Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:21, 6 July 2013

To help test the VisualEditor:

• Go to any page in the article or user namespaces and click "Edit" instead of "Edit source" – this should open the VisualEditor
• Attention Internet Explorer (IE) users: VisualEditor is temporarily disabled for IE9 and IE10 users, due to various issues that are being fixed. VisualEditor will not be made available for users of IE8 and earlier; such editors should switch to some other browser in order to use VisualEditor.

This page is a place for you to tell the Wikimedia developers what issues you encounter when using the VisualEditor here on Misplaced Pages. It is still a test version and has a number of known issues and missing features. We do welcome your feedback and ideas, especially on some of the user interface decisions we're making and the priorities for adding new functions. All comments are read, but personal replies are not guaranteed.

A VisualEditor User Guide is at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/User_guide.

Add a new comment – View known bugs – Report a new bug in Bugzilla – Join the IRC channel: #mediawiki-visualeditor

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view · edit Frequently asked questions Main FAQ User Guide Named refs Updates Newsletter  MediaWiki If you would like to try VisualEditor without editing an article, here is a page where you can freely do so. You don't need an account to use it. Shortcut WP:VE/FAQ Main page Feedback at MediaWiki Sandbox (no account required) About Documentation: Introductory tutorial User guide Keyboard shortcuts Frequently Asked Questions (or at MediaWiki) Development: Roadmap up to 2017 Updates (2013-2023) Weekly status reports (2015-2016) Help out Update the help pages Add template data (Tutorial) Translate and localize documentation Research Main research page Other Why are the developers building this? (2013) User Test Data (2013) Customization Known problems Requests for Comments (RfCs): Jul 2013 a, Jul 2013 b, Jul 2015, Sep 2015 What is VisualEditor? VisualEditor is a way to edit pages that looks more like a word processor. It was first offered here in 2013. How do I enable VisualEditor? VisualEditor is available alongside the original wikitext editor if you opt-in, by changing your preferences. It is currently not available to unregistered users at the English Misplaced Pages, unless they switch modes while editing. Why is this change being made? Some people who could become productive, experienced members of the community are turned off upon attempting their first edit in wikitext "source" mode. Some edits, such as adding or rearranging columns to a table in wikitext, are difficult even for experienced editors. Where do I go to learn more about how to use VisualEditor? Please see the VisualEditor User guide. Does VisualEditor make automatic fixes to pages? In most cases, VisualEditor will not change or reformat lines that are not being directly edited. If markup already on the page is handled incorrectly (for example, with tables that are not closed), then it may attempt to correct these. Will it still be possible to edit articles using wikitext after the visual editor becomes available? Yes. While the visual editor will become available to all users as an editing environment, a method for editing the underlying wikitext "source" will continue to exist. There are no plans to remove the "Edit source" option. Won't this slow down reading and editing for people who have slow connections or computers? VisualEditor loads the bulk of its code only when you edit a page in the visual editing mode. So if you keep using "Edit source" or are a reader, the effect on your user experience should be negligible (~4KB of additional JavaScript payload before you click "Edit", or about 0.5% of one typical page). Your web browser will typically cache the JavaScript, speeding up future uses even if you are on a slow connection. However, using the visual editor for editing may cause problems for those on slow computers or connections, especially on very large pages. For these users, opting-out for now may be the best option. I've found an issue with VisualEditor or a feature that is missing. How can I tell you to fix it? Please report the issue in Phabricator, after first searching exiting tickets to make sure it hasn't been reported already. Additional bug reporting instructions can be found here. There are four main kinds of issues that the developers especially need to hear about: Something breaks: The failure may only affect a particular type of browser or computer, on a particular page, or after doing something else. Please post your problem at Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback. In your description, it is helpful to include information about what you were trying to do, your web browser, computer operating system, and a link to the article or a diff of the edit if it was possible for you to save the change. Performance problems: If all pages seem unexpectedly slow on loading or on performing a particular task, or if it used to be faster and has recently gotten worse, then please report this. User experience issues: If it didn't make sense, or if it was awkward, or if you couldn't figure out what you needed to do (Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/User guide covers the basics), please speak up, and feel free to offer your suggestions for improving the design. Missing functionality: Is there something you need to do, but it currently can't be done in VisualEditor, like editing mathematics equations or seeing hidden comments that contain instructions to other editors? Make sure that it's on the developers' list of needed features. If you'd like to know which missing features have been reported before, you can search the talk page archives and feedback archives. If you can't find any reference to the new feature you'd like to suggest, please report it at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback. Can visual editor be customized ? Yes, see Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Customization, and mw:VisualEditor gadgets for more advanced customization. How do I disable VisualEditor? To continue to edit the wikitext directly, simply click the "Edit source" button instead of "Edit". On section edit links, you can open the wikitext editor selected in your preferences for that section by clicking "edit source" instead of the regular "edit" link. If you would like to remove VisualEditor from the user interface, then you can do so. If it is a beta feature: go to the Beta tab of your preferences page, untick the checkbox "Visual Editor", and click the Save button near the bottom of the page. (As of 2021, this is how you do it on Meta-Wiki and the Chinese Misplaced Pages.) If the visual editor is already out of beta: go to the Editing tab of your Preferences page, untick the checkbox "⧼visualeditor-preference-betatempdisable⧽", and click the Save button near the bottom of the page. (This is how you do it on some sister Wikipedias, for instance, Russian Misplaced Pages, as of 2021.) on English Misplaced Pages, go to the Editing tab of your Preferences page and change the "Editing mode" to "Always give me the source editor" See Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Opt-out for other options. Can I install VisualEditor on my personal wiki outside Wikimedia? Yes. The VisualEditor extension is available for download. Can I use named references like the basic wikicode editor does, so I can choose my own reference names? This has been requested via Community feedback, and is on the list of things to do. There are some links and more information about this on the Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Named references page. The FAQ didn't answer my question. Where may I ask it? You can ask on the central feedback page on mediawiki.org. Notes <<And no, we're not taking markup-level editing away. Some users may always prefer it over visual editing, even if the exact nature of the markup changes, and even if VisualEditor becomes the best tool it can possibly be.>> Erik Möller, deputy director of the Wikimedia Foundation, The VisualEditor Beta and the path to change, op-ed for Misplaced Pages Signpost, July 31st, 2013.

Template parameters

Currently, when editing a template, the template parameters list is taken from TemplateData (if exists), or from the actual page being edited.

Whenever TemplateData exists, everything is hunky dory. However, when there is no TemplateData, the user does not know which parameters are recognized by the template, if they are not already present on the page.

There are two possible solutions:

1. The more effective solution is for the backend to generate TemplateData based on parsing the template page whenever "TempalteData" does not exist. Presumably, in this case, only parameter names (or numbers) are available, and all other parts of the metadata will have their default values.
2. in the Visual Editor itself, run something like the following code to extract the parameters list from the template page if no metadata is available (this is an illustration, and uses "async: false" so it works correctly. in reality, there are better ways to do it than using async:false):

function extractParameterNames( tempalte )
	var
		result = ,
	$.ajax({
		url: mw.util.wikiScript(),
		data: {title: template, action: 'raw'},
		dataType: 'text',
		async: false,
		success: function buildParamsRaw(data) {
			var
				paramExtractor = /{{3,}(.*?)/mg,
				m;
			while (m = paramExtractor.exec( data )) 
				result.push( $.trim( m ) );
		}
	});
	return result;
}

we use this exact logic in hewki, with the "TempalteParamWizard": the wizard does not use metadata embedded in the tempalte page itself - we did not have the TemplateData extension available - but rather we have an optional subpage that contains the data in a form which is more human-friendly and less script-friendly, but is basically very similar to TempalteData.

When this optional subpage does not exist, we use code very similar to the above to extract the parameters recognized by the template from the template page itself.

Surely TemplateData itself is a more elegant solution? I appreciate it's not available everywhere (although people are doing a lot of work on high-priority templates) but ultimately with most templates automatically generated data is going to be highly confusing. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:13, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

References - first attempts - ouch

Just had a go at adding a reference to James Gordon MacGregor (to replace an existing somewhat malformed "links" section). Ouch.

1. Clicked on the icon for "Edit reference"
2. It seemed to offer me "Create new source" or "Use existing source" but neither link was responsive
3. Then there was a blank window asking what I wanted to cite - no clues about format
4. Eventually stuck the URL into it, as I didn't see what else it wanted. Superscript "1" appeared.
5. Clicked on the icon for "Reference list": nothing useful offered (can't remember exact detail)
6. Used the "Transclusions" icon to add "Reflist"
7. No visible response to that.
8. Repeated previous step
9. still no response.
10. Went to "Save page", looked at "See your changes", observed that Reflist was added twice.
11. Despaired of being able to do anything useful in VE except offer this feedback, and will now save the page and reopen in Edit Source!

Nothing intuitive, no indication how to get anything like the helpful prompts from the dear old RefToolbar. Oh dear.

Ah, when I save it, the two copies of Reflist take effect and I have a duplicated single-entry list of refs. But, as with several previous comments, we need to be able to see in VE the effects of our VE edits, because lack of visual feedback causes confusion!

Will now go into Edit Source to fix the article. PamD 20:35, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I guess I'm echoing what User:Charmlet said a couple of items above: it's a terrible step backwards to move from the RefToolbar approach into a blank "what do you want to cite" box. This is not going to help new editors to create full, well-formatted, references. If I'm editing an article and know I'm going to be adding references (much of my editing is wikignomish stuff which doesn't involve that), I'm going to have to remember to use Edit Source until VE can come up with something more helpful - and that's as an experienced editor. PamD 20:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

I'll say that es:Misplaced Pages:Portada and other Wikipedias also use cite templates, so this would help out a lot more than enwp.. And if I remember right, those don't have the A/B test going on, so they may not even know that they're going to lose the RefToolbar. Charmlet (talk) 20:52, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

There's a feature request already tracked at Bugzilla 50458 (linked above) that might be a good place to discuss this - I note that already under request there is a list of parameters to be filled in, which I agree would be enormously helpful. I'm not finding this feature very intuitive myself. :/ I link here in case either of you would like to add your support or your own thoughts. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:48, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

Completely agree with PamD. VE is a huge step back for ease of use for references, which is THE core feature of wikipedia. Not only is it not intuitive, but it takes more clicks and time to use than wikitext. The Cite dropdown menu on the toolbar worked very, very well. Mnnlaxer (talk) 15:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

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

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

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

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

You use both of the features together: Go to the references tool to create a new reference. Once in the space where you could add unstructured text, click the puzzle piece. It will ask you for the name of the template that you want to use, e.g., cite web. Then you can fill it out by adding the parameters one at a time (if TemplateData has been processed for the one you're using, then it will give you a list of all the options). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Error message: 'Error: Invalid token'

I just tried to test VisualEditor by removing some text from my userpage, and got the message 'Error: Invalid token'. What does this mean? Robofish (talk) 22:20, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to have been a problem with the edit summary, I changed that and it worked. Are hyphens no longer allowed in edit summaries or something? Robofish (talk) 22:22, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

@Robofish: I tried a hyphen, a dash, an en-dash, and an em-dash, within edit-summaries, and all worked.

The only bug I can see that contains "token" is Bugzilla:50424 (VisualEditor: "Invalid token" message after period of inactivity leads to lost work). Might that be it? –Quiddity (talk) 22:55, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I can only assume so. I haven't had any further similar problems, I guess my first edit just timed out. Robofish (talk) 22:59, 1 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad it's working better for you. :) I had an issue with really slow editing when it was first rolled out for all logged-in users (mentioned above). Seems okay now. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 01:08, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I can attest to that, I have done the same thing and so due to inactivity the 'invalid token' message is appearing. No idea what to do, currently my tab is still open containing my edits which cannot be saved, I don't want to start over (quite a bit of work here), any suggestions? Copy-pasting to a text editor is not an option since I did mainly lot of linking and minor fixes. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:04, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Can you review your changes? If so, you can copy the markup difference to the markup editor in a new tab. If not, I've got nothing. Thatotherpersoncontribs 10:20, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Tried it just now, now an error message pops up saying "error loading date from server: Unsuccessful request: Invalid token" :( -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:26, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

@Ugog Nizdast:, I'll add something about this at Template:Bugzilla - they seem like related function to me. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. -Ugog Nizdast (talk) 14:18, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Images

Why is the Visual Editor not displaying images at the correct default sizes? Hawkeye7 (talk) 13:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7:, can you give an example? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 06:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I was working on Operation Crossroads. My thumbnail size is set to the maximum (300px) in my preferences. The thumb images down the bottom do not have sizes hard coded. Enter the Visual Editor and they are not displayed at 300px any more. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:21, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Because the VisualEditor operates off article text, not user preference. Images ideally should include a size. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 08:33, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Roger that. Will hard code the sizes in all thumbs. . Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:00, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

OHHHH NO THEY SHOULDN'T. From Misplaced Pages:IMGSIZE#Displayed_image_size:

In general, do not define the size of an image unless there is a good reason to do so: some users have small screens or need to configure their systems to display large text; "forced" large thumbnails can leave little width for text, making reading difficult. In addition, forcing a "larger" image size at say 260px will actually make it smaller for those with a larger size set as preference unless you use upright with a scaling factor, so the use of upright is preferred wherever sensible.

So (1) please don't do this (2) the VE forcing this is a bug - David Gerard (talk) 21:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

As noted, forced image sizing is discouraged unless really necessary (for large maps and similar special cases). The Visual Editor should try to simulate the article's image display in read mode. After all that's the whole point of a Visual Editor as WYSIWYG tool. Assuming VE has all necessary parameters like user preferences and global settings, it shouldn't be that much of a problem to fix this. GermanJoe (talk) 09:03, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Fair point, both :). Adding into bugzilla now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:38, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

"Page notice" box gets in the way

When I click "Edit" on an article page, there is a wide shallow box near the top with a "Page notice" link. After clicking the jigsaw icon to add a template, this "Page notice" box remains in front of, and partly obscuring, the "Add template" box. It can be moved up out of the way by scrolling, but it's a nuisance. (Win7, FF21.0, standard 1366 x 768 screen).

• If it has to be displayed, it should not stay in front of the "Add template" dialogue.
• I don't think it should be displayed by default at all - creating a page notices is a fairly advanced activity. There is a link that says "1 notice" which makes it go away; better to have it concealed by default and brought up by clicking the "1 notice" link.

JohnCD (talk) 14:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

• This isn't actually meant to display by default, and doesn't for non-admins :/. Some volunteers here on enwiki decided to have it always pop up, even if there are no page notices, to remind admins that they can add them. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

  As a volunteer on ENWIKI, I've decided to not have it display. How do I make that happen?  ;-) --j⚛e decker 16:24, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

  More seriously, can ANYONE point me at where the discussion happened on this? "Some volunteers here on enwiki" is vague. --j⚛e decker 18:22, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

You're talking about a discussion from five years ago. It was somewhere in the vicinity of WP:Editnotices, but where exactly, I don't know. However, it is Visual Editor that turned an unobtrusive red link to the edit notice page into an annoying pop-up box. Dragons flight (talk) 18:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think you and I are talking about the same thing. I find it extremely unlikely that the inclusion of a click-through popup in VisualEditor was required by a discussion five years ago. Since there was no VE five years ago. --j⚛e decker 15:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

When Okeyes says "Some volunteers here on enwiki decided to have it always pop up", he means five years ago enwiki added a little red "page notice" link for admins to nearly all edit pages. Visual editor was designed to treat all page notices as popups, and couldn't distinguish between a real page notice and the red link we added ages ago. So he was blaming enwiki for having a long established configuration that VE wasn't designed to understand. Incidentally, this should have been fixed now. You aren't seeing the "page notice" link anymore, are you? Dragons flight (talk) 17:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Ahhh. Thank you. Yeah. I'd like it gone, or at least not to have to spend a step to get it out of the way of what I'm trying to accomplish, but at least I understand where it comes from now.  :) --j⚛e decker 19:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Me, too! It is extremely rarely that I need to add an editnotice, and I absolutely do not need to be reminded that I could every single time I edit an article, by a notice which actually gets in the way. I certainly want it off myself, and I think most other admins will, too: who were these volunteers, where did they decide, and how can we get their decision reversed? JohnCD (talk) 17:35, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If you click edit source, you'll see a little red page notice link at the upper right above the edit box (only works for pages with no edit notice defined). Enwiki added that function about 3.5 5 years ago as an easy way to be able to access the page notice functions. As far as I know, no one has ever complained about the little red link. Unfortunately, Visual Editor is now transforming the unobtrusive red link into an annoying popup box. Dragons flight (talk) 18:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

If it were as unobtrusive as that little red link, I would have no problem; but when that is re-implemented as a floating box obscuring the place where I want to edit, I definitely do have a problem. JohnCD (talk) 19:15, 2 July 2013 (UTC).

