Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2017 1

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:VisualEditor. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current main page.

Infoboxes

Visual editor continues to screw up infobox layouts. This is what an anonymous editor was trying to do. This is what Visual Editor did. Typically, at least as far as {{Infobox television}} is concerned, the errors that I've seen have involved selectively moving some image related fields away from the main group of image fields to the end of the infobox. I normally just fix these edits and move on, but the example that I've provided did that too, but moved a number of other fields randomly. --AussieLegend (✉) 14:09, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Known. See Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2016_2#Visual_editor_is_rearranging_infobox_parameters. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 05:30, 2 January 2017 (UTC)

Can't edit collapsed tables

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Edit the citation in a table caption
Steps to Reproduce:	Start VE and click on a collapsed table
Results:	The table properties dialog appears, but the table contents aren't accessible
Expectations:	I was expecting some means of expanding the table contents so they could be edited
Page where the issue occurs	See Analog Science Fiction and Fact#Overseas editions for an example
Web browser	Chrome 55.0.2883.87 m
Operating system	Windows 7
Skin	Vector
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution	Editing in wikitext seems the only option.

Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:46, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Refnames

As discussed last year, VE's method of automatically generating refnames :0 :1 :2 :3 :4 :5 :6 is problematic. I'd go so far as to call it a sin against metadata, in fact; if you want, I can go on at great length about the problems it causes.

Something that generates meaningful names might be unfeasible, but would it at least be possible to include a note warning users that such reference names are non-optimal? Lots of people ignore warnings, but some people heed them. DS (talk) 00:05, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

I'd like to second DS's point. I first encountered these numbered refs in an article being edited by students, and couldn't figure out why they would choose those ref names. They're not at all memorable. Was the Smith 2017 source "ref name=:17" or "refname=:18"? Could the names be chosen instead from the author's or website's name or the title of the book/journal? SarahSV ^(talk) 21:09, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

A probably relevant point in one of the Phab tickets is that since VE is used across multiple Wikipedias the leading character needs to be something that's legal (numbers are not) and on the keyboard of almost all MediaWiki editors (Latin alphabet characters are not). Does an instance of a language wikipedia know what its alphabetic characters are? If so, perhaps VE could draw from that set of characters for each language, filtering information from the citation (e.g. author name) against the legal character list for that wiki. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:14, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Mike is correct about the limitations. My favorite solution for this is to pull a semi-random string out of the citation (especially to pull the author's name out of a citation template, if common/well-documented templates are being used).

Dragonfly, there isn't any way (now; there used to be, and there may be in the future) for users of VisualEditor's visual mode to see or change the ref names. If you're re-using a ref, then you search for it in the list according to actual content rather than ref name. (But I may someday take you up on the offer to go on about the subject at great length.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:22, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

Page render glitch

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	edit the page
Steps to Reproduce:	Click edit on Solar water heating#Worldwide use
Results:	clear did not clear. subsection appeared adjacent to table rather than below
Expectations:	that VE would match normal page layout
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Chrome 55.0.2883.87 m
Operating system	W10
Skin	Monobook
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Lfstevens (talk) 04:37, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

Odd. The template generates some HTML. When I use the HTML directly, it works fine.[1] But not when I use the template. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:30, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

table bug

I did an edit to add a row into the table in List of Ministers of Public Works (Queensland). As you will see in the (diff), it broke the table syntax (two rows are merged into one very long row). In case it is relevant, the citation in the last column of the new row was copied and pasted from one of the later rows (at this stage, all the rows in the table have the same source). I have made a number of similar edits to this article (adding rows and copying the citation) without problems, so I am not sure what happened on this occasion. The workaround was to add a newline in the appropriate spot using the source editor; the workaround in the VE was far too much work to even contemplate (I presume I would have had to fix it by deleting each of the extended columns individually). Kerry (talk) 05:05, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

Another another one - same problem diff Kerry (talk) 06:03, 1 January 2017 (UTC)

You deserve a bug number; I'll make a note to file one next week unless someone else gets to it first. I'm guessing that this is User:SSastry (WMF)'s team. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:24, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

User:Whatamidoing (WMF), Thanks for the ping. A bug report would be helpful! SSastry (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

This is now https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T155978. Thanks, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:47, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

Section link in edit summary is wrong

When we have a section with a header like == {{anchor|Z}} Example ==, and I use the Visual Editor to edit its source (a.k.a. use "Visual Editor's wikitext mode"), then the auto-generated edit summary is /* {{anchor|Z}} Example */, which is wrong -- the link doesn't go to the section. The traditional source editor, as well as the normal (i.e. non-wikitext-mode) Visual Editor generates the correct edit summary: /* Example */.

To try this out, try to edit this section in Wikipedia.

--Distelfinck (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2017 (UTC)

Yea, found how to do it. For reference, the section with the anchor is this Computing#Sub-disciplines of computing. Using VE (even switching) causes the section edit automatic summary to be /* AnchorSub-disciplines of computing */ rather than /* {{Anchor|DISCIPLINES}}Sub-disciplines of computing */ . Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:10, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Repeated dropdowns for inserting common edit summaries, and sometimes the button to mark it as a minor edit disappears

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I was making an edit and I checked my changes (to make sure there weren't any bugs with VE) and I noticed the buttons to mark the edit as "Minor" disappeared, and also I noticed that it automatically put the page on my watchlist.
Steps to Reproduce:	# . Make an edit with VE Click "Save changes" Click "Review your changes" Click "Return to save form" Repeat steps 3 and 4.
Results:	The dropdown menus for common edit summaries repeats.
Expectations:	Display only two dropdowns and the minor edit and add to watchlist button.
Page where the issue occurs	Add URL(s) or diffs
Web browser	Google Chrome 55.0.2883.95 64-bit
Operating system	macOS Sierra
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Screenshot:
Workaround or suggested solution

∼∼∼∼ Eric0928^Talk 00:45, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Can't reproduce this; things seem normal for me on the page mentioned as well as random ones. Is it still happening and more so, every single time? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:53, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

Seems like a problem caused by MediaWiki:Gadget-defaultsummaries.js and it's ve.saveDialog.stateChanged hook. It has happened several times before, and it seems that a change in VE has caused it to reoccur. User:ESanders (WMF) will probably know what changed. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:20, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I had no idea there were gadgets which worked in conjunction with VE, given it being unconventional and having fluctuating development, are there any more that you know of? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 13:26, 5 January 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe our work as either "unconventional" or "fluctuating" :) We also have some documentation on writing gadgets. Most of the editing gadgets implement functionality that is now standard in VE which is why they are uncommon. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

VE gadgets...very interesting indeed. Hehe...that came from someone who has just made a few scripts and seen a little of the mediawiki api for fetching information; so to me interacting with VE felt unimaginable. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 19:52, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

Looks like that's always been wired up to the save dialog changing panel, so was always slightly broken, but an upstream change has made it more likely you'll see duplicated checkboxes. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

copying material between articles is doing strange things to photos

I have a large list in List of sites on the Queensland Heritage Register in Toowoomba. I needed a subset of that list in Toowoomba City, Queensland, so I opened both in VE and copy-and-pasted the large list over into the Toowoomba City article and then went through deleting the entries I didn't need and then SAVEd. This is the diff. The list included some photos embedded at appropriate places in the list. In the original article, they appeared as

[[File:Carlton House.jpg|thumb|[[Carlton House, Toowoomba|Carlton House]], 2014]]

but in the Toowoomba City article they appeared

* [[File:Carlton_House.jpg|link=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carlton_House.jpg|thumb|[[Carlton House, Toowoomba|Carlton House]], 2014]]

So there are three things here I would not have expected:

The replacement of spaces in the file name with underscores (probably harmless)
The introduction of the link=
The asterisk preceding the File (in the VE these appeared as vertical white space at the points where the photos were embedded within the list and not as empty list items)

I recollect seeing the first two problems some months ago but have not noticed it happening recently.

In my next edit (using VE still) seeing the "empty list items", I then tried to remove the empty list items, but doing so seemed to remove the photos. So I tried to relocate the photos outside of the list by dragging them to the start of section rather than have them embedded within the list. This is the diff where it appears that the 3rd photo is now embedded in the caption of the 2nd photo.

How did that happen? I understand how that might happen in the source editor, but how is it possible in the VE?

Kerry (talk) 20:13, 9 January 2017 (UTC)

delete starting of user name

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.87 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Journal_of_Nanomaterials_Science?action=edit

How to delete "User:" from my created page

Journal of Nanomaterials Science (talk) 09:30, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

@Journal of Nanomaterials Science: please see: the information about renaming pages. BTW: Your username represents a company or group, which makes it fail our Wikipedia:Username policy. You will likely be asked to change your account name to represent an individual. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 17:40, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

Visual editor table editing conflicts with IME

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T155928

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Editing content in table's cells
Steps to Reproduce:	(placeholder) Find a table. And single click a cell to edit. If you start to input without IME, it will start to replace the content in that cell as normal However, if you have IME activated (I tested Sogou IME in Chinese, Baidu IME in Japanese, same result), the first character disappears. 100% reproduceable.
Results:	the first character disappears.
Expectations:
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Chrome 56
Operating system	Win 7
Skin	Vector
Notes:	A gif to show the bug
Workaround or suggested solution

fireattack (talk) 11:40, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Cannot edit wikitables

Is the visual editor not working properly or being upgraded at the moment? I have tried using it in Firefox and Chrome on both Mac and Win and if I go into visual editor on my sandbox and try to edit a wikitable, when I hove the mouse over the table, a pop up comes up, saying "Sorry, this element can only be edited in source mode for now". It has been like this for at least the last 10 hours, this is the first time I've experienced the problem. Beatpoet (talk) 21:39, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

There was a stray html tag which I removed and now the table works for me. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 00:43, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

How to previsualize on NWE?

When I hit alt+shift+p the page becomes whitish and doesn't show the previsualization, and I didn't find any way to show a rendering of my edited text other than switching to VE, which is not convenient.--Micru (talk) 09:44, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

You need to click the "Save changes" button, and then the "Show preview" button at the bottom of that box. There have been some requests to make that button easier to reach, but no decision has been made about it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:26, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

That is quite hidden. I really hope that it is changed, because the current system is not obvious at all.--Micru (talk) 07:42, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

VE not enabled

My recent 1Lib1Ref sessions have shown me that there are people out there wanting to use the Visual Editor but "can't find it" (either for the first time or were using the VE and then "lost it"). In every case, I found these people all have Preferences > Editing > Editing mode set to "Remember my last editor". None of them seem to have set it manually. In all cases, "Temporarily disable the visual editor while it is in beta" was unchecked. (Aside, is the VE still in beta?). It would appear that by default, edits have the VE not disabled (which one would imagine meant it was enabled) but still can't access it because their last edit was a source edit. Now in some cases these users created their accounts before the VE was available, so of course their last edit was in the source editor. But others are new editors who using the VE and "lost it". Something is wrong here. How is "last edit" determined? Is it based only on the editor used for article pages or are talk pages (and other non-VE pages) being considered? And is "last edit" determined by what editor was launched or what editor was in use at Save?

I think if "Temporarily disable" is unchecked, editing mode should not default to "last edit", as it seems to an existing source user into the source editor forever more. I think "both editors" should be the default.

It also seems to me that even if "last editor" is explicitly set by the user, the semantics of "last edit" should exclude any source-only page and even then it should be the last edit at Save rather than at launch in case some tool launches the source editor rather than the user launch it and the user quits out without saving. Kerry (talk) 00:54, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

First, thanks for doing that #1Lib1Ref outreach work.

When the 'single edit tab' was introduced at the English Wikipedia last year, a small group of editors insisted that all new editors start with the wikitext editor. At the first edit, new accounts should see a pop-up dialog that offers them the ability to choose their favorite (at all wikis/regardless of the default).

"Last edit" is supposed to be based on namespaces where both modes are available. (However, I haven't checked to be certain that this is still the case since before the wikitext Beta Feature was released.) It is based on 'last seen' rather than 'last saved in'. Given the situation, I think that you may want to direct the librarians to another setting in the preferences, such as defaulting to their preferred environment (whichever that is) or showing two tabs. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:47, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Jumping zombie cursor in table cells and elseswhere

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156228

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	~~2017 Women's March. US table. Trying to type in cells in attendance column.~~ Seems to be true in any table in VisualEditor. On 2 different computers. With any shift-key character. Actually happens outside tables too. It doesn't happen all the time. Happens when I hit the shift key (whether I hold it down along with a character or not).
Steps to Reproduce:	When trying to type in "100s (hundreds)" for example. It is reproducible. It seems to happen when I try to type in the parentheses. In particular, the first one (. It jumps to the front of "100s". When I leave it there, and move the cursor after "100s", then I am able to type in the rest. It does not matter what shift-key character I use. First use in a cell jumps to front of cell. Happens outside tables too.
Results:	Cursor jumps to front of current text or numbers in cell, or in front of line of text outside tables.
Expectations:	Cursor to not move around unless I move it.
Page where the issue occurs	~~2017 Women's March. US table.~~ Any table using VE.
Web browser	Firefox 50.1.0
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin	Vector
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution	Instead of typing it in, I now paste it in. I have to edit in Notepad. Slows things down greatly. Minor changes are at risk of the jumping cursor.

--Timeshifter (talk) 16:42, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

This sounds unbelievably annoying. I can't reproduce it (Firefox 50.1.0/macOS Sierra). So the first question is: Is it still happening for you? For example, could you go to https://www.mediawiki.org/ (where they have a slightly newer version of MediaWiki and VisualEditor software as of ~12 hours ago) and see if it's a problem there?

~~Also, I see that there's an update available in Firefox. Do you think that an update might solve it?~~ Never mind; Kailash is reporting that the problem exists in multiple browsers, so that won't help. Do you happen to have the Beta Feature (wikitext mode) enabled? I'm curious whether it happens there, too. If it does, then it might be related to this "finger-slipping" kind of problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 08:06, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I have the latest standard version of Firefox. I do not have any Beta features enabled. The problem is not occurring at https://www.mediawiki.org on the tables at mw:Help:Sorting. So I guess the problem is solved. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:28, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

The Shift-key problem

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156228

Why is it that when I press/hold the Shift key while typing in VE, the caret (the blinking I beam) goes back to the beginning of the sentence? Kailash29792 (talk) 05:04, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

@Kailash29792: That is the problem I am having with adding ( in a table cell. See section above:

#Jumping zombie cursor in table cells and elseswhere

--Timeshifter (talk) 05:24, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I have heard reports of similar weird behaviour with the Shift key from another user only with the source editor. That user believed they resolved their problem by setting all their preferences back to "vanilla" but it wasn't done systematically so I can't say what specific preferences may have caused their problem. And I believe they also did do all the usual things that you do when "weird stuff" happens: make sure all OS and browser updates have been installed, clear your browser cache/cookies, reboot your computer, etc so it may have had nothing to do with their preferences. I would suggest doing all the "usual things" first and if that doesn't work, try removing some of your preferences and gadgets. I don't think this is a VE problem itself but it may be a problem where the VE is interacting badly with a preference or gadget. Kerry (talk) 09:03, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

The "Shift key" problem has nothing to do with which PC I use. And the source editor never shows this problem. Only VE does, regardless of which browser I use, be it Firefox, Chrome, or Edge. Kailash29792 (talk) 10:23, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I just tested it on another PC, and on other tables. Same thing is happening with any shift-key character. Tables in Help:Sorting for example. It only happens on the first use of a shift-key character in a cell. --Timeshifter (talk) 16:44, 24 January 2017 (UTC)

I couldn't reproduce this (Chrome, Mac OS) or can't understand the problem. Go to a table column and try any shift-key character? works for me. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 00:38, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I'm thinking that this may be a Windows-only problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:49, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): The problem is not occurring for me at https://www.mediawiki.org on the tables at mw:Help:Sorting and, as you said, that site has a newer version of Mediawiki software. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:54, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Definitely not a Windows issue, I'm on Ubuntu and I'm getting the same problem on Firefox and Chromium in the source editor: the shift key brings me to the beginning of the line, making editing almost impossible... I've been having this issue for quite a while and I'm so surprised that very few people appear to experience it (based on the absence of relevant results when searching the issue on the Internet). Natematic (talk) 16:11, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

allow citations to be reused in image captions

Hi, I just noticed that it's not possible to reuse a citation in an image caption. This would be a nice feature to have (for captions that contain information not depicted in their image). Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 18:56, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

@Rachel Helps (BYU): A basic workaround for now is just copy-pasting the said citation, if you aren't already aware of this. Copying a citation in VE works to some extent; edit the image and paste it in the caption field. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 01:37, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

Just remember to copy it from "edit" mode, and not while reading the article (e.g., in another tab). If you copy the ^[1] while reading a page, you'll get the blue clicky number itself, rather than the ref's contents. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:28, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

I didn't know that, thanks! Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 16:50, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

Bug report: move/above below deletes rows instead of moving them

So after reading Help:Sorting#Putting a table in initial alphabetical order I tried to sort the rows of the List of photo and video apps table alphabetically by following the tutorial and clicking the first column's cell, then its arrow on the left and then choosing "move above" (or below). However instead of moving the rows it simply deleted them.

