bit.--Paul McDonald (talk) 00:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought that pointing to where the full information can be found - in the FAQ at the top of the page - was giving all the information. Thryduulf (talk) 09:27, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. Paul, I'm not sure why you got the impression Thryduulf wasn't explaining all the solutions. "You can also disable the visual editor in your preferences - see the FAQ at the top of this page for details" is very clear, to me. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:53, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Because Thryduulf is giving a direct answer to one option and then burying the answer to another. Essentially this user is told you can turn it off, but you have to go someplace else to figure out how. It's clear bias.--Paul McDonald (talk) 14:31, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Someplace else. You mean: the top of the page you have to be on to read his reply in the first place. It's just as likely, if not more, that Thryduulf couldn't see the value in typing out "click preferences, and then go to gadgets, and then tick this box, under that heading, and hit save, and clear your cache" when all of that information was readily accessible on the page the conversation was happening at. Paul, please don't assume bad faith of your fellow editors. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:47, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Okeyes has it spot on. I don't have any agenda here, I don't work for the WMF in any capacity. I've expressed plenty of both good and bad points about both the VE and its rollout. It seems likely to my reading of the original message that the user is after an option to make some edits in the classic editor and some in the visual editor, but I've given a simple answer to a simple question that allows for me being right or wrong about this. Linking to the FAQ allows my reply not to be seen as a complicated wall of text (I have not interacted with Wantnot before and have no knowledge about their technical ability - something that looks complicated will put some people off even if it isn't actually complicated), makes them aware that the FAQ exists so they can find the answer to their question (and others they might have) there. Thryduulf (talk) 15:49, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

That's not how it's coming across to me.--Paul McDonald (talk) 21:16, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Well I apologise for that, but I really don't understand why explicitly pointing to a different part of the page, that is clearly labelled, is hiding information, and I really don't why it was necessary not to assume good faith. Thryduulf (talk) 22:37, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

"I apologise, but..." is not an apology. It comes across very insincere. That's just one of many examples why it seems you are not coming across in good faith.--Paul McDonald (talk) 17:21, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If you refuse to accept an apology and refuse to explain your views when asked, then there is not much more that I can say. I will leave it at just registering my disappointment at your lack of good faith. Thryduulf (talk) 18:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If you'd make a real apology instead of an accusation, we'd be in business.--Paul McDonald (talk) 11:24, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

How does a user preview their edits before submitting them, like with the old standard for editing? I made a edit, but there should be a way to preview edits for QAQC / PCC-PCI purposes. Bullmoosebell (talk) 01:01, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hey Bullmoosebell. The idea with the visual editor is that your changes are visible as you make them - if you add an image, you see it as it will be displayed, same with text, links, and so on. If something is screwball, you should be able to see it in the VE window. (the exception being some of the more troublesome bugs you see above) Does this answer the question? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, PEarley (WMF). I'm just used to editing with the codes, but I did find the Edit Source link. As long as Wiki doesn't get rid of the Edit Source link, I'll be alright. VE is new and innovative, and will take some getting used to, but I'm not seeing the benefits yet. Thanks for your help with this change, I see a lot of users are poopy-faced about having to use VE and you (and all the all the supporters) are quite professional and patient. Keep up the great work! Bullmoosebell (talk) 01:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Cheers, Bullmoosebell. We appreciate you giving it a try. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 01:58, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Ditto. :) And there is an option to "review your changes" after you hit save page, if you want to just double-check your edits. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

@bullmoosebell It's mildly confusing because you can back out after that step -- i.e. hit save page, then hit review your changes gives you basically what "preview" does. Personally I liked it better when the review button was up next to the save button, was more intuitive. -- phoebe / (talk to me) 22:07, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I prefer that organization, too. I thought there was a request to put that on the main page in bugzilla, but now I can't find one. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:14, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

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

---

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T53528

This may have been reported, but it seems that leading spaces are rendered differently in VE than on the Wiki page. With the Wiki page they cause the text to have that dotted box around it, and to appear as single line. In VE it displays just as a leading space, with no indication of problems. I saw some IPs having issues with the difference between the two. - Bilby (talk) 02:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I thought this rung a bell, but I can't seem to find anything on Bugzilla. Bilby, I know it may be hard to find now, but do you have a dif of the edit? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 02:21, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll see if I can dig one up. It seems that the problem isn't quite what I thought, though, and may turn up under other bugs already covered. The diffs I saw were of editors removing leading whitespace and it didn't work, so the edit summary said something along the line of "trying to remove box", but they only removed one space and the box remained. So I tried it and it was clear that VE doesn't show the effect of leading whitespace. But in attempting to recreate it I encountered a different problem, so I'm not sure which is the actual issue. Specifically