+1 with John on this. There is a warning triangle above that tells me there are or aren't page notices (although currently I get told there is alsways one - the redlink), I don't need a floating box getting in the way every time, especially when at first it's not intuitive on how to get rid of it. Aren't the development team into little X in the top right hand corner to close? NtheP (talk) 08:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Good suggestion :). I've added it into bugzilla. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

edit one section only

When I click edit on a section, it opens up the entire page for editing. Why? I'd rather save bandwidth and save information overload, and just see the section I asked to edit. --99of9 (talk) 16:17, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. I'm not sure if this targeted opening is possible yet or ever will be, but I'll try to find out. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It is a problem to change well-understood behaviour. The hover-links show a vsection=N, but the editor then still tries to edit the whole page (if indeed, it ever finishes loading rather than just freezing). —Sladen (talk) 16:49, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that the interface is basically just lying about editing the section is highly problematic - David Gerard (talk) 18:19, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Maggie, I appreciate your reporting it. Frankly I'm bemused that a developer would think it was better to show the whole page when we ask for a section. --99of9 (talk) 18:44, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Aaarggghhhh... the WMF is not going to do anything about this! (see bugzilla) --99of9 (talk) 08:33, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Hopefully they will - but there's more talk at #Section editing will never be implemented. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

WYSIWYG: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooooooooo

Shp0ng1e (talk) 17:05, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Zabadinho (talk) 17:09, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It's horribly confusing, you can't tell for certain that you're editing, at least not at first, not enough changes (edit box or something around the visual editor would be clearer. Montanabw 17:54, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

It's great to get some design feedback. Thank you! Keegan (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

More seriously; @Montanabw:, @Shp0ng1e:, @Zabadinho:, are there any specific problems you're encountering? The problem of making the editing environment more defined is a known, and is being worked on. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:42, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

My quick solution is to not make VE the default for "edit this page" but instead have the two buttons BOTH clarify if you are using VE or source syntax -- at least ESPECIALLY not make the "edit source" button show up AFTER the other one when editing sections and subsections. Make both tabs show immediately. For another thing, I can't seem to convince the server to even save my edits when done that way, at least, no time in this century! (FYI Mac OSX 10.8.4 with Safari, MacBook Pro less than a year old...it ain't me) My biggest personal gripe; however, is when you hit "edit this page" you can barely see anything change, and it's not obvious you're editing until something goes totally haywire (and my watchlist is showing me that I'm not alone in having this happen) Also takes far longer to use the buttons than to just type in syntax, and oh yes, I'm female and no, the interface isn't what makes me want to reach through the router and rip things out! VE is a solution in search of a problem. Slow, buggy, not ready for prime time, should not be the default. Montanabw 15:58, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't think anyone you're interacting with here suggested that gender and the pleasantry of our editing interface were linked. The distinctiveness (or rather, lack of distinctiveness) with the VE compared to read mode is a known, and is being worked on; could you expand on troubles saving? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:38, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

You know about the gadget that disables the Visual Editor entirely right? I tend to agree that this solves very little. Most people who have the slightest interest in editing Misplaced Pages as a hobby already recognize the need for clean, predictable markup languages. The mere fact that VE didn't work in all browsers right away should tell you that it's too much goddamn Javascript. Connor Behan (talk) 20:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Whitespace

I'm sure this is far down the list of problems, but I think the transclusion editor (and other bits with similar display) have way too much white space. For each parameter one gets two blank lines for every one line with parameter name. That is annoying and when templates have dozens of parameters, as many infoboxes and citation templates do, it creates a lot of extra scrolling to find what one is looking for. I'd suggest reducing the whitespace between parameter names by half. Dragons flight (talk) 18:18, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

On the other hand, a bit more whitespace would be useful in some places - see this edit where I added a hatnote and it was jammed up against the start of an infobox! Please ensure that hatnotes, infoboxes, start on a new line, for legibility. PamD 18:32, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Dragons flight, I've put it in as an enhancement request. :) Pam, if I could request clarification - is VE behaving differently from the regular editor there? The link looks kind of normal to me. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:56, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

Maggie, I'd say it's behaving differently from "regular editor plus intelligent human editor". There may be a tiny minority of Editors who would stick in a hatnote template like that, running straight into the infobox, but the vast majority would certainly follow it with a line break, and probably a blank line too for legibility. Yes, in VE I can: position cursor at start of text; up-arrow; Return to create a blank line; then hit "transclusion" button and hope it will put the hatnote in the right place. VE is producing code which functions perfectly well but is sub-optimal for a human editor who comes along next and wants to edit the article. There are very strong views about white space: I know of one editor who removes(d?) it whenever he thinks it appropriate (and would support VE's approach here), while the consensus is that white space and newlines are helpful for other editors: that editor has been very strongly criticised (possibly topic-banned) for removing whitespace and newlines. PamD 08:52, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

And see another example: I added two stub tags in this edit, and would have put them on separate lines if using Edit Source. I don't know if there's actually anything in MOS that says that stub tags go on separate lines, but it's certainly the normal way. PamD 13:19, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

And WP:Stub says "It is usually desirable to leave two blank lines between the first stub template and whatever precedes it." - again, virtually impossible to do in VE, but AWB does it as a Genfix. PamD 13:44, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure what to ask for there. :/ I wouldn't want to ask for whitespace after every template. Any ideas? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Anchor templates - Not shown, but still easily messed up or deleted by accident

I noticed that when editing (e.g.) TRS-80 that anchor templates, such as the ones I'd included within the section titles (e.g. )- for links that don't break when section titles change- don't show up in the visual editor... but they're still easily (inadvertantly) deletable, simply by backspacing over the hidden markup.

You couldn't blame a newbie- or even nontechnical editor- for deleting something that wasn't even shown to them(!), but this is the sort of thing that could be a major pain in the neck.

While I'm in favour of the visual editor in principle (the ability to contribute content shouldn't be reliant upon geekish markup skills), this *was* an issue that concerned me when I heard about the idea- namely that the large amounts of complicated templates and markup (which IMHO will never be entirely representable in the visual editor) would be inadvertantly messed up, either by users or by oversights within the design of a "helpful" visual editor itself.

Ubcule (talk) 22:28, 2 July 2013 (UTC)

On the specific point, I've made a request for anchor display/support. On the general one, it's an uphill battle getting the many complex templates in use on en to work with VE. But we're making progress. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 02:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

They won't *all* work. *Ever*.

That's not intended as a criticism, it's just a fact. It'd be too much work to get- and test- a visual representation of every obscure template working in an entirely WYSIWYG fashion, though the common ones should definitely be made accessible.

The aimed-for situation should be that the visual editor is designed such that it doesn't *break* existing templates. Ubcule (talk) 09:14, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:59, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Withdraw deployment temporarily

A number of serious bugs and missing important features have been identified from this initial rollout, which was the stated goal. So now that this set of major bugs has been identified, the sensible thing to do would be to turn it off until they are fixed. I'm not saying it needs to be bug-free, just take a couple weeks (or less) to address what's been brought up, after that, turn it back on for registered users for a week, and then complete the deployment schedule barring any more serious problems. To me this does not feel like beta software yet. Beta software is feature-complete, even if it may contain bugs. Don't press forward with what amounts to an alpha to a larger audience, it will be a disaster. I see no downside to going back to opt-in for a week or two. Gigs (talk) 01:45, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

+1, as already voiced out several times. --NicoV 02:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't you just click on 'Edit Source' so what's the problem? Many of us will continue with 'Edit Source'. — Charles Edwin Shipp (talk) 04:18, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, we can use 'Edit source', but the problem is not us who have found this button and also know that VE is currently having a lot of undesired side effects on saved pages. The problem is that most people don't know that (as said by many people, it's far from obvious for a lot of people), and will use VE in its current state without even checking their edits. Who is going to fix all the mistakes VE is saving in pages ? Why is it such a problem to pause a little time to fix a good part of the hundreds of bugs currently opened before making the default editor for everyone ? --NicoV 06:10, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep. You have enough bugs to be working on. Remove the VE, fix those bugs, then put it back for another trial. That would be the respectful, responsive thing to do. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, if this genuinely is a "trial" or "beta" (which I'm not certain of, particularly given recent attitudes towards editors) then you need to fix all the critical and major bugs (as defined by impact on editors) and a good proportion of lesser ones and finish the missing features (tables, templates, redirects, etc) to avoid damaging the live wiki. As it currently stands it is not ready for high-volume use, and feels more like an alpha release than a beta one. Thryduulf (talk) 10:02, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, given that they apparently didn't evaluate the results of their A/B test before turning this on, it doesn't seem like they are managing this roll-out according to any methodology I've ever encountered. You are absolutely correct that in any project methodology I have ever encountered this would be the point in time where the product was pulled from release to be rereleased when the problems discovered in this trial were dealt with. Certainly this wouldn't be the point where I was continuing with a plan to unleash it on all anonymous editors in five days.—Kww(talk) 01:10, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

No, it seems like they are in complete denial about state of this software. It's madness. They released, nay imposed - on one of the most important production systems in the world, used every day by millions of people - this bug-ridden, untested, incomplete software that does far, far less than what it is supposed to be replacing, corrupts data, has some of the most defective user interfaces it has ever been my misfortune to see, is far more difficult to use in many common cases, and not only that, they did it right before a major holiday and went home. And they apparently think they should go ahead with their deranged plans as if everything is fine, and they aren't responsible for a major disaster that could easily and justly wreck their careers. The cluelessness, incompetence and arrogance are simply breathtaking.Enon (talk) 23:09, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Who said we think we should go forward? Let me be clear; we're taking these bugs very seriously, and have a meeting today to discuss a go/no go on Monday's deployment. If you have issues you consider critical that you want to surface, surface them. I'm not sure where the cluelessness, incompetence and arrogance in that statement is (or when I've ever said "yes, we are definitely going ahead with the deployment on Monday and nothing you can say can change that!" or words to that effect). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:46, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Releasing at all it in the state it is was not the thing to do. The A/B test results weren't even back, references effectively don't work at all. I read the design documents etc., and it seems to me while you solved lots of general cases for abstract things, you never solved or even specified actual specific cases for nearly everything that a user would want to do with the software. Anyway, the comment to which you responded was a late one - see my other comments on this page for details of what I think about this.Enon (talk) 16:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

My impression is that the A/B testing is about how IPs and other newbies might respond to VisualEditor. For example, if VisualEditor resulted in more spam from new accounts, then expanding it to all of the IPs might stress the anti-spam work. (On the other hand, you've made less than 30 edits this year, so perhaps you might qualify as a less experienced editor for these purposes.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:26, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorting categories

Is there an easy way to change the order of categories? I think one has to remove and re-add them to change the order in which they're listed, which can't be efficient for articles with dozens of categories if I want to add a new one in the middle. Huon (talk) 04:05, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Not at the moment; is there a reason there needs to be? (I'm not arguing with you - it just helps when convincing the devs they need to do something to have an argument as to why :)). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:13, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

From WP:CAT: "The order in which categories are placed on a page is not governed by any single rule (for example, it does not need to be alphabetical, although partially alphabetical ordering can sometimes be helpful). Normally the most essential, significant categories appear first." In particular eponymous categories usually are the very first ones. We could interpret "not governed by any single rule" as "let's be happy with whatever VE produces", but I'd consider that a step backwards. Huon (talk) 12:09, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

For me, the part of the sentence Normally the most essential, significant categories appear first means that editors should decide the order of categories, and certainly not VE by itself. If an editor should decide the order of categories, he should be able to sort them (and not by deleting and recreating them). --NicoV 20:22, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Added as an enhancement request. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

"Happy to announce"?

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

There's been an opt-in beta since December 2012, and we sent out a centralnotice, but it looks like a cookie problem meant it didn't go to some users :(. The opt-out is pretty prominently displayed on the VE portal, which is both where the banner drops you and a single click away from where the current popup in the VE drops you; hopefully this will help. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 09:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I said the same thing, Jeff. --Paul McDonald (talk) 00:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate the info, Okeyes, but an opt-out buried in a topic unknown to the entire affected audience is a catch-22 and isn't adequate. (Indeed, that's the kind of practice that gets companies excoriated, like putting a license agreement inside a box whose opening binds you to the license.) But I see that we've got a main-page banner now, so that addresses my concern. Shame it didn't show up a few days earlier. ☺ ~ Jeff Q (talk) 07:27, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Any plans to make infoboxes appear?

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

Er. It was; the infobox appears fine for me. What browser/OS are you using? Can you send a screenshot? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 07:36, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Firefox on XP. And will do shortly. Orderinchaos 15:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Orderinchaos: Thanks :). (What version of firefox?) Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Newline removal impossible

I tried to remove the whitespace (actually newlines) between references 7, 8 and 9 of this revision of KHD Humboldt Wedag (the ones after "Klöckner Humboldt Deutz AG." at the end of the "History" section's second paragraph). I can remove the "↵" symbols, but when I try to review my changes I get an error message: "Could not start the review because your revision matches the latest version of this page." When I tried to remove them along with some other changes, the other changes were saved correctly, but the newlines persist: Huon (talk) 06:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Reported as Bugzilla bug 50641. Huon (talk) 06:46, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

How often and when are code updates happening?

I assume there are developers looking at the bug reports and working on this stuff. How quick is the deploy cycle (for large or small releases) for this period? i.e., how quickly should we expect things to get better? - David Gerard (talk) 10:06, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

An excellent question, and one I'll ask now. Prior to the big deploy we were releasing practically daily; I'm not sure what the plan is now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 10:14, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, "now" was 14 hours ago ... so, how often is the code updated? What's the schedule? - David Gerard (talk) 23:11, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm asking :). Bear in mind that "14 hours ago" equals "less than one workday, PDT". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

No reply yet; light jab in the ribs sent via email. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:48, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

It sounds to me like they're trying not to update anything on Fridays or over the weekend, so Monday might be the next one (assuming no emergencies require sooner action). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Extra space added in bold text

An extra space has been added in the bold text. Wouldn't it be better if bold and italic markings were sticking to the text they are applied to (excluding surrounding whitespace characters) ? --NicoV 12:09, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Possibly; does it cause any actual problem? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:21, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

First, the space is doubled. It's not visible in the article, but it's visible if you go in VE (the display is different). Second, for me, this doesn't look natural, it's a strange way of putting bold/italic in my human perspective. Is it major ? Clearly not, just a small, minor enhancement. --NicoV 12:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Has the problem been reproduced by anyone else? I ask on the possibility that the editor introduced it himself. :) Looking at his other edits in that article, he seems perhaps a bit unfamiliar with conventions such as spacing. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the user probably added the extra space himself. But, I really think VE should try to help making clean wikitext, rather than letting the user do whatever he wants (some modifications are not really visible in VE, whereas they are clearly visible when editing wikitext). --NicoV 08:32, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Updated watchlist status not preserved during editing

When you add a page to or remove it from your watchlist and start editing it directly after, the updated status is not preserved in the save changes dialog. --WS (talk) 13:20, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

@Wouterstomp: that's very strange :/. To be fair, the same is true in the source editor (just tested it). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:03, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't see it happening with the source editor here, only with the visual editor. --WS (talk) 18:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm now not seeing it in either location. How odd! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:50, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

John McCabe

Appearance

The edit bar follows you as you scroll; good. But the line between the body and the edit bar needs to be slightly more bold than "practically white". (This pale, spaced out look the entire web seems to be striving for makes quick navigation and focus difficult.) The edit bar is not a part of the body, the line should be as dark as the one separating it from the navbar. Back to the whole pernicious spaced out bit, the enormous space between icons in similar functional groups is disruptive for me. If some disability/accessibility issue requires this, there should be an option to compact the layout. At first, I didn't even realize like functions were grouped because the chasm between individual functions makes the spacing between groups less obvious in proportion. The icon bar has room for ten more icons, at least. - BalthCat (talk) 14:01, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, BalthCat :). We're working on making the editing experience more distinct - see bugzilla:50456. I agree that the icon bar has room for more icons, but we've got more icons to add - things like math editing, special characters and table formatting, for example, are still to come. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

</br> tags displayed as text in VE_tags_displayed_as_text_in_VE-2013-07-03T15:11:00.000Z">

Whenever I hit the edit button for Kamar Siah, several </br> tags appear as text in the table at the bottom of the article (Selseleh County), instead of being used as line breaks. --NicoV 15:11, 3 July 2013 (UTC)_tags_displayed_as_text_in_VE"> _tags_displayed_as_text_in_VE">

This might be related to bugzilla:49820? Thryduulf (talk) 15:20, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Why ? I don't see any relation to bug 49820 which is about "Warn users that wikicode doesn't work and they shouldn't insert it when it looks like they're doing so".