Also would it be possible to implement an auto-sort feature so that one only has to click a button and the whole table(/s) of the current section get sorted alphabetically by their first column's cell-display-values? That would be pretty useful especially for longer tables...

Sidenote @Timeshifter: that section of the Help:Sorting page describes how to rearrange rows (per above that's not working) using VisualEditor and then suddenly switches to talk about columns instead of rows. It says "Either method can be time-consuming for long tables. For long tables there is a quicker way." -> why is it about columns, not rows, afterwards and how is the method described therafter the "quicker" way? Isn't it the same way that was described before just for columns?

--Fixuture (talk) 20:48, 18 January 2017 (UTC)

I rewrote the section in Help:Sorting to clarify it. I also noted the wikitext editing method for when VisualEditor bugginess arises at times. VisualEditor is working correctly on the tables I tried it on within the Help:Sorting page. But as you described, it is deleting rows in the List of photo and video apps table. I don't know why. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:49, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

I haven't figured this out completely yet, but it has something to do with that table's structure. If I add another column there is no problem. Must be the cell count or something like that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:20, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

I copied the table from List of photo and video apps to my user page on mediawiki.org and the problem is still occurring with the newer version of the Mediawiki software there. Rows are deleted when one tries to move them. Columns move fine. The problem only occurs on that table. Not on tables at mw:Help:Sorting.

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Timeshifter

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Sorting

I am using the latest standard version of Firefox (50.1.0) on Windows 10 in the Vector skin.

Same exact things occur in Internet Explorer browser. On both Wikipedia and Mediawiki.org

--Timeshifter (talk) 10:09, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

@TheDJ: & @Timeshifter: it's the {{No}} template in the last column that's causing this. It might have a problem parsing the end of rows when there's a }} - but that's just a guess. --Fixuture (talk) 20:35, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

@Fixuture: and @TheDJ: In edit mode in VisualEditor I deleted the "No" column, and then tried moving the rows. It worked! The rows moved, and were not deleted. I didn't save the page. I just experimented in edit mode. --Timeshifter (talk) 21:06, 26 January 2017 (UTC)

On Admin Nominations to put your vote or question in, it doesn't have the visual editor icon available.

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Place my vote on a new nominee for admin.
Steps to Reproduce:	I attempted several times, with no luck at getting anything at all.
Results:	It wouldn't go to the visual editor, it just stayed in the sourcing coding.
Expectations:	I like the visual editor as I am new and I don't know all the Wiki coding methods yet.
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Dodger67_2&action=edit&section=4
Web browser	Google Chrome Version 55.0.2883.87 m
Operating system	Windows 8.1
Skin	No clue??
Notes:	https://gyazo.com/ae6de90dae3bc3f8e336a4002e461feb
Workaround or suggested solution	None yet

ExpertListener95 (talk) 19:45, 23 January 2017 (UTC)

@ExpertListener95: VE isn't enabled for talk pages. For using them, I'm afraid, you'll have to learn basic wikmarkup. See WP:TPYES and WP:INTERSPERSE which explains the basic. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 00:48, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

If you really don't want to learn the old system, then you might consider enabling the new Beta Feature at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. You'll still see wikitext markup code, but the toolbar will be the same. For example, you could still Insert > Template with the same dialog box, and it will add all the wikitext code for you.

OTOH, this is definitely beta testing, so if you don't want to encounter the occasional bug, then wait until the devs have done some more work on it. Whether you want to try it is purely a matter of personal preference. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:40, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Thank you Whatamidoing (WMF) I really appreciate that! I went ahead and enabled it and so far, I love it! It's so much simpler and easier to use for me. --ExpertListener95 (talk) 01:27, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

@ActiveListener95: editors who vote on RfA (or any other back office or maintenance areas) are expected to have a knowledge of what our administrator system entails and it electoral process. It is unlikely that new users with only 6 or so edits will have that experience. The en.Wiki is now the only major Wikipedia not to have introduced a minimum requirement for experience to vote and/or comment at RfA. The level of experience required would normally presuppose that participants are perfectly at ease with traditional Wiki markup at least in its simplest form. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:36, 30 January 2017 (UTC) Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 23:40, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Possible bug inserting pmc= into citations

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T157152

Please see this possible bug report. Thanks. – Jonesey95 (talk) 06:32, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

More convenient way to switch refs to use cite

Right now this involves a lot of switching around or a change to source mode. How about a way to see the current random ref text and in the same dialog show the cite properties. Then you could drag and drop the invidiual pieces of the old ref into the right slots. You could include a dropdown to pick which type of cite was relevant and switch the displayed fields accordingly. Cheers! Lfstevens (talk) 01:59, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking for? What do you mean by "switch refs". Do you mean trying to copy the ref in its raw form? Then I think that would be useful. Could you explain? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 04:25, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for following up. Many refs are of the form <ref>Smith, John. ''Eye candy'' http://abc.com/def....</ref></nowkik> The Convert button can only handle a few specific cases. Otherwise you have to be very good with cut and paste or go to source mode. I would like a simpler way to convert such refs into: <nowiki><ref>{{cite web|last=Smith|first=John|title=Eye candy |url=http://abc.com/def |accessdate=...}}</ref>

If you e.g., had a mode that displays the existing ref in a textbox at the top of the cite dialog and let me cut/drag chunks of text into the appropriate field that would be great. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lfstevens (talk • contribs) 19:58, 1 February 2017 (UTC)

Oh, now I get it. Converting refs into their respective cite templates. Okay, now pardon me for being slow again, what convert button are you referring to? I just tried and there doesn't seem to be any way to convert a given ref, especially in this raw form, you can edit them but nothing more. Regarding the main issue, let's see what the devs have to say. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:04, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

If the content of a ref is a simple url, a convert button appears and it attempts to fill out a cite template. There may be other cases it can handle. Lfstevens (talk) 13:34, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

If you can get this idea to pass an RFC at WT:CITE, then I'll propose it to the devs. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

cannot safe edits, error code HTTP 404

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12) AppleWebKit/602.1.50 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.0 Safari/602.1.50

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Old_Dutch&action=edit

Watisfictie (talk) 10:22, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Just made a null edit there successfully. Is it still happening? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:52, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

I see that you have been editing on the mobile site. Was it working on a mobile device but giving you errors on your laptop? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Right Shift Key

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156228

I can't use it on many pages without the cursor moving to the top left of what I'm writing. Chrome, Windows 10. Please ping me if you know how to fix this. _{Adotchar| reply here} 10:27, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. I thought we'd just gotten that annoying bug fixed. Is it still happening today? User:Timeshifter, are you seeing this, too? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:18, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): Still happening to me in Firefox on English Wikipedia, though not on Mediawiki.org (it is using a more recent version of the Mediawiki software). Use of shift key moves cursor to front of line or cell. Depending on whether I am typing in a table or outside a table. It does not happen all the time. --Timeshifter (talk) 06:59, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Cite > Manual > Web template

I did Visual Edit training at the State Library of Queensland 3 weeks ago to kick off the meta:Wikipedia Library/1Lib1Ref campaign. The library has now added over 1,000 citations through the campaign, so an excellent result there for 1Lib1Ref, for the library, and .... for the VE as almost all the edits would have been done with the VE. As part of this process, I was involved in mentoring sessions at the library and I noticed some common misunderstanding with the use of Cite.

In Cite > Web, the user can see URL, Title, Last Name and First Name with other fields out of sight below. While these users knew that a URL means the "web address", it is not indicated that the http (or other prefix) is required so it was not uncommon to omit that. I think "i" in the circle for more information should mention the need for the http prefix as this is clearly a common misunderstanding. Also I don't think someone who doesn't understand what a URL is is likely to be helped by repeating the word URL in the info, maybe "URL (web address)" might be helpful either in the main form or at least in the info.

Then comes the Title field. People are tempted to put the name of the website into these field rather than the title of the web page. Although there is a field lower down (but out of sight) for the Website, they haven't seen it yet. I think the word "title" is used here because that is the field name in the cite-web template, but this is not obvious to a user who knows nothing of the cite-web template. When they do reach the Website and Publisher section, it is not clear to them what to do and URLs are often pasted into the Website field again. Given that most web pages don't have an author for the first/last name fields, I would be inclined to move the Website (and posssibly also Publisher) into the earlier fields where it is initially visible and rename Title as "Name of Web page", Website as "Name of Web site" (again, the info popup info is not entirely helpful). I think if the first 3 visible fields were URL (Web Address), Name of Web page, Name of Web site, (perhaps with Publisher as a 4th) with the info popups stressing the difference between "page" and "site", the information going into these fields might be more what we intend.

Another thing I spotted in the librarian's use of VE (and have found in my own use of the VE) is that it maddening to create Cite > Manual > Web and then realise it was a news website and should have been Cite > Manual > News or that it was a digitised book or journal and you would rather have used Cite > Web > Book/Journal. For the VE user there is NO way to fix this without deleting the work you did and starting all over again. Whereas the source editor user simply replaces the word "web" to "news" and quickly moves on. It would be nice if the pop-up for the Cite > Manual > Whatever allowed the "cite web" that appears as a title to be a drop-down that could be changed if you changed your mind retaining the values already entered in the fields. (I personally experience this problem more generally with templates when I need to convert an existing template into a related template for some reasons, most common example is to switch commons-category-inline to commons-category once other external links are present; having an easy way to change the template type to a related one without redoing all the parameters would be a great help).

The other misunderstanding related to the use of Trove's pre-formatted citations. Being librarians, they live and breathe Trove. The correct way to add them in the VE is Cite > Manual > Basic form and then just paste them in, but unfortunately the librarians would see Cite > Automatic (and in their minds these were "automatic" citations) so they tried to paste in that field. Now the interesting thing is that sometimes this actually works (e.g. I think the code is detecting the ISBN for a book in these pre-formatted citation and produces something reasonable from that albeit not what was pasted in), but it does not work in general with the Trove pre-formatted citations. I was wondering if this field should support the parsing of wikitext as Cite > Manual Basic does as clearly to quite a number of these users, these are "automatic" citations rather than "basic" citations. Now obviously when I am in the room and can point them in the right direction, all is well, but for the user at home without this help, they will just be confused when Cite > Automatic seems to work some of the time with Trove citations but not all of the time.

Anyhow that's the feedback I have from watching a number of clearly desirable contributors (librarians) use the VE. They do love the VE (some had prior exposure to the source editor and mostly found it too hard), so my comments above should be interpreted in the context. They loved the VE but they still did have some problems using it, which a little bit of tweaking might resolve. Kerry (talk) 02:13, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Comment: Although @Kerry comments are long some of them have very good merit. I am NOT a WMF employee but I have written the following more concise list of his suggestions and my actions:

Clarify that "URL" requires a "http://..." My notes: This is not directly within the purview of this project. This is TemplateData fix of Cite web, Cite news, Cite journal, and Cite book Done for those four templates
Clarify what is meant by "Title" in Cite web. My notes: again TemplateData Done Kept "Title" but added clear description
Clarify Website or Publisher params in Cite web. Done I will spare you the details. Edits here
Great suggestion Create a functionality for switching a citation from/to one of the four citation templates provided. Even I wish this was possible. For automatically generated citations, sometimes the citation template chosen is not the best.
Add the ability to accept Trove's pre-formatted citations (or other pre-formatted) in some form. My notes: maybe by use of the Citation template. For example VE already uses the Citation template when it detects a YouTube.com URL fed into the Automatic generator. I have no experience with pre-formatted citations, but to me this seems unnecessary. The user over time learns to switch to "Manual" to achieve this goal.

Just trying to help. I hope I was helpful. Even for an experienced user like me VE is extremely helpful. I say thank you to everyone at WMF — አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 13:07, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Citations of essays in books

I have in front of me a book, of a sort that I have seen academics wishing to reference during their first experiments with Wikipedia.

ISBN 0 7100 6979 0. On here, using the /template/Cite book/, the ISBN auto fills to <ref>{{cite book|last1=Jenkins|first1=ed. by J. Geraint|title=The wool textile industry in Great Britain|date=1972|publisher=Routledge & Kegan|location=London [u.a.]|isbn=0710069790|edition=1. publ}}</ref>'' Providing you manually strip the space characters first.

autofill is not working on VE today.
the reference is wrong. The Essay I am using is by RTD Richards on page 80, and the title is The development of the modern woollen carding machine.(yes I do know how to change it - but new editors don't.
if ve is as clever as it should be, and if ISBN autofill is working again, there can be no technical reason why the book cite window, cannot autochange its format on detecting a compilation. The obscure hat message 'There might be some additional information about the "Cite book" template on its page.' could be changed to 'If this material is an contained as an essay, click on the compilation button, see "Cite book" for more information.' The current method of reading through 82 extra fields after the second click is not user friendly, or a user orientated solution.

The aim of VE is to be task orientated- to work for the newuser- not an all-inclusive-when-you-have-stumbled-on-the-technique solution.

So to continue with a second problem. When you have made a lot of site visits to obscure badly referenced places, you learn to appreciate that you can legitimately use the on-site interpretation boards as references. We have a excellent template {{cite sign}}, and if doing a back-stage pass with edit-a-thon at a GLAM these are incredibly useful. VE doesn't link to {{cite sign}} but again it could. The level 2 -Add a citation widget- has 6 spaces in the grid but only 5 are used. The 6th space could be Link to other cites, and this could drop to a further level three widget where they are all listed, extra user cite forms could be designed (including one for sign), or it could crash out to a bit of wikieditor code. At this stage feedback from trainers could be useful to explain exactly what our more real-life experienced newbies expect to see.

--ClemRutter (talk) 19:25, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

Once again, the issue of the inability to edit footnotes within templates (in VE) rears its ugly head.

There is now a user script - User:Cumbril/References Consolidator, mentioned in the Technology Report of the most recent Signpost, that "converts all references in an article to list-defined format". Or, if you will, the script moves the body of all footnotes into the {{Reflist}} template, where the footnotes are no longer editable by VE.

I hope that either (a) the new user script doesn't get adopted and used by many editors, or (b) VE programmers can figure out how to make footnotes within templates editable within VE. Because if neither happens, the usefulness of VE is going to substantially decrease. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:31, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion: Adding an Uncomment and Comment-out features in VE

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T160103

As you are no doubt aware Commenting out is a very helpful technique in Wikipedia edit, web design, or computer programming in general. My two suggestions are to improve VE in this regard. The first is perhaps easier to implement than the second:

Add an Uncomment button: this would be right next to the "Remove" button that currently exists when editing comments. "Remove" currently deletes the comment. The existence of this "Remove" is stupid and inconsistent with rest of VE (see Template, Cite, Media etc.) because the user can simply hit the backspace button on their keyboard. What I would like is a way that would just remove . Or perhaps change the stupid "Remove" to accomplish this instead.
Add a Comment out functionality: right now in VE if a user highlights any thing and hits Insert > Comment, the portion highlighted is deleted and a new blank comment is created. It works in "source editing" but not in "visual editing". — አቤል ዳዊት^?(Janweh64) (talk) 13:41, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

I support this as well. A good idea, new users especially need to know commenting out is better than just removing. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:50, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Trying to Properly Cite a Reference

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_3) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/55.0.2883.95 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Salute_Your_Shorts&action=edit

Hello,

Under production, I'm attempting to properly cite the following link I can't get it under the References section either. I apologize for any errors but I figured this would be an important foot note for this entry.

KingSTVO (talk) 06:41, 7 February 2017 (UTC)'

@KingSTVO: It's very easy to cite a web link in VE. In edit mode, go to cite and choose "automatic" instead of manual, enter the url and click "generate"; the ref would be made for you. The ref can be re-inserted once added, elsewhere in the article by selecting the reuse option. What was wrong was: replacing an another existing reference with the new eonline link manually and not changing all the parameters, the former was cited multiple times so it broke in the ref list and the new "combined" ref had only the title and link for the eonline article but still showed older Variety article other information. There was duplicate eonline link which I combined as well. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 11:13, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

This reinforces the point I was making above about the UI needing to be Task focused. If a trainee asked me how to do it- I could now explain- but if they followed up with the question 'Why?', I am phlumoxed. --ClemRutter (talk) 15:32, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Display error on Nyuserre Ini

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Edit the article
Steps to Reproduce:	Edit Nyuserre Ini in VE.
Results:	Look at the first sentence of "Contemporaneous sources"; it reads "Nyuserre Ini is well attested in sources contemporaneous with his reign, the Egyptian Museum of Cairo and many more.</ref> for example in the tombs of some of his contemporaries".
Expectations:	The text "the Egyptian Museum of Cairo and many more.</ref>" should not be displayed. It should appear as it does in read mode
Page where the issue occurs	Add URL(s) or diffs
Web browser	Chrome Version 56.0.2924.87
Operating system	Windows 7
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Any additional information. Can you provide a screenshot, if relevant?
Workaround or suggested solution	Edit in wikitext mode

Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:57, 16 February 2017 (UTC)

This seems to be caused by the external link in the loc parameter used in the second-last sfn cite within the efn note. I tested this by removing it here, tried VE and it worked as usual. You can even go further and add the parameter back with plain text rather than the EL; VE still works as usual. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 07:52, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

The 3rd parameter (loc) of the sfn template is used add to the name of the reference. This probably creates a whole lot of trouble for parsoid.. when it is a link nested inside another ref. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 08:32, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

more than 9 authors in journal citation

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rkleegemtsinai/sandbox&action=edit&section=3 How do I add authors 10-18 in a journal citation?

