Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor/Archive 6

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 talk page.

Archive 1

←

Archive 4

Not sure if this is VisualEditor or not...

But something has changed on my edit windows so the text is now displayed in a larger Arial font. When the page loads slowly the traditional text in mono mode appears before switching at the last minute. The section below the edit window has changed too to hide templates and categoies and add some fancy needless stuff. Is this thanks to VE or another changed imposed without telling us? Timrollpickering (talk) 18:52, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Does that occur when you hit the edit beta link? What internet brower are you using? Kumioko (talk) 18:55, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Firefox 23.0.1. I have beta disabled and it happens whether I click the tab at the top to edit the whole page or the edit link to the right of any section heading. Timrollpickering (talk) 18:58, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Fonts are controlled by your web browser. I also use Firefox 23.0.1 (on a Mac), and mine hasn't changed. Look under Preferences > Content > Advanced for font settings. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I've looked but can't spot what the problem could be. What should the default settings be for each option? Timrollpickering (talk) 22:54, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Well, it "should" be whatever you want, but I think you'd like to have the "monospace" item set to something like Courier. The others probably don't apply to the editing window. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:04, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Update: see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Font_changed for a list of on-wiki prefs to doublecheck. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:51, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Ah found the problem, it was in the Wikipedia preference settings. Timrollpickering (talk) 12:09, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Vis.editor and images.

It is necessary to prohibit the insertion of images through the editor. This broken text feature of Vis.editor (like a this). Зелёный Кошак —Preceding undated comment added 18:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi Зелёный Кошак,

I don't understand why you are concerned about that edit. It looks like someone added captions to two pre-existing images. The addition of captions makes the images comply with the WP:Manual of Style, which requires nearly all images to have captions. Why is this a problem? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:05, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Does ve seriously produce markup like [[:File:Intercitymk4logo.png|thumb|337x337px|The Intercity Logo]] for a rectangular image, thumb|96px and give no alt text? -- Clem Rutter (talk) 22:13, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Note, ClemRutter's comment was edited to escape the image (WP:NFCC#9). —rybec 17:14, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

The diff he presented only added the captions. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:34, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Can't see any way you can add alt text with VE, indeed its T40129.--User:Salix alba (talk): 22:41, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I just tracked back to history to see how this group of images had been added. Some were 200px, some 228, some 337- a right dogs breakfast. But the point remains, does ve serious produce this strange markup. Looking at the history, there are no edit summaries for all these ve changes, surely ve shouldn't allow that- even if they are only there to aid debugging. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 12:03, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

You have not quite understood correctly. However, i do not really use a good example. This diff is the correction indicates a trouble. I'm talk not about add an image caption, but about inserting images at all. Such insertion through the editor i have to fix it. Image is inserted not before or not after a paragraph, but into text of the paragraph in an arbitrary manner, thereby breaking it. Зелёный Кошак 03:19, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

I think this has to do with the position of the text cursor. The code for the image will be inserted on a new line at the position of the text cursor. This works fine if the cursor is at the start or end of a paragraph, but causes a lot of problem if the cursor is in the middle. The best way round this is to make sure the text cursor is always between paragraphs or at the very start of a paragraph when you insert an image. Don't have it inside a paragraph.

On a related point, you might want to insert an inline image. This can't be done in VE and I've started a bug T55937.--User:Salix alba (talk): 10:16, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, VisualEditor, just like the wikitext editor, adds the image wherever your cursor is. I've updated the user guide to mention this. People also do this in the wikitext editor (you can see an experienced editor making the same mistake in the classic wikitext editor here), but it's less obvious when you do it in VisualEditor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

"VisualEditor, just like the wikitext editor, adds the image wherever your cursor is." But due to the nature of both, it is very rare to find this error in the text editor, and very common in VE, since you type the file syntax in one (or copy-paste it), and try to drag it to the approximate location in the other. "Less obvious" is quite an understatement for one of the most basic flaws of VE... Fram (talk) 11:39, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Issues I've just experienced with VE