I haven't added them myself not even done any modification in the article. They are already present in the table which is created by a template, they are true </br> tags (even if their syntax is broken, because they are not valid HTML, they should be <br> or <br />). --NicoV 15:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Correct be if I'm wrong, but I thought the correct code was <br />? Perhaps something isn't cleaning up the code as it should. Try it the other way. Ignatzmice•talk 15:24, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the syntax is incorrect, but they are not even in the article, they are part of the template. VE should handle them as MW, not differently, even if the syntax is incorrect. --NicoV 15:27, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I fixed the navbox template. Does the article behave properly now? --Redrose64 (talk) 16:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Even with the template fixed, the problem is still the same on Kamar Siah, still </br> tags appearing. A cache problem ? (not due to my computer because I reported the problem on an other computer than the one I just used to test). --NicoV 19:02, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, it looked OK to me. Nevertheless, I've done a WP:NULLEDIT on Kamar Siah which should fix for all users. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:54, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's ok now. --NicoV 18:59, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Those should really be <br/>. We'll probably add support for broken </br> though, and collect information about the pages they are in so that they can be fixed. --Gabriel Wicke (talk) 18:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Hidden categories

Is there any plan to manage hidden categories in VE ? I couldn't find a way to view them or edit them with VE. --NicoV 15:21, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Are there hidden categories that are actually embedded in articles as opposed to in templates? I'm not that familiar with hidden categories, but the ones I know would have to be changed at the template itself. Hope you can offer some guidance on that, @NicoV:. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF): Maybe a mistake on my part for the "edit them" part, but how to "view them" while editing ? With the plain text editor, you can unfold a list of hidden categories at the bottom of the page ("View hidden categories on this page"), you get all hidden categories even the ones that are coming from a template. I didn't see anything like that in VE. How can we see the list of hidden categories when editing a page in VE ? --NicoV 16:18, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

This seems like the sort of thing that should be stored in "page settings"; I'll file a bug for it now. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Wrong target link

Ctrl+Click on a link in Edit mode took me to http://en.wikipedia.org/w/Virtual_8086_mode, which is a wrong target. Codename Lisa (talk) 15:58, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Weird; where were you to click on it? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Here: . Initiated a section link edit because I wanted it to be a manual partial revert. Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 00:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Which link did you click on, I mean? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 00:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Virtual 8086 mode

Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 05:09, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Reported. Thanks, Lisa! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Section editing will never be implemented

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

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

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

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

Comment #35 - David Gerard (talk) 16:22, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The one that starts:

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

I don't see how that leads to a conclusion that these links are purely decorative and will never be otherwise. :/ I wish it did conclude differently than "Solving what you're actually asking for (a form of VisualEditor/Parsoid that loaded and edited only one section at a time) would be a mammoth piece of work, albeit with some usefuless as you describe" and "I cannot justify spending donor funds to that extent when there are more pressing demands on the resources of the VisualEditor team" (I would be much happier if it concluded with "This is an easy fix, and it'll be done by the time I hit save"), but I'd like to be hopeful that if it isn't picked up by other developers, it'll be attended after the more pressing demands are met. (Of course, if people think this is more pressing, making a case for that is a good idea! I'm sure it's not always easy to prioritize fixes.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:30, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

At present, the links do not in fact edit the section - they load the whole hundreds of kilobytes of page. The interface lies to people.

"I cannot justify spending donor funds", when talking about this feature, looks pretty conclusively like "no" to me.

(I don't think "maybe some outside volunteer developer will implement it at some unspecified point in the future" counts as "it will happen" - what's the ratio of outside volunteer VE developers to WMF VE developers been so far?)

- David Gerard (talk) 16:34, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, we got the opt out gadget from a volunteer developer. But, mind you, my technological abilities are slightly to the left of "none", so I have no idea how possible it is. You and I are reading that differently, perhaps because I'm focusing on the word "when" in the rest of that sentence: "I cannot justify spending donor funds to that extent when there are more pressing demands on the resources of the VisualEditor team." It might be worth asking for clarification there, though, and I'd be happy to if you don't want to. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

• I think the complaint is overly pessimistic. Section editing is quite challenging to implement because the appearance of a section can depend in crucial ways on material that lies outside that section. Given that the developers are in fire-fighting mode right now, it makes sense for them to defer that problem until more basic problems have been resolved. It is, however, a very important problem in the long run. Currently it is very unpleasant to use the Visual Editor on an article such as Parkinson's disease, because it takes so long to load even on a fast computer. My plan for the present is to use the Visual Editor for short articles, but to stick with the old functionality for long and complex articles. Looie496 (talk) 16:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Parkinson's disease takes 5 seconds for me, that's not too bad. I'm not sure if fast computer helps or not. I tried List of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition monsters (288 K!), and it did not work at all - always hits a timeout after 60 seconds. GregorB (talk) 19:00, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
    • That D&D list is amazing. Timed out after 90 seconds here - perhaps the limit's been raised - David Gerard (talk) 19:07, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

• I'll predict that this is going to end up with portions of articles getting terminated. Had to deal with that before in long articles in a full wikitext source edit. VizWiz not being able to section edit will end up with more articles getting a bad/partial save ... --J. D. Redding 18:56, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
• I'm going to agree with David Gerard and the filer of the bugzilla that this is actually quite a serious problem, and one that should have big red flags next to it. This will have major effects on the ability of editors in non-Western regions with slower computers and little or no high speed internet to participate. Risker (talk) 23:20, 3 July 2013 (UTC)
  • Hear hear. Please add your comment to bugzilla. I am having trouble convincing the devs that this means the importance!=lowest. (Even though I see that Joe Decker has upgraded it, I think it's important that the devs share our view of the importance). --99of9 (talk) 14:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• What bothers me the most about this issue is that it doesn't seem that the development team was given the mandate to match existing functionality.—Kww(talk) 23:24, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

• • Please add your thoughts there. :) I can tell people that this is an important issue, but it really conveys best if people speak for themselves. Anyone with a Bugzilla account can register a comment on that thread. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 00:50, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

• • • I have added my thought that this bug is of higher priority than previously believed by changing the priority. See WP:BRD --j⚛e decker 15:51, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Ah, I see the "edit|edit source" links on sections have turned back into just "edit" links, which edit the wikitext. Thank you :-) You need to correct the text at the top of this page - David Gerard (talk) 11:08, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

This is due to bugzilla:50731 —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

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

• Just to let you all know; we're discussing this now, and hopefully will have something for people in a couple of days. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:52, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Change of case in link cannot be saved

I tried to lowercase the link ] on the Vogrie House page, but then VE would not let me save it, saying that no change was made. I had to use the old, non-buggy, intuitive, straightforward, dependable, efficient, tried-and-true "edit source" editor—you know, the one that was hijacked and replaced by VE—to accomplish the job; where's the fun in using that old editor? Chris the speller  16:38, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Intuition after having used it for a matter of years is kinda contradictory. I just tested here and it saved fine; what browser/OS are you using? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:57, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Firefox 19.0.2/Windows Vista. My first attempt at lowercasing it caused the "a" to appear outside the double square brackets, so I started over and inserted "a" after the "A" (like "Aarchitect") and then removed the "A". Chris the speller  17:15, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Try changing "Marvel Comics" to "marvel Comics", not "Marvel comics". Chris the speller  17:18, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

The trouble occurs when trying to flip the case on the first letter of any link; the only way to flip it with VE is to delink, change the case, and then relink. Chris the speller  18:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to work either to lower case or upper case. Thanks. I'll report. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor: Reopening save page dialog after closing it breaks backspace / delete.

An oddball one, took me a while to figure out what on earth caused this. Tested in Firefox 22 + Monobook skin.

Steps to reproduce

• Navigate to Mariposa botnet and edit the page in the visual editor.
• Make any textual change - just add "Test" somewhere for example.
• click "Save Page"
• Adding a reason doesn't matter. Just click to close the save page popup.
• Immediately open it again (Don't click anywhere else)
• Try to add a text as the reason, then press backspace or delete what you just added.

For some reason delete and backspace won't work anymore. Another fun fact in Monobook: It will block any input on the screen. For example, the search box will refuse to accept a backspace or delete while the save page screen is opened a second time. And even MORE fun: Do the above trick again, but after the last step add the following steps:

Steps to reproduce (for even more fun)

• (Do all the steps from the first section)
• Press "Review Your changes".
• Wait for the review to load, then press "Return To Save", and close the resulting form.
• Now click the search block (In mono) and enter a random search criteria.
• Once entered, try to remove it again.

What happens for me: Entering data in the search box works fine, but pressing backspace somehow causes text to be removed from the article, instead of the search box i was just typing in. Excirial 19:06, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting it. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Table formatting instructions displayed as text

When I edit fr:Brendan Schaub in VE, the first column of the table displays the formatting instructions as text instead of applying them : I see text like style="background: #...." and if I click on it, VE thinks it's a template to be edited. --NicoV 19:16, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

And same problem with the English version Brendan Schaub in the same table (for the display of formatting instructions as text). --NicoV 19:18, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

No reaction ? The bug is still there on Brendan Schaub, on the second table in "Mixed martial arts record". VE displays table formatting instructions as text instead of applying it to the table cells : texts like <tt>style="background:#bfd; color:black; vertical-align:middle; text-align:center; " class="table-yes2"|</tt> are visible in edit mode. --NicoV 16:23, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm hoping somebody a little more techie than I am will read this, because I have no clue what's going on there. :/ Best I could do is post it as a bug using exactly your words, and I'm happy to do that on your behalf, if you'd like. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Sure, you can create the bug report. I'm not sure my words are correct (English not being my mother tongue), but you can see what's happening simply by editing Brendan Schaub and looking at the second table in "Mixed martial arts record" : instead of cells with a short text over a colored background, the wikitext that should create the colored background is displayed as text. --NicoV 20:33, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Done. :) I can see it - I actually saw it the first time I read this - but I am possibly the least techie of the people liaising at this page, so I was kind of hoping somebody would come by who could say, "This is the kind of problem we are having here" and file it accordingly. :D Now that I know that nobody has answered (the green text makes it much easier to find - and I thank you for helping out with that!), I have given it my best shot. I hope the developers can figure it out and fix it! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome, I also find the green text very helpful --NicoV 20:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

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

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

Hello, WereSpielChequers. It's supposed to be able to add pictures. :/ Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/User guide talks about how. If you encountered specific difficulties, sharing those could be helpful, in case there's anything we can do to help developers improve the experience...or in case you found a bug. Thanks. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

OK tried again, this time reading and rereading the instructions. It was rather slow, it didn't go where I tried to put it and and I didn't spot where I had the opportunity to put in captions, so I've gone back the previous system as it takes much less time to edit that way. ϢereSpielChequers 20:39, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

It is a little difficult getting used to. :) I appreciate your trying and am glad that even if it was not as efficient for you it basically worked! I'd hate to find out image additions were broken. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:43, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

So you think "so confusing that the editor gave up" fits your definition of "basically worked"? No wonder there is so much antipathy here to WMF. Please include this in your reports of design failures. You do have such reports, right? Not just reports of not behaving as designed? —David Eppstein (talk) 22:50, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

If you're feeling antipathy to me, I'm really sorry. It wasn't my intention to anger you. My initial thought here was that image additions were no longer working, which would mean something new had broken. I'm relieved that this is not the case. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:38, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

@David. Software testing is not helped by an aggressive environment, there will be bugs, we need to try and explain them in ways that let the programmers find them. I pulled out of this before because my bug reports were being archived without any response - not even "another example of bug ****", if Maggie is actually looking into bugs then I might try this again. But if the opportunity to add a caption and even alt text was not obvious to me then it won't be to those who might not be looking for it. ϢereSpielChequers 13:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm really sorry to hear that, WereSpielChequers. :/ The only two reports I find from you in archives (here, here) do seem to have received response, but if I've missed any that did not, I'll be happy to try to make sure they are properly tracked. Image functionality is being improved - there are a number of existing requests related to it, and I hope that it will better meet your expectations as those are implemented. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Maggie. The first of your links is a redlink. The second links to Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_05#Spellchecking where I did get an initial response, but the problem wasn't fixed and the final post in that thread is still from me. If you continue in that same archive you find one thread I raised where another editor linked it to another thread raising the same bug, which is fine obviously I wasn't the first to report that problem. But there are four others - it looks like I was the only person testing this on the morning of the 19th May. Now that was a Sunday so of course I wasn't expecting a staff response that day, but Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2013_05#Copying_a_barnstar and the subsequent threads just seem to have been ignored. It is just one of those things when you test something only to find that others have already spotted that bug. But less enthralling when when your bug reports get archived without comment. So that's why I stopped testing the visual editor, if it didn't work for really simple stuff like typo fixing then there didn't seem much point testing it for things like image adding let alone referencing. I have to admit I was rather surprised when it went live this week, the sooner it goes back into testing with people who've agreed to test it the better. ϢereSpielChequers 23:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry about that - I dropped the W. It's fixed now. In terms of the ones from May, I am sorry you didn't get a response to those. It doesn't mean they weren't noted, though. As it says at the top of the page, "All comments are read, but personal replies are not guaranteed." Due to the activity here now, obviously, comments would not be read if we didn't have both volunteers and staff keeping an active eye on things. It's just too busy. :) But problems are not always going to be fixed as soon as you report them. Nor will solutions be proposed or explained here. Part of what we are doing here is annotating them for the developers, who then triage and assign them (which is a good thing, because I don't understand this stuff at all :)). But that doesn't mean your feedback doesn't matter -- even if you get no more than a bug number or a question clarifying your issue, your observations could still be relate to a crucially important issue. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:16, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Maggie, I've done enough testing to be OK with being told that something is a known bug, but in my experience of software testing it is best that once you've found a few bugs you tell the programmers and then wait for them to say they have a new version to test. But its difficult to motivate myself to test when my bug reports don't even get a cursory "nuther example of problem x", and there is a nagging feeling that I'm simply wasting my time if I test something without knowing the bugs that have already been found but not yet resolved. ϢereSpielChequers 20:06, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Reference tooltip feature request

I was wondering if it would be possible to have the references show up in a tooltip when you hover over the link in edit mode, just as it does in view mode. This way it will be easier to tell at a glance what is what when you're editing, instead of having to go into the reference edit box itself, which then blocks the screen etc. --Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 19:55, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I've submitted the request. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Article scrolls up when entering edit summary

When I click "Save page" after making an edit, and then start typing the edit summary, the article scrolls upwards with every keystroke till it reaches the top of the page. This is a bit annoying because it would be better to have it stay still, so that I can see the edit I made, as I type in the summary. Especially useful when I've made several minor edits. On the whole, I like VE. I really hope you guys add a feature to pull the template parameters automatically. Right now, its a lot easier to copy paste them in the source. Also, I wanted to help out with the template data (especially certain infoboxes), but I'm not sure if it needs to be added in the template's main page or the doc page or both. BigJolly9 (talk) 22:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

@BigJolly9: Which browser (and version of it) do you use ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:44, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I tried this again a few minutes ago, and everything works fine for me on both FF22 and Chrome27. I dont know if something's been changed, but I had this issue for the past two-three days, but not prior that to that. Thanks for the quick response BigJolly9 (talk) 17:01, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

They unrolled some changes today- perhaps they fixed the issue. :) If it happens again, please let us know! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor: Template glitches after editor reload.

It seems that the visual editor can glitch a bit when it initially renders a template. Yet when the template is altered without changes this is corrected. (Firefox 22, Mono skin)

Steps to reproduce:

• Navigate to this link (Historical revision of my sandbox)
• Edit the page in the Visual Editor. You will immediately notice that the template isn't correctly displayed.
• Enter the template setting screen and just select "Apply Settings".