• Added leading whitespace to paragraph in VE. Text appears fine in VE, with leading whitespace as an indentation.
• Saved. VE adds nowiki tags before the whitespace and after the first few words. Text displays without indent.
• Tried removing the whitespace in VE.
• VE won't allow the whitespace to be removed, but instead will only permit the first few words to be deleted.

This is with Chrome 28 + Windows 7. I'll see if I can work out the conditions that would have created the first problem. - Bilby (talk) 02:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

This is interesting. I'm not quite sure how to report this yet.

• Added whitespace to the lead of an article, and it nowikied. [8]
• It turned the first word into an uneditable element. See image.
• Curious as to what the nowikis would do to formatting, I found an article that had formatting on the first word. It added space, no "nowiki." [9]
• It allowed me to remove the space in VE. [10]

Any ideas what's going on and how this can be reported, anybody? :)(Also using Chrome on 7.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

There's another bug, possibly; I don't know if this has already been reported. If a page already contains text, followed by a template (not necessarily on the same line) and the next line has a leading space, attempting to remove the leading space using the backspace key also removes the template. The space can only be removed by moving the cursor beyond the end of the template on the same line and using the delete key. Peter James (talk) 22:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sure I've seen this discussed before but I can't immediately find it. It might be Bugzilla:50995 or Bugzilla:50250 but I'm fairly sure that's not what I remember. Thryduulf (talk) 23:59, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I tracked what Bilby found and what I came up with at T53528. If it's a repeat, the developers will merge it, I'm sure. Since I don't really have a clue what's causing the problem, it's hard for me to say, "Oh, this is related to that!" :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I think VE is a good idea. However, I think that there should be an easy way to turn it off, so you don't have to retrain your muscle memory, and think Wikimedia did it a huge disservice by the manner of its launch - it's buggy and largely unusable as it is now. I can't even scroll down to the bit of text I want to edit in it because it slows to a crawl when I slow. It damages the code of the site. It's not ready.

But it's a good idea, and, were, for instance, the WMF to switch it out of default to "opt-in" for now, and stop the hugely counterproductive pushing forwards with the schedule before fixing the bugs - do you really need another several million editors using it to tell you it's still massively buggy? - I'd look forwards to a relaunch in a few months, and would likely give it another try then. (Hell, another wiki I'm on already has a working Visual Editor, and I think that one's pretty great. MoinMoin-based, for the record. Of course, the big difference is that one works perfectly, is quick, uses minimal resources, and feels natural to use.)

But you can't launch buggy software, make it the default, ignore it's causing damage to the code of articles, try to prevent people from turning it off - a problem because misclicking, a.k.a. clicking exactly where you used to click, means a 15-second loadtime and an unusable interface because I can't scroll without massive lag - and expect happy users.

A way that would likely have gotten everyone on board would have been to announce that VisualEditor would be tested by a one- or two-month trial, during which time it would become the default for all editors, but could be turned off using simple instructions that were put in the sitenotice for the first few weeks or first month of the run.

After the period, turn it off, but tell everyone how to turn it back on in the sitenotice.

You now have a bunch of enthusiastic users, and a lot of bugs. Patch it up. Make it work better. Get a really good product ready. Then turn it back on for everyone, again, telling them how to turn it off. Muscle memory is an awkward thing, and Visual Editor, after all, puts the VE-edit link where the Wikimarkup link was - but a lot of people will use it. [By the way: Edit (Text) and Edit (GUI). That's what the MoinMoin wiki I like uses, and which are far clearer terms than the unclear-at-best and actively-misleading-at-worst "Edit" and "Edit source".]

Anyway. Yes, I do think you should make VisualEditor Opt-in only for now. You've screwed up the launch really badly, and backing off a bit will show you listened to the community. Of course, you should make a sitenotice to help people willing to put up with the bugs to keep using it, and you'll almost certainly get enough users still using it to keep the bugchecking up.