Hello. Personal feelings on VE aside, I just logged out to try VE for the first time in several months. Here's what I experienced:

Article Futurama took 58 seconds to load into VE, with the loading bar running the entire time. I think this is unacceptable as it is probably off-putting to inexperienced users. Further, the bar just fills, empties, fills, empties, etc. rapidly and continuously until the page is loaded... Would it be possible to make this bar actually indicate what percentage has been loaded so editors have at least a hint that something is being processed?
I picked Futurama specifically because I know there is a hidden comment () in the lead. Currently, in VE the hidden comment is, well, hidden. This is quite incongruent with the intent of VE: hidden notes are generally for inexperienced editors, and VE is supposed to assist inexperienced editors, yet currently those notes don't appear to help inexperienced editors. This issue was supposed to be dealt with in a July rollout (per archived discussion), but apparently never happened. This also explains a lot of recent edits I've had to revert that ignore hidden messages as they were clearly never seen! Please do something to fix this as it seems like a pretty big issue (in my opinion)

Anyway, that's my current two cents on VE. If anything I said is confusing or requires further comment, just let me know! DKqwerty 01:54, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Both of these issues are already on the list of needed enhancements. Are you working with an older computer? I can open Futurama in about 15 seconds, and the devs say that CPU speed at the editor's machine is the primary bottleneck. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:28, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm on a computer about 1.5 years old, with an Intel i7 processor on Win7x64 SP1 and the most recent public release of Firefox (23.0.1). Not to sound snotty, but you can believe me when I say my CPU doesn't bottleneck. BTW, I raised this in a more appropriate venue, and was about to delete my comment here but your edit conflicted. DKqwerty 02:35, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Yup, it sounds like CPU is not a significant bottleneck for you. I wonder if it's related to the problem you report at WP:VPT#Slowdowns. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 03:06, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Heuristic parameter detection

Right now, templates must have "TemplateData" for the visual editor to know the right parameters. This can be changed if the editor "detects" the parameters used by a template. For example, if {{Template}} is something like this:

<span style="{{{1}}}">{{FULLPAGENAME}}</span>

It should automatically display "1" as a parameter to add and take it as "mandatory", warning the user if {{Template}} is used without it... Or if {{Template}} is something like this:

<span style="text-decoration: blink">{{FULLPAGENAME}}</span>

It should take "1" as an "optional" parameter. Here's another example for {{Template}}:

{| class="wikitable" width="100%"
|+ This is a good table heading.
{{#ifeq:{{{1}}}|{<!-- -->{{1}<!-- -->}}||
! This is a row heading.
{{!}} {{{1}}}}}
|}

... in which case I'm looking for something even better, where the user might not even need to go into that dialog for changing parameters.

This is a good table heading.
This is a row heading	Click here to insert parameter "1" (or not actually because this is just a fake version in wikitext)

Is such heuristics for parameters used in templates even possible? (don't reply to me that it is possible but would be a client-side performance problem; hint: if it is possible, do it on server side) --X 6 8 6 22:51, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

This idea is whats done in User:Salix alba/TDSkell which is used to generate a skeleton template data for templates. I generally use it as the starting point when writing the TemplateDate documentation. There are a few other implementations of the same idea, see the links at the bottom of Wikipedia:VisualEditor/TemplateData/Tutorial#Tools.