Once that is done, the template is rendered correctly. Note that the same template was initially added trough the visual editor itself and displayed just fine. Only when you open an already saved page it seems to glitch a bit (Until the settings are applied without change - somehow that corrects it). The page reports no changes after applying, so it seems this is just a rendering issue. Excirial 22:38, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Excirial. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:50, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

{{efn}} template mis-handling

It seems rather odd to display notes implemented using the {{efn}} template as "</ref>", for instance, but more seriously there seems to be no way to close the edit box after clicking on that other than to apply changes. Eric Corbett 22:37, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Any news on when the functionality to display and edit footnotes (with references) is going to be added? Edgepedia (talk) 12:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Edgepedia: is it not present currently? How are you trying to do it? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:07, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

In User:Edgepedia/VE/Met I used {{#tag:ref|group="note"}} and opening the visual editor on this shows the footnotes in the form — as opposed to read mode rendering this as . Scroll down, and a limited view (2 lines) of the notes is shown, and open one of the transclusions and you are presented with the raw wiki markup.

Open User:Edgepedia/VE/LU, where I used {{efn}} in table in the lines section, and you get </ref> shown after the footnotes, the footnote text after the first reference is shown on the Circle line row. Edgepedia (talk) 15:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Sourcing Difficult

I just learned how to add sources change fonts and change sizes and stuff and now I have switched to the old editing because I can't figure out how to add sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Foxtrot620 (talk • contribs) 22:48, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

"I just learned how to add sources ... I can't figure out how to add sources" is illogical captain. Eric Corbett 22:54, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

I think he means he figured it out for the old source editor, but can't figure out how to add sources in the new visual editor. He left out in the new visual editor at the end of his sentence. Cut people some slack. We are trying to get more editors, and more editing, and not to drive them away with snark. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

You may be a mind reader, but I'm not. And keep your fucking "snark" to yourself asshole. Eric Corbett 00:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Well, at least you are direct this time. I am sooo hurt. /snark off. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:56, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm always direct, that's why I'm so unpopular in this best of all possible worlds. Eric Corbett 02:01, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Foxtrot620, I'm sorry for the confusion here. It isn't necessarily an easy transition for people who are familiar with the old setup. I hope it will get easier as bugs are cleaned and feature requests implemented. The user guide might be helpful to you if you decide to give it a go again. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Transclusions are confusing

I tried putting in an ambox.

Step 1: Click transclusions button. Step 2: In "New template" textbox, add "ambox" and click "add template." Step 3: Put something (I have no idea what) into "add parameter" textbox and click button. Step 4: Put text in big box.

Once I get past Step 2, it stops working. ??? Step 4: Add stuff to bigger textbox XndrK (talk · contribs · count) 22:59, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) I tried out an ambox, and it seemed to work all right for me. When you say it stopped working, can you tell me what happened? What happens if you try again? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

First of all, the word "transclusion" is confusing. It is compsci jargon, and not even used correctly. The VE is a step forward because it makes editing accessible to people who aren't geeks, so the use of such a geeky word (not in my Random House Unabridged, not even in Misplaced Pages's spell dictionary) can only confuse.

The puzzle piece icon seems to serve only slightly related purposes depending on where you encounter it: 1) it allows you to import templates, and 2) it allows you to edit data contained in a template. It's not clear to this user how to use a template once I've added it. So, yes I've added a cite web template, closed the box and now I have an empty reference. When/where do I put in the data? This should be obvious, but it isn't. Intuitively obvious human interface, when we get it, is a triumph. We're definitely not in the triumph stage yet in the use of templates. Camdenmaine (talk) 01:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Monobook visual issues

Hi. When editing a template using VE in Monobook, there are several elements that overlap onto the VE component. I reopened a bug about this, neatly linked in the boxy thing on the right. Posting here for awareness (The more you know™). Killiondude (talk) 23:21, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your diligent reporting. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:13, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

"Edit - Edit source" links appearing despite Preferences setting

Since trying VE a few days ago, I have had my Preferences -> Gadgets -> Remove Visual Editor setting selected so that the "Edit - Edit source" links would not appear. About six hours ago when I did some editing, everything was fine. I had only an Edit link, and it took me to the traditional editing screen. Now, at 23:30 UTC on July 3, the "Edit - Edit source" links are back. My preference is being ignored. I tried unchecking the preference, saving, checking the box, and saving again, to no avail. I looked in Bugzilla for a similar bug and did not find one. Jonesey95 (talk) 23:57, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

This problem is gone for me now, four hours later. Who knows? Jonesey95 (talk) 03:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

It was a bug introduced by some updates. It's fixed now. :) Sorry about that! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Edit source tooltip

This is probably in the wrong place (but I haven't got time to hunt down the correct place), but the tooltip for the "edit source" tab doesn't seem to be working properly. The other tabs include a keyboard shortcut, e.g. for history, for move, but the "edit source" tab tooltip says "". Firefox 22.0, monobook skin, Xubuntu. Thryduulf (talk) 00:02, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed. But MediaWiki:Accesskey-ca-editsource exists. Not sure why this is happening. πr (t • c) 00:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I am also experiencing this issue, and it appears to be a regression; it was fine yesterday. I have a gadget turned on that shows hotkeys for each tab and I see this: . This is not just visual; the SHIFT+ALT+E hotkey for Edit Source is no longer working in mainspace on Chrome. It continues to work fine in other namespaces. Dcoetzee 00:28, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I have the same issues with shortcuts as you. I didn't think to test them earlier as I don't normally use them. Thryduulf (talk) 00:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Alt text

Is it possible to add alt text to images using the VE? I can't see how that is done in VE, and I'm worried that it can't be, but it seems very possible that I'm missing something. - Bilby (talk) 00:17, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Evidently, the answer is "not yet." It's in the works, according to the bug I've added here. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

If I can comment, this is one of those things that I feel should be fairly high priority, as alt text is a basic step in providing accessibility for people with vision impairments. While I understand that the primary aim at the moment is to make the visual editor function, one of my hopes for it was that it would also encourage people to edit in the best way possible. If we could encourage people to add alt text and captions as part of the process of adding images (as opposed to the current VE approach, where adding a caption is a distinct and separate optional step), or even encourage people to add and correctly format references, then we'd go a long way towards providing something that would work to improve the project. - Bilby (talk) 05:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Red links

If you are editing a page that you did not start while using this editor, you couldn't know right away which ones have the red links because all links are in blue. Is there a easy way to turn off this visual editor. I turned it off in the Preferences>Gadgets>under Editing, but still, every time I try to edit, it brings me back to the VisualEditor. I am not so thrilled about this abrupt change. Thanks. Briarfallen (talk) 00:25, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

The opt-out gadget should right now be fixed! Credit to User:Jamesofur. The engineers made some changes today that brought initial load from 110KiB-ish to 4KiB, and one side-effect is that it seems to have ganked the gadget. Now fixed :). The Pertinent bug for the linking problem is 37901, which is being worked on too.

Thanks. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:28, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Refs and templates

Inserting references is completely unintuitive - none of the icons really make any sense. Also, why is a template represented by a jigsaw piece? That doesn't make any sense... I'd suggest a cog or something, but I guess that's too close to the normal "Settings" indicator. Something to indicate that it's basically a 'function'.

Another issue with the new ref-insertion interface is that I can envision it resulting in a lot of bare urls. This is A Bad Thing. — foxj 00:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VE is aimed towards new editors, and getting new editors to provide ANY reference, including a bare URL, is better than no source at all, IMHO. If we can get the new editors to stick around, they'll learn how to add fully formed references later. Plus, I'm more likely to add a citation template to a bare URL than I am to find a source for an unsourced sentence. GoingBatty (talk) 03:08, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

That sort of misses the point of this complaint, doesn't it? Editors had no trouble adding bare URLs before. The existing reference feature in VE is deeply confusing to new users in comparison with, say, refToolbar, which is far from great itself, but, to my mind, should be considered the bar for Visual Editor to beat. There's a long way to go, I'm afraid. It is a darned shame that references (with a good understanding of how they are actually used in practice) do not seem to have been made a highest priority in Visual Editor. --j⚛e decker 15:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Math tags

Hovering over a displayed math formula in <math> tags is supposed to get a tooltip that explains that the formula can't be edited in the VisualEditor. It sort of works; but it has trouble with tall formulas. The tooltip doesn't show up unless the cursor is moved to the middle of the formula. For some formulas this is OK, as users can be reasonably expected to put their cursor in the middle. For other formulas it's not. Here's the opening of Companion matrix, which has both a formula that works and one that doesn't:

In linear algebra, the Frobenius companion matrix of the monic polynomial

${\displaystyle p(t)=c_{0}+c_{1}t+\cdots +c_{n-1}t^{n-1}+t^{n}~,}$

is the square matrix defined as

${\displaystyle C(p)={\begin{bmatrix}0&0&\dots &0&-c_{0}\\1&0&\dots &0&-c_{1}\\0&1&\dots &0&-c_{2}\\\vdots &\vdots &\ddots &\vdots &\vdots \\0&0&\dots &1&-c_{n-1}\end{bmatrix}}.}$

It would be more helpful if the tooltip appeared whenever the cursor was over any pixel of the formula, not just a middle pixel. Ozob (talk) 01:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. :) I've passed that along. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Not Rubbish

I'm a relative novice at Misplaced Pages editing. The visual editor came along just as I was learning markup and struggling with it. I think the VE, though still not nearly done is a huge step in the right direction. Its purpose is to make editing accessible to subject matter experts who would be put off by markup. This is such an admirable (and necessary) goal that I think it's essential to carry on. If there is something to complain about, it's that this has been released in beta way too early. Keep up the good work. Camdenmaine (talk) 01:46, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Blocked sites

Some sites are blocked from WikiPedia and editors can't add links as a reference. It's sure that editors don't know which these sites are. In the old version, when a link from those sites was added on the article, there was a warning saying about the blocked site when you were clicking on "save page". So, you were just removing it and clicked "save page" again.
I was trying to add references in one article with VE, I tried then to save the page and I got the notice: "Invalid code error" or something like that. I thought it was just a clinch. I cancelled and did the edits again and tried to save. Same message again. I then realized that it was probably a site that was blocked that was causing the problem so I started deleting one-one the refs to see which one was responsible. Took me some time to figure out what was going on and then find the "problematic" link but I found it.
Can we please get a notice of why there is error and we can't save the page? In this case the blocked site? Thanks TeamGale (talk) 02:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@TeamGale: It sounds like you're talking about the spam blacklist. Graham87 02:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Pretty much the same thing happens with an edit filter violation. "Error: The notification you tried to make was aborted by an extension hook" means nothing. The filter itself displays a message that makes it clear to the editor that he shouldn't be including charly1300.com as a source.—Kww(talk) 02:51, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks @Graham87: Yes, it seems like the blacklist. But it's impossible for an editor to know which sites are in the blacklist :( It happened to me in the past with the old version but I knew immediately why I couldn't save my edits. Now I had no idea why I was getting the error message. If it had not happen to me in the past, I would never think of it. It would be good to get a "why".

Yes @Kww:...seems like the same happens with the filter violation. A message explaining these situations would be really nice. I was trying to save my edits for 40min while trying to figure out what was happening, when it took me only 3min to add them. TeamGale (talk) 03:23, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

That's pretty annoying, reported —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:55, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, TheDJ. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Suggestion for Editnotice

I see that many comments on this feedback page have been asked and answered before, but with a page this long, it's hard to determine if your question has been asked already. Maybe adding an Editnotice would help, directing people to WP:VE/FAQ and/or including some of the FAQs in the Editnotice. GoingBatty (talk) 02:33, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

That seems like a brilliant idea to me. +1 :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:42, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Request to add Amazon Silk browser to blacklist

When I try to use VisualEditor on my Kindle Fire, the article goes into edit mode, but clicking in the article doesn't bring up the keyboard like it does on an iPad. I'm presuming that aading support for the Kindle Fire's Amazon Silk browser isn't on your to do list now. Could you please add this browser to the blacklist? I would like to keep VE on in my preferences so it works when I'm on my PC but not have VE get in the way while on the Kindle. Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 02:59, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Passed along. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Save edit fails

Not only is the legal information too small to read at the save button - but I tried to add an edit summary. But nothing appeared. The edit saved. I later found the text - on another (non-Misplaced Pages) browser window. Rmhermen (talk) 03:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, @Rmhermen:. Can you tell me what browser & operating system you are using? Or let me know if it's still happening? It's working okay for me, and since I can't replicate it it will help with reporting to know more. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual Editor not loading

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

Support for LaTeX

Will visual editor support LaTeX? Dashed (talk) 06:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Eventually. — This, that and the other (talk) 07:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I hope LaTeX support will go to the front of the queue for new features to implement. Now that VisualEditor has brought a little sanity to citing references, by far the biggest PITA in editing articles is working with math. If it were less onerous to do the LaTeX, I'd be making a lot of edits in math articles, completely reworking some of them. The editors who have the knowledge and motivation to do the LaTeX often are also the sort that write jargon-encrusted "English" incomprehensible to nearly all readers, making many math articles worse than useless. Making it easier for more people to edit LaTeX could lead to real improvements in some of the most fundamental articles in Misplaced Pages.Enon (talk) 17:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I was wrong about VisualEditor adding some sanity to citing references. It's so recursively broken that I can't figure out what they even thought they meant to do. The only thing that actually works pretty much as expected is basic text editing, bold, italic, Wiki-links. In some ways it has less functionality than MacWrite v.1.0 (1984), certainly it has less capability than it needs for the purpose it was intended or even to be released at all for any purpose. This is not beta quality. It's not alpha quality. It's barely even demo quality. Core functionality is missing or terribly broken. How on earth could you release such a thing without even bothering to define common citation templates' data structures? If you tell me that anyone who knew the first thing about interface design had anything to to do with the "transclusion" box, I'll laugh in your face. It's simply incompetent, and anyone who thought this was ready for release has to be presumed incompetent.

I have read the so-called design documents and related info such as testing, poked around the API, and the more I do the more "WTF!" I feel. They never actually specified in more than the vaguest possible way what this software was supposed to do from the point of view of specific utility to the user - certainly didn't get to the level of interface and expected behavior. They just started building it, in a way that was more complex than needed for most cases, too abstract to be easily applicable but still inflexible enough to cause important things to be virtually impossible. (If you have some radical, brilliant idea for how to make the underpinnings of a graphical text editor- or the overpinnings, for that matter - you're almost certainly doing it wrong. That particular wheel has been reimplemented thousands of times over the last 40 years. Just adapt something that already works and don't try to show how pointlessly clever you can be.)

Insightful and experienced commentary on the design was brushed off with the usual superficially polite but unhelpful, clueless arrogance so typical of wikicrats (and many others encountered on talk pages - jerks are the reason editorship is declining). It's all low-level code implementation stuff with no effective thought for human interface design. They did a little user testing, basically with the obvious goal of justifying themselves, rather than finding problems - very much a shallow push-poll. They didn't even wait to get the test data back before releasing the software.

The first and most fundamental requirement in trying to create something to use in place of wikicode is that the replacement must be able to do substantially everything wikicode can do. This can most easily be achieved by allowing the underlying wikicode to be edited from VisualEditor when the user feels it's needed, such as equations, references, pictures, media, etc. (many options for the latter three cannot be set with VisualEditor).

The second fundamental requirement is that all the most common things should be easier to to in the replacement than in wikicode. The beta release needs to be suspended until the second requirement can be demonstrated by well-constructed tests to be met for ~98% of the general edits and a similar proportion of template-using, citation and reference-adding edits currently being made. Otherwise it just isn't ready.Enon (talk) 21:51, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding multiple templates is messy

When I've added one template using the transclusion icon, please offer me a button which says "Add another template", rather than insisting I click on various totally non-intuitive bits of the window to achieve this! I've just managed to add two separate stub templates, but it was still an uphill struggle. PamD 07:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Enhancement request added. Thanks, Pam. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

HTML5 WYSIWYG editor

Hello,

Why not using a HTML5 WYSIWYG editro like Raptor or Mercury? https://www.raptor-editor.com/demo http://jejacks0n.github.io/mercury/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.11.115.148 (talk) 07:54, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Because we don't have HTML5, we have wikicode. It has some intricacies. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:01, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor deactivated, no possibility to edit....