Rkleegemtsinai (talk) 15:48, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Rkleegemtsinai:, at the bottom of the parameter list is a button "Add more information". When you click it, more parameters will be shown for selection as well as an edit field to enter a parameter name. If you enter an unlisted parameter name, VE will add such an "unknown" parameter under the given name (including eventual typos, so such parameters should be double-checked before saving). In this case: just do this step twice and add unlisted parameters for "last10" and "first10" (without quotation marks). The parameters will be added as empty fields in the list and you can fill them with values as usual. Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide has an (albeit tiny) section about this function, and Template:cite journal includes a documentation of all parameters for journals. GermanJoe (talk) 16:40, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

Hello @GermanJoe:, To add multiple author names to a journal reference, I copied sourcecode "last5=O'Neal|first5=Timothy" from "Wikipedia:Citing sources/Example edits for different methods" and changed the number to enter each additional author. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rkleegemtsinai (talk • contribs)

That works too :). To respond to a previous thread you can edit the same section and add your comment at the end of the section (usually with an increased indentation). I have merged both threads just for clarity. GermanJoe (talk) 17:41, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

→→→→Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rkleegemtsinai (talk • contribs) 18:02, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

I want to be able to copy this and put it on my power point

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 9000.91.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.110 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mandible&action=edit

66.44.195.43 (talk) 22:33, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

Which part do you want to be able to copy? If it's an image, then don't try to edit the page; just read it. Look at the caption for the image, where you'll find a tiny icon of two overlapping boxes. Click that to reach a page where you can download it. (If that icon isn't present, then control-click or Command-click the image to open it in a new tab.) Many images on that page are public domain, but some are still protected by copyright. You may want to read c:Commons:Reusing content outside Wikimedia. More images are available at c:Category:Human anatomy, mandible. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:31, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Can you make my page

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Bollualawer12/sandbox&action=edit&redlink=1&preload=Template%3AUser+sandbox%2Fpreload

Bollualawer12 (talk) 16:24, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Bollualawer12, if you have a technical problem, then I'd like to know more about what happened. Just click "Edit section" next to your question and tell me what happened.

If you need general help with figuring out what to write, then you might want to ask for help at the Wikipedia:Teahouse. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:33, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Insertion of unformated Text

It would be great if formated copied Text would be insertet unformated. Thanks --31.16.248.200 (talk) 10:20, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Try CTRL-SHIFT-V when you paste. It usually works for me. Kerry (talk) 11:02, 23 February 2017 (UTC)

They're making a change so that if you copy one line (e.g., a headline from a news source), then it will be unformatted, but if you copy multiple lines, then some formatting will be preserved. This may reduce some of the problems (but will probably annoy people who want to copy pre-formatted bibliographic citations and retain all of the traditional formatting). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Text alignment and other options in VisualEditor - Suggestion

It would be optimal if there was stronger text formatting / customization options in the VisualEditor, such as the ability to align text (left, right, centered, justified). Supporting simple edits in the VisualEditor such as text alignment are important so the contributor can see the "finished product" while the formatting is applied. As a new contributor, the VisualEditor is much more tangible than editing in Source Code, so polishing the VisualEditor to include more abilities would make editing even better. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TheAnonymousNerd (talk • contribs) 04:49, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

In general in Wikipedia, we only use left aligned text. Slight exceptions exist for tables, but table structure is not edited very much, so it's a bit lower priority. Thank you for your feedback —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:30, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to enable the VisualEditor for some templates?

Some templates consist of tables which however can't be edited with the VisualEditor because only source editing is allowed. Is there a way to enable the VisualEditor at least on some templates? Examples:

The latter two were meant to be templates, but since the VisualEditor doesn't work in template space, I first moved the newly created templates into article space, which then promptly got moved to draft space by someone else. The move into draft space then broke the main articles which transcluded the templates in article space, because moves to draft space don't have redirects, leading to wrong accusations in the edit history of the main articles. (People thought the templates simply weren't there, as they couldn't see them due to the missing redirects.)

The reason I'd like to use a template for these two tables is that they are used in two articles. Editors of the articles have been debating a move of the tables to only one article for years, and any attempts to go forward with such a move have always been reverted. So anyone working on these tables has to sync the changes in both articles manually. --Pizzahut2 (talk) 14:34, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Short answer: No.

Long answer: VisualEditor's visual mode can only be enabled in entire namespaces (all the templates, not just this one), so this isn't technically possible.

However, there's a relatively simple workaround: Put them in the Template: namespace, and use them normally. Whenever you want to edit one of these templates, then open the template page, copy (not cut) the entire contents to your own /sandbox (in userspace), and edit them there. When you're done, save your changes to your sandbox. Then open your sandbox in source mode (or open it in visual mode, and click the button near the Save button to switch to the wikitext source moe), copy the entire contents of your sandbox, and paste it back into the actual template. This approach has a second benefit: if you discover a mistake right after you save the page (which happens to me all the time :-), then you can fix it before it goes 'live' in the real template. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

how to make your own title

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/51.0.2704.79 Safari/537.36 Edge/14.14393

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Soraya_O%27Sullivan?action=edit

Soraya O'Sullivan (talk) 03:41, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Soraya O'Sullivan, I'm not sure whether you want a new username or to WP:MOVE an article to a new title. You might want to ask this question at the WP:Teahouse for new editors. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:48, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Adding interwiki links

I've been adding a lot of interwiki links here, and it doesn't seem to work quite right. Going into the link dialogue and entering :it:Livio Garzanti doesn't generate [[:it:Livio Garzanti|Livio Garzanti]] as I would expect; it generates [[it:Livio Garzanti|Livio Garzanti]] which plays hell with the display. Is there a way to do this in VE? Not sure this is really a bug if it's not intended to work yet. However, I should point out that it does actually work in editing mode; it only loses the lead colon when you save. Up to that point you can click on the created link in edit mode, and get sent to the Italian page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:44, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Mike, I'm not sure if this is a bug or a (mis)feature. In the meantime, if you link to [[w:it:Example]], then it should give you the link that you wanted. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:44, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's a bug, and the bug report reportedly exists, but I haven't found it yet. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:23, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

templates and bullet lists - everything looks OK visually in the VE but the source produced is not good

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I was trying to relocate some external links from the See Also section to a new External Links section in the presence of {{commons category}} in the article Leslie Orme Wilson (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Leslie_Orme_Wilson&type=revision&diff=768171271&oldid=768168381 diff)
Steps to Reproduce:	cut the See Also heading and 4 bullet points and pasted them to under the reflist using the "Insert New Paragraph" that appears when you hover. I changed the section name (See also -> External links). Visually the commons category box was lying below the 4 bullet points so I dragged it up to above the first bullet point, so that it would render on the right of the external links rather than below them. It all looked OK on screen with the commons category box appearing above and to the right with the 4 bullet points below it.
Results:	However, the source code generated by SAVE isn't OK as the first bullet point is before the commons category template which messes up the presentation on screen. It is reproducible. I get this happening frequently in the external links section because it often has the structure of the commons category template followed by a bullet list (other sections don't usually have that structure).
Expectations:	I would get the commons category template and then the first bullet point after that
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Chrome latest
Operating system	Windows 8
Skin	whatever is the deafult
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution	Go into the source editor and fix it. I don't think you can fix it from the VE.

Kerry (talk) 06:34, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Kerry,

It's possible; it's just not intuitive. You have to first create blank lines (e.g., place your cursor at the end of the word "links" in the ==External links== section heading), drag the template into those blank lines, and then remove the extra blank lines.

There's a bug about doing it properly, but I don't think it will be fixed very soon. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

It's not a probably creating a new article as I put in the External links heading, add the commons template, and then add the bullet list of external links. The problem occurs more when working with an existing article. It is one of those situations of when it looks right in the VE but isn't right and can't be fixed in the VE, meaning it increases the risk of being reverted or of reinforcing the perception that the VE is an "extra burden on the community". Kerry (talk) 03:14, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

Cursor jumping

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156228

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:
Steps to Reproduce:
Results:
Expectations:
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Google Chrome 56.0.2924.87
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin	Vector
Notes:	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Aporter90/George_W._Hooker_(Medal_of_Honor)&diff=768160211&oldid=768157724
Workaround or suggested solution

Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for not including steps here. If it's a known problem, I'll leave it alone; if not, I'll try to reproduce it in the next few days. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 08:24, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Maybe it's this: /Archive 2016 1#Page jump issue? Ugog Nizdast (talk) 10:00, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I think it's Timeshifter's bug. I'm sorry that it hasn't been fixed yet. It's apparently more complicated than it looks – perhaps an intermittent thing?

Ed, I believe that a set of reliable reproduction steps would be very much appreciated. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): If I'm remembering the circumstances right, I think it's what ~~Ugog Nizdast is~~ you are describing. I'll try to reproduce this asap. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:56, 7 March 2017 (UTC) Fixed, sorry. It's the shift key that does it.

Check that, I can reproduce it right now. Hitting "shift" in the sentence beginning "Historians William H. Garzke and Robert O. Dulin ..." over at Design A-150 battleship does it. Same setup as above, Chrome on Windows 10. Happens on Firefox too. Rather hard to edit sentences when I can't use the shift key. ;-) Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:01, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm testing it on other articles like George W. Hooker, United States Navy, Nicolai Wammen, Khin Yu May, North Carolina-class battleship, and several other random articles; the cursor moves every time I click somewhere and hit "shift." Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:07, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Ed, where does the cursor end up? (Start of the line, start of the article, apparently random...) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:48, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): It seems to jump back to the last wikilink, citation, or paragraph beginning, in that order. It never jumps up to a new para. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 09:12, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Shift is somehow being left tab and shift at the same time

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156228

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/56.0.2924.87 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view/Noticeboard?action=edit&section=4#Conflict_of_Interest_regarding_User%253ABomberswarm2

Endercase (talk) 17:12, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Endercase, I want to hear more about this. What exactly happened, and does it happen every time? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Hey, sorry I didn't see your first tag for some reason. It happens kinda randomly. Usually, after I interact with hyperlinks or edit something I had already written in the same session. Also, the amount of space the cursor moves seems to be random but it is always backward (left tab is inaccurate as it skips through text). I will attempt better documentation next time. What would you like me to record? Endercase (talk) 23:56, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

looks like a variation of https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T156228 (timeshifter bug) Endercase (talk) 23:57, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

It is also worth noting that after the bug has been "activated" shift will always return to the same location (I think) but allow you to type in that location. I will test right shift next time as well. Endercase (talk) 00:03, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm copying your comments to phab:T156228, on the theory that you're probably right, and if you aren't, it's probably the same dev who will get to figure out both problems. :-)

It looks like you're running Chrome on Windows 10, which seems to be what everyone else with this particular bug is using. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:12, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

I have tested right shift after left shift problems. It is just left shift that activates the jump. Endercase (talk) 16:43, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Left-, centre- and right-aligning

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T103276

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T2418

Is there any way to align text within VE? I understand it would be disabled within prose for style reasons, but it would be nice to be able to align text in table cells (e.g. often table columns consisting of numbers are centre- and right-aligned). Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 10:50, 21 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Jc86035,

This is unfortunately not possible yet. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Avoiding punctuation

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T128060

I accidentally selected a linkable term which was followed by an apostrophe and my selection included the terminal apostrophe. When I selected for linking, it found the matching article but also introduced a nowiki tag which is not needed. I think it might help to trim apostrophes and quotes at the ends while placing piped links. (example here) Shyamal (talk) 13:38, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Shyamal, I'm sorry that you ran into this problem. These are called "link trails", and they only create links under certain circumstances (e.g., if it is followed by a lowercase Latin-alphabet letter). [[Ernst Ludwig Heim]]'s does not create a link trail (it produces this: Ernst Ludwig Heim's instead).

There is a long-term plan to make it easier to see whether letters are connected to the link; I've added a link to it on the side. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:55, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Project pages - where does one ask for these to be VE-enabled

I am now in my 2nd situation of working on a Project page with VE users. Currently project pages are not enabled for VE users so you have to think of a workaround. What I am doing is to put a REDIRECT from the Project page into a user subpage (as VE is enabled for User pages), e.g. Wikipedia:GLAM/State Library of Queensland/QWiki Club. It's quite ugly as it is visible what I am doing, but I don't see what else I can do. Kerry (talk) 03:18, 8 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't have a good solution to your problem. The general approach is that you have to demonstrate consensus from the community and then make a request (e.g., ping me, but the theory is that editors would just file a Phab task about it). For the English Wikipedia in particular, you would also have to convince the product manager that the benefit of having it enabled for your target page(s) exceeds the pain that would be caused by having it enabled on ANI.

Since that's unlikely, I wonder what you think about suggesting that they opt-in to the beta feature, so that they don't have to learn two different toolbars? I suggested it to a new editor here a few weeks ago, and s/he seemed very happy about that. It's not a good solution for that page in particular (wikitext syntax for tables is intimidating to most people, and a familiar toolbar won't help with that), but it might be an alternative to consider in other cases. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:01, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Where exactly would I seek to establish this consensus? And what specific pain would occur on ANI? Kerry (talk) 04:07, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

The best location for a discussion like that is probably WP:VPPR.

VisualEditor can't "indent" replies, and it's relatively slow to load large pages, so it would be painful to use it on pages such as ANI (current size: 409,515 bytes, or about twelve times the old maximum recommended page size). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Still unacceptable

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T161642

If I edit International Space Station in wikitext mode, I can start editing after a few seconds, but I am confronted immediately by two edit notices in their own box, one about British English and one stating "STOP! Are you planning to change aTTitude to aLTitude? If so, please check whether or not this is correct - aTTitude is the orientation of the station, whereas aLTitude is its height.". Then there is a large pink box about the protection, and then a line shown on every article you edit, stating "Content that violates any copyrights will be deleted. Encyclopedic content must be verifiable. Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions."

If I edit the same article in VE (four years old at least, and promoted as the default editor by the WMF for at least two years now, if not more, even though usage remains here at what, 5%?), I get first a long, long wait of 50 seconds. And then... no notices at all. Not the two white boxes, not the pink box, and not the standard text every aricle gets on editing. It doesn't seem to be related to the specific article, e.g. on Aerith Gainsborough I don't get the edit notice or standard text in VE either.

Now, these examples may not seem that important, but what about something like George W. Bush, which starts (for the 95% of editors that use the better editor) with "Attention!

Any addition of content that is not properly sourced, does not conform to Wikipedia's neutral point of view policy, or is defamatory will be removed promptly. In addition, you will be blocked from editing Wikipedia, possibly without further warning."

For VE editors, it starts (eventually, after a long long wait) without all that distracting bullshit.

But wait! On the top right, you get a triangular icon with an exclamation mark, and it gives the popup text "Edit notices". So while they are hidden too far away and not prominent enough by far, you can at least access them from VE! Er, wrong, clicking on the icon just gives a box with the text "edit notices" and nothing else. Strangely, in the New Wikitext environment, this does work, and the edit notices are there shown by default (not in the best possible way, but that's a minor problem).

So, if this situation is representative for VE, this means that

Edit notices are not shown or accessible in VE
Protection notices are not shown in VE
Even the general editing instructions (about copyvio and so on), shown at the top of every article you edit, are gone in VE.

Why, dear WMF representants and intermediaries, is such a situation acceptable and tolerated for years and years? Why wouldn't the fact that the most basic things like edit notices, which contain essential information for editors (and general disclaimers about copyvio and so on), are not visible in VE, not be sufficient to start a discussion to finally disable VE completely at enwiki?