Should you run out of bugs, or reach a stage where you don't have enough testers to know if you've got everything, just turn it back on for everyone. So long as you're actually responsive to the community, and know the difference between "test of potentially buggy software" and "suicide pact to launch our software permanently, even if it causes damage", you should keep the support of the community, barring, perhaps, the ones you got too upset by this PR disaster.

However, eventually, you're going to have a great product. And at that time, you want to have the right to turn it back on for people. You don't want to be in a situation where everyone's already turned it off, because when you did turn it on, it was too buggy to use.

In short, I think you should take VisualEditor away. But I want it back later. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:28, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Adam, thanks for posting this here, I had already read it at the RfC. I would just add that the "ignore it's causing damage to the code of articles" does not look like a fair statement: there's been a team for some time now (weeks? months, maybe?) keeping an eye on recent changes exactly to revert unwanted article disruptions (then of course, we might miss something, nobody's perfect), and my understanding is that we are also trying to make such disruptions easy to spot (filters, tags, these kind of things). I definitely don't think we expect people to be happy about it; instead we appreciate people being _very_ patient and helpful with bug reports. As for the buggy thing, please take a look at how many bugs there were in MediaWiki before VE: I was mind blown when I did that. Everything you mention is being worked on, so, stand by for a better version :) Thanks. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

While I know you're trying to deal with it, apparently, a lot of the bugs causing damage to articles are not fixed yet - and you've just extended it to IP editors, meaning more people are editing with code you know is causing damage to articles.

I can't understand why you're sticking to a schedule that means you're expanding usage, at a time when the sane thing is to decrease usage - I mean, you need enough usage to know if you've succeeded in fixing things, obviously, but this is the fifth most popular website on the internet, so you have a lot of users, and some will probably do whatever you need them to. It's just madness to go through with a schedule that means you increase usage before the bugs that cause damage to articles are fixed. Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 07:54, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Again, I'm not so much into tech thing :), but, "a lot of the bugs causing damage to articles are not fixed yet" is not accurate, from my POV. Major bugs do get fixed quickly: what we keep finding out is, that as we keep deploying, some of them "mutate"; bugzilla tickets are re-opened, and the thing gets studied again and again. Stop that now, VE dies. This is really only about the "given enough eyes"-thing, and it would not be savvy for the VE not to benefit from something our communities are truly skilled for. Plus, we are not as many people as we usually believe: yeah, 5th site, 500 million readers, millions of accounts, but not so many editors as we'd hope, yet - that's incidentally what VE is here for. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:14, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I have to second Adam on this matter - why is the editor rolled out at such speed while there are still so many issues present? I can understand the rollout to regular editors as a means to find these issues, but what purpose does a global roll out to IP editors serve? As far as i am aware new editors are only bound to be confused by issues, and less likely to report them.

The visual editor is technically taken quite the accomplishment, even in its current form. Even so, i would point out that (new) users generally don't care HOW something works, as long AS it works. I have seen applications best described as "Bugs, Bad Design and Bad Code in a Blender"; Yet somehow those applications still managed to present users with the data they wanted so the users were happy. The visual editor on the other hand has a large share of simple issues that a user might run into. Simple example: A basic operation such as moving a section that contains an image simply doesn't work. Cut and Pasting such as section will result in the removal of all of the sections formatting, and click and drag is not supported yet. Effectively this means means that there is no (working) method to move a section that contains an image from within the visual editor. These (often small) problems cause the main problem: The end user will think "I can't even copy and paste a simple section? Even notepad can do that!" and dismiss the editor as buggy and unusable.

If anything i would recommend polishing the editor's end user experience some more before releasing it globally. Removing the most glaring issues before a full release should increase editor acceptance by a fairly large margin. I'm not sure why there is such a steep timetable and I suppose there is a good reason, but i would personally slow down a bit for the sake of acceptance. Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 08:16, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, I am not sure how many bugs IP will file properly (seasoned users don't seem to like doing it by themselves either :p ), but, again, it's the "given enough eyes" thing: earlier on IRC there were devs commenting and starting to work on variants of problems they had never seen before, and sometimes I think it is also difficult for them to reproduce the issue and find out what originated it. Also: newcomers/IPs are more likely to save edits even if they break something. That unfortunately helps. So, more eyes = more bugs we spot = better versions of VE on the way. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

@Elitre (WMF):. I'm quite surprised by several things you've said...

there's been a team for some time now (weeks? months, maybe?) keeping an eye on recent changes exactly to revert unwanted article disruptions : not to my knowledge, the WMF team only looks at this page, but doesn't watch edits made with VE. I think Oliver said this himself, there's not the man power required to do this.