....I do not know if this is due to the VisualEditor, but yesterday I deactivated it in my preferences, and this morning, although all my admin-buttons were available, the possibility to edit in mainspace was gone. When I changed my preferences again to allow VisualEditor, I could edit again..Thanks for your consideration. Lectonar (talk) 08:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

You must be using a browser which is blacklisted by the VisualEditor like IE or Opera, per this technical village pump thread. Graham87 09:41, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

This should be fixed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:45, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually I use Firefox...but still: it is fixed {smiley}}. Thx. Lectonar (talk) 10:01, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Mystery meat navigation

Would it kill you 8-P to put labels on the frikkin' buttons (Edit link, edit template...), at least in the pop-ups if not in the main toolbar?

There's this article about mystery meat navigation and it says it's a bad thing. You're forcing users to go though an intermediate step to edit a link or reference, you could as well inform the user of what that step means with something more than a cryptic icon. Cheers! Diego (talk) 08:37, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

+1. Is there a bug for this yet? - David Gerard (talk) 08:41, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Diego Moya: I am getting mouse-over labels. What browser/OS/skin are you using? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Mouse-over labels = fail. Please do read mystery meat navigation and the original reference for the explanation of why it sucks (for a summary, this is how your users feel the first time they open the new interface). This is not a technical problem, it's one of interface design. Labels should be always available, not shown on mouse-over. Diego (talk) 12:31, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Is it just me, or is kind of funny that content such as "The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them" is followed by a number in brackets that reveals explicative text when the mouse cursor hovers over it? :)

This kind of navigation is not new to VE, Diego Moya - it's already in the toolbar in use in standard editing. If you're asking for a feature change for legibility, are you asking for it for the existing system as well? I'm happy to convey your request, but want to be sure I'm clear. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:38, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I've always been irked by the lack of labels in the old source editor, but that tool was not intended for absolute beginners as the VE does so I didn't feel the need to push for its change. There are places where it's needed the most and places where it's not vital - Misplaced Pages references are not primary elements and they look and work as hyperlinks, and MS Word for example can live with large sets of button toolbars, as the smaller footprint of unlabeled buttons makes for a higher density of commands, and Word is known to require a learning period anyway.

In a low-density, aimed-for-beginners, use-as-you-go interface with lots of extra space, there's no excuse to provide an unlabeled button. Yes, I'm asking for a feature change for legibility, and it should be done at least in the VE edit pop-ups where it can be added without any drawback. Diego (talk) 21:03, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

And for the static toolbar, the best course of action is to label each section. A label for each button would make it too large, but grouping the buttons under sections "word style", "paragraph style" and "insert elements" would be a great improvement. Diego (talk) 05:34, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Pressing backspace moves paragraph into image caption

When editing inflammation, when I put the cursor just before the first word ("|Inflammation") and press backspace, the whole first paragraph is moved into the lead image caption.

Found in bugzilla. --WS (talk) 08:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Furthermore, when I put the cursor on the first, seemingly empty line, and press delete, the image unexpectedly disappears and the caption is converted to text. --WS (talk) 08:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Just found in bugzilla that apparently this is 'expected' behavior, except for leaving the caption text behind. --WS (talk) 08:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

In the same article, when I put the cursor just below the "Leukocyte extravasation" header, again on a seemingly empty line, pressing backspace unexpectedly does nothing, while delete deletes the template below instead of removing the empty line. --WS (talk) 08:44, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Delete issue is probably the same as above, couldn't find any reference to not be able to use backspace. --WS (talk) 08:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor - Cite template layout not displayed correctly. (TemplateData)

Tested on Firefox 22, Mono skin:

Steps to reproduce

• Open any random page in the visual editor.
• Add a new template - use Cite Web for this.

The output will be akin to the screenshot added. Some the template parameters end up next to eachother, and are thus offscreen. Even if that is not the case the description will often be to long to be displayed. Would be nice if those ended up on a new line if that occurred. Excirial 09:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hoo boy. Thanks for finding this! Reported already, I see (having submitted a bug, and then having closed it as duplicate. Oops ;p). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

adding categories

When adding categories via page settings the cat does not show after pressing save edits - you have to click on article to see the new version. Cheers Berek Berek (talk) 09:15, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Berek: great catch :). Now thrown in bugzilla - thanks for finding it! Let me know if you find any other issues. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

mouse pointer doesn't change when ctrl+clicking a link while editing

When editing a page visually you can ctrl+click a link to follow it (I just guessed you could do this, as it doesn't appear in the documentation I've seen), but the mouse pointed does not change from the editing I-beam to the link hand when doing so. Thryduulf (talk) 10:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Good point! I'll throw it in bugzilla. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Incresaed risk of Vandalism

Vandalism is bound to increase as the users will be able to edit any article or topic within seconds. Also, the whole essence of learning Misplaced Pages markups will diminish. I am strongly against this! Please cancel this new idea!! By User:Utkarshsingh.1992

@Utkarshsingh.1992:: actually, the A/B test results (which I'm writing up now) shows no statistically significant change in the quality of VisualEditor-related edits, nor their likelihood to be reverted. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 11:26, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Speaking only from the unrepresentative sample of what I've seen on my watchlist, far more visual edits need follow-up work to fix errors than markup edits,, but this is due to bugs and missing features in the visual editor rather than vandalism. Thryduulf (talk) 11:54, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

space beginning line within paragraph. Get me out of this!

Somehow I was put into visual editor this morning. I really do not like it at all, and am cutting short editing this article (which really needs it) because of the bugs. Not only do I have to cut and paste to retain links, a space keeps reappeaaring at the beginning of a line in the middle of a paragraph, right after a citation which I also had to cut and paste to keep. I really resent having been dumped into this system. Jweaver28 (talk) 11:02, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi, @Jweaver28:. I'm sorry that your first experience was frustrating. It doesn't seem you saved your edit, so I can't really figure out if you encountered bugs or if - as I certainly have done- you ran into problems that result from being experienced with the old Wikitext and trying to use it in the new system.

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

I hope you'll decide to give it another go and will find it more useful. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:11, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. The space at the beginning of the line after footnote 1 of the 1383-1385 Crisis page seems to be gone at last too.Jweaver28 (talk) 13:52, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor - Required template fields aren't required (TemplateData)

Not sure if this is a bug or an enhancement request but either way: It seems that fields marked as "Required" in the template data are not enforced as "Have to fill those in" in the template editor.

Steps to Reproduce

• Open a random page in the visual editor
• Add the "Cite Web" template to any page.
• Add a few random fields and fill these in (Don't add Title or URL), and press "Apply Changes"

The template data marks "Title" and "URL" as required which is correct - without these the template will display an error and refuse to work. I would have assumed that required would mean "You have to fill these in before you can accept the template".

A bit of praise

For doing cosmetic fixes and copy edits to small articles VE is really nice to use. --NeilN 12:23, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad it's proving useful for you. :) I hope it will serve you more as it grows more and more robust. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Image sizing

The default image sizing is still wrong (Chrome on XP and Windows 7). I mention this as it's listed in the Fixes any time soon? section above as something that has been fixed. Edgepedia (talk) 12:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

"Edit source" links not appearing in sections

When I hover over the "edit" links in certain articles' sections with my cursor, the "" links do not appear; instead, clicking the "Edit" link results in the source being edited. Additionally, the "Edit" and "Edit source" links are present at the beginning of the article. (In essence, if one were to use VE on the article, they would have to edit the entire article.) Epicgenius 12:52, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

If you are referring to an edit link for the lead of an article, that happens because those links are placed there by a special gadget, which apparently has not been updated. If that's happening elsewhere, could you clarify? Looie496 (talk) 13:17, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Known issue —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Problem with references in explanatory footnotes

A similar bug was reported as #Template:Bugzilla, but closed as fixed a while ago. Article Otto I has a reference ("ref") to "Thompson" (numbered #11 in old edit mode) inside an explanatory footnote "efn". The notes are generated below the article using "notelist". Ref 11 Thompson is not included in the reflist of VE, but shown in regular read mode. Just compare the reference lists in read and in VE edit mode to see the difference. GermanJoe (talk) 13:03, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, GermanJoe . :) Tracked. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Template editing interface

When editing a template, it would be great to see all the parameter values on one page, instead of having to click on the lateral tabs again and again.

I think it would allow faster, less tedious editing, and it would suit both beginners and more advanced contributors. Od1n (talk) 13:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed; I'm not sure how that'd work in practise, but it's bugzilla'd :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:33, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Transclusion Table

There seems no way to edit the contents, or get to the original source, of a transclution table. I was trying to edit the Notes in the article on Paul Morphy. Shabd sound (talk) 13:33, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

What's a transclusion table, sorry? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the complaint is that it is impossible to directly edit the Notes section of the article (the contents are a single "reflist" template). The way to do it is to click on the text link to the note in question (i.e., the "" for note 1), and then click the template-edit tab that pops up. Looie496 (talk) 13:52, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Alas Hotcat

We seem to have lost the plus and minus options of Hotcat that were one of the closest to WYSIWYG features of this site. Please can they be incorporated into visual editor. ϢereSpielChequers 13:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, WSC. I've added it to the older HotCat report. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 14:07, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with VE. HotCat was disabled as a default by the community, so anyone who wants it needs to manually enable it again. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 14:11, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, for pete's sake, why. It's a useful tool. Anyways, we have had a few reports of HotCat (when enabled) flashing in and out between edits. WSC, do you have it enabled? PEarley (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I have been a Hotcat user for years, I have thousands, perhaps over ten thousand hotcat edits on Misplaced Pages. But what seems to have happened is that not only has it been switched off as default, even those of us who've used it for years have now been opted out of it. Not a VE problem, just a sad coincidence. I was able to opt myself back into Hotcat, but there are people I've trained and talked through setting hotcat in their preferences over the years who may not realise that all they have to do is change a user preference, and some who may not be able to do that. ϢereSpielChequers 14:38, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree. I loved Hotcat on as default. I strongly suspect that the "big problem" was way overblown by conservatives.TCO (talk) 17:18, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

One click disable

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)

Templates and parameters

Many of the templates I add most often either have no parameters (eg stub templates), or take "date" as a parameter (maintenance templates like {{unref}}), or take one or more positional parameters (eg {{in title}} or {{about}} or {{coord}}).

The handling of templates seems to assume that each template has one or more named parameters.

Inputting a 3-parameter template like {{about|this|that|the other}} is very tedious, even after you've discovered how to do it (very non-intuitive). You can't see the content of previous parameters as you go along, so have to remember where you've got to. Messy and stressful and takes a whole lot of clicking.

It's probably too late to suggest this, but imagine the following scenario:

1. I click on the jigsaw icon
2. A box appears where I input the name of the template and click "Add template"
3. The next box includes a prominent "See template documentation" button which links to the appropriate documentation, perhaps popping it up in another window or tab.
4. This box is divided into two columns and a note says "use either the left-hand or right-hand column to add any parameters to this template". One col has named parameters, the other has a set of boxes labelled "1st parameter", "2nd parameter", etc. Along with buttons for "Next template" and "Apply changes".

A further refinement would be for VE to be aware of (a) templates which take no parameters (eg stub templates), and (b) templates which only take the date (many maintenance templates), and in these two cases not to prompt for parameters (but to quietly add the date for (b), saving this having to be done by a passing bot later).

A yet further refinement would be for VE to recognise stub templates (they all end in "-stub", apart from {{stub}} itself, so it shouldn't be hard), offer them as a separate drop-down menu (much easier when stub-sorting), and put them in the "right" (per WP:MOS) place at the end of the article.

Probably too much to hope for: but going back to the basics, please work out a way for parameters to be input without all the clicks involved in making "names" like "1", "2", etc. I haven't yet tried to add a coords parameter - something on the lines of {{coord|54|36|51|N|2|49|34|W|display=title}}. That's going to be really tedious.

... Getting a bit stream-of-consciousness here: can't we just have two columns of boxes: "parameter name if any" and "parameter contents" - perhaps 10 rows and a "More parameters" button. Then to input that coord template I'd just leave the first column blank and put the values I've got, in order, and hit "Apply changes". Simple, allows you to see previous params as you go to keep track of where you've got to, etc. Ah well, perhaps it's all in hand. Good luck. PamD 14:12, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

There's a bug for that! I'll add your comments to it. If you have a bugzilla account, Pam, you might want to add it to your watch. I think you are rapidly developing as an expert in this. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

That was quick: I added this, looked at the few latest items above it, found the similar item, looked at the linked bug... and found my words there! Thanks. Let's hope it's useful.

@Mdennis (WMF): I'm about to take a bit of a wikibreak - have spent too much time on VE lately (it's become quite fascinating, probing little bits to see what happens and thinking of useful comments to make), but must get on with some Real Life stuff in next few days so my stream of comments may be about to dry up. Good luck: there's good stuff in there but a whole lot that hasn't yet been made to work in ways which suit real live editors. Problem being that we editors vary so wildly in both (a) what we do on Misplaced Pages and (b) our background, experience, skills and expectations of the software. You've got a real challenge on your collective hands. Or "our"? Not sure! (And now I really must go and hang up the washing, sort out papers for tonight's WI meeting, pack for long day-trip to family funeral, etc ...) PamD 14:41, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I hope the meatspace time is enjoyable (other than the funeral of course - my condolences). Some day, when the VE is functional, I hope to occasionally see sunlight ;). Thank you for all the work you've done thus far - I know that both Maggie and I have found your advice, bug reports and continued patience incredibly helpful. Best of luck! Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Score: GNU Lilypond

It wouldn't edit GNU Lilypond code generated with the score expression.

It apparently doesn't edit LaTeX code or mathematics.

The Visual Editor is dead to me. Kiefer.Wolfowitz 14:31, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry, Kiefer. As the User guide notes, those things are in the works, but they just aren't here yet. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Visual Editor

Great improvement Domiter (talk) 14:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Domiter: thanks! Let us know if you see any bugs, or anything that could be improved :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:49, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor: The default value defined in the TemplateData is ignored.

It seems that the default value defined in the templatedata (currently) isn't used while adding a template to a page.

Steps to reproduce

• Open a random page using the visual Editor.
• Add the template "Cite web"
• Add the "Display authors" parameter.