This is no longer an experimental, rapidly evolving environment where we need to have a bit of patience; this is a mature environment, in most aspects as good as it will ever get, and it seems that this simply isn't good enough. Fram (talk) 15:14, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

I'm no fan of VE so it pains me to defend it, but I think you may be mistaken; have you got some kind of unusual setting preferences, as I can't replicate what you're seeing? When I open the page in question in "pure" VE or in the new hybrid editor, in both I'm immediately confronted with an unmissably-large box hovering over the edit window containing both the editnotices and the protection status which needs to be manually closed (and thus implicitly acknowledged) to continue editing. ‑ Iridescent 15:31, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

Firefox (latest version) on Windows 8.1, no personal css at all. I get the edit notices in old and new wikitext editor. I don't get them in VE. I'm glad it isn't universal, but it still is the same kind of shit I got used to at the time I regularly checked VE a few years ago. Fram (talk) 15:44, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: interesting, user @Xaosflux: reported something similar, but I have not been able to reproduce those experiences. Strange.. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:03, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

This is purely a guess—I don't know the mechanics of how VE interacts with various browsers—but could it be something to do with the close box on the editnotice window fooling the browser into thinking it's a popup ad trying to sneak in via the back door? Firefox has always been more zealous than other browsers when it comes to suppressing popups. ‑ Iridescent 16:21, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: I think it is Adblock Plus interfering with the popups. I can confirm your behavior with Adblock Plus with Firefox on Linux. But, when I disabled Adblock Plus, the notices show up just fine. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 03:28, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

AdBlock Plus is also apparently quite usage-intensive compared to µBlock or µBlock Origin, so this could be a factor in the loading time. Jc86035 (talk) Use {{re|Jc86035}}
to reply to me 03:31, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, but I have no Adblock or anything similar installed. Fram (talk) 06:42, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Fram, have you tried opening the page in a private window? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

Just tried it, makes no difference. Fram (talk) 06:57, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

Weird situation in edit training today

I was edit training using Visual Editor this morning with a group of about 9 people. Each person was adding their first citation (on their User page) and everyone was adding the same citation, see for an example - I use this example in all my edit training. Most of them got an error message (which I didn't have time to write down as I was too busy trying to work out how to solve it as being unable to save a citation would have been a show-stopper for the edit training) but seemed to be complaining that too many of something were happening at the same time. I note that everyone was probably had the same IP, although they were all logged-in users (a couple had pre-existing accounts, the rest had accounts about created an hour earlier). They were being asked for Captcha and had provided one. The error came on the final Save after the edit summary and greyed out the final Save and the only thing they could do is was "Resume editing". So, I asked them each to do their SAVE one at a time and that seemed to work. We had no problem after that but by then the group were working on individual articles.

Can someone tell me exactly what I experienced and what circumstances trigger it and how I can avoid it happening in edit training in the future? Having things fail inexplicably at edit training sessions is quite embarrassing and hardly gives the trainees much confidence in the software. Thanks Kerry (talk) 06:19, 24 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Kerry,

I'm sorry that you had to deal with that. I assume that the problem is too many connections from the same IP or something like that, but let me ask around and see if there's anything that can be done about it. Could you please ping me with date and time/timezone (as close as you can guess)? There's always a chance that the problem was a temporary outage. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:11, 28 March 2017 (UTC)

About 11:25am on Friday 24 March, Australian Eastern Standard Time (not Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time). This diff is probably one of the successful SAVEs, so I assume the unsuccessful ones happened a few minutes earlier. The error *might* have said something about external links or URLs as I think my first thought was something like "maybe it's an anti-spam thing" as everyone in the room was adding a citation to the same URL. I don't think it was an outage; I think it was an objection to what was being saved. Kerry (talk) 06:04, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

FYI just a helpful tip regarding: "which I didn't have time to write down as I was too busy". Next time take a quick picture with your phone. It's the easiest way to get on with stuff and still be able to accurately process something later. —TheDJ (talk • contribs)

Alas, no phone. Kerry (talk) 22:43, 29 March 2017 (UTC)

mysterious nowiki tags lurking in many articles I have edited in VE

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I am not sure how they came into being as they are harmless to the reader or the VE users, but I have stumbled onto a few when using wikitext and initially not thought anything about it, but got suspicious and did a systematic search of the Category:Queensland Heritage Register (where I do a lot of my editing) and found many more of them.
Steps to Reproduce:	There is a pattern to them. This diff with this being the generated wikitext [[Government of Queensland\|Queensland governmen]]<nowiki/>t The problem always seems to occur after I have added a wikilink where it looks like I have not selected the complete text leaving some of it outside the "blue" zone. This is quite easy to do because VE will suggest articles with longer titles than the selected text (which is very useful of course) but allows text that should be part of the anchor to end up outside the anchor.
Results:
Expectations:	Fair enough that the unselected "t" is outside the anchor (as that is my error in this case, although it might be deliberate in other cases), but it's not clear to me why the nowiki tag is put there.
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser
Operating system
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

For a few more examples (not fixed) see Cairns School of Arts, Clermont Cemetery, Colonsay Farm, or more plenty more just do what I did and run AWB over the Queensland Heritage Register category searching for "nowiki" (which normally does not occur naturally in articles of this type). Kerry (talk) 04:39, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

add geotagging

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T165692

geotagging is clumsy in the source editor, could something be added to the visual editor?Back ache (talk) 07:33, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Screen repositioning to top of article when working at bottom of article

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I am adding commons categories to a bunch of articles.
Steps to Reproduce:	This should involve the following sequence of actions in the VE, scrolling to the bottom of the article text, clicking curson, adding text "External links", clicking Toolbar to select Heading format, hit Return (so cursor is under the new heading), click on Toolbar Insert > Template > fill it out > Insert, then Save.
Results:	In both clicking of the Toolbar (for Paragraph format and Insert Template) the displayed article did not remain at the end of the article where I was working, but jumped to top of the article. The article I was specifically working on most recently where this occured was Selhurst, North Ward and this is the diff. Feel free to roll back and repeat my actions. Now I add a lot of commons categories to articles and I don't think this problem was occurring in the past (it's quite maddening so I am unlikely to have failed to notice). It seems a recent change in behaviour. Note, although the display of the article is in the wrong position, the VE is not forgetting the location of the cursor. The actions of changing the paragraph format and inserting the template are still occuring at the bottom of article (you just can't see them). So the outcome is correct, but the experience is not very "visual" as you have to keep scrolling back down to the bottom of the article to check that what you expected to happen actually happened. Kerry (talk) 07:52, 2 April 2017 (UTC)
Expectations:	bottom of the article would remain displayed
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Chrome 57.0.2987.133 (latest)
Operating system	Windows 8.1
Skin	default
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Kerry (talk) 07:43, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

It seems the problem isn't limited to the bottom of the article but more widespread. I just edited Emerald, Queensland to add the when-template after the word "recently" in the Newspapers sub-section and, again, having positioned my cursor after the "recently", I think clicked on Insert on the toolbar and was transported to the top of the article. Kerry (talk) 08:53, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

As Murphys Law would have it, I am doing edit training tomorrow morning so this is not the sort of bug to inspire trainees :-( Kerry (talk) 08:54, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Was able to confirm this behavior after inserting the "citation needed" template at the bottom of an article. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:01, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

You can always train them using the standard Wikitext editor. Works like a charm, and can be used on all pages! Fram (talk) 06:42, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

@Fram: Speaking as someone who has done training using both wikitext and Visual Editor, I can report that most trainees find wikitext does not "work like a charm" for them as they find it too difficult to use, with the consequence that few continue to contribute after the training session. Trainees have found the Visual Editor much easier and the trainees are more likely to continue contributing (which is the ultimate goal of training). Given the ongoing attrition of editors on en.WP, if we want more contributors, we need the Visual Editor. As I was quite proficient in wikitext, I initially learned the Visual Editor purely in order to train others. However, I have found the VE is a better editor for most article content purposes (very much superior for creating tables, but not as good for working with templates) and I often use VE for a lot of my own article contributions, switching between the VE and wikitext, so I can use the best tool for any particular task. What have been your experiences of training new users in the two editor tools? Kerry (talk) 03:03, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

No experience. But if you have editors unable to work in wikitext, they can't participate in discussions, and can't edit all aspects of pages (templates). Despites years of pushing VE on new editors (gently, by trainers like you, and more aggressively by the WMF in general), VE use rate is hardly increasing, so the influx of new, VE-using editors seems not to happen. Yes, VE is better for tables, and that's about the only thing it really is better in. Every time I try it, I swiftly encounter bugs, problems, issues which make it to me clearly inferior to wikitext (see my section above on edit notices and the like). Teaching people to use an easier but limited editing tool, when they have to learn the other, complete tool anyway if they stay around a bit longer, is a short-term solution which may seem to generate more new editors but doesn't seem to have that effect in the long run at all. Fram (talk) 06:54, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You are making an assumption about the permanence of the status quo. I've seen the same arguments about automatic transmission in cars (you aren't a real driver if you can't use a gear stick), about moving from assembly language to high-level programming languages (you aren't a real programmer if you can't use assembler), and the 1970s horror when vi was unleashed into the Unix world of ed (real Unix users don't want or need visual editors). Yet, despite all the huffing and puffing, all the easier-to-use things became normalised. Back in the 1990s wikis were using wikitext syntaxes. Atlassian's Confluence wiki product introduced more visual (based on rich text format) tools very early in the piece, expanding on that until 2006 when they first considered dropping wikitext, finally doing so in 2011, and they have supported Microsoft Word-to-Wiki translation for many years now; given their financial success those guys seem to have worked out what the market wants from a Wiki product. Yet here we are in 2017 at Wikipedia apparently determined to party like it's nineteen ninety-nine!. Look at the big picture. Non-monopoly (CC-BY-SA) content, last century technology, declining community. That's not a nice place to start your SWOT analysis at a strategic planning meetings. If Wikipedia is the digital disruption of the traditional encyclopedia, what is the potential disruption of Wikipedia? If Wikipedia does not move into the 21st century, then soon or later a more tech-savvy competitor will emerge. Kerry (talk) 08:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

That better things than the current wikitext editor could be developed, doesn't mean that VE is such a thing. You are absolutely right that older doesn't mean better, but equally newer doesn't mean better either. VE is not getting picked up by long-term editors (in general, there are exceptions), and oesn't seem to be the editor of choice of most new editors either. Most statistics generated by the WMF seem to be down (502 bad gateway error), but simply looking at enwiki article space editing statistics, at the moment the latest 500 edits by IPs took (09.39-09.07) 32 minutes: the last 500 edits by IPs, VE only, took (09.39-yesterday, 22.46) 10hours and 53 minutes. For registered users only (no IPS, but also no bots) VE = (09.41 - 04.59) 4 hours and 42 minutes, all edits = (09.42-09.31) 11 minutes. This percentage, of only about 5% of the edits on enwiki (mainspace, no bots) being made using VE has remained more or less the same for years now. If VE truly was superior, many more editors would have switched by now (or at least many of the "new" editors of the last few years would continue using it, resulting in a steady increase of the percentage of VE edits). So, in this case, by popular vote, newer is not better. Fram (talk) 09:46, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I would not expect a lot of long-standing contributors to take it up. Quite simply, if you are already proficient at wikitext, there's not a lot of motivation to put the effort into adjusting to a different way of thinking (plus there's too much "muscle memory" in the fingers). I forced myself to use VE in my own editing until I was "fluent" because I knew wikitext training was a failure so I had to try something different. I didn't like it initially and never expected that I would use it in a regular way as I now do. As for new users, I believe we have a bug which I have reported here previously (not sure what happened to it or whether it is still an issue). New accounts were enabled for the VE but the Editing preference "Edit mode" is "remember my last editor". I know from people I've done training with that some of them have told me later that they have "lost" the Visual Editor. It seems that once they attempt to edit something that the VE is not enabled for, they are switched into only being able to use the wikitext editor from thereon in due to this preference setting. Now in my training, I start by getting them to set their Edit mode preference to be "Use both editing tabs" which seems to solve this issue and they remain VE-enabled. If this is still a problem, then our new users may be losing access to the VE due to the default edit mode. Since you can't inspect other user's preferences, this is something I cannot check on. Also I believe VE is not enabled for IPs, which is an issue if you believe that people start as IPs and then graduate to creating an account. If we lose them as IPs, maybe they don't make that transition. Or when they do, they are now expecting to see the wikitext editor. The stats you see are of the "survivors"; what we don't have such good stats on is the ones who don't survive and what experiences they had before they disappeared. I am not surprised that VE edits are longer than non-VE edits; I would say it is true for me too, because VE opens the whole article so I tend to spend longer than in the wikitext editor where I usually edit at section level, so a lot more edits of short duration in wikitext than in VE. The edit count stats aren't directly comparable, you would really have to drill down and "weight" the edits by the complexity. Probably the best experiment would be be take a group of inexperienced editors and set them all a set of editing tasks (on different articles for edit conflict reasons) but fundamentally the same in content), split them into wikitext and VE groups and then compare what they did and how they did it. It would be useful to compare experienced editors too, but probably harder to recruit the experienced VE editors in this case. This should give us some baselines for how edits differ between the two editors and therefore how to compare them more meaningfully. (Sorry my day job was research so this stuff interests me a lot). Kerry (talk) 10:31, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

This is just anecdotal, but broadly my experience matches Kerry's in that I do much longer and more complex edits with VE than I do with wikitext. I still switch to wikitext for certain things, but the list has been gradually growing smaller. As noted above, tables are clearly better; I'd add that pure content addition -- typing, adding/copying citations, moving text around the article, copyediting, adjusting structure -- is much more productive in VE. It's because that's most of what I do that I mostly use VE. I don't use many templates but despite the advances VE has made I'd be surprised to find an editor that found VE faster for complicated templates, except for citations, which I find much easier to work with in VE. For a lot of wikignome stuff such as categories and repetitive small edits I doubt VE will ever be as productive as an expert wikitext editor. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:39, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I've heard the "VE edits are longer" before, but looking at the actual "recent changes", there doesn't seem to a significant difference. Most edits are still of the "small fix" variety in either version, and many editors make whole series of VE edits. I have also heard claims that VE edits are more "succesful", but hard evidence for this was lacking (the WMF stats compared all wikitext edits to a sample of VE edits for some unknown reason, and their calculations often weren't matching reality). I don't doubt that for you and others, VE is the tool of preference. But that doesn't mean that promroting it as the tool of preference in general is the best idea, when it seems that in the end, most people use the wikitext editor anyway (either because they drop VE in favour of wikitext, or because the VE editors tend to stop editing completely). Fram (talk) 11:51, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Not sure about either of those stats; I'll take your word for it -- it's really my own experience I was talking about. I don't have a strong opinion about promoting it, though I suspect editors whose editing patterns are similar to mine would find it more productive than they might expect. I don't know how many such editors there are, though; I'm very much at the pure content end of the spectrum, and do almost nothing with categories, templates, tagging, and so on. The only change I feel strongly about is that I think it would be sensible to make both VE and wikitext available to all editors, including IPs; I watched my wife (a professional computer programmer and analyst with decades of experience) baulk at the wikitext editor when she made the only edit she's ever made to an article, and if someone with her background finds it an obstacle surely many others do too. I'd also think a larger VE editing community here would have more clout in requesting changes from the developers -- Jytdog's comment below isn't something that bothers me, since I've never found much value in the human-built ref name strings either (and of course in VE I don't care at all), but it would be nice to have a bit more leverage for requesting whatever enhancements or bugfixes are seen as most beneficial. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:04, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Lack of Infobox

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/52.0

I can't add an infobox.

DatGuyonYouTube (talk) 06:26, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Automatic citation parameters

I was just playing with the VE to understand better what it does, after cleaning up a bunch of student editing.

For journals, if you use the automatic citation formatting function, putting in the pmid, you get this:

Begley, C. Glenn; Ellis, Lee M. (2012-03-28). "Drug development: Raise standards for preclinical cancer research". Nature. 483 (7391): 531–533. doi:10.1038/483531a. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 22460880.

The biggest problem with this, is the url link to pubmed. The pmid parameter in the ref already creates a link to pubmed, and the url is redundant. I and others regularly go through and remove it, which is a waste of time all around.
I don't know who chose to include the issn, but this is not commonly used.
what is missing from the autofill, is the "pmc" parameter, which is an identifier to a free copy of the article at the Pubmed Central. Why issn and not pmc is very hard to understand.

Can the url be removed and can the pmc be added? I would like to see the issn gone as is clutter but others may object.

Can there be an autofill for books? The plain old wikitext editor has this function off the ISBN; cannot VE do this?

thanks -- Jytdog (talk) 23:34, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

1. The problem with the url link is that in general Citoid does not do logic. It just gathers data and passes that data along. A "only add a link if there is no pmid link"-interpretation is not currently a distinction that any of the systems can make (I guess the template itself could be enhanced to make that interpretation...). From my personal point of view, I even prefer it to have the title linked and suspect it's a lot more accessible to the casual reader. But that's just me.
2. ISSN is added because it is available I think. It just adds whatever it can find.
3. The PMC id is not there, because the pubmed page does not reference it, and it can thus also not be retrieved.

ISBN is still stuck in bureaucracy I believe. They are partnering with worldcat for that and it was already done in December if I remember correctly. Somehow it has failed to make an appearance so far. It's a bit weird

— Preceding unsigned comment added by TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:08, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

The example I gave doesn't have a PMC so of course the automatic feature can't find it. For pete's sake. The autofill feature of VisualEditor doesn't grab it when a PMC is available. if it had I would not have written here. Also what you write about the pubmed link makes no sense, at all. The underlying software is generating the pubmed link.