It's not a task force or something, but as you can easily see by checking the liaisons'contributions, we do take a look at recent changes focusing on unwanted disruptions/behaviors - especially at deployment times. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but that's just not true, look at edits that are triggering Filter 550, many of them are not fixed even after a few days. I think Oliver said it himself: the VE team never planned to watch edits made by VE, only to answer reports here. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 08:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'll try and rephrase this. It is "not our job" to revert each and every "wrong" edit done by VE. Still, we do actually check whether disruptions are being caused by VE and, in case, fix them. We might not be doing this 24/7, we might be missing something, but we are definitely doing it. Otherwise, there would be no reason for us to edit ns-0! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:02, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

my understanding is that we are also trying to make such disruptions easy to spot (filters, tags, these kind of things) : to my knowledge, this things are not put in place by WMF, but rather by volunteers being annoyed of so many articles damaged.

I apologize if that leads to confusion, but my point was simply that there are people trying to minimize inconveniences in many different ways. Not sure about en.wiki, but at it.wiki I was the one who requested such things :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

As for the buggy thing, please take a look at how many bugs there were in MediaWiki before VE : yes, MW has a lot of bugs, but you don't usually run into them as a basic user, which is not the case with VE...

--NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 08:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

My point was just, MW is a over 10 years-old software, it's stable now. VE is alpha stage still and yet there are editors using it comfortably (TeamGale comes to mind). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, and the problem for many people is alpha + default editor for everybody... Yes, it's normal that VE has many bugs, what isn't normal is it being forced on everybody at this point. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 08:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

While, yes, we're not trying to catch every VE edit we ARE looking at an enormous quantity of them. Both during the initial default roll out and during this roll out we also have people assigned 24 (actually 26 hours) in a row to keep watching specifically to help respond to feed back AND to watch edits for common issues to make sure we preemptively see bugs as they happen even if others don't. We're certainly not perfect, and I don't think we pretend to be but there have been 100s of bugs closed in July already, I believe roughly 200 possibly a bit more now. The VE team is working constantly to go as fast as possible and to work in order of how bad they are (and things get re prioritized quickly if it's a killer). I find it highly highly unlikely we would have found that many bugs this quickly (I think it would have been MUCH MUCH slower) if we hadn't rolled out. I think it's very wrong to say that isn't the case, I just don't think it meets the facts. Jalexander--WMF 08:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, we'll never know since the beta-testers never had a chance to try a VE version with template editing, references editing, ... before the roll-out to new users (this major features were released at almost the same time than the A/B test). And, with the current number of open bugs, why was it so important to release it also to IP editors ? That won't discover many more bugs, when the list of open bugs/features requests/enhancements will already keep the VE team occupied for at least several weeks. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi again Nico, I think we should also make this clear - many of the things filed in Bugzilla are not bugs, they are enhancements (as in "I think we should add this/change this"). And it's not the number of bugs (myself in the first place, I see it now) we should focus about; as I said before, rolling out to IPs already provided insightful information to devs about variations of known bugs they had not seen before yesterday. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

We're not trying to gang up on you here, but you happen to be the one on duty on this page. The problem here is that what the community considers a bug is being recategorized as "enhancements" all over the place. Almost all of the VE bugs I've been watching have been recategorized this way. We don't think it is an enhancement that VisualEditor work properly with the AbuseFilter; we think this is core functionality. (Bugzilla 50472). We don't think it's an enhancement that VisualEditor and PendingChanges work properly together; we think this is core functionality. (Bugzilla 49699) And even if we don't think it is core functionality, it is absolutely essential that VE work properly with the sister software FlaggedRevisions before VE is deployed on projects that have FR deployed by default on most if not all pages, such as dewiki and ruwiki. The downgrading of bugs to "enhancements" implies that it is acceptable that VE not properly work with other existing WMF-designed and heavily used MediaWiki extensions. We're telling you that's not acceptable. Risker (talk) 11:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I think devs have already explained at least once what they mean by using some of those terms, unfortunately I can't recall where this happened now. I think that any downgrading now might just imply that these things can't probably be seen as bugs at this stage of development, because right now it is probably expected that they can't work. Of course they must be working at a later stage (what shouldn't?); right now a bug IMHO is an unexpected behaviour of what VE should already be doing by now (like, regressions, which unfortunately happen), and everything else is considered as enhancement, as in, VE must be doing this at a certain point. Again, I'm not much into technicalities, but hope this helped a bit. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