The textbox doesn't contain a default value and accepting it without change doesn't enter it in either. Not adding the parameter altogether also doesn't create a parameter containing the value Excirial 14:51, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Some thoughts

Just wanted to give some thoughts after the last update:

• First, I am glad seeing that there is a list of the parameters now when I am trying to add a "cite web" reference. The thing is that the list, personally, confused me a little and I finally ended up just typing the parameteres I need the way I was always doing. I think it would be easier for the parameteres to already being added, at least the basic ones, to the template. For example, to the "cite web" template, the parameters that most people use (title, url, author, publisher and date). So, when the editor adds the "cite web" template, would only have to add the content of each parameter and not the parameters themselves. If the editor wants to add an extra parameter, they could choose it from the list and add it. I am sure that this is difficult to be done knowing that there are lots of templates to go through but maybe keep it as a thought if it can be done?
• Why the "edit/edit source" was removed from the section parts? I know the flashing was annoying for many people, but I was hoping that both would stay without the flashing. Now if I am at the end of an article and want to make an edit with VE, I have to scroll all the way up, click edit and then find where I was since the "edit" on the section takes me to the old way of editing. Not to mention that now "edit" on the section and "edit" at the top of the article mean a different thing. :(
• And a bug I found...when I add the reference/template, if I want to edit it again it's not easy to choose it since the "blue line" that has to be on the text appears completely elsewhere and I can't click it. I took a screenshot and I could send it if it helps. TeamGale (talk) 14:52, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi. :) I think the edit/edit source issue is a bug: Template:Bugzilla. Looking at the other issues.... --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

First issue - added to Template:Bugzilla. Third issue, I'm sure it would. :) How do you feel about uploading it here? You would license it by using {{Misplaced Pages-screenshot}} and naming the page, if text shows. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers Maggie and for reporting the issues to bugzilla. I'll give it a try with the upload! :) Never done it before...another new experience! ;) I'll be back as soon as possible! TeamGale (talk) 18:08, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Good job with the upload. :) I changed the template - in the old way of doing things, you just have to use the curly brackets. I am really too tired to do anything sensible with it right now, but unless somebody else wants to file the bug, I'll work on it in the morning! Thanks for learning new tricks for us. :D You're so incredibly helpful. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Mdennis (WMF):Oh thanks! I just saw it and thank you so much for fixing the licence! I got the notice, tried to fix it but I didn't know exactly how! It's ok...the bug can wait till tomorrow, no problem for me. I survived with it today, I can survive with it few more days! ;) You all need some rest! Thanks for everything. TeamGale (talk) 00:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Comma adding "nowiki" to text

I recently added a comma to an article in the edit before this one, and I was reverted for adding "nowiki" tags all over the place. I tried to repeat adding the comma, thinking I messed up the edit, and this happened. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 14:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I can't replicate that - I removed a space and a comma from that section and it seems okay (). What browser and operating system are you using, Kevin? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:51, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm flinging it in bugzilla just to raise the eyes on replicating it, if nothing else :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

(I also tried adding a comma, and it went okay. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 4 July 2013 (UTC))

I had a look, and can't replicate it either. Is there a reason why Kevin Rutherford appears as User:Ktr101 in the Northrop Loom: Revision history page and on my watchlist and Maggie Dennis (WMF) as User:Mdennis (WMF) or is it something I haven't noticed before?-- Clem Rutter (talk) 17:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I replicated the problem , using Chrome on Windows 7. Edgepedia (talk) 18:14, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm using Firefox on Windows 7. Clem, you're seeing our usernames, not our signatures, so that's what might be confusing to you right now. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 18:27, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. :) Browser & OS information for both added to the bug. And, yes, Clem, it's similar to your signature appearing as Clem Rutter when your account is User:ClemRutter. :) I find Mdennis (WMF) a little impersonal, myself, so I edited my signature to include my first name. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I just cleaned up a pair of VE edits ( ) that added odd <nowiki>...</nowiki> or <nowiki />. The user concerned made a fair go of sorting the mess, but didn't finish the job. --Redrose64 (talk) 20:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Tutorials

I know the visual editor is in its Beta edition, however I am going to be using Misplaced Pages as a teaching tools in one of my classes this fall and also will be doing a faculty workshop in using Misplaced Pages in the classroom. Probably it is too soon to incorporate the VE in the various tutorials, but any idea of the timeline for updating the tutorials? Domiter (talk) 15:12, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Domiter:, hi. :) The various tutorials are managed by community members, who will undoubtedly begin to incorporate VE as time goes along. In the meantime, we have a user guide that is evolving along with functionality. We're trying to keep that updated, but welcome help from everyone, especially as rollouts change things. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

beta editing

dont like it Ngs61 (talk) 15:32, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Ngs61: can you elucidate? What do you think we need to improve on/make work better? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:47, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

It is simply slow, sluggish, counter constructive and will kill the motivation to edit pages. You should give the people a change to at least temporarily disable it by a single click. Qtguy00 (talk) 11:16, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't switch between GUI and source editor

In its current state there are many operations that can only be applied in the source editor.

If you switch from the GUI editor to the source version, make an edit, and then switch back, the edit is lost.

This is bad. Maury Markowitz (talk) 16:06, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep; this is something we're probably going to work on as a long-term project, but it's technically complex. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:49, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Can't remove a space at Michael Lowry (actor)

I'm restoring this from archives. No bug has been filed, and the problem is easily reproducible. --j⚛e decker 16:12, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Attempting to remove the space that is erroneously between the period and the following ref at the end of the penultimate sentence of the second paragraph at Michael Lowry (actor) fails--the editor visually appears to allow the change, but when the change is saved, no error is produced, nor is any change left in the article history. Reproduced in Chrome and Safari. --j⚛e decker 15:19, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Confirmed in Win7/FF21.0. There are actually two spaces in there; at first I thought the problem was maybe that you were only removing one and VE didn't consider that a change, but removing both still produces "No changes. Could not start the review because your revision matches the latest version of this page" when you do "Review your changes". JohnCD (talk) 17:54, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

I moved the reference to inside the period and it saved just fine. Thoughts? Keegan (WMF) (talk) 08:29, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

This is very odd. In this version that you saved, there are still spaces left of the reference, which I don't suppose you intended - in fact, looking at it in edit-source mode, there are three. I moved the reference back (because they are supposed to be outside the punctuation). What I did, in VE, is:

• put the cursor to right of the full-stop
• backspace to remove it
• left-arrow to put the cursor "on" the ref
• left-arrow again to put cursor just left of the ref
• backspace three times removing spaces
• backspace once more removing the "n" at the end of "Epsilon" (to be sure there are no spaces left)
• replace n
• add full-stop.

Now (still in the editor) it looks just fine. Save it - and the two spaces between the full-stop and the ref are back! It looks as though VE is adding spaces to the left when it saves a reference. I will try to devise a simple test case to demonstrate this. JohnCD (talk) 09:07, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

There is a simple test case, folks. Open that article, attempt to remove the space before reference 3 using the Visual Editor only. It simply doesn't work. --j⚛e decker 16:13, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

See, I'm getting a totally different problem; removing spaces doesn't constitute a change. I'm going to bugzilla that, then look at reproducing this.

Now replicated; both filed :). John, Joe, thanks for reporting this bug and keeping us on our toes - sorry I didn't handle it the first time around. Things have been rather overwhelming. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

No worries! it's a busy time, and a little chaos is par. Have a great day!  :) --j⚛e decker 17:08, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Issue with table that has invalid markup

After saving a minor edit at Long Island, I noticed that the VisualEditor added over 2kB of additional content. Cause was a table in the Sports section, which misses </tr> closing tags. Presumably due to this invalid markup, an incomplete "<tr" tag was added in front of the table, and half the table was copied to the end of the article in a malformed shape. The diff can be found here.

During the conversion from Wiki markup to HTML the </tr> tags are added, but apparently the VisualEditor doesn't handle the source in the same way.  thayts t  16:14, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to note: I'm using Firefox 22.0 on Ubuntu.  thayts t  16:20, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! Yeah, mutated table syntax is a problem for the VE, but this is...certainly a new strain of that problem. I'll report it :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:35, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

My feedback on VisualEditor

I absolutely hate it. Wren Valmont (talk) 16:21, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

@Wren Valmont: could you point to specific problems with the software? It's hard for us to improve it if we don't know the specific problems it's having. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:36, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I think it's clear that there are so many problems reported that it's time to retire this version of the code, fix it, and bring it back when it's ready. You've received numerous detailed bug reports and numerous reports at this level of specificity. I certainly hope that the plan to inflict this code on all anonymous users has been scuttled until the already reported problems have been fixed. After all, a big part of the reason to have a beta is to determine whether a product is ready for general release, and I think it's fairly clear that this piece of software is not.—Kww(talk) 17:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the release shouldn't be extended to anonymous users until the most serious bugs have been fixed. But you should realize that there is no possible way of releasing such a major change to a broad community with getting a flood of bug reports. Beta testing can't prevent it, because beta testers are a limited group of sophisticated users. Once something goes to a broad community, you always get lots of people trying to use it in ways that never previously occurred to anybody, or in situations that none of the beta testers can duplicate. It's just unavoidable, and if the functionality is deemed essential, the only solution is to slog one's way through it. I'm not sure that the beta testing was as thorough as it ought to have been here, but even if it was, the flood of bug reports would still come. Looie496 (talk) 18:30, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

There was already a lot of bugs discovered, and suggestions made during the beta testing (opt-in phase) but they haven't been fixed before doing the roll out to registered users. Moreover, the VE version rolled out was a new version containing major features (templates editing, references editing, ...) that were never tested during the opt-in phase. We were several people saying that the roll out to new users and then to all registered users was premature. But the VE team seems to take no account of users advices for the schedule of the release (they don't even answer to this kind of posts)... The WP:VE page still states that VE will be rolled out to anonymous users in 4 days, and I fear that it's still the plan :-( --NicoV 18:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I've managed far larger projects than this editor, Looie496. I'm not a big fan of the "turn it on for everybody" technique for betas, but it could be reasonably argued that there was a good case for it here. Still, even when one resorts to that kind of testing, one needs to monitor the results and determine that it's time to stop the test. We are there: time to stop the test, regroup, deal with the things that the developers didn't think of and the things they didn't get right, and then turn it on again once they are repaired. There's no benefit in trying to support a half-working variation of the product while fixing the bugs. It distracts your developers from what they are doing, encourages short-sightedness in fixes because every fix has to work with everybody else's code right now, and generally results in a lower quality result. They've actually gotten closer to a working product than I would have thought possible, but it's time to recognise that they are six months to a year away from production quality.—Kww(talk) 18:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Amen, Kww. TAt the very least this needs to see several months more work from the interface-design stage on throughout the project. New people are needed on this project, people who know interface design, software testing and verification, and good software engineering / project management practice as opposed to just computer science theory. Frankly, I'm not sure there's anything worth saving in it, from my brief review it looks like it's rotten from the foundations. If I were involved with this project, I'd try not to admit it. Enon (talk) 22:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not yet sure whether the visual editor is fixable or doomed. But going live on schedule with a software release despite there being multiple unresolved bugs is a very bad sign on any software development - it usually means that the schedule is being given priority over quality. ϢereSpielChequers 22:39, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm nowhere near that negative. I don't think we are dealing with people that are purely theoreticians. There's some design choices that I certainly wouldn't have made regarding what level of parsing to do before template expansion vs. after, but nothing that seems unrecoverable or "rotten from the foundations". I think this was a good strong effort, and can become a worthwhile editor. It's just not a worthwhile editor at this moment in time. It needs to get the outstanding bug list dealt with first. Pushing forward with bugs frequently causes more problems than taking a break and fixing them before proceeding, and that's what I see happening here.—Kww(talk) 22:41, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Adding reference error

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

Hey Vcczar. I'm a bit confused by your desciption, could you clarify? You mean the reference editor doesn't open for you at all, or after you've already inserted one? (btw, improvements are coming to the reference interface. rubs palms) PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

hi PEarley (WMF). Yes, reference editor is not opening up at all. I can add a reference number, but I cannot get the reference editor to open so that I can add a book to the references. Vcczar (talk) 16:49, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Difficult to use

This may be easier to use for newer editors, but for those already familiar with editing Wikimedia text, it's not very easy to use and would be very cumbersome. I wouldn't use this and hope the direct source editing option continues to be available. Seraphimblade 18:46, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Different strokes for different folks. There are no plans to turn off source editing, unless they're super sekrit. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:35, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Empty list item deletion challenge

The revision of an article here has an interesting thing, a completely empty bulleted list item, which does not normally display when the article is read. It is just below the reflist, you can both confirm this in the old-style editor, and see it visually in VisualEditor. However, I have found myself unable to delete that from within Visual Editor without also deleting the preceding reference list, which is a little wacky from a UI point of view. E.g., I attempt to backspace over the bullet and I lose a reference list. Reproduced on Chrome and Safari. --j⚛e decker 18:48, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

I had the same result. Definitely undesirable. Now to translate into developerese for a bug report ... PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

May be related to Bug 50213, but I filed a new one to get it back on radar. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:34, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Optout-related feedback

• I recognise that these changes have come about because the dropoff in active editor numbers, together with feedback from their prospective replacements rightly has the WMF running scared. I do see the need for them.

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

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

  • I would have to agree, although my issue early on was that it was switched on without an option to switch it off. Obviously, this has been fixed, but I would love an option to make it so "Edit" leads to the old window, instead of the Visual Editor. I too am set in my ways, and I would prefer having the option to edit the old way immediately instead of waiting a second for the option to pop up. I know it's a tiny issue, but it would be a nice option to have. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 19:15, 4 July 2013 (UTC)
    • Use the gadget. Connor Behan (talk) 20:16, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Formulas not editable This applies even to the most simple formulas like ${\displaystyle 2+2=4}$.

When I try to edit a formula with VE, I just get a popup with: "Sorry, this element can only be edited in source mode for now." This applies even to the most simple formulas like ${\displaystyle 2+2=4}$. I mean, really? Science articles may be only a fraction of the wikipedia articles. But they are an essential ingrediant for any universal encyclopedia. The inability to deal with formulas makes the VE hardly usable for these core articles.

Suggestion: If the VE cannot deal with an element, it should automatically divert to the source editor for this item. See how LyX deals with this kind of situation. Unfortunately, there is currently no way to gracefully edit the source while in VE.-----<)kmk(>--- (talk) 19:49, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, and frankly graceful source editing is probably more difficult than mathjax support. I know we're working on support for mathematical formulae, and it's a high-priority item - we're also discussing being able to tab between source and visual editing, although that will come later. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Nested templates

Templates inside other templates (e.g., flags inside an infobox) still require the use of the double curly braces syntax. I'm guessing it may be feasible and desirable to have recursive template structure editing. EJM86 (talk) 21:13, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

The nested templates issue is tracked, thanks for the report. PEarley (WMF) (talk) 23:51, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Cancel

Clicking on "Cancel" brings up a confirmation dialog which asks, "Are you sure you want to go back into view mode without saving first?" with two button options: "OK" and "Cancel". That's not as unambiguous as you probably want. Those two buttons should be labeled "Yes, don't save" and "No, continue editing". EJM86 (talk) 21:19, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

See also the last point of #First impression. I have a feeling that it has been bugzilled already but it isn't noted in that thread and I'm apparently useless at working out which terms to search on over there! Thryduulf (talk) 23:45, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Page being edited needs to look more distinctive - how about a coloured line down left of page?

I think various editors have said this before, but I'm feeling tired right now and have found it more of a problem than usually: a page open in VE needs to look much more distinctive. Otherwise it would be too easy to forget to Save Page and then absentmindedly close the tab on a page of edits. (Especially when juggling several tabs because checking different pages - even more so because Navigation Popups don't work in VE!). Even the header bar is almost monochrome. Could we have something like a red line all the way down the left-hand margin? Perhaps it would need to be an option, as some people would hate it. But I'd certainly find it helpful and I know I'm not alone. PamD 22:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably my last ticket of the day. :) I think I am almost past functioning, but this caught my eye, and I said, "Hey! I know that ticket!" :D --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 22:53, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Why does this even use the nowiki tags?

What is the point of putting <nowiki>...</nowiki> in every edit made with the new editor even when there is wiki formatting between the tags that was inserted with the very software that stopped the formatting from being rendered on the edited page once saved! PantherLeapord (talk) 23:00, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

• See bugzilla:49820, bugzilla:49686, bugzilla:50527, #Julius H. Kroehl article, #Wrong syntax for title in bold ? and several other sections that I can't immediately remember the titles of. Thryduulf (talk) 23:40, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

amazing!

I'm a medical student who has been using wikipedia for years. I have no time to learn how to edit, and since medical school started (I'm a 4th year now), I have read hundreds and hundreds of articles that I wish I could have edited but didn't because I either didn't know how to, or I didn't know how to include references. Also, the community here doesn't exactly consist of nice people. Not that I'm here to make friends - but I'm not going to spend my time fixing something, only to have it reversed by some 10 year old who has no clue what he or she is talking about, yet exudes so much confidence because they've been editing articles for so long and they are "part of the community". I wouldn't even bother replying because I have no time (even if I did, I probably still wouldn't bother honestly).

I would just fix spelling mistakes every once in a while. I can't tell you how many medical articles on wikipedia are written by idiots. The medical profession hasn't been touching them because of the complexity involved when it comes to editing them. I know this for a fact because I have many many many classmates (and professors!) who have said the same thing. With this new visual editor thing, I edited my first article today! And by editing the article I don't mean I fixed the spelling mistakes. Thanks for finally realizing that quantity is very different from quality. There are people other than your heavy editors and your "community" that can contribute, and some actually know what they are talking about. Just because someone knows how to edit does not mean they have something meaningful to write. Thanks again! Boonshofter 23:25, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Be still my beating heart.