Every time I try to deal with devs I get useless answers that are arrogant to boot. I wasted my time here and I am gone. Jytdog (talk) 09:13, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

@Jytdog: Every time you ask questions and I answer them, you expect that I fix them for you instead. Well sorry, I'm not your personal code monkey, just another volunteer like you. I can only give explanations, I have no pixy dust and neither can I make complexity disappear just because you don't like it. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 09:19, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

I have no desire for a personal code monkey - nothing i wrote said "fix this now". I do expect answers offered as definitive to be clear and competent. Jytdog (talk) 09:25, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Your judgement of my incompetence is noted, I'll be sure to avoid your questions in the future. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 10:12, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

In case anyone wants to remove the issn from inclusion btw. you can remove the citoid mapping between citoid issn and template data issn from the template data description on Template:Cite_journal/doc. If a citoid value is not mapped in templatedata, it will not be inserted by the reference dialog either. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:39, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Would you please address the issue with the software creating a URL in the URL field based off the pmid and the lack of automatically picking up the pmc when it is present. Jytdog (talk) 22:52, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Nah, don't really feel like doing that. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:34, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Probably may eventually be solved by https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T126249 . — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.218.91.8 (talk) 19:24, 21 April 2017 (UTC)

VE on Template Pages

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T61818

I know that the VE is not able to handle template data. However there are a lot of template pages on the english Wikipedia, who doesn't use template data at all (e.g. Template:AMD_Radeon_Rx_400 and other series). For these pages it would be desirable to use the VE (since tables are a PITA to edit in source mode).
So is there any way to enable the VE on these pages? I tried "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:AMD_Radeon_Rx_400?veaction=edit" - which doesn't work.... Wikiinger (talk) 18:16, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Anyone?? Wikiinger (talk) 12:21, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

If you insist on using VE, you can always copy the template to your userspace sandbox, use VE there, and copy it back to the template space. Fram (talk) 12:31, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I know and I'm already doing this. I'm looking for a way/support to avoid the back-and-forth copying the userspace sandbox. Wikiinger (talk) 14:30, 25 April 2017 (UTC)

Wrong info for "Table of contents" page setting?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T166029

Currently the (i) in Visual Editor "Page settings" for the Table of Contents setting reads:

"You can force a table of contents that lists each heading on the page to appear on pages with fewer than three headings, or force it to not appear at all. By default, it will appear if the page has three or more headings."

Maybe I am missing something obvious, but shouldn't that be "four" in both instances? According to WP:TOC and a quick test on en-Wiki, the minimum limit to display the ToC by default is 4 headers (regardless of their header level apparently), not 3. GermanJoe (talk) 11:13, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Unable to edit privacy law

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	One of the WikiEd students was trying to edit the article privacy law using VE as part of a class project, but was unable to due to the page stating that it could only be edited in source mode.
Steps to Reproduce:	I'm not sure of the student's steps or what browser, OS, or computer they were using, but both myself and Sage (Wiki Ed) had the same issue with the page. I clicked on the "edit" tab for VE and moved my mouse over the text, only to see a green box informing me that I could only edit in source mode.
Results:	A green box appeared stating that I could only edit in source mode.
Expectations:	That I would be able to edit using VE.
Page where the issue occurs	privacy law
Web browser	Google Chrome
Operating system	Windows (unsure of the type)
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:58, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the problem was caused by some stray unclosed italics markup. I did this and now the page works normally in VE.--Sage (Wiki Ed) (talk) 16:58, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_4) AppleWebKit/603.1.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/10.1 Safari/603.1.30

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Consumption_smoothing&action=edit&section=4

I am receiving a message that says "Error saving data to server: Empty server response."

Please help me resolve the issue. Thank you!

Publicecon (talk) 16:54, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

@Publicecon: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36

I keep getting this message when trying to edit this page: Error saving data to server: Empty server response.URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discretionary_spending?action=edit

Mattbainum (talk) 02:30, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

You're the third user that I'm aware of to have this problem. Were you using the mobile interface? DS (talk) 13:14, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Mattbainum: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Empty Server Response when trying to save new page

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Trying to add new page to main wiki. Also tried to add page in sandbox.
Steps to Reproduce:	On attempting to submit/save the page I received the error
Results:	Error message
Expectations:	Page to be saved (added to server)
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Eel-eye-jar_eye-bell/sandbox&action=edit&redlink=1&preload=Template%3AUser+sandbox%2Fpreload
Web browser	Chrome 57.0.2987.133
Operating system	Windows
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Eel-eye-jar eye-bell (talk) 07:06, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Eel-eye-jar eye-bell: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	minor edit to existing page
Steps to Reproduce:	Just hit save-happens every time
Results:	error message above
Expectations:	expected it to save without error
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Erwin_Center
Web browser	Firefox 53.0 (32-bit)
Operating system	Win10
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Dbryte (talk) 18:51, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dbryte: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response.

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Editing Wikipedia page for the actual person it refers to.
Steps to Reproduce:	Reproduced on an iMac with Safari. Originally tried on a MacBook with Chrome.
Results:	Error saving data to server: Empty server response.
Expectations:	Expected to update the page
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Clancy_(rugby_union)
Web browser	Safari Version 10.1 (12603.1.30.0.34)
Operating system	macOS Sierra 10.12.4
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Emmetgtroy (talk) 19:03, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

@Emmetgtroy: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Problem with submiting links

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.81 Safari/537.36

The server response says something like "server response empty" when I add this link vimeo.com/193289299

Josemazcorro (talk) 09:56, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Josemazcorro: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Wanted to save an edit to a page
Steps to Reproduce:	Pressed save edit
Results:	error message came up
Expectations:	Save the edit without problems
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=British_Pain_Society&action=edit
Web browser	Safari
Operating system	OSX Yosemite
Skin	MacBook Air
Notes:	Help!
Workaround or suggested solution	Not found one yet

AliceCostello (talk) 14:49, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

I got this too, Windows, chrome, swedish wiki, using source editor 2017. Skottniss (talk) 15:38, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@AliceCostello and Skottniss: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

error while adding section

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/57.0.2987.133 Safari/537.36

I tried to add a new section. Got this error message. Not sure how to proceed:

Error saving data to server: Empty server response.

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influencer_marketing?action=edit&oldid=777982354&wteswitched=1

207.181.231.2 (talk) 18:00, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Trying to add small piece of text to page ~250 characters
Steps to Reproduce:	Simply clicked on edit, both the edit article and edit option at the top of the article.
Results:	After editing and saving changes I was given the error: Error saving data to server: Empty server response. Tryed on 2 computers, both windows: same result
Expectations:	I expected it to save my edit
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_version_history
Web browser	Chrome
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution	None that I know of. Similar error when changing to source editor: Error loading data from server: Failed to connect.

Rowan Harley (talk) 19:14, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Rowan Harley: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty Server Response

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Trying to add new paragraph
Steps to Reproduce:
Results:	have tried multiple times with same results
Expectations:
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=One_for_My_Baby_(and_One_More_for_the_Road)&action=edit
Web browser	Chrome Version 58.0.3029.81
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Kateinsinai (talk) 23:41, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

@Kateinsinai: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	<submit changes to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_oil>
Steps to Reproduce:
Results:	<reproducible>
Expectations:	<for changes to be submitted>
Page where the issue occurs	<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emu_oil>
Web browser	<Google Chrome Version 58.0.3029.81 (64-bit) and FireFox 48.0>
Operating system	<Windows 7>
Skin	<?> File:C:\Users\Lydia\Pictures\emu oil wiki screen
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Ron Magnet the 2nd (talk) 10:14, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@Ron Magnet the 2nd: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Error saving data to server: Empty server response

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Update the foundation's wikipedia page to the current programs, people and references.
Steps to Reproduce:	On attempting to submit/save the page I received the error. It is completely reproduceable because I have been experiencing this issue two days straight and from different PCs.
Results:	Error message
Expectations:	That I could save my updates.
Page where the issue occurs	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnum_Foundation
Web browser	Chrome v.58.0.3029.81 (64-bit)
Operating system	Mac OS X El Capitan
Skin
Notes:	I'm doing everything in the visual editing mode
Workaround or suggested solution

Magnumfoundation2017 (talk) 15:26, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Everyone experiencing this difficulty: this is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T164157 and is being fixed as we speak. Apologies for the inconvenience and thanks for your reports and patience, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@Magnumfoundation2017: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for reporting it! Sam Walton (talk) 18:09, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Possible fix suggestion for empty server response error message

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164157

I have noticed that people seem to only get the message on pages with spaces in the title, but when there isn't any, it works fine. The problem may be similar to Windows's tendency to load C:\Program rather than C:\Program Data. The space is seen as the end of the path rather than part of the path.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Vulpus Maximus (talk • contribs) 11:11, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

@Vulpus Maximus: This problem should now be resolved. Thank you for your suggestion, however, and sorry for the disruption. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:17, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Red link issue in subpages

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:53.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/53.0

While editing Symantec Endpoint Protection/Draft, I noticed that all links in the citations appeared as red links. To investigate, I clicked on a link to IDG. Instead, the non-existent Symantec Endpoint Protection/IDG was opened. Codename Lisa (talk) 09:43, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

The mainspace is not supposed to have subpages, so it's probably related to that. I have moved that page to the draft namespace. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:00, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

New wikitext mode

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.96 Safari/537.36

,,New wikitext mode" edit feedback Hi. 1. I prefer to have the edit mode when I'm previewing an article. It's better to see both for when you are doing other things rather than writing a text, like a chart/family tree, a graph, a table, etc. To see them both in the same time.

2. A keyboard shortcut for small parameter is needed, and I can't find the break line ( br / ) parameter.

3. The familytree.js tool doesn't appear when I'm on New wikitext mode.Daduxing (talk) 18:39, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

== Cite error: A <ref> tag is missing the closing </ref> (see the help page).</nowiki>

From this edit. I tried to reproduce it and was able to. Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 19:22, 28 June 2017 (UTC)

Wow. Seeing code in there looked dangerous, but it's not as bad as I feared. I checked the source website causing the problem. The vcard with the author info includes an email, and that email is wrapped in javascript protection. The javascript is being copied like plaintext (not code). It's being copied like it's a list of author names.

I'm not sure, but I suspect their website is wrong. If so, we may just have to manually remove junk from the ref. Alsee (talk) 05:19, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, Ian. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:05, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Stranded category tags

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52882

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I wanted to expand a stub article with VE. Stub templates often lie below category tags and the category tag wikitext ends up getting stranded in the middle of the page.
Steps to Reproduce:	#Open a stub page with some categories and a stub tag for editing Delete the stub template, then write new paragraphs at the bottom of the page Finally save
Results:	The category tags went to the middle of the page (because VE interpreted the edit as some text standing in for the stub template
Expectations:	I would expect the category tag to get moved to the bottom of the page where they typically belong
Page where the issue occurs	[2]
Web browser	Chrome 58
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Any additional information. Can you provide a screenshot, if relevant?
Workaround or suggested solution	Edit in wikitext mode afterwards, sadly

Deryck C. 22:55, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Hi Deryck,

This is actually a bit complicated, partly because every wiki has its own idea of "the correct" order, and also because on some pages, the categories are supposed to be added to the "wrong" section, such as at WP:VPM. I've linked an old discussion about it above. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:39, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

"Manage TemplateData" does not open on Template:Multiple_issues/doc

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T168521
Resolved

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0

The built-in button for managing TemplateData does not open ont his page. When I manually clean it out (leave <templatedata>{}</templatedata>) then it opens, but then saving fails.

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Multiple_issues/doc&action=edit

-- intgr [talk] 12:51, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

The doc page in question has invalid JSON on the page, and it seems the error handling of the Manage TemplateData that is supposed to catch that problem has become broken itself. I filed a ticket. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:53, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

This was fixed, BTW. Thanks all! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 30 June 2017 (UTC)

IETF language tags and cs1|2 |language= parameter

This edit, apparently done with ve, adds a {{cite web}} reference with |language=eng-US. That language code is not supported by MediaWiki and so not supported by cs1|2 templates. While eng is a valid ISO 639-2 and -3 code, MediaWiki doesn't recognize three-character codes when there is a two-character ISO 639-1 equivalent:

{{#language:en}} → English

{{#language:eng}} → eng

{{#language:ar}} → العربية

{{#language:ara}} → ara

cs1|2 does not support IETF language tags that use ISO 639-2 or -3 codes because there has been no pressing need. But, cs1|2 does rely on MediaWiki's language support to obtain a language name from an ISO 639-1 or -2 code that MediaWiki recognizes. ve should not be using language codes not supported by MediaWiki. —Trappist the monk (talk) 11:42, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

Hi Trappist the monk,

Thanks for this explanation. A minor point: "VE" doesn't do this. mw:Citoid does. And the citoid service reliably supplies whatever language the website claims to be using, without exception, modification, or pre-processing. Citoid hands over accurate information about what the website claims, whether they claim something CS1 recognizes, such as en, something it doesn't recognize, such as eng-US, or something that is obviously wrong, such as Martian. Editors need to check the language specified by the website, just like they need to check to see whether the website has provided complete and correct information in the other fields. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:42, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Clicking on link in the edit-link box is broken?

Previously, within the VE, if you clicked on an existing link, the edit-link box popped up and if you clicked on the link, it launched that page. This was very handy for resolving disambiguations, or checking what content was at the other end of the link. Now when you do it, it launches /w/LINKNAME which launches a new tab in my browser but it contains not the article expected but Wikimedia Foundation logo and

Page not found /w/Brent_Cockbain

We could not find the above page on our servers.

Did you mean: /wiki/Brent_Cockbain

Alternatively, you can visit the Main Page or read more information about this type of error.

I was editing Innisfail, Queensland#Notable residents in this case with the link to Brent Cockbain but it seems to be happening all over. Kerry (talk) 04:20, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

Possibly a transient, already fixed thing? I don't seem to be able to reproduce. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:44, 22 June 2017 (UTC)

It's not transient but it doesn't happen all the time. But I have experimented a little more on Bowenville, Queensland. Having just opened the article in VE, if I opened the link for Warrego Highway and then opened-in-new-tab the article, it worked fine. However, after editing parts of the lede (not in any way relating to the text or link about the highway), the same attempt to open Warrego Highway failed. This is the diff of the edits I did, after which I could not open the link to the Warrego Highway article successfully. It is the reverse of the bug where the screen starts displaying the start of the article while are trying to edit lower down in the article; that happens very often on the initial edits but seems to settle down after a while to be random. Kerry (talk) 06:28, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Scratch that theory too. At the moment, I can't get launch the links at all even at the start of the edit. Kerry (talk) 06:38, 25 June 2017 (UTC)

Kerry, can you give me the exact and complete URL of the article when you're editing and getting this bug? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 26 June 2017 (UTC)

OK, I just opened an article for edit (this is the URL in my browser). I see the link Australian Labour Party in the lede paragraph and I note the unusual spelling (the spelling of Labour/Labor changed over the life of this political party so you have to check if the correct spelling is used in the correct time frame and the easiest way to remind yourself of the date of the spelling change is to read the article on the Australian Labour/Labor Party). So I click on the link, a popup box opens (I see the link symbol, the word Link top left and on the right top, the "prohibited" sign and the Edit button with a link showing as Australian Labour Party in blue middle of the box, a bit of a logo at the left and the words "political party in Australia, political party in Australia" below). If I click on that Australian Labour Party link in the popup box, it launches a new tab in my browser which displays its title on the tab as "Not Found", the URL in my browser address bar is https://en.wikipedia.org/w/Australian_Labor_Party and the body of the page comprises a black-and-white WMF logo (head and two halfs of a body sitting in a curved U shape) which is appeared to be squashed to be narrower and more oval than normal with the words Wikimedia Foundation underneath. To the right is the message:

Page not found

/w/Australian_Labor_Party

We could not find the above page on our servers.

Did you mean: /wiki/Australian_Labor_Party

Alternatively, you can visit the Main Page or read more information about this type of error.

Now, if I had clicked Edit in the box (rather than click on the link), it would have opened up the dialogue of suggested articles or URL as appropriate. In that screen there can also be problems about being unable to launch things but that seems more random and possibly worse after I have been editing things in the article. In the above, I did no actual changes, so I think that is the simplest scenario for this particular problem. Kerry (talk) 02:07, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for all of this. It's not breaking for me today, in Safari or Firefox. Perhaps it's browser-specific? Also, how many edit tabs do you have? Do you have the new wikitext mode enabled in Beta Features? I have two, and "Edit" leads to a slightly different URL. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

Browser is Chrome Version 59.0.3071.115 (Official Build) (64-bit) (latest version), Windows 8.1 (all updates done). I usually have multiple edit tabs. I always run Google Calendar in one tab, another tab will have Wikipedia open (obviously) and there may be more, depending on the specific type of editing I am doing, but almost always a tab for the Queensland Place Names database, another for Trove, generally one for random Googling searching for info and citations, possibly Wikimedia Commons, and random others depending on exactly what type of info I am adding. Typically 5-10 (beyond that, I start to close the ones I am not using as I use a small screen laptop (for disability reasons) and they start to become too squashed up to tell the tabs apart on the top of the screen). I don't have the new wikitext mode enabled in Beta (I did try it but something about it annoyed me, I forget why, and turned it off again). But having said all of that, I am struggling to see how generating the URL to launch could be altered by the browser. It feels like there is some chunk of code somewhere that adds /w instead of /wiki/ when constructing the URL. Or perhaps some code that copies the article title to construct the URL is doing so 3 bytes earlier that it should, so /wiki becomes /w or somesuch, perhaps some memory management problem where a string has been freed despite still being referenced. That's what it "smells" like. Kerry (talk) 21:18, 29 June 2017 (UTC)

I meant, do you have [Edit][Edit source], or just [Edit]?