Working out if a parameter is mandatory is quite a hard job. While {{{1}}} is a good indication a parameter is mandatory you can have code like {{{1| {{{2}}} }}} or {{#ifeq:{{{1|}}}|yes| | {{{2}}} }} which only uses parameter 2 if parameter 1 is not set. On the other hand quite a lot of people are in the habit of always writing {{{1|}}} even when parameter 1 should always be set. Really you would need to completely parse the template to work out the mandatory parameters. --User:Salix alba (talk): 23:18, 26 September 2013 (UTC)

Are you wanting TemplateData to be automatically generated (a more or less one-time activity per template), or are you wanting VisualEditor to 'read' a template and identify the potential parameters whenever I add one? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:22, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

I was actually thinking about having VisualEditor 'read' a template and identify the potential parameters whenever you add one. Also, a new VisualEditor feature like what is shown in this example:

This is a good table heading.
This is a row heading	Click here to insert parameter "1" (or not actually because this is just a fake version in wikitext)

... is not possible with the current TemplateData specifications, thus such features would require that VisualEditor is rewritten to identify potential parameters in a new way which deprecates TemplateData. — Preceding unsigned comment added by X686 (talk • contribs) 11:26, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

If template "A" (the one you're adding) uses template "B", which has its own set of parameters, then I'm not sure that this is useful, because you'd want the "B" (and "C" and "D" and "E" and so forth) parameters, too, not just the "A" ones. Someone told me the other day that even a simple template like {{tracked}} can contain more than a dozen other templates. We'd probably have to seriously restrict the design of templates (for example, to prevent "B" from calling "A", which would be a disaster). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Clean up wording about IE

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

At the hat notice says

Attention Internet Explorer (IE) users: At the moment, VisualEditor is disabled for all IE web browsers. For IE9 and IE10 users, this is intended to be temporary, with various issues being addressed by software fixes. But VE will not be made available to users of IE8 and earlier. If you use these older versions of IE and want to edit with VisualEditor, you will need to use a different browser.

This gives the impression that support for IE was turned off for a few minutes. I'd like the wording to be more explicit as at present IE support will not happen for many weeks and possibly may take months.

Attention Internet Explorer (IE) users: The VisualEditor does not support Internet Explorer. At present there is no planned release date of VisualEditor for Internet Explorer. You will need to use a different web browser.

Related to this is the first paragraph of the hat notice. It ends with "... although it is currently not available to unregistered users." Get rid of the word "currently" so that it reads "... although it is not available to unregistered users." --Marc Kupper|talk 07:12, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Not done: {{edit protected}} is not required for edits to unprotected pages, or pending changes protected pages. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:03, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Dealing with the IE-related problems is taking longer than expected, but it has been turned on in the past. Usually what happens is they fix everything they know about, then they turn it on, and a new batch of serious problems is found very quickly, and they turn it back off. (If memory serves, the last one was something that prevented IE users from saving any pages in VisualEditor.) I don't know when the next attempt for IE will happen, but it's on the list of things that are being worked on. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:31, 27 September 2013 (UTC)

Office Hours to discuss VE

The engineering department is hosting two office hours this week to discuss VisualEditor. The first of these will be held on Monday, 30 September, at ~~1700~~1900 UTC. The second will be held on Wednesday, 2 October, at 0000 UTC. Please join as Product Manager James Forrester discusses VisualEditor and upcoming plans. Thanks! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:02, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

November office hours

Hello, I'm here to annouce two office hours this week to discuss VisualEditor with James Forrester (Product Manager). The first of these will be held on Saturday, 2 November, at 1700 UTC; the second will be held some hours later, you can check local time and connect here. Logs will be posted on meta after each office hour completes. (If office hours are heavily attended, it can be difficult to get to all questions, but if you want to ask a question and cannot attend, please let us know your question here by Friday and we will present it among possible discussion topics.)

Thanks! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:50, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

December office hours

Hi everyone, here is the next set of office hours for VisualEditor:

Monday, December 2, 1900 UTC
Tuesday, December 3, 0100 UTC.

