This page is an archive. Do not edit the contents of this page. Please direct any additional comments to the current main page.

I don't even have to check the archives to know this must be the 100th complaint about this. There are many things to despise about Visual Editor and the way it was designed and developed, but surely in the top 10 is the fact that, when a template is edited, it reorders all the parameters so that diffs are impossible to interpret. [1] I don't want to hear about how technically challenging it would be to fix this. Just fix it, or disable editing of templates in VE, or something. EEng 18:02, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

It's either a bug or a feature depending on your point of view. What it does do is bring consistency to the random orderings of fields created by users, which is quite annoying too. Personally I like to see infobox fields in the same sequence so I don't actually mind the result. But I agree that the first time it happens it makes a messy diff. This is because we don't have a very good diff tool. Indeed, if you want to be sneaky about a small change, you make it and then switch some paragraphs around. The human reader of the diff will tend not to notice the small content change in the presence of the larger re-ordering change. Some diff tools can show moved-but-unchanged information differently, so it is clearer what is a re-ordering of content vs what is a change in content. If our diff tool could make this distinction, it would be less of a problem not just for this VE re-ordering but for spotting those sneaky edits too. Kerry (talk) 04:12, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

Well, we don't have that diff tool, and the parameters aren't in a "random ordering", but rather the order the article's editors put them in for various reasons. So it's a bug. I'd appreciate hearing from the geniuses who designed it this way WTF they thought they were doing. EEng 04:58, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

I believe that the Visual Editor is maintaining the the fields in the same order as the template definition. I believe work is in progress on a better diff tool; it was presented at Wikimania in August. You can find the slides and a video linked off here. Frankly there is a lot to be said for actually trying the Visual Editor. I was quite fluent in the source editor, but I find that there are many things are done better and more easily in the Visual Editor and, since you can switch between them, even within a single edit, you can have the best of both worlds. Kerry (talk) 07:15, 1 November 2017 (UTC)

I don't know if the VE is still organizing parameter out of sequence which was previously the problem I'd noticed about this, but yes, it was annoying. @EEng:, you might consider going into Preferences > Gadgets, and activating wikEdDiff. While viewing a diff, you'll have the option of clicking a little triangle doohickey (Delta?) and a more intuitive drop-down will help you make sense of the changes that were made. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 14:40, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

Ooh, I did not know it was available yet. Very nice! Kerry (talk) 00:58, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

• The new diff tool is useful and clever, but it doesn't solve the problem. My OP mentioned only the exasperating diffs (under the standard diff-er) but the more fundamental problem is the one I mentioned later. The statement the Visual Editor is maintaining the the fields in the same order as the template definition is false: it's not maintaining them in that order, it's rearranging them into that order, in place of the order laid out by the article's editors. If AWB did this it would be yanked in a minute; why in the world do you think it's OK for VE to do it? EEng 04:24, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

  EEng code has been written to prevent existing parameters from being rearranged.[2] (Yeay!) There is some discussion on tweaking "smart" code to try and insert new parameters adjacent to related existing parameters.[3] I am hopeful that it will be sorted out and deployed reasonably soon. Alsee (talk) 10:51, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Please ping me when it's live. EEng 22:51, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

@EEng: as requested... ping, because now live. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:48, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks. It's amazing how much editor and developer time it takes to correct one really thoughtless design decision. I don't use VE myself so I guess I'll see the results in not running into diffs juggling parameters anymore. (Not that it happened so often anyway -- a testament to how little uptake there is for VE, at least for the editing of templates.) EEng 13:53, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

It appears that the Visual Editor, in these edits, added "cite note" internal anchors with manual superscripts, added unnecessary nowiki tags, and possibly made other errors that someone is either going to have to clean up or revert along with a lot of apparently valid content changes. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:24, 24 December 2017 (UTC)

Hello,

Please help! we have installed new visual editor and parsoid on our wiki, and all user have the problem with articel edititing. when articel have a external link, he cant be saved by users, but not by admins.

How we can enable editing with external links for all default users?

Strange, but standard mediawiki editor can save a page with a URL.

LocalSettings.php:

# The following permissions were set based on your choice in the installer
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false; // Registrierung verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit'] = false; // Bearbeitung verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read'] = false; // Lesezugriff verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createpage'] = false; // Schreibzugriff verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['upload'] = false; // Dateien hochladen verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['reupload-shared'] = false; // Ersetzen von bestehenden Dateien verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['upload_by_url'] =false; // Hochladen durch eingeben einer neuen URL verbieten
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['autocreateaccount'] = true;



$wgVirtualRestConfig['modules']['parsoid'] = array(
  // URL to the Parsoid instance
  // Use port 8142 if you use the Debian package
  'url' => 'http://wiki-aws.cib.de:8142',
  // Parsoid "domain", see below (optional)
'domain' => 'wiki-aws.cib.de',
  // Parsoid "prefix", see below (optional)
// 'prefix' => 'localhost'
);

require_once "$IP/extensions/VisualEditor/VisualEditor.php";
$wgDefaultUserOptions['visualeditor-enable'] = 1;
$wgHiddenPrefs[] = 'visualeditor-enable';
$wgDefaultUserOptions['visualeditor-enable-experimental'] = 1;
$wgDefaultUserOptions['visualeditor-editor'] = "visualeditor";
$wgSessionsInObjectCache = true;
$wgVirtualRestConfig['modules']['parsoid']['forwardCookies'] = true;

Best regards, Vadim

UPD 08.11.2017:

Hi,

following settings in Localsettings.php have fixed the problem:

$wgGroupPermissions['emailconfirmed']['skipcaptcha'] = true;

$ceAllowConfirmedEmail = true;

hopefully, it will not bring any new problems now

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.125.106.12 (talk • contribs) 08:16, 8 November 2017 (UTC)