The software uses different URLs, depending upon whether you have the new wikitext mode enabled. I don't know why, but it does. To get to wikitext (with two tabs), I have https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Lear?veaction=editsource here at the English Wikipedia, and that takes me to the new wikitext mode. At the Simple English Wikipedia, I have the beta feature disabled (but still two tabs), and the URL for the corresponding article is https://simple.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=King_Lear&action=edit

I think that there is a bug open about the link tool giving the wrong URL if you are using a /w/ URL to start editing. I'll have to look for it later. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't have the new wikitext mode enabled but I do have the two tabs (Preferences > Editing > Show me both tabs). Kerry (talk) 04:35, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Screen repositioning

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T164720

Has there been any progress on this bug? I had to clean up a load of citations in some articles today and every time I found the citation I needed some screens of text down and clicked it, I fly off to the top of the article. It's been happening for months now. Kerry (talk) 04:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

It hasn't been triaged yet. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:24, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

iWhy not? It's not a visual editor if it doesn't show you what you are editing. I have seen it occurring at WikiClub. Being beginners, they tend to t think "what did I do wrong?" But I know I'm not doing anything wrong. And when you do repetitive tasks on articles like add Navboxes etc, you see it happen on *every* single article, I'm contributing a lot less lately because of it, it's just too frustrating to use. I've got training in a week and have next wikiclub in a fortnight, all of which is done in VE, which I am not looking forward to. Kerry (talk)

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:
Steps to Reproduce:
Results:
Expectations:
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser
Operating system
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Badshah HY (talk) 11:42, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Preview

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T172297

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/49.0.2623.112 Safari/537.36

I'm not sure if it's a client-side problem, but the preview edit feature does not work for me, it only freezes the software

Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 01:49, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Jjjjjjdddddd, I need more information about this. Are you in the visual or wikitext modes? What did you click on to get to "the preview edit feature"? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:44, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Well, I clicked "Save changes" in wikitext mode, chose "Show preview", and got a freeze. Not sure if it's my sub-par computer or a software bug. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 05:47, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Jjjjjjdddddd, do you still remember what page it was on ? Was it a big article, or a small one ? Had you made many changes or just minimal changes ? —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 07:31, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure it's happened more than once, and I think it was a fairly small thing(70 b or so) Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 03:03, 14 July 2017 (UTC) UPDATE: It happened again. Jjjjjjdddddd (talk) 05:11, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

"Edit" button working differently for citations!

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T169307
Resolved

Previously, if you hovered over a citation (footnote number), and then clicked edit, if the citation was created using a template, then the template editor opened (for example, for the template "cite news"), and you could edit the template (modify an existing parameter, add a new parameter, etc.). Now when you click "Edit", the Reference dialog opens, and you have to click in the box with the text, then click again, in order to invoke the template editor. Further, when saving the changes, there is yet another additional click. This is not only three extra clicks, it's confusing to editors who were used to the old system. And, as far as I can see, there actually isn't anything that can be done in the reference dialog if the citation was created using a template. Why was the change made? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:31, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that it's not obvious that you have to click the link in the edit window to edit it. The new version is less user-friendly than the old.Red Fiona (talk) 21:05, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

This is known, accidental, and going to be fixed.

Fixing it is probably going to annoy the editors who have been asking for this for the last couple of years, because in the current "broken" mode, it's possible to add a second template or extra content to the footnote: <ref>{{cite web|title=Whatever}} Short note. {{extra template}}</ref>, and in the old system, you couldn't do that. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

The problem, for me, is not so much the new system, so much as the only reason I knew how to edit using it was User:John Broughton's message. It's really non-obvious.Red Fiona (talk) 13:14, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

There are (at least) three things that an editor can do with a footnote created with a template: (1) edit that template (modify parameters), (2) add a second template, or extra content, to the footnote, and (3) change the group to which the footnote belongs. All of that can be addressed - with minimal impact on experienced editors, and minimum additional clicks/steps required, by using "modify" rather than "edit" as the action that one can take with a template-created footnote, from the main editing window. Specifically, clicking on "modify" would open a dialog with those three choices. In most cases the editor would end up doing a single extra click ("edit template").

If that approach were taken, the current dialog should be retained for circumstances where the footnote is already mixed - that is, where more than just a single template is used; clicking "modify" would display the current dialog. Then hovering over the content of the footnote would indicate which part is a template (or a separate second template); that experience would resemble editing as is currently done in the main editing window. Of course, selecting a template in this case would be via an "edit" link, rather than a "modify" link, just as is the case in the main editing window. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:50, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Intellectually, the current behaviour is right, because we are dealing with two constructs, being the ref pair and the template within the ref pair, so it makes sense that you need a 2-level edit so you can modify at both levels. In particular, the current behaviour makes it possible to add a {{deadlink}} after the citation but still within the reference as requested by that template's documentation. Otherwise, there is no way to do this in the VE; you have to use the srouce editor. It also makes it a more consistent UI experience for those of us who use other {{cite}} templates than just the 4 built-in (web, news, book, journal) ones (and I do use quite a number of other cite templates myself). But I agree that none of these reasons are common "use case" that most people are likely to be wanting to do and maybe when you first click on the citation, there should be two buttons, Edit, which jumps straight into editing whichever template is in use (including those other than the "big 4" as I do find the two step process for working with these annoying) and another button "Ref Edit" (or whatever better name comes to mind) which lets you play at the reference level where you can add a deadlink or CC attribution or commentary on the citation that falls outside of the cite template parameters. Kerry (talk) 22:54, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

This was resolved. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:05, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

@Elitre: I'm not seeing any change. Does the tracking ticket imply that the fix was supposed to be implemented on 13 July? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:25, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

The train was late, but yes, and it is working indeed now. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:31, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Array of 404 issues resulting from /w/ instead of /wiki/ URL in editor mode

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	To edit an article, in particular to click links within that article while editing – this is the specific thing that suffers from this failure.
Steps to Reproduce:	I don't know how, but upon entering VisualEditor, I arrived at an http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title= link, instead of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/. Once this has happened, to reproduce the problem: First be in editor mode with VisualEditor Then click any existing link in the body of text Finally click the link in the popup that appears, like so: http://prntscr.com/fvpkas
Results:	The link which is opened returns a 404 error because it is located at /w/ instead of /wiki/. Results within the article being edited include that it is covered in red links (mainly template links): http://prntscr.com/fvpr2k, though most links to other articles are blue: http://prntscr.com/fvproq (whether a link is red or blue seems to be somewhat random, as you can see in the pronunciation template in the previous screenshot). Article links on Wikipedia work fine with the /w/index.php?title=Article_name URL, however the popup attempts to link the user to simply /w/Article_name, which returns a 404 error.
Expectations:	The link, and VisualEditor itself, should always be located at /wiki/.
Page where the issue occurs	Any
Web browser	Chrome Version 59.0.3071.115 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Operating system	Windows 7
Skin	Vector
Notes:	None
Workaround or suggested solution	On most occasions, opening VisualEditor leads to a regular /wiki/ link as it should do.

SpikeballUnion (talk) 16:36, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

This may have been already fixed. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:30, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Strange things that you can do with the VE

I was doing a Cite > Manual > Basic intending to paste in one of my favourite citations, when it seemed I didn't have my favourite citation in my paste buffer but by some accident (probably Ctrl-A Ctrl-C when my brain was in neutral) I had a copy of the article itself. Curiously it actually worked although the end result was pretty weird. So I saved the result for anyone interested to see what happens if you put an article complete with infobox, references and navboxes as a reference to itself. Here's the diff. I'm not reporting this as a bug (it did more-or-less what it thought I wanted), just in the category of "by gosh, that copy and paste is smart in the VE". Kerry (talk) 16:06, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Kindly remove this image

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Navghan_Kuwo.jpg

Raakuldeep (talk) 12:50, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Raakuldeep:, this page is only for Visual Editor-related feedback and bug reports. However, the linked image is currently under discussion for deletion. Please feel free to comment directly in the thread at Commons:Commons:Deletion requests/Files uploaded by Raakuldeep (also including 3 more images). GermanJoe (talk) 08:05, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Copying wikilinks and they become URLs

South Sea Island indentured labourers clearing scrub at Farnborough in 1895

When copying from Capricorn Coast#Yeppoon Sugar Mill, it included a photo with a piped link in the caption. But when I pasted it into Farnborough, Queensland with this diff, all kinds of weird stuff happens to the link to the image and to the link in the caption.

[[File:Farnborough-kanakas1895.png|link=https://en.wikipedia.org/w/File:Farnborough-kanakas1895.png|thumb|[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/South_Sea_Islander South Sea Island] indentured labourers clearing scrub at Farnborough in 1895]]

Try clicking on the two images and try clicking on the links in the two captions. Kerry (talk) 01:51, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Kerry, as of today I can't reproduce, but I also can't say whether this was related to something that has been fixed in the meantime? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:29, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

I repeated it and it is not occurring at the moment. Kerry (talk) 16:12, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

I think that this is an instance of phab:T166333. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:46, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Easy and very quick to use

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.115 Safari/537.36

This is a really useful add-on, it speeds up editing up a lot. I can now very easily edit and add references and other things.

Anish Mariathasan (talk) 12:53, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Not indexed by Google

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0

This page is having about 7 hits per day from various wikipedia links but srill not showing in google searches. Pl help in correcting the same.

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morgan_House,_Kalimpong?action=edit&veswitched=1&oldid=791026305

Subhrajyoti07 (talk) 16:56, 20 July 2017 (UTC)

Pages are not usually indexed by most web search engines until they are manually marked for indexing by other editors, or until they are 90 days old. You can read more about this at Wikipedia:New pages patrol/patrolled pages. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:55, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Plain links with quotes fail to make the round-trip edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T172301

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:55.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/55.0

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Intgr/sandbox?veaction=edit

When I paste a link that includes a double quote mark like https://www.google.com/search?q="test+Google+search" then VE initially links the whole URL. But after saving, only part of it is linked.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PCjccTVaTY

-- intgr [talk] 08:28, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for this note, intgr. I've filed the bug report. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:12, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Interaction with GoogleTrans

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156228

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:54.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/54.0

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

Note that if you have your preferences with the gadget by User:Endo999 - GoogleTrans - enabled - you will have serious troubles with visual editor when pressing the shift key.

Shyamal (talk) 04:06, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for mentioning this. I will fix this problem up this weekend. Endo999 (talk) 07:55, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

GoogleTrans no longer works in Visual Editor (pages with parameters 'vedit='). Endo999 (talk) 06:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I think that you meant veaction= instead?

Also, I believe that approach won't exclude any pages if you have enabled the Beta Feature for the new wikitext mode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:30, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

User:Timeshifter: Remember phab:T156228? Do you have "GoogleTrans: open a translation popup for the selected text or the word under the cursor when pushing the shift button" enabled in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets (third item on the page)?

Shyamal, can you tell me what troubles you were having? For example, was the cursor jumping around? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:35, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF): - yes, the cursor jumps (or was jumping) to the beginning of the paragraph. Shyamal (talk) 02:59, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Yea, I actually meant to put 'veaction='. That's what the gadget does now. Thanks for letting me know about this problem. It wasn't too hard to fix up. Endo999 (talk) 20:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

My initial tests show that with the Beta wikitext mode enabled, that the URL has 'veaction=' within the parameters, but please give me example showing this not to be the case and I'll work on it. Endo999 (talk) 22:58, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random?action=edit (with the Beta Feature for the new wikitext mode still enabled).

Also, even if you don't opt-in to the Beta Feature, you can start in the 2010 (light blue) wikitext editor and use the button in the left corner of the toolbar to switch to the visual editor without changing the URL. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:53, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. Since you are a Wikimedia contributor can you suggest a test for me to know that I am in Visual Editor so that I can disable use of GoogleTrans gadget within Visual Editor. Currently, I have the test that 'veaction=' must be in the URL, but you are saying this isn't good enough. Endo999 (talk) 18:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

I have GoogleTrans enabled in preferences. But I don't remember ever using it. Or at least not in a long time. I don't need it since I have the "Translate This!" Firefox addon which I use often. With that addon one selects text, right-clicks the selected text, and a popup menu with options shows up.

I am not currently having the problem with the shift key causing the cursor to move around while in Visual Editor. I just tested it inside and outside of a table in an article.

I will be disabling GoogleTrans since I don't use it. --Timeshifter (talk) 04:05, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Ken Wahl actor DOB 10-31-1954 ?

Making a correction. Ken Wahl DOB 10-31-1954 ... I've found many on other names. This is the first time I've sent info. Ty Brenda Register — Preceding unsigned comment added by BrendaRegister (talk • contribs) 16:27, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Provide a way to identify whether a link is piped or not without opening the link editor

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T172861

When looking at a page in the source it is trivially easy to determine whether a link is piped to a different target than is displayed or not. In VE only the link label is shown and there isn't a way to see at a glance whether the label is the same or different to the link target without mousing over the link individually.

Some way of highlighting that a link is piped to a different target would be useful (e.g. in relation to phab:T55973 when a link label is changed but the link isn't, contrary to your intention). My very first thought is perhaps a dotted or dashed underline. It doesn't need to report what the target is, only that the target is not identical to the label. I haven't got time to see if this is a duplicate of an existing task. Thryduulf (talk) 08:28, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Will mouseover text be a good compromise? I'm not a developer either but my take is that a dotted or dashed underline in VE only would be counter-intuitive to the WYSIWYG principle. Deryck C. 14:38, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Mousover text exists already, but you have to mouseover every link to see it, which is cumbersome. I'm looking for some annotation to highlight that this is a piped link I need to mouseover. Whether underlines are the way to go I don't know, they were just my first thought, and while VE is broadly WYSIWYG it's not completely, e.g. no TOCs, blank lines to interact with templates, question marks to interact with comments, etc. Thryduulf (talk) 15:00, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree this would be useful. Different colour maybe? I use the Preference > Appearance > " Display links to disambiguation pages in orange" and I find the orange definitely draws my attention to potential problems around disambiguation links. Of course different colours are not an ideal solution for people with vision issues. Kerry (talk) 06:55, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Now added to Phabricator as phab:T172861. Thryduulf (talk) 10:34, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for filing this, and especially for including the permalink to this discussion. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

For citations, have a "Generate and insert" button

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T173437

Probably not a new complaint, but the Visual Editor is really slow and a huge reason for why I don't contribute more to Wikipedia.

Here's a small and simple suggestion to speed it up: When adding citations, I have to first click "Generate", wait 5-10 seconds, then click "Insert". Why not give contributors the option of skipping the second step, by allowing me to simply click a "Generate and Insert" button in the very first step? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimsmith1978 (talk • contribs) 06:42, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

Used to think this too; it would be a good idea. SpikeballUnion (talk) 04:24, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Jim and SpikeballUnion, I think that the point behind the separate 'Insert' button is that you need to see the results that the citoid service gives you. The imagined workflow is paste in the URL (or ISBN, etc.), "Generate" the citation, manually look at the result, and finally "Insert" it (only if you like it). Skipped the "Insert" step would also skip the opportunity to look at the result. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree. Automatic citations often contain errors because web scraping is a messy business. Very common ones that I see come from government agencies that appear as

{{Cite web|url=https://environment.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=600066|title=Albert Street Uniting Church {{!}} Environment, land and water|last=Communications|first=c=AU; o=The State of Queensland; ou=Department of Environment and Heritage Protection; ou=Corporate|website=environment.ehp.qld.gov.au|language=en-AU|access-date=2017-08-02}}

which renders as ^[1]

^ Communications, c=AU; o=The State of Queensland; ou=Department of Environment and Heritage Protection; ou=Corporate. "Albert Street Uniting Church | Environment, land and water". environment.ehp.qld.gov.au. Retrieved 2017-08-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

which pretty much gets everything wrong including the DMY. As someone who cleans up this stuff, I would be very grateful if we didn't automatically insert it. It's bad enough that people are hitting Insert without checking what's generated (there's no way something like the above derives from human error with a manual citation). Maybe we should be disabling this feature from users who don't use it intelligently. Kerry (talk) 22:29, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Jimsmith1978, I've filed your suggestion at phab:T173437. If you want, you can use your Wikipedia account to login there (button at the bottom of the login page - look for the yellow sunflower logo) and add more comments there. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

VE steals the keyboard shortcut for the Show Changes button in SE (Alt-Shift-V)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T156141

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	look at the change I'm making using the Show Changes button's keyboard shortcut, in Source Editing (i.e. I'm not using VisualEditor)
Steps to Reproduce:	1. Edit any page with the traditional editor. 2. Make any change, but don't save it. 3. Press Alt-Shift-V to click the Show Changes button. Reproducible.
Results:	I see a prompt to switch to the visual editor.
Expectations:	See my changes in a side-by-side diff.
Page where the issue occurs	en.wikipedia.org
Web browser	Google Chrome 61.0.3152.0 (Official Build) canary (64-bit)
Operating system	Windows 10 Version 1607 (OS Build 14393.969)
Skin	Vector
Notes:	n/a
Workaround or suggested solution	None yet found.