Actually, your edits today don't seem fundamentally different from your edits last year. What did this make easier for you?—Kww(talk) 23:43, 4 July 2013 (UTC)

Probably the difference is he enjoyed it more and might bother more. He has had a low pattern of editing in the past.TCO (talk) 01:09, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

KWW, what made it easier was that for the first time ever, I actually added a reference to an article. TCO, you are absolutely right. Boonshofter 02:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Forgot to mention that also for the first time, I added words that you could click on (i.e. to see that word's wikipedia page). Also, I had no clue how to add references at the very bottom of the article, and put a number at the end of a sentence that you could click on that would take you to that reference at the bottom of the article. Notice how in my edit today I added some examples of medications. You can click on each of them and it will take you to each medication's respective page. You can also click on the number 3, and it will take you to the reference I added. I would spend hours trying to do that, and I could never make it work. I realize that to you guys this seems pretty ridiculous, especially since I've been using wikipedia for so long - you'd think I would get it by now. But I really don't have the time to learn how to, and even when I did have some time, I just couldn't wrap my head around it. Thanks again!Boonshofter 02:48, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

ADDITIONAL COMMENT TO ABOVE: I just do simple housekeeping edits so far but now I plan to take the time to learn the new visual editor. I think it will be very good for novice members as long as it doesn't lead to every man & his dog making changes they really should not.Princebuster5 (talk) 04:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• Dear Boonshofter and PrinceBuster, it isn't that the community doesn't want a visual editor, or that we don't want every man, and for that matter woman making improvements to the pedia. It's just that we want a visual editor that works properly and enables editors using it to deliver work of the same quality as other editors. If you look at the bug reports on this page there are lots of things that need fixing before the visual editor will be fit for purpose. Nobody here is arguing that we don't want a visual editor, people are just annoyed that we are implementing buggy software on our largest wiki without properly testing it and trialling it first on one of our smaller wikis. ϢereSpielChequers 07:00, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I completely understand. The thing though is that princebuster and I are both very inexperienced editors (at least I definitely am), so the functions that are troubling you and other users are so out of our league that we don't even know they exist. For example, I skimmed through this page reading complaints, and I couldn't understand a single thing. I feel that most users here on wikipedia are either computer programmers or have computer skills that are extremely advanced. I kid you not - 99% of the info on this page is way above my head. I'm a pretty smart guy, so you can imagine my frustration. Therefore, don't expect my sympathy - not because I don't want to give it, but because I simply can't, since I have no clue what you guys are going through. I trust your community's judgment, i.e. if you guys feel that this visual editor needs to be eliminated, then it needs to be eliminated. People like me will get over it, and we will still be here once the fixed version of it is reinstated. I didn't mean to offend with my comments above - I just got a little excited because it felt like I finally knew what I was doing after being on here for so long. All the best. Boonshofter (talk) 08:53, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

We don't want the visual editor eliminated - indeed most of us want a visual editor, we just don't think it is ready yet. It works fine for doing simple things, but it sometimes causes problems while doing so and there are more complicated things that it simply can't do yet.
As an analogy, think of it as a car. Traditionally, Misplaced Pages has required you to tell the car exactly what you want it to do and how to get to your destination in order to drive it while the visual editor (VE) allows you to simply get in and tell it where you want to go without needing to know how it works. Currently the VE works, but only if you want to go in a straight line. It can turn left or right, and it appears to the passenger that it works fine, but actually the road needs repainting after each turn you make. Most of the issues on this page are because the drivers who know how to make their cars work want to do things like reverse, turn the windscreen wipers on and carry luggage with them while travelling, but the VE either can't do that yet at all or breaks itself or the road while trying. Many are also frustrated because they like telling the car which route to take and don't like that the VE now decides that for them and breaks if they try to override it.
The reports on this page are confusing to you because they are asking about details you don't know about (and in future shouldn't need to know about) and are written so that the cause of the problems can be understood so they can be fixed. To continue the car analogy, to the driver a problem report of "it makes a loud noise when I accelerate" is fine, but the mechanic needs to know whether the problem is with the engine or the exhaust before they can fix it. Does that help explain things or just make you more confused? Thryduulf (talk) 11:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

This is freaking hilarious. You all are hassling a newbie who likes the new interface. And you want it turned off even though, you still have manual editing on another tab. There's a huge disconnect here of people thinking in terms of what THEY like to use (or what self-selected current editors do) versus potential users do. This place is way, way, way overbalanced to IT types. You need more artists, writers, and business people. There are a lot of them out there in the "real world".

Plus turning it on and just trying to make it work is a great way to just move a project forward. This thing has dawdled YEARS past when WMF started talking about it. And then some of the "ZOMFG change" whiners...sheesh. Like crying about the damned edit button sliding to the left. Or the orange bar complaints. Just step back and think about how silly that looks with some distance from Wiki Pculture.  ;-)

TCO (talk) 17:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

P.s. Erik: keep it on. Always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.  ;-)

Moving the project forward should not be the primary concern. Producing an encyclopedia should. Bringing a newbie into a watchmaker's shop and handing him a hammer and saying to have fun is a good way to get a newbie to have fun, but it won't produce fine timepieces. I have found two absolute clangers in VE in two days, and I use VE very little. This behemoth should not be the default choice for editing until it is much more likely to help than to hurt Misplaced Pages. Chris the speller  17:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

@TCO: I'm trying not to hassle anyone. I don't want it turned off because I want to keep editing the wikitext (as you say I can do that anyway), I want it turned off because it breaks things. The test should be suspended at least until it stops breaking things and preferably not until it can handle (without breaking itself or the wiki) the full range of features that an intelligent but not-technically-proficient user is likely to want to be able to do - references, templates, tables, galleries, redirects, alt-text for images, etc. Turning it on and trying to make it work would be fine if it didn't break things that other people have to fix. Thryduulf (talk) 23:43, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Cannot see or edit images which have been deleted

I was editing this revision of Chubby bunny to try to remove a thumbnail of a deleted image, the following wikitext:

]

Has everyone switched this off?

Looking through the recent changes I was surprised at how few edits are now taged with visual editor. Looking at those tagged VisualEditor we seem to be getting one or two edits per minute out of a total of about 30 changes per min at the moment. Restricting recent changes to articles I'm typically seeing two or three edits in the last 50. Either way its looking like a smaller than 10% uptake. Also IP edits are not getting tagged VE, I though it was on for all IPs.--Salix (talk): 06:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

• It is currently only enabled for logged-in users, so IPs cannot use it yet. As section edits are not supported yet it seems that the section edit links to the visual editor have been turned off for now (at least I guess that's the reason), so the only way to access VE is to use the edit button at the top of the page. It wouldn't surprise me if this is a cause of fewer edits using the VE - it certainly is with my editing. Thryduulf (talk) 09:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

  I suspect so; that bug, we need to fix fast. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

font too small

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

Monobook? - David Gerard (talk) 06:46, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I suspect so. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:37, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

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

Edit section links gone AWOL

All the edit section links are now pointing to the wikitext editor. The flyover has vanished. Anyone know why? — This, that and the other (talk) 07:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Known issue —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Possible solution for all your technical ills

Perhaps you guys should hire an East End thug to come round and "have a quiet word". Works a charm! -- Hillbillyholiday 09:14, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, if only! :P. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 13:35, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Change font/color while editing

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

How to use a template on a page in Visual Editor

I can't figure out how to use a template on the page. If I type Template:Template-name, a <nowiki> tag is automatically added. — Preceding comment added by Sky Lined (talk • contribs) ; original signature removed while fixing wiki markup errors NtheP (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

To add a template you click on the transclusion icon (puzzle piece) and then type the name of the template you want to use on the box. Add template and then start adding the parameters. To add a new parameter each time you click on the name of the template that is at the top on your left. TeamGale (talk) 11:01, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

No way to edit templates in Visual Editor

Check out this version of a page that I saw a little while back. Open in another tab, please. Do you see that line of white space at the top? I don't believe it's possible to remove it using Visual Editor. (See this diff using VE--can you do better than I did?) — Preceding comment added by Red Slash (talk • contribs) ; original signature removed while fixing wiki markup errors NtheP (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Yup; only way I can do it is to remove the infobox :/. Reporting. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Keyboard shortcut has vanished

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

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

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

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

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

Regarding <accesskey-ca-editsource> this is a known bug, see bugzilla:50725. I don't recall seeing the other issues mentioned previously so they might be new, but I'm not certain. Thryduulf (talk) 11:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Proly it's a cog. Good people decided they had a right to intercept keystrokes. --Holigor (talk) 12:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Rubbish. Doesn't even load.

If you can't get it to load on normal browsers (Firefox), then it shouldn't be made the default at all. I've disabled it, just like every other 'visual editor' I've come across. Buggy, refuses to load. No thanks. The disable option needs to be taken out of the "Gadget" section where it is stacked with dozens of other things along with a "YOU USE THESE AT YOUR OWN RISK" warning implying this isn't the right way to use wikipedia, and be moved onto the "Editing" tab in preferences. Macktheknifeau (talk) 11:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The worst thing is that everyone is forced to use this sluggish visual editor. We simply don't want it! Let's give editors a chance disable it with just 1 click. --Qtguy00 (talk) 11:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

@Macktheknifeau: what version of Firefox? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:12, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

12. IMO the last version of Firefox before they started to wreck everything by updating every three days, destroying my add-ons. Macktheknifeau (talk) 18:10, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Wikilink being repeatedly altered without being edited

First of all thanks to all the staff and volunteers who have put effort into this crucially important project. I'm surprised and impressed at how it's not just a visual editor but a WYSIWYG editor.

My minor problem is that I'm editing a userspace draft which has links to ]. Each time I edit, those links get rewritten as ] which breaks the link, even though I haven't edited that bit of the page. Didn't see this on a quick scan of the feedback page. Apologies if this is a bug reported a hundred times already. MartinPoulter (talk) 11:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

tracked —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

How can I edit code?

I just wanted to change the alignment of a table (centered to the page to aligned to the left vertical). And I'm looking at a whole bunch of nothing. It's weird. I don't like it. It seems to be the big kids-bouncy-castle version of Misplaced Pages, where you can't hurt anything but at the same time, you're extremely limited. If only, if only, at the very least there is an option, a toggle, a quick button to easily get to code if I need to. Sometimes its just easier that way. -Gohst (talk) 12:11, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

We're working on table editing (and also working, although that's more of a long-term project, I suspect) a way to tab between the two. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Confusing

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

@Kaiser Torikka: sorry to hear that :(. Is there anything specific you think we can improve? (You can still get to the old interface just by clicking "edit source", of course). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

What happens in 3 days ?

In Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor, it says that in the week of 8 July, there is the "Launch to all logged-in and anonymous users as the default editor" on enwiki. And that one week later, the same "on other first-stage projects" ("TBD – definitely dewiki, frwiki, itwiki. Probably also arwiki, nlwiki, hewiki, hiwiki, jawiki, kowiki, ruwiki, plwiki, eswiki and svwiki").

All members of the VE team seem to simply ignore all the posts where users ask to make a break for fixing bugs, rethinking some of the graphical interfaces so they can be really used for editing WP (templates, references, images, conflicts, section editing, ...), including a few suggestions to have a really useful editor.

So, I'm asking. What's the plan ? Is it still the schedule displayed in Misplaced Pages:VisualEditor ? --NicoV 12:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

The members of the VE team who are engaging here do not have the authority to impose changes to the schedule, NicoV. As far as I know, that schedule is still the same; if and when we discover otherwise, you will discover otherwise, too. :) (That said, I don't want to sound like I'm intending to discourage the conversation - they are definitely being read, and I'm sure they're being considered.) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:41, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I would note that I believe there's a meeting happening on this today; if anyone has bugs they consider really critical, let us know about them and we'll do our best to surface them to the developers quickly. Presumably one way or the other we'll have an update this afternoon :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 12:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Maggie, I understand that you or Okeyes don't have the authority to change the schedule, it's ok. It seems that there are more than 400 reports currently still open in bugzilla for VE itself (I haven't checked Parsoid). When several people made some suggestions on the bugzilla or on wikitech-l for the A/B tests before rolling it out (like a clear indication of what was going on and how to opt-out, or fixing the bugs that are making dirty diffs), those suggestions were simply ignored, and the schedule seems to go undisturbed by all the bug reports (after the A/B test, the VE proceeded to the roll out to all registered users). I fear that we are in the same situation because I don't see any indication (except your answer about a meeting today) that the VE team is taking into account the huge amount of bug reports, suggestions, ... to work on a more reasonable planning.

As for the bugs that I consider critical, you're missing my point : in my opinion, there are too many open bugs, too many major features that are not mature or simply missing, ... to go on like that.

I'm all in favor for going back to the opt-in mechanism so that people know what they are doing when using VE. I hope that with the previous rollout you will have enough editors willing to keep using VE so that you will still get enough feedback. Speaking for me, I'm ok to keep testing VE once it has been stabilized. --NicoV 13:07, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

We're very grateful for that :). What features do you see as missing? Off the top of my head I can only think of table editing and mathematical formulae. We're taking into account the bugs - not the number itself, however. We could have only 5 bugs and deploy, and then find they were all crucial ("the visualeditor pastes an infinite loop of sentence fragments, chess pieces and bicycles), or have 500 trivial fixes or tracking bugs. It's probably more useful for us to surface those that are really big deals. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I see at least the following important missing features in addition to the ones you referred to: managing edit conflicts, being able to edit contents in extension tags (source, score, ...) even if only as text, section editing (VE team said no for the moment, but that's the best way to avoid edit conflicts, save bandwidth, ...), more namespaces (so that new users don't have to learn both ways of editing), ... but more importantly I think existing major features are far from being fully functional : templates editing is poor and complex, images editing is poor, references editing is poor (not tested by myself, just reading other opinions), ... and bugs that are making dirty diffs should be fixed, because if they often don't make major changes, it requires more human work to check modifications made by VE.

Regarding the number of bugs, I do agree that probably a lot of them are really minor, but in my experience, when you have that number of open bugs, fixing them will result in major regressions at some point, especially with major features still not really up to the expectations. That's why I think it would be best to go back to opt-in so that the VE team can more time to think on the plan, to test releases before they are going live, to have less frequent releases but with better quality. --NicoV 14:22, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) To be fair I share the same concern Toshio NicoV voiced. The visual editor is a great initiative but right now it still has some rather rough edges. Editors who have been around a while will know what the editor should do, and will know where to raise the issue if they run into a problem. New editors on the other hand don't know what the editor should do, and are less likely to report issues while being more likely to run into those (Ask yourself: If your a new customer ordering something on a webshop and notice a broken layout, do you report it or will you just skip over to the next one).

Of course some issues should be taken into perspective though. Lack of Mathjax support is unfortunate, but i don't think most new editor will start working on full fledged formulas. On the other hand there are other features that i would expect a newbie to use in a visual editor. For example, if i wanted to move a section in an article i would try to copy and paste it. However, copy and paste discards all formatting, images, reference tags and so on. The alternative, click and drag is quite buggy as well. Excirial 14:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Toshio only asked the question below . I do agree, that Mathjax is not that important, especially if all tags that VE don't understand yet can be edited as wikitext (click on a math formula to open a simple text box with the content between the <math>...</math>, same for other extension tags...). --NicoV 14:28, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Great thoughts, the both of you :). I'll factor them in. Fwiw I totally agree on template editing - there are a lot of issues around it that have implications for things like referencing, too. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

What does this "Launch to all logged-in users as the default editor" mean exactly? -- Toshio Yamaguchi 12:53, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

That's the current situation: all logged-in users have VE active. --NicoV 12:55, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Logged in users can currently choose between "Edit" and "Edit source", with the "Edit" tab being to the left and only "edit" appearing on section headings until hovering over it. Is this what is meant by VE being "the default editor"? Or does it only refer to the VE option being enabled by default without changing preferences? Will something change for logged in users next week compared to now, or is the only change that anonymous users get the same option logged in users already have? PrimeHunter (talk) 13:53, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely nothing will change; exactly, anons will get "edit" and "edit source". Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:00, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay, that's good to hear. Thanks for the clarification. -- Toshio Yamaguchi 14:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

This editor is clearly not ready for use, now. Having said that, I think the beta is really promising. A good start.--Wickey-nl (talk) 14:31, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Okeyes: How can you be following this page and say "Off the top of my head I can only think of table editing and mathematical formulae." How about?