And I think Risker's point, and many of our points, is that there are some things which many not be vital to the software working (bugs) but are near-vital to the community working (so-called enhancements)—and until neither are major problems, VE should be opt-in, not opt-out. (Especially, as Adam pointed out, forcing it on us now makes it more likely for people to turn it off and never look back.) Ignatzmice•talk 12:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi there :) How bugs are labelled/sorted/solved is definitely dev's call. I think it is safe for me to say that what liaisons do in that regard is actually asking the devs about some of them to understand when they are going to be assigned, or if there's any chance that they can be solved earlier than others, things like that. While I check the ones Risker listed, please don't hesitate to a) make sure these concerns are also voiced at the relevant bugzilla page; b) check in here from time to time and list a few more of them that you feel are absolute "blockers", because I'd be really interested to hear about this - not that we'll manage to have them solved immediately!, but we might at least know where we are with them (I sometimes get notifications of solved bugs days after they are fixed). I'll also check on this, but probably something being classified as an enhancement does not mean it is not going to be fixed soon either. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:43, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

A bug is something that doesn't work per the requirements for a release, whereas an enhancement is some behavior that wasn't requested as part of a release. I think what we're all looking for here is some idea of what the WMF spec'd as requirements for the editor to be used by new/inexperienced editors. - Pointillist (talk) 20:46, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

[Unindent]:For that matter, Please, I beg you, cancel the rollout to the other big wikis until such time as you've sorted out more of the bugs.

There's no need to cause problems in more places. You'll just upset those wikis, and how on earth will you defend yourself? You need more data? More data than en-wiki can provide? Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 09:22, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

We're not going to pay more attention to you because you use size 72 font. I can't speak for everyone but at least, personally, I pay less. I am, obviously, not the person who makes the decision on when and what gets deployed. I know that those that are, however, read here and will see the concerns and we will constantly pass them up. Jalexander--WMF 09:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

*Grins* Nothing as "Enjoyable" as being stuck between the end users on one side, and the developers on the other side while being slowly crushed between them is there? Large size aside, the original question does have merit though so let me rephrase the above in a smaller fon: Browsing trough the reported bugs in Bugzilla i still see many open issues that new users are bound to stumble over. Exotic bugs and non supported functionality is one thing, issues in basic editing functionality that should work is another. What i don't understand: Why aren't these basic issues fixed before a global release? And why is the editor under such a tight deadline to begin with? Excirial ^{(Contact me,Contribs)} 10:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't know this, since I'm not WMF, only a small volunteer developer, but I can take a guess. Having seen this thing from afar for a while now, I suspect the following is the reason:

By the time en.wp would be satisfied, we would be 3 to 4 years down the road, and keeping up to date with the rest of MediaWiki would occupy much of that time. We don't have this amount of time. So instead, we will USE them (our most diverse and complicated scenario) as reluctant beta group to get the quickest to where we need to be. They will curse us now, but the net effect will be positive.

And for anyone who says "throw more people at the problem", that has its limits. A team like this, can absorb about 1 highly qualified 'outsider' per 2-3 months, without it hurting the team productivity (and remember that people can and do leave as well, further limiting your growth factor). —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:27, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I made this into its own section, since it is a different idea than those made above. The relevant part of the roadmap:

"22 July: Deployment of the VisualEditor to most large Wikipedia wikis, available for all users. Which wikis are in this list is still to be determined, but will definitely include Wikipedia in German, French and Italian."