Mathieu ottawa (talk) 22:04, 13 July 2017 (UTC)

Mathieu ottawa, which mw:Editor are you calling "SE"? Why do you think that this has anything to do with the visual editor? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

Extension:WikiEditor, apparently. Sorry, I hadn't been aware that there was more than one. (I have both "Show edit toolbar (requires JavaScript)" and "Enable enhanced editing toolbar" enabled in my Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing.)
I suspect this is a VisualEditor-owned piece, because instead of seeing my changes in a side-by-side diff, I see a prompt to switch to the visual editor. Now, I suppose it's possible that someone else is prompting me to switch to the visual editor--but I don't have the technical knowledge to figure out that someone is, if it's not VisualEditor.--Mathieu ottawa (talk) 02:37, 6 August 2017 (UTC)

This seems to be phab:T156141. Thanks for the explanation. I apologize for taking so long to get the bug number posted here.

I'm putting this on my list of things to talk to the Product Manager about, in the hope that it might be fixed sooner rather than later. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:59, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Automatic Citation Tool Thinks a Link is in Spanish When It Isn't.

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I'm going through sports bios adding missing info. For 2014 Commonwealth Games athletes, this includes adding links to their results from the 2014 Official Site. When I do this, the auto tool thinks the page is in Spanish.
Steps to Reproduce:	And example would be Ryan Sissons. I added a link to http://g2014results.thecgf.com/athlete/triathlon/1024120/ryan_sissons.html this page. The auto cite says its in Spanish. I fixed it manually. This happens every time I add a link to this website.
Results:	It says the website is in Spanish.
Expectations:	It says the website is in English (which it is) or no language given at all. I'm really not sure why it picks Spanish as the language.
Page where the issue occurs	Add URL(s) or diffs
Web browser	Chrome 60.0.3112.90
Operating system	Whichever the most recent Windows is.
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Any additional information. Can you provide a screenshot, if relevant?
Workaround or suggested solution	Not found one yet. I've been correcting manually.

Red Fiona (talk) 17:49, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

This says that the language is Spanish because the website itself claims to be in Spanish. The very first bit of HTML on that page is <html lang ="es". The only way you could fix this is to write to the website's owner and tell them that they've got the wrong language code on the page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

I always knew the Scottish were funny people ;) Thanks. Red Fiona (talk) 19:51, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Suggestion for Citations in VE

Some articles have warning messages at the top to use DMY dates in the references. This is an easy box to overlook when adding several references. If a title in a citation has a line break in a red warning message appears when you save the link. Is there any way that this could also be done if you put the date in the wrong way? Asking because I feel really bad about the amount of effort that users like Lugnuts spend tidying up after users like myself. Red Fiona (talk) 16:20, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

In general, VE itself tries to do few things that are very Wikipedia specific, especially if they are specific to a single Wikipedia (because that is very high maintenance). I'd say, that long term, editors shouldn't have to care how the date is entered. I'd also say that if a bot cannot do it, then VE cannot do it, so what I wonder is if Lugnuts can be replaced by a bot... —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:42, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh well, since it doesn't matter, please change the VE to use DMY dates when it constructs citations. The DMY people like me will all be very happy and the non-DMY people can be the ones who wait for the bot. Kerry (talk) 07:57, 25 July 2017 (UTC)

Citoid uses an easily translated ISO standard for dates, and you can set the date format inside the citation template to whatever you want (the |df= template). If you do that, then the citation template will always automatically transform the ISO date to match the desired format. A bot could very easily add that parameter to all citation templates on a page. You could also propose that the templates treat |df=dmy as the default, unless specified otherwise. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I'd be delighted if DMY was the default. I am tired of fixing date formats in articles manually because other people are using Citoid. I understand that searching the article for the "Use DMY dates" template is an issue for performance, but it would only be in "automatic citation" which is a bit of a sit-back-and-wait situation for the user anyway (something the user freely chooses to do as an alternative to manual citation). As it stands, the VE does appear to be treating some templates with special processing (infoboxes, coords), so it is not without precedent. Kerry (talk) 22:11, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I've been told that it can't be done. It's not performance; it's the mess of trying to make it happen. And if they somehow managed to do it, then the dates would get mangled again if the article got translated into another language. Manually changing date formats seems tedious (why don't you just wait until someone runs one of the date-formatting scripts to fix it?), but IMO this is worse. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Presumably you fix ht.WP without waiting for some bot for the same reasons I fix date formats on en.WP articles about Australian content. Firstly because I haven't seen any date-fixing bot come past in a very long time (and even when I did it wasn't frequent enough) and so I do it myself because I care about Australian content and I don't want it to be wrong, which is both ugly and confusing. But I think the real problem is that we are seeing this as a content issue rather than as a rendering issue. We should just template every date on Wikipedia and let the rendering display it correctly for the locale or as directed by the user's preferences. We could deal with spelling variations the same way. We really are using the wrong tools for this job. Kerry (talk) 06:48, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

I fix things at htwiki because I can't do more important things there (since I don't speak the language at all), and because there are no local bots. The m:Global bot policy does not currently permit global bots to clean up obviously broken wikitext.

I wonder whether we could set you up with a list of Australia-related articles that need the |df= item added, and let you fix them all quickly. You're running Windows, right? (Or maybe it would make more sense just to poke one of the bot ops to get a date-fixing bot running through your favorite subject area.) User:Magioladitis or User:NicoV would probably know the best way to do this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Since you mention Windows, are you saying AWB (which suits me fine)? The problem with any bot is that I have thousands of Australian articles on my watchlist so I generally see updated articles within a day (I usually work my way through my watchlist every morning religiously - I get notifications by email and I delete the mail when I have checked and, if needed, fixed the article) so I see the non-DMY dates going in, so I have to fix them. The bot needs to run faster than I do if it's going to save me work. When I say I fix them manually, I use some gadget to actually fix all the dates within the article. But I have to open/save each article manually. So AWB suits me well, as I just have to SAVE or SKIP. But for the next month, I am quite literally at sea, so I won't be doing my watchlist for a while.. Kerry (talk) 18:23, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I was thinking about an AWB approach, if bots weren't available. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:01, 17 August 2017 (UTC)

And I probably won't be reporting any VE bugs either :-) Kerry (talk) 18:25, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

photo

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Billy_%22Uncle_Bill%22_Wright&action=edit How do I upload my photo?

Billy "Uncle Bill" Wright (talk) 17:56, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

trying to upload photos to the wiki and it is not working

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 9460.73.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/59.0.3071.134 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_(advertisement)?action=edit&oldid=793673451&wteswitched=1

Thesubarulovah (talk) 18:17, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Recent performance analysis?

This is a bit of a generic complaint but it seems that Visual Editor performance has noticeably decreased during the last months or year, especially when loading large articles with tables. At the same time Visual Editor seems to hog every last bit of processor ressources while loading such pages - to the point where everything else freezes for several seconds. Admittedly my PC is utter crap (Windows XP, 2x1.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM, Firefox 52.0.2), so I probably have only myself to blame ;). (1) But has there been any recent research in Visual Editor performance especially for low-end systems? (2) And are developers still working on performance tweaks? Just curious, any info or links to recent research would be appreciated. GermanJoe (talk) 12:28, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

@GermanJoe: It seems that on average, the load time has consistently gone down, even for the bottom 5% worst performing user agents [3]. However, that also incorperates the fact that people generally tend to update to faster machines over time, so i'm not sure what the trend is when you would pin that to one specific non-updated machine. It is also true that Firefox is generally a slow browser when it comes to VE, and that generations of machines using XP, are probably never going to run VE fluently. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 11:04, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

The team is talking about a proper performance audit during the next quarter. I don't know yet if they'll get it approved, etc., but it is something that they thing that it's time to check. AFAIK nobody is explicitly working on performance right now (although it's something all of them keep in mind). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Image addition bug

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Was attempting to upload images to be included in the article Partizanskaya metro page.
Steps to Reproduce:	#First Go to visual editor and press "add media" Then select a photo for upload add description etc and press upload Finally view the uploaded image. Issue was reproducible and in total two images were tried, both only 50% of the image was uploaded
Results:	50% of image uploaded see this image history
Expectations:
Page where the issue occurs	image image2 look at the history of both images.
Web browser	Chromium 60.0.3112.90
Operating system	Arch Linux
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution	Upload the image to the commons first and then use it in visual editor rather than trying to upload whilst in visual editor.

EvilxFish (talk) 10:05, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

Strange. You were uploading the same versions of those files each time, right? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes it was the same files from the same machine both times, please note that the current versions are slightly different though as other users removed the embedded data. EvilxFish (talk) 19:25, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

PgDn jumps to near the beginning

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Page down
Steps to Reproduce:	#Edit the page Make an edit somewhere deep in the page Press PgDn I have seen this many times
Results:	The focus shifts to the first subhead
Expectations:	The page would scroll down
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Happens on Chrome and Firefox
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin	Monobook
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Lfstevens (talk) 13:40, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

Only have a save shortcut on the final save dialogue

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 9592.94.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.114 Safari/537.36

When saving an article, there isn't a first "Alt+S" save shortcut, like the one when the final save dialogue loads. These two shortcuts should be largely the same.

Sadads (talk) 03:00, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

How do I see a preview of my work when editing in wikisyntax mode? Can't find it.

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_12_6) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Snapdragon66?veaction=editsource

Snapdragon66 (talk) 16:54, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Snapdragon66: you have to click "Publish", and then in the dialog that pops up, it's the 2nd button at the bottom left. It's a bit confusing indeed but there is already a ticket for the developers about this confusion. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 18:16, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Rajesh shah

Brun 1983 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ashika shah (talk • contribs) .

Hello @Ashika shah:, if you would like to post article-related feedback, please use the article's talkpage instead (probably Talk:Rajesh Shah) - but you should provide a published reliable source for any information you want to get changed or added. I'll post a few additional links with some basic information about Wikipedia on your user talkpage. If you have further questions, the WP:Teahouse is a good forum to ask for Wikipedia-related assistance. GermanJoe (talk) 19:55, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Needs link to these "usual tradeoffs..."

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.113 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Triclopyr&action=edit

RedBird 14:36, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

Hello @RedBird:, please suggest article-related changes on the article's talkpage Talk:Triclopyr (Visual Editor feedback is primarily for editor-related bug reports and comments). Or you can edit the article yourself of course. GermanJoe (talk) 18:00, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Preview?

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.12; rv:57.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/57.0

I can't figure out how to view a preview. I need it to see that a template looks right.

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faulkner_Act?action=edit

Acebarry (talk) 14:29, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Acebarry: - Does this section, above, answer your question? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:49, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@John Broughton: - Yes it does! I thought by doing that I would save my work. Thanks for getting back to me 23:51, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

overlinking: worldcat and oclc

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T95376

Recently I've encountered a lot of edits like this one where new citations are added that have both |oclc= and include a redundant link to the same place in |url=. To me, this 'functionality' seems pointless because the two link to the same place and that place is not a readable copy of the cited source – worldcat may have a link to Google preview but there is no guarantee of that. Don't overlink, don't link |title= with |url= when the value of |url= does not go to the source.

And why are worldcat/oclc handled differently from other identifiers?

—Trappist the monk (talk) 10:50, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Deleting infobox parameters scrolls screen to top of dialogue box

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T180151

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	To delete a parameter
Steps to Reproduce:	Steps: First edit an article with an infobox and double-click the infobox to open its settings Then click in a parameter input box Finally click the red bin next to the input box to delete the parameter.
Results:	The screen scrolls to the top of the dialogue box.
Expectations:	The scroll position should remain the same.
Page where the issue occurs	Any
Web browser	Chrome 60.0.3112.101
Operating system	Windows 7
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Screenshot before parameter deletion: http://prntscr.com/gu5zis, screenshot after parameter deletion: http://prntscr.com/gu5zvy
Workaround or suggested solution	Only workaround is using source editor.

SpikeballUnion (talk) 19:20, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Citation in infobox floating at the top of the article during Edit

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T180154

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Editing Cairns Hospital to fix the suburb
Steps to Reproduce:	I edited the lede para and then I opened the infobox and updated the location field. On existing the edit of the infobox, I noticed that at the top of the article (immediately above Cairns Hospital, known as ...) it was displaying a citation "[1] Patient information brochure ...", a citation which was in the Founded field of the infobox (I had not edited that field). I wasn't sure what would happen when I saved, but I was sure I had not meddled with citations, so went ahead and Saved and everything seemed OK in the article as displayed. I then noticed that some of the information displayed in the Location field of the infobox was duplicated so I went back into Edit and fiddled with the fields that are used to construct the location and again on exiting from editing the infobox, the citation was again visible at the start of the article (again I had not editted the Founded field). Again SAVE worked as expected. It is reproducible because I tested for this.Edit the article, go into the infobox and remove Cairns from the Location field, exit the infobox and the citation will be there above the title.
Results:	It works on SAVE as expected, it's just the visual experience is weird.
Expectations:	Not to see a citation at the top of the article.
Page where the issue occurs	diff1 & diff2 (occurred in both)
Web browser	Version 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build) (64-bit) up to date
Operating system	Windows 8.1
Skin	default
Notes:	Yes, I have a screenshot. I can email it to someone.
Workaround or suggested solution

Kerry (talk) 01:16, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. I was going to report this issue ages ago but Template:VE Bug2 wasn't working in the bug report page. I'm pretty sure this: http://prntscr.com/gu62xo is what you were reporting. It only started happening about 2 or 3 months ago. SpikeballUnion (talk) 19:25, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

I just noticed it in the last day or so. I've experimented a little. It occurs when there is an infobox with a citation and when there is some change made to anything in the infobox (doesn't matter what field). If you open the infobox to edit but then don't make a change, the problem doesn't occur. If you edit the infobox, Apply changes, the citation appears but if you then Undo, the citation goes away again. If you edit the infobox, Apply changes, the citation appears. If you edit the infobox again and reverse the original change, then Apply Changes, the citation disappears. So it seems to trigger precisely on an infobox which is changed from the original. Kerry (talk) 00:32, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

VisualEditor won't disable

I am fed up of the VisualEditor and I want to disable it but I don't know how to do this. Can you please help me. I don't like the way the buttons on the VisualEditor are so confusing to locate and I am happier editing on the original editor than the VisualEditor. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:13, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I even enabled the source editor but this rubbish VisualEditor won't go away. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:16, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

I am becoming frustrated because 5 minutes it will go to the source editor and then it will automatically change to the VisualEditor and I completely hate the VisualEditor. Pkbwcgs (talk) 09:30, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

If you always want the source editor then you should have "Always give me the source editor" at "Editing mode:" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing. "New wikitext mode" and "Automatically enable all new beta features" should be disabled at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. Did that help? PrimeHunter (talk) 10:23, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

@PrimeHunter: Yes it did but the images problem is still not fixed yet as indicated at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Pkbwcgs (talk) 10:30, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

Signpost

Is there a chance visual editing will come to the Wikipedia Signpost pages? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 22:34, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

There are three ways. One is to get the VE enabled on the Wikipedia namespace in which Signpost lives. This is a policy issue rather than a technical issue. The second is to place the template {{VEFriendly}} at the top of individual pages, which basically lets you invoke the the Visual Editor on that page, for an example see Wikipedia:GLAM/State Library of Queensland/QWiki Club. The third is to do manually what the template does, which is to add &veaction=editsource onto the URL of the Wikipedia page. None of these are officially endorsed, but just saying what I do in similar situations. Kerry (talk) 00:50, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

While its technically possible already per what Kerry said, editing Signpost pages with VE won't be a pleasant experience because of all the custom formatting and templates – e.g. for https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2017-09-25/News_and_notes&veaction=edit everything you might want to edit visually is interpreted by VE as blocks of templates/transcusions. If you want a better experience, VE needs to be able to visually edit content within such blocks (which I think has been requested before, but IIRC is too difficult with too few use cases for mainspace) - Evad37 [talk] 03:03, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I assume that the present design relates to an era when the source editor was the only option but would the same design decisions be made today. Even as someone quite proficient in the source editor, I'd be reluctant to edit anything made so complex. Given there's often a call for more people to contribute to Signpost, I can see why they don't if they have to master the complexity of those templates. @Eddie891:, can you clarify what kind of edits you are wanting to make? E.g. to write content, to comment, or what? If it's clearer how people are wanting to contribute, it might become clearer how to reduce the impediments to doing so. Kerry (talk) 10:12, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

I usually do a significant amount of writing content for The SignpostEddie891 ^Talk _Work 11:08, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Ref name

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T52568

How do we add references with the "ref name" via VE? --Kailash29792 (talk) 18:37, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

I don't think you can. Mostly this is not a problem as the VE automatically labels citations with numbers, but it becomes a problem when a citation is declared within an infobox rather than in the main body of the text, as this gets "overlooked" when you do a citation re-use. I do not know of a solution other than using the source editor. Kerry (talk) 08:27, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Searching and re-using citations

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T179870

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I was trying to re-use a source used elsewhere in the article.
Steps to Reproduce:	#First I clicked " cite. Then I clicked the re-use tab. I entered the start of the author's last name or the name of a publication I knew was used in a source elsewhere in the article. For example, I would try to search for New York Times or Nytimes, knowing a New York Times article from nytimes.com was cited in the article, and get no results. The results looks completely blank. Finally I have tried this on multiple articles with no luck. Typing the number the article assigns to the reference seems to work to pull up the source, but it is sometimes hard to know what the appropriate number is of the source I am looking for.
Results:	The results show up blank.
Expectations:	I was expecting to see a list of all citations to the New York Times in that wikipedia article.
Page where the issue occurs
Web browser	Chrome Version 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build)
Operating system	Windows 10
Skin
Notes:
Workaround or suggested solution

Knope7 (talk) 01:14, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Agreed. Nothing happens. I usually just scroll so I've not noticed the problem before. Kerry (talk) 08:32, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

No easy way to get back to VisualEditor

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T182155

Hi! I'm asking on behalf of Wiki Education - we have had several students end up losing access to VE because they post on a talk page, which can only be edited in source mode. Since the default is to remain in the last editor version used, there's no easy way for them to get back to VE. I know that for more experienced and/or adventurous Wikipedians they'll go to the preferences tab, but honestly there are a lot of Wikipedians who don't go to the preferences tab (where they can change it back or enable both) and I don't think that all really know that it's there offhand, given that I've had a few students ask me how to get to their sandbox. I figure that it's because of an overload of information and a fear of messing things up (more).