You can see local time conversions and links to join on Meta. James Forrester will be addressing questions about VisualEditor. There is now a category hosting the logs for VE office hours. As usual, if you can't attend you can still leave a question here (until Dec 1st). Community liaisons will try their best to present it during one of the two appointments. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:27, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

How to opt-in

This should be more clear, newbie may not realize that they need to click on the link in the lead. We have a whole, mostly obsolete and unnecessary Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Opt-out; we need Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Opt-in for the newbies, too. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 07:34, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion, Piotrus, will take that in consideration. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:14, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

It seems something has been altered. The instructions state that to opt-in for the VisualEditor, you must go to your preferences, with a link to Preferences->Editing. However, there is no opt-in option there. I had to go to Preferences->Beta features to find the opt-in option. Is this just me? Jaardon (talk) 19:01, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

This is how it works now, yes, thanks for noting this. Someone will update that content ASAP. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I just changed the link I referenced earlier to reflect the correct page under preferences Jaardon (talk) 19:31, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect Wikipaedia...

This new editor is quite frankly rubbish! It wont work, and it is really complicated to use! Why cant Wiki just stick with mark-up? the think we are used to after about a decade of using it!

86.128.197.177 (talk) 22:59, 16 December 2013 (UTC)Phthinosuchusisanancestor

Hello, Phthinosuchus.

If you have had a specific problem, then please leave a note at WP:VisualEditor/Feedback. If you just prefer the old wikitext editor, then feel free to use it. There are no plans to remove the old editing system. Any editor may use whichever one he or she prefers. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:05, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Timetable & rollback on en

I notice that there's no mention in the timetable of the rollback of VE on en. I'm holding back as I'm at a bit of a loss for words as to how to describe it. --Elvey (talk) 05:48, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I think it was just an oversight; I've added it. We also need to re-write the page on how to opt-out, since that stuff doesn't really work in the current state. I suppose it's not surprising for a product in development, but there are a number of things that are out of date in the documentation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks.

Re. 'I also think an entry listing some of the major issues that led to that rollback and when fixes to those issues are anticipated is warranted.'

I guess you're in agreement. --Elvey (talk)

I don't know what could usefully be said in that section, that isn't already present under ==Limitations==. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:56, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm sorry if this has been answered elsewhere, but I can't seem to find the answer: are there plans to ever restore Visual Editor to English Wikipedia as an opt-out feature? Or is the plan to keep it opt-in perpetually, even after beta testing is finished? –Prototime (talk · contribs) 17:06, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Hi Prototime,

Thanks for your question. At this time, there are no specific plans to do anything either way. We are getting some complaints from IP editors and from people who normally work at other projects about the non-standard setup here. Right now, the dev team is pretty busy with some complicated language issues involving input method editors, so I doubt that they're thinking about en.wp's status very much.

There is a general expectation that VisualEditor will once again be made available to everyone at some point. Just to be clear, "at some point" means "probably during the next ten years or so", not "during the next couple of weeks". However, if you (or anyone else) has any suggestions for measurable technical goals (e.g., this bug should be fixed first, or that feature should be working first) that you think would be appropriate for VisualEditor to address before reënablement, then feel free to post them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Complete table editor.
Accurate round trip on every article in English Wikipedia. Nothing fancy: just open the article, add a blank line with VE, save the results. Open it again, delete the blank line, save. Compare. Nothing should have changed.
Error-free cut-and-paste between articles.
Handling templates that emit any combination of CSS, table markup, and table content.

You know ... the stuff you should have had working before it was released as a beta.—Kww(talk) 22:22, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, Whatamidoing (WMF). Beyond the obvious reliability improvements that are coming (fixing errors when trying to save using VE, VE's slowness, etc.), I think Kww has a decent list, and I would add to it the ability to read hidden notes, as they can convey important information about content that editors (especially inexperienced editors) should know about before making certain changes. I look forward to day that VE can be fully rolled out on the English Wikipedia. –Prototime (talk · contribs) 23:18, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Office Hours to discuss VE

Greetings. The engineering department has planned office hours in the next months to discuss VisualEditor. The first one will be held on January 15th, at 2300 UTC; the second will be held a week later, on January 22nd, at 2300 UTC. Please