1. Being able to indicate to a user whose edit has been blocked by the spam blacklist why his edit has been blocked. (critical for novice editors)
2. Being able to indicate to a user whose edit has been blocked by an edit filter why his edit has been blocked. (critical for novice editors)
3. Being able to display inline comments that guide novice editors about what kind of editing is acceptable. (critical for novice editors: they don't need to write them, but they need to read them)
4. Being able to deal with templates that generate table markup correctly
5. Timing out on large files
6. Presenting and editing references in a manner that editors can deal with
7. Recursive templates (don't think that's a small issue. A lot of templates are designed for use in larger templates. Good programming structure and all that)

This editor shows promise, but it isn't ready for use at this time. It needs to be pulled back, fixed, and redeployed after it is fixed. The development team certainly can stay busy for several months correcting the known bugs, and they don't need to be dealing with a live deployment while they do.—Kww(talk) 15:14, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I was unaware of the spam blacklist/edit filter bugs; have those been tested/found/reported? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:18, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

50727, 50472, picture at File:Filterviolation.PNG. On the list, but not going to be done for a while.—Kww(talk) 15:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

See #Blocked sites above. --NicoV 15:44, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I take it that we're already rolling out to some new editors: Special:Contributions/Portal707 --j⚛e decker 15:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Those that make accounts, yes.—Kww(talk) 15:42, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Gotcha. Thanks. --j⚛e decker 15:49, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Ctrl+click doesn't open a new tab

Hi,

I don't know if it's due to VE, but since it's something that might, I'm reporting it. On enwiki, Ctrl+click on Edit in this discussion (at the top of the page, or near each section) doesn't open the edit in a new tab, but in the same tab. This is usually useful to check things outside the section while answering in it. On frwiki, it's working. I'm using Chrome Version 27.0.1453.110 m (currently updating to next version). --NicoV 13:39, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I have the same problem in Firefox 22.0 but only in namespaces where VE is not enabled, for example this page. bugzilla:49993 says it's fixed. Has the supposed fix been deployed? PrimeHunter (talk) 14:04, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Confirmed as not working here but working on fr using both Firefox 22 and Konqueror 4.8.5 (which is apparently blacklisted from VE). Thryduulf (talk) 14:08, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Given the timestamp on that gerrit patch I'm going to assume we've got a regression :(. Terribly sorry about this. I've reopened the bug. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

On further experimentation, I find that the middle button does work in all namespaces in Firefox but only in VE enabled namespaces in Konqueror. Thryduulf (talk) 14:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

This is not a beta, its a prototype

With all the problems with VE Its really starting to get annoying all the talk about it being a "beta". This is not a beta. Its barely better than an alpha test. Major bugs, limited functionality, hundreds of people disabling it, etc. A lot of people including me have been saying it in various ways but I am going to be extremely direct, blunt and probably a little rude because I want to be clear. Visual editor has a lot of promise but right now its garbage and basically unusable. It needs to be turned off until the bugs can be whittled down. No one expects a perfect product but this application isn't even close to ready. The WMF keeps saying they are serious about supporting this app and how they hired more people. No one cares. We want to be able to edit and to build the project and many of us would love a working Visual editor. But this application is an absolute mess and is only making things harder to edit, not easier. If you turn this on for all the IP's you are asking for widespread problems. I know that no one really cares but I am not going to be editing much for a while largely because of VE. We have told the WMF it has problems and they do not cre what we say. So I don't feel like I should have to clean up their mess when they can prevent it by putting off the release for a month. When the WMF takes this project seriously and stops treating it like a sewer to test broken applications I'll think about returning to regular editing. Kumioko (talk) 14:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

As far as I can see nearly all of your article edits are gnomish stuff using AWB. Does the VE impact on that, or is your concern that editors will be creating lots of breakage that needs fixing? Looie496 (talk) 15:02, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Quoth the pertinent article "Software in the beta phase will generally have many more bugs in it than completed software, as well as speed/performance issues and may still cause crashes or data loss. The focus of beta testing is reducing impacts to users, often incorporating usability testing." We do care what you say, and we're factoring bugs in; I'm singularly unconvinced by arguments based on "this is making things harder to edit"; source editing is still available and will be indefinitely. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 15:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Making it the default editor when it is still this buggy is irresponsible. It has promise, and I think that it will be a better product than I ever expected, but it's not ready yet.—Kww(talk) 15:17, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Your right Looie I do a lot of Gnomish stuff but I also do a lot of other things as well and it does have an effect. Its mostly what you say that people are going to be breaking a lot of stuff. I also understand what you say Oliver and I would agree if it were one or 2 people. But almost everyone outside the WMF staff thinks this thing isn't ready, it needs more work and the WMF is being irrisponsible and inconsiderate by releasing it with this many problems. Kumioko (talk) 16:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

I tested it a little bit. It's usable

I played with it on my user's page. All right. Weird but one can find ways. I don't think I'll have more time to play with it. I would not use even an excellent VE because I am so powerful with markup. When rolled out to my chapter I won't even see it, because my Firefox 3.5.6 is blacklisted. But the main thing is that I do not belong to the target category of users. Probably I'd use it for minor grammar corrections. Seems it is OK in that department. Angry comments here come from users who are as powerful with markup as I am. No VE can match that power. I'd recommend to suspend blocks with templates at the moment. Remember that the target category do not know, do not want to know and do not have to know what a template is. Those who want templates will learn markup. People who want find means. The same with math. I will always prefer LaTeX and that should be prepared in text editor and compiled. --Holigor (talk) 15:52, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Where I wish I *could* use the VE, but can't

Quite a bit of the random stylistic cleanup I do when working on drafts at WP:AFC would be easier if could apply the Visual Editor. Due to a quirk of history, however, those drafts are stored in the Misplaced Pages Talk namespace. I wish that didn't completely exclude the possibility of using the VE, but I can't say that this wish is anything like a priority, either. --j⚛e decker 15:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

VE is currently also disabled in the Misplaced Pages namespace so it actually makes no difference that AfC drafts are placed in Misplaced Pages talk (this is because IP's can only create talk pages). A possible workaround: Move the draft to userspace, edit it there with VE, and move it back. You could also copy-paste the source instead of moving the page but then you get a lot of extra steps because there doesn't appear to be a way to copy wikisource into or out of VE. Or is there a way? PrimeHunter (talk) 16:16, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Oh, I can certainly move the thing back and forth. It's just a hassle, the AfCH scripts don't work in any other namespace. I really appreciate your reply, though, because I hadn't known why the drafts were in WT, and now I both see why that is, and why it's unlikely to change on this end. Which puts the ball a little more squarely back in VE's court--I doubt that denying new editors the ability to use VisualEditor when creating new articles is precisely what the WMF has in mind.  :) --j⚛e decker 16:23, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Call for audit and rollback

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

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

Surely TemplateData will solve the underlying problem here? It's going to take a bit of work to roll out, but it seems to be coming along nicely. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

No, Chris is absolutely right, we are needing a context specific editor. There are certain templates that need to be treated in a special way because they are so common. I have a little list

• convert
• frac

Those are simple- all we need is to display the parameters so they can be changed, when focus is lost they just display. For useability you could enter the the inline-template-editor by double clicking or ctrl-shift -click.

• fact
• cn

These two are more complex as editors are there to change the *cn to a reference- of which the *sfn template is ideal. So here on a double-click, you need to change a *cn to a *sfn and enter the inline-template-editor to add the fields which are Name|Year|pp=page-lastpage. For a sfn, on leaving, you need an alert that offers to take you to the reflist to confirm or edit if that reference is missing.

• sfn

Explained above.

• efn

Simplicity- there is only one parameter. Though an alert may be needed if the Notes {*{notelist|notes=}*} structure is not in place.

• reflist-

fiendishly complex from a programming pov but functionally simple- as the functionality we need is

• add a line in wiki code- I C&P common ones from a master list of commonly used texts in field that I keep in a subpage, or as a textfile on the desktop. An easy technique to teach when you are training at a museum or library as you can give your students the file on usbstick
• change some data- for instance an isbn number

this can be achieved in a popup wikicode editor- or even gedit, vi, geaney, wordpad as no parsing is required.

• infobox

it is totally essential to just be able to change the content of a field visually. It is desirable to add new fields but this is of lower priority nigh essential, and this wont be achieved until the issue of recursive templates is resolved. (That rates as essential on my list.)

I leave the list there for a Linus test, so if you could pass this on to your dev team and ask them to add these to the functional specification. Here is an example of a sample edit for them to try Swanley it keeps coming up on my watchlist:

• first three references contain raw urls- probably could do with a *cite template her- not mentioned above
• fix a *cn
• change item in infobox
• convert acres to hectares needed

All of that could be easily achievable.-- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

No, Convert is actually a good example of where TemplateData falls over and hits the ground. The meaning of the numbered parameters changes depending on how many of them there are and whether the entry is text or a number. For example, each of the following are valid:

• {{convert|3.21|kg|lb}}

3.21 kilograms (7.1 lb)

• {{convert|3.21|mi|3}}

3.21 miles (5.166 km)

• {{convert|60|to|170|kg|lb}}

60 to 170 kilograms (130 to 370 lb)

• {{convert|60|+/-|10|kg|lb}}

60 ± 10 kilograms (132 ± 22 lb)

• {{convert|6|ft|5|in|m}}

6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m)

In those examples, parameter 3 is variously 1) The output unit, 2) The number of significant figures, 3) The upper limit of a range, 4) The measurement uncertainty, 5) The number of inches in foot-inches measurement. Now write a TemplateData description for parameter 3 (or 2 or 4 or 5)? Convert is used on 500,000+ pages, so it is not like it can simply be redesigned at this point. That said, if someone can see the values of each parameter in the transclusion window then it would still be pretty easy to figure out which one they need to edit. I would suggest that the transclusion editor needs a way to preview the parameter contents (even if just a snippet) without having to click on each parameter. Dragons flight (talk) 17:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

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

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

Table editing

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

Suggestion in regard to _recent changes_

I think it would be useful to have a statistic available for the number of recent edits which have been done using Visual Editor vs. not on a daily basis. Further, it might be useful to query those people who are using Visual Editor specifically about their experiences ... I think that a lot of the feedback is biased by those people who are prone to feedback rather than representing the actual user base. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 16:50, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Right-clicking a misspelled word and selecting from the pop-up menu does not look like a change to VE

Using Firefox 19.0.2 on Windows Vista, editing Relativity Media. Find "subsidairies", right-click, select "subsidiaries". The word appears changed, but the "Save" button is not activated. Chris the speller  17:03, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Nice find, reported. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:57, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

JDF seems to be unable to reproduce this problem. I assume DJ was able to, though. I copied the unchanged page to my Sandbox4 subpage, and now I can't, either, whereas I could 10 out of 10 times before. Did any VE fixes go into production in the last few hours? Chris the speller  20:40, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Double click

For items that require a popup window (e.g. references, templates), it would be much more user friendly to allow one to open that popup window using a "double-click". Clicking on the item to reveal the puzzle piece (or other icon) and then having to move my cursor and click again on the icon is unnecessary effort. Dragons flight (talk) 19:58, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Markup in template parameters

Apparently VE allows one to type markup directly into transclusion parameters and it continues to treat it as markup. Personally, I kind of like this behavior, but I think it violates the paradigm that the developers were going for.

To replicate:

1. Open some page for editing.
2. Insert a transclusion for the "Cquote" template
3. Set parameter 1 to "Testing... ] {{frac|1|2|3}}"
4. Hit Save.
5. Marvel at how the wikilink and subtemplate are rendered as true wikicode.

Dragons flight (talk) 20:27, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

See #Nested templates and bugzilla:50182. VE hasn't implemented handling of nested templates so it has to allow wikicode in template parameters. PrimeHunter (talk) 20:36, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Makes me tempted to build a template called "article" that takes the wikitext of an article as its sole parameter.—Kww(talk) 20:38, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Overly agressive use of nowiki

When one is typing in the visual editor, if you include text that would be wikimarkup, e.g. ], then VE wraps the entire section in <nowiki> tags. Unfortunately "section" ends up translating as everything from the previous bit of markup (or newline) until the following bit of markup (or newline). Given the way text is written this can mean an entire paragraphs is nowiki-ed, rather than just the portion containing the offending text. To add to the problem, anything in nowiki tags is presently uneditable by VE, so one can write a long block in VE, save it, and then find you can't edit if via VE any more.

If nowiki tags are going to be used, they should be more narrowly targeted to the offending element rather than also wrapping large swaths of plain text on either side. For simple elements like {}, I would suggest you might even do better to default to HTML entities rather than using nowiki. Dragons flight (talk) 20:42, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

See bugzilla:49820, bugzilla:49686, bugzilla:50527 and others, Thryduulf (talk) 21:51, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

None of those links appear to be addressing the point I'm actually making. When one types something that triggers nowiki tags, the nowiki tags are very aggressive. For example, entering:

I am the very model of a modern ], I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical

The result is:

<nowiki>I am the very model of a modern ], I've information vegetable, animal, and mineral, I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical</nowiki>

Where nowiki tags grab the entire sentence rather than just the offending element. This has the secondary side effect that the entire sentence can no longer be edited in VE, since it won't handle nowiki elements. If we are going to keep escaping wikitext (and I presume we are), then the escaping should be more focused on the offending elements rather grabbing large amounts of plain text as well. Dragons flight (talk) 22:20, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

According to Subbu, the current logic is designed to minimize the number of nowikis added (e.g. if there are multiple links), but it may be feasible to make the escaping a bit smarter especially when there's just one element that needs escaping.--Eloquence* 22:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

CTRL-K for adding a link

Using CTRL K is a big mistake when it comes to key bindings, when adding a link the editor will likely be using the mouse with one hand and the keyboard with the other and CTRL K is a bit of a stretch for many including myself, I suggest adding a link should be bond to something closer to the left CTRL button.

Certain templates are totally invisible on VE, and editors should be able to detect them

Has there been any discussion of certain templates being totally invisible on VE when there are advantages in having editors be able to see them? Some templates, such as "Use British English" and "Use dmy dates", besides adding hidden categories, serve notice to editors that a specific style is appropriate for that page. This helps keep a professional look, and perhaps prevents some international incidents between editors on opposite sides of the pond. Chris the speller  21:18, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Parser functions

I don't see it noted anywhere in the archives, but VE does not handle parser functions correctly.

Parser function syntax is generally {{#function_name : expr1 | expr2 | expr3 | ... }}

Currently VE sees this as a template with name "#function_name : expr1" and arguments "1 = expr2", "2 = expr3", etc. This makes it impossible to edit expr1 in VE. Dragons flight (talk) 21:43, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Heh. I think parser functions could reasonably be termed out of scope for the VE ... but it should recognise it and balk - David Gerard (talk) 22:11, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, a solution that amounts to disabling visual editing of parser functions isn't optimal, but it is probably better than getting it wrong. Dragons flight (talk) 22:25, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Also, Magic Words

Essentially the same issue occurs with all the magic words. Not so important for things like {{PAGENAME}}, but the ones that take parameters like {{urlencode: XYZ & 123 }} and {{formatnum:987654321.654321}} won't be handled correctly. Dragons flight (talk) 22:47, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

link insertion does not work.

Attempts to edit/add a hyperlink (internal Misplaced Pages link) results in an undefined target resulting in a 404 error. See the related page, "...Wit (white) beer..." that should link to http://en.wikipedia.org/Witbier#Witbier -- but there is no way to correct/specify the target URL, either as internal or external.

Webistrator (talk) 23:29, 5 July 2013 (UTC)

Amended VisualEditor deployment schedule

For your information, we are amending the deployment schedule of the VisualEditor and pushing the rollout to IP editors by a week. This will give us more time to squash bugs especially in the areas of dirty diffs, as well as the notorious Template:Bugzilla.

Following the deployment to the English Misplaced Pages last Monday, many more users have taken the time to test VisualEditor and provide feedback. You and others have reported many bugs and issues previously unnoticed, and we're very grateful for our community to have provided so much detailed feedback. We also appreciate that the launch of this beta has been disruptive. Extensive testing notwithstanding, the process of cleanly generating wikitext from a rich-text interface is very complex and somewhat fragile, which is what causes VisualEditor to sometimes insert "dirty diffs". Caching and infrastructure issues can make issues arise in a production context that weren't previously seen. We're thankful for your patience, understanding and support.

We appreciate continued reports in Bugzilla as well as on this feedback page. As we work to squash bugs, we are prioritizing bugs that impact content and stability. We are also looking for ways to educate users that they're in the VisualEditor, and don't need to use wikitext - and in fact, will create problems if they do. (See Template:Bugzilla.)

We are planning to deploy the VisualEditor beta to anonymous users on English Misplaced Pages on 15 July. We will follow, with a multi-language test rollout to a selected language set on 22 July, with a target date for full deployment to all Wikipedias on 29 July. Of course, the farther we get down that schedule, the more likely it is that things may change, so it is possible that the full deployment will need to be pushed into August. Because of Wikimania and staff availability, that would mean we'd be looking at full deployment somewhere around 19 August.

We hope that you'll continue to test VisualEditor as we improve it, and provide us with more feedback. Our goal is for VisualEditor to not only become as bug-free as possible but to eventually become the best collaborative authoring tool on the planet. The only way we can get there is through continued iteration and continued feedback along the way.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 00:20, 6 July 2013 (UTC)

• VisualEditor