Is there a way to keep VE from getting disabled when editors post to a talk page or perhaps have the "enable both" option the default upon launch? Or other than that, perhaps a way for people to get back to source mode without going to the preferences section, like a popup that comes up after they save their talk page message? Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 17:45, 27 September 2017 (UTC)

Hi, I think that for the time being, if the option on the toolbar for the easy switch back (the pencil) doesn't seem to be working for your cases, I think you could consider highlighting it, or the possibility to have 2 tabs, as part of the information you're already certainly providing to the students. At least you have good chances to succeed, because it is a group with a finite number of people with whom you can communicate in several ways. So while it may be suboptimal, I think it's what you can do now. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:21, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

@Shalor (Wiki Ed): This happens to my trainees too. The solution is to set Preference > Editing > Editing mode to "Show both editor tabs". Do NOT use "Remember my last editor", because sooner or later this setting leads to the problem you are seeing. Kerry (talk) 03:33, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

We've been telling students to do that, but I didn't know if there was a way to resolve this without having to go to preferences. Shalor (Wiki Ed) (talk) 13:58, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Can you elaborate on why the toolbar switch is impractical for them? If the problem is occasional, it should be enough: if it's too frequent, then yes, choosing a different setup from Prefs does the trick. (FWIW, there is an option "Always give me the visual editor when possible".) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Because they see the markup and panic. These are generally new users; they don't generally know the semantics of the "pencil" icon. I know of a couple of people who clicked it thinking it was a drawing tool. Why not tell them ""Always give me the visual editor when possible"? Because at one point it didn't seem to work properly and nobody has reported here that it has been fixed. Also, when dealing with a panicking/frustrated person, I tell them what I *know* works to fix the problem and not something that I think *might* work. These problems are generally occurring after the class so we are communicating by email so there's quite a time lag already to sort out their problem. The frustration of new users is already fairly high, so I don't want to make it worse. This is a new user problem rather than a functional problem. Kerry (talk) 08:59, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Edit a row in a table and it disappears from view

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	I have been changing a lot of the values in the LGA column of List of schools in Central Queensland
Steps to Reproduce:	Edit > scroll down till I find one of interest (say Cawarral State School in the State primary schools section) which is the 5th row visible on my screen. I see its LGA is wrong, so I double-click in the 3rd column of that row, I select and delete the existing content (Rockhampton). Then I type in Livingstone, then I select that text and click on the Link symbol on the toolbar, and up comes the usual dialogue for adding a link, BUT on screen behind the link dialog something has changed (although I usually don't notice it at this point as my focus in on choosing the correct link (Shire of Livingstone). What has changed on screen behind the Link dialogue is the positioning of the table. The row with Cawarral State School has disappeared and the first visible row on screen is now Clarke Creek State school (which is the row AFTER Cawarall State School). After finishing the link dialogue, the on-screen view remains still with Clarke Creek Staet School at the top and the row I have just edited is not visible. It's very reproducible because it happened to me many times yesterday on List of schools in Far North Queensland where I was doing a similar task.
Results:	I can't see the row I am editing.
Expectations:	The row I was editing stayed in much the same place on the screen as it was before, or at least move to something where I could see it. So you have to scroll up to find the row and check the change and do other changes to that row as required.
Page where the issue occurs	You won't learn much from the diff as it did what I wanted in terms of changing the article but the repositioning of the screen is an absolute pain, given it happens every time I edit that LGA field.
Web browser	Chrome Version 61.0.3163.100 (Official Build) (64-bit) (up to date)
Operating system	Windows 8.1 (up to date)
Skin	whatever the default is
Notes:	Screenshot? Great idea, but how?! If I try upload it to Commons, there is a problem with WMF IP apparently.
Workaround or suggested solution	Don't edit tables?

Kerry (talk) 08:33, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Having done more table editing, I notice a pattern. When adding a link to the table cell, if the drop-downs list of link suggestions is very long, that's when the table moves upwards on the screen, presumably to accommodate the longer drop-down, but putting the row out of sight when the link is added. If the list of suggestions is short, the table seems to remain in place. Kerry (talk) 09:01, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

the table cannot be edited

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/61.0.3163.100 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel?action=edit

Adithya harish pergade (talk) 18:40, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Special Characters in the Citation Editor

Hi, I was just wondering if there was a way of adding special characters in the titles when using the citation editor? Red Fiona (talk) 19:56, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

science

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; CrOS x86_64 9592.96.0) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/60.0.3112.114 Safari/537.36

it doesn't doesn't contain anything about Acoustics consultant Analytical textile technologist Animal technician Astronaut Astronomer Audiologist Biochemist Biologist Biomedical scientist Biotechnologist Botanist Chemical engineer Chemical engineering technician Chemist Clinical engineer Clinical psychologist Clinical scientist Consumer scientist Criminal intelligence analyst Data analyst-statistician Ecologist Economist Education technician Electronics engineer Fingerprint officer Food scientist Forensic scientist Garment technologist Geneticist Geoscientist Geotechnician Healthcare science assistant Laboratory technician Materials engineer Materials technician Medical physicist Meteorologist Microbiologist Nanotechnologist Nuclear engineer Oceanographer Operational researcher Paleontologist Pathologist Pet behaviour counsellor Pharmacologist Physicist Psychiatrist Psychologist Research and development manager Research scientist Scenes of crime officer Sport and exercise psychologist Sports scientist Technical brewer Technical textiles designer Textile technologist Vet Zoologist

204.186.238.66 (talk) 14:25, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

@204.186.238.66: You apparently think that the article Science should include a long list of occupations. I've added a link - List of scientific occupations - in the "See also" section; I don't think any other action is needed. In the future, please makes suggestions for changes to an article on the Talk page for that article; in this case, that would have been Talk:Science. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:51, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Heads-up

Over two years ago I contacted several wikis as part of the plan to progressively centralise user feedback about the visual editor at mediawiki.org. (Among the other advantages it offers, the centralised board is the only one that Community Liaisons at the Wikimedia Foundation commit to check at least once a week.)

We are now working at the second phase of feedback centralisation. We think this page gets enough traffic that it's worth keeping it here, but we still want to make a change. The page will need a visible notice on top. It must either flag the name of at least one volunteer who agrees to monitor and take action on the page from now on, or it needs to say that the page is not actively monitored by WMF staff. (In any case, after the transition is complete, you can get our attention at any time by simply pinging us, like you're already doing.)

Unless I hear from you before, I'll come back in 2 weeks, on 2017-10-24, to see whether someone has volunteered, otherwise I'll simply put the other notice up. I appreciate your attention and all your support! Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:16, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

What are the benefits to those of us who currently contribute here? The signal seems to be "we are no longer wanting feedback" or "we are no longer interested in the Visual Editor" (a once-a-week look doesn't sound like any action will be taken on an urgent bug). A quick visit to the centralised page makes it look inferior to what we have here. I don't see a template, which is useful for most bug reports. Will it be possible there to add screenshots which we can't do here? And how do we setup notifications when the page changes? I ask this because I don't get them from other wikis such as wikidata even though I have tried many times to set the preferences to do so. And how do you actually read the entries -- they all appear empty? And what is the role of this volunteer you are seeking for here? Bug reports need to be seen by the developers not random volunters. The motivation for this change seems unclear and the proposed new arrangement seems to be to make it more difficult to give feedback, particularly for the new users who are the target audience of the Visual Editor. Kerry (talk) 00:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your questions. When the visual editor first landed on big wikis, the Foundation had a huge staff that took care of the feedback for months, on several of our wikis. Liaisons don't have those staff resources any more: on the top of that, we never meant to "own" the feedback process. It is vital that communities self-sustain in those areas where this is possible (especially the biggest and best organized ones), and feedback at a not-crucial stage of the life of a single product is certainly one of those areas. This doesn't mean CLs simply walk away: we remain available whenever the need arises, but we just can't behave as if this is our only task and priority, like it was in 2013.

The TL;DR (the process goes way beyond en.wikipedia, so some of the following may not apply) would be: having all the feedback on a single, centralized place like mw:VisualEditor/Feedback mainly means getting faster, more frequent replies and more attention from a higher number of people, including the people who are building the software. It also means chances are high, that editors will find that someone else has already written there about the issues or requests they wanted to post.

Maintaining a local page instead can be cumbersome: it needs to be checked frequently in case someone reports urgent issues. Old threads need to be archived from time to time. Off-topic comments should be removed to keep readability. Feedback left there is sometimes not easily understandable or actionable at all.

As for your questions:

- Yes, we still want feedback. We will always want feedback. Including yours :)
- There isn't a template. In all these years, there hasn't been much need for it, if any: in the worst case scenario, we can point people to mw:How_to_report_a_bug so they know which structure is more effective for their reports.
- Once a week is the minimum: it refers to the process of following-up after a task has been resolved. If the report is on mw.org, then I'll go close/summarize the thread and update the Tracked template. I check centralized boards multiple times a day.
- You can upload screenshots in comments there by drag&drop, and then clicking Upload (it's the uploading procedure from within the visual editor), or you can use https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/file/upload/ (no need for them to be actually attached to a task).
- For watching the page, I simply have it in my watchlist and get email notifications every time a new thread comes up. To follow specific threads you're interested in as they evolve, you can watch them by subscribing individually to them.
- Most of the threads are actually empty - the page gets some spam or OT content (I'm on it). https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Topic:Tyf6r3spq0a16k77 is an example of an open thread. You can see closed threads at any time by clicking on the "X comments" link.
- Volunteers who watch feedback pages simply help with requests as they come by: they look up on Phab if those are already known, otherwise they file a new task. Phab is how you put things in front of devs' eyes. I'll be happy to discuss more in details with anyone who would like to step up, if they have any doubts/concerns.

However, in case this isn't clear though: this page is not going away. Others elsewhere are, but this one doesn't really need a redirect at this time. We simply need people to know that the mediawiki.org one is the officially staffed one. If volunteers want to keep this one alive, that's great!, go ahead, otherwise let's simply have a notice that reflects reality. HTH. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:11, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

I have now put the notices up. LMK if you think tweaks are necessary. best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:23, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Shortcut "Ctrl + Alt + S" should work in the end also

The shortcut "Ctrl + Alt + S" is not working in the end. At the article it´s working but if you are inside the "Save your changes" it´s not working (in opposite to Shift + Alt + I").

Thank you very much!--F.Blaubiget (talk) 15:05, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

Stop VisualEditor scrolling the page down when inserting a hyperlink

Is there any way to stop VisualEditor scrolling the page down when inserting a hyperlink, as in this screenshot: http://prntscr.com/h34uht? If not, can there at least be an option made for it? It's slower to work with and harder to immediately click on the first result. SpikeballUnion (talk) 14:41, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Templates blocking editing of adjacent image captions

Bug report	VisualEditor
Mito.money	Please app{}
Intention:	Edit the caption of an image which is adjacent to one of these templates, using the recently implemented instant caption edit functionality (instead of going into the image's settings)
Steps to Reproduce:	First, go to a Wikipedia article which includes images on the right and at least one of the templates mentioned above Then, find one in which the template horizontally aligns with the image caption Finally, try to click your mouse in the image caption.
Results:	The selection box of the template is highlighted when you click on the image caption, instead of the image caption, and you cannot edit the image caption. Screenshots: http://prntscr.com/h3ks3l, http://prntscr.com/h3kwvb
Expectations:	The selection box of the template should not overlap the image caption, and I should be able to edit the image caption by clicking it.
Page where the issue occurs	Any
Web browser	Chrome Version 61.0.3163.100 (64-bit)
Operating system	Windows 7
Skin	Vector
Notes:	Screenshots: http://prntscr.com/h3ks3l, http://prntscr.com/h3kwvb
Workaround or suggested solution	Clicking on the image itself and opening its settings dialogue box to edit the caption there

SpikeballUnion (talk) 19:16, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Make the page scroll down when using Find & Replace

Is there a way to make the page scroll down to see which items of text are being replaced as it happens? It currently stays in the same place, and there is no way to scroll to the current item of text selected for replacement: you can only go to the next or previous one. SpikeballUnion (talk) 19:23, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Is Visual Editor stripping whitespace by default

Hi all, re: this edit, and this edit, I'm trying to figure out if Visual Editor is stripping whitespace by default, or if this user might be doing this on purpose. Anyone know anything about this? If the whitespace is being stripped by default, that's a bit annoying, since a lot of editors prefer setting up infoboxes by lining up the = signs. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 22:27, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

Seems to be doing it here as well. Can someone please turn this off? Cyphoidbomb (talk) 04:01, 25 October 2017 (UTC)

Also for the 100th time, fix the damn bug where VE scrambles the order of existing template parameters, even when the user hasn't touched them. Alsee (talk) 13:00, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

I've elevated this to https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T179259#3729758 Cyphoidbomb (talk) 15:11, 2 November 2017 (UTC)

In source editing, the text does not line up with the text cursor (so edits are no where they should be)

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:58.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/58.0

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Probability-generating_function&action=edit

Enedrox (talk) 05:22, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

Audio editing software - VE "switch" "glitch"

User agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.102 UBrowser/7.0.6.1618 Safari/537.36

URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_editing_software?action=edit&oldid=776328615&wteswitched=1

106.207.13.186 (talk) 08:49, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

The first time I followed your link it (eventually) timed out with a server error. Clicking 'cancel' in the error dialog took me to the source editor. I was able to switch to VE from there with no issues. Also, your link now works without error, so maybe my actions cleared some server cache somewhere... Definitely confusing and user-unfriendly though. -- Begoon 09:11, 30 November 2017 (UTC)

Grammarly browser plugin

I really thought it would be great if this browser plugin Grammarly worked with VE. It seems very popular and in case you haven't heard of it: see official website. Fortunately, it does work with source editing since it seems to search for editable html fields to check, so the markup language will cause some problems. (I just used it here to correct a few things in this post) For someone more technically minded, I was wondering if a small fix in VE would make it compatible as opposed to pleading with the Grammarly devs to make it work. Ugog Nizdast (talk) 18:49, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

@Ugog Nizdast: VE is fundamentally built on the "contenteditable" mode for HTML + lots of other complex additions. This mode gives a lot of power, but also has lots of inconsistencies across browsers and is rather hard to support. This is the reason that grammarly doesn't work in VE. Either we have blocked it, because it was breaking VE, or grammarly has blacklisted VE (not sure which one). if you google a bit for grammarly and content editable, you will find lots of other editors have similar problems. You should contact grammarly for sure if you want this, but I think it might take a few more years for the browsers to become more consistent, in order for grammarly to reliably support complicated editors like VE and CKEditor. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 12:41, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

Blockquote text formatting reset by Visual Edit

Quoted text changed to normal font text from small font text by Visual editor. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.197.7.225 (talk) 19:40, 11 December 2017 (UTC)

[1] Communications, c=AU; o=The State of Queensland; ou=Department of Environment and Heritage Protection; ou=Corporate. "Albert Street Uniting Church | Environment, land and water". environment.ehp.qld.gov.au. Retrieved 2017-08-02.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

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