98.243.174.235 (talk) 20:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

At this point, the deployment is scheduled to go ahead. I know the developers are working hard on bug repair and enhancement, and I hope that it will go as smoothly as possible. The liaisons here continue to list and alert them to what we perceive as "blocker" bugs, so that they can assess their impact and hopefully expedite repair. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:24, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

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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 T52595

At this sandbox page I experimented to see how the VE would cope with the ((od)) template (Ignore all the text, it is left over from a previous test). I actually found myself experimenting with indentation. It seems that where text is indented, VE renders one blank line before and after the indented section for every line that does not exist. i.e. section 1 of the sandbox page is rendered with five blank lines between the line starting "Fiji" and the outdent template. Section 2 had two blank lines at the end of the section (2 colons indenting), Section 4 is illustrated right, there are 5 blanks lines (one for each level of indentation) before and after the indented section (the Roman numerals are just to show the indentation and were not produced by VE, the line marked 0 was a pre-existing blank line).

If you try to delete any of the blank lines before the indented text, that level of indentation is deleted and subsequent lines moveed left one indent:

i                           i
  ii                           ii
     iii                           iii
         iv                        
             v                     
                Text 1                Text 1
                Text 2   →            Text 2
                Text 3                Text 3
             v                     v
         iv                        iv
     iii                           iii
  ii                           ii
i                           i

If you try and delete a new line following the indentation, then the entire indented section and all associated VE lines are deleted. This cannot be undone. Thryduulf (talk) 01:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I've reported this as additional to bugzilla:50995, but it might not be quite the same. Thryduulf (talk) 16:00, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

*nods* I was thinking that looked a lot like the Eckstein bug, too. --j⚛e decker^talk 17:11, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

		The Teamwork Barnstar
		Hi, This is a Barnstar for all those developers who worked on MediaWiki software and various MediaWiki extensions.Special mention to VisualEditor, Universal Language Selector, Edit Filter as milestones which helps achive wiki moto access for all , and many more extensions which are user freindly.Thanks to all you developers Mahitgar (talk) 03:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

On their behalf, thank you. :) I will make sure they are aware. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:14, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Of the last 5000 edits, 201 (4%) were tagged as "nowiki added". Dragons flight (talk) 05:04, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I have official WMF word that I shouldn't consider this to be a problem and that I should put this in perspective. Besides, the simple fact is that it's really all the editors fault and the glorious Visual Editor is just valiantly rescuing them. You wouldn't be suggesting that Okeyes and Jdforrester don't recognize the severity of this problem, would you? The sad thing is that the "fix" to issue a little warning message has already been installed, and it still is this bad. I think the edits should just be blocked in Visual Editor. If someone really wants to insert wiki markup as visible text in an article, they can use the source editor to do so.—Kww(talk) 05:18, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, let's put James's words in context; as I explained soon after that edit, and as I have explained on other occasions on this very page (most recently yesterday), what James means is not "this is not a problem" but "if we threw raw wikimarkup into the VisualEditor, Bad Things (TM) would happen". Nowiki tags are a small formatting area, albeit a serious one, but not so serious or so substantial as what would happen if the nowikis were not added.

The flaws around the nowiki popup are well known, and the pertinent thread suggests that a fix will be deployed tomorrow, which will hopefully reduce the occurrence. At the same time, we have several volunteers, including staffers in their volunteer capacity, working on a bot to identify and eliminate the nowiki tags, which will be hosted on Labs and in production hopefully soon. In the meantime, we may as well wait. There's no solution to the problem that doesn't either break things further, take longer to develop than the solutions in the works, or eliminate edits entirely based on formatting inconsistencies - which, as your WP:VPT thread on the topic notes, is something that has led to other editors rejecting your suggestion. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:49, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

If you would disable the Visual Editor until the reported bugs were fixed, someone works out a solution to this problem that actually works, there's an interface for references that the community approves of, there's a template editor that people agree upon, support tables (a pretty basic concept), and reintroduce it after it has been corrected, these problems actually would go away. The reason I get so irritated correcting things is because I know that they are being introduced for apparently the sole purpose of sticking to a schedule despite negative feedback. The only reason you think there's "no solution" is because you insist on overlooking the obvious one. I do my best to stay polite and reasonable, but the way we are continually told that so long as we aren't individually forced to use it, we have no right to complain about WMF exposing editors that know no better to a buggy tool is extremely frustrating. Having to make fixes like this and this because one of the most common edits that new editors make to pop music articles is impossible with the tools they are given does make me angry, and all you have to do is turn it off until it's fixed. That's easy. It's what should have been done weeks ago.—Kww(talk) 07:20, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not overlooking it, I just don't think it's pragmatic. As you say, we've got a schedule; this is not one I set, or one that I control (although I pester people abut specific bugs with some regularity). I cannot say "excellent idea, let's do that" because even excluding my personal objections to it, it's very unlikely to happen. Yes: allowing wikimarkup to be typed into the VE would solve for this problem. It would also be a substantial technical challenge for a problem that can at least be mitigated with other, smaller fixes, and that will reduce as muscle memory adapts. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Who is responsible for deciding that proceeding is the best move? There has to be an individual responsible for that decision. Who is it?—Kww(talk) 14:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

As the change management document says, James F, with ultimate reporting authority to Erik and Howie. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Way back on 30 June I complained that I couldn't follow links from within hatnotes or refs while editing articles in VE (I'd been using ctrl + left-click) and Oliver pointed out that with right-click and menu choice they should work. I'm sure that advice worked at the time. But today I'm finding that even right-click isn't getting me anywhere useful. I may be missing something but it feels as if this is a change, that right-clicking used to work OK - eg to follow a link in a hatnote (eg the link to PLI in the hatnote while editing Pli). PamD 09:26, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It does work for ordinary wikilinks and external links embedded in the text, but (to my knowledge) has never worked for templates or references. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 09:35, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I've added edit filter 573 to test for the addition of multiple blank lines to articles. Looking at the results from last night, this is not strictly a VE issue (many people and tools using source editor also do this), but people using VE may account for 50% or so of the cases it traps. Dragons flight (talk) 12:40, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't add rows to tables 94.142.172.21 (talk) 14:27, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

That is correct. At present you can only edit the content of existing cells in a table, full support for tables is one of the many features that the devs are working on but which don't yet exist. Sorry. Thryduulf (talk) 15:21, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I tend to use Wikipedia:Tools/Navigation popups a lot. Mainly to check that the link I'm inserting is actually the right one. I can just hover over a link a small popup window will appear with the first line of the article being linked. This allows me to readily confirm the link target is correct. Without this I feel like I'm editing blind, the link I've just inserted might be the right one but I can't confirm it until I save the article and hover over the link.

This raises two questions. 1) Could some popups like function be applied to give a better indication of where a link is pointing? 2) is there going to be any way gadget can work with VE? --Salix (talk): 14:39, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

This is frustrating. There is a workaround for the minute, whereby you can ctrl+click (I think it's command+click on a mac) on a link and it will open in a new window or tab (depending on your browser settings). This doesn't work for links to sections or redlinks currently (see bugzilla:51122).

In answer to your specific questions, 1) this has been requested, see bugzilla:50593, but remains unprioritised and classed as an enhancement so don't hold your breath. 2) Modifying Visual Editor to spport the current popups gadget has apparently been rejected, but whether it or a future gadget could be made to work with Visual Editor I don't know. Bugzilla:503 and Bugzilla:29272 are possibly relevant to this though. Thryduulf (talk) 15:33, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

If gadgets don't work with VE, we're headed for a two-class Wikipedia: novice editors using VE, and experienced editors using gadgets, semi-automated tools (TW, AWB, etc.), scripts, etc - that only work with the wikitext editing interface. Experienced editors can move in and out of pages quickly, tweak various settings, etc., and VE editors are limited to whatever the developers decide are important enough "enhancements" to roll out. And crossing the divide? That will require novice editors to learn a completely different editing system.

I'm all for making VE into the one best editor, but WMF absolutely needs to recognize that there is an entire ecosystem of tools (which reminds me - will toolserver/WMF labs stuff ever work with VE?) that has grown up around the existing editing interface, an ecosystem that makes it possible, for example, for a single (human) editor to have well over a million Wikipedia edits. Which means that VE absolutely must support such tools, even if they have to be rewritten. (Those who remember Web history may recall when the AOL website was written in a proprietary language called Rainman, because AOL didn't think it was necessary - or desirable - to expose its dial-in subscribers to the chaotic Web. And there are other examples out there: http://dashes.com/anil/2007/10/rainman-blackbird-facebook-and-the-new-tables.html ) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:46, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the user intended here, but I'm sure that <nowiki /> was not supposed to be part of it. --Redrose64 (talk) 16:32, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I got an instance of that here as well. Insulam Simia (^talk/_contribs) 16:50, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) ×2 Almost certainly they were trying to change the link to "Grand Theatre, Blackpool". I'll add this to Bugzilla:50945. Thryduulf (talk) 17:00, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

here it seems the editor attempted to insert one link using wikitext and VE inserted nowikis around every bit of markup in the paragraph, including preexisting stuff. Just got to work out which bug to update now. Thryduulf (talk) 17:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Reported at Bugzilla:51554 but it's probably a duplicate of something. Thryduulf (talk) 17:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Both those instances looks like UI issues where the user didn't leave a space after the ']]' and the next word: (Ex: [[..Theater]]and, [[Hamitic]]stock). Without the <nowiki/ > after the link, "and", "stock" would become linktrails of the preceding link which would be incorrect. So, the UI could maybe alert the user about this. I assume this is not a very common scenario. Ssastry (talk) 18:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

In testing a week or so back, I found that the link editor sometimes included the space after a word in the link even when you dind't want it to. It's also difficult to get links to do what you want them when you try and edit them. It's very likely that other users will stumble on the same issue. Thryduulf (talk) 18:29, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Toolbar is really big relative to the size of the screen. 199.212.27.245 (talk) 17:00, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

199.212.27.245, could you provide a screenshot? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm beginning to get the hang of it, and learning all the idiosyncrasies of the software. (What to the < and ^ arrows on dialogs do, why do I need to click on the template name to show the list of parameters, why does the newline and tab not work as expected in template dialogs).

Working on a Cornish parish involves creating a lot of small interlinked articles, and I've noticed that link dialog does not know about recently created articles, I created Penpol Creek (River Fowey) about 30 minutes ago and I'd like to link to it. However its not coming up in the hints and it I enter it in manually VE thinks its a new page, shown in red in the dialog. How long does it take to recalculate the list of articles?--Salix (talk): 18:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

That's a really good question; I'll find out. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

The answer is that the cache clears every 86400 seconds - so, 24 hours. That's realistically the maximum you'd have to wait, unless you're really unlucky. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Even though the link displays in the dialog as red, you can insert it just like a normal link and it will appear and work as a blue link in the saved article. Thryduulf (talk) 18:58, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but I'm a) lazy, b) dyslexic and c) got no short term memory. How am I going to remember the name of an article I created 10 minutes ago?--Salix (talk): 19:02, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

When I do things like that I keep the original open in a separate tab so I can refer to/copy and paste from it. I find that a great help, particularly when dealing with misspelings and typos at RfD. None of laziness, dyslexia and short term memory problems are bugs with the VisualEditor though, and no matter how useful it would be asking the devs to fix them is unfortunately out of scope :) Thryduulf (talk) 19:21, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

@Salix alba: Regarding "How am I going to remember the name of an article I created 10 minutes ago?", is there some reason you wouldn't look at your recent edits, via "Contributions"? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:09, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Ah, you were marginally quicker than me! I've marked the bug I opened as a duplicate :) Thryduulf (talk) 19:14, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

It has been noticed on the plwiki ([12]) that the dialogs (especially References and Page settings) are like modal windows: they are unmovable, huge, they are at the center of the screen and, unfortunately, they cover the content. It confuses users who have small-resolution screens and those who want to compare the data they're adding with content without losing added—but not applied—changes (for ex. when adding categories:year births/deaths with the introductory text or when adding a reference with the info being sourced). Tar Lócesilion|queta! 22:16, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

There's a bugzilla entry for this, bugzilla:49969 ("Dialogs should be repositionable/draggable"). Add yourself to the CC: list to watch updates. –Quiddity (talk) 22:26, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you :) Tar Lócesilion|queta! 22:37, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I found an example of this in the Filter 550 list. If you enter "In 2012 he was included in Variety's Legal Impact Report 2012" and some following text, and then select "Variety" but not the following "apostrophe-s" and click "Italic", you get this. The result actually looks like what was intended, with only the word "Variety" in italics, and if the closing </nowiki> was immediately after the apostrophe it would make sense; but it is confusing (and might cause other problems) to have it so far downstream. JohnCD (talk) 22:44, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Tracked in T52841 Ssastry (talk) 22:51, 17 July 2013 (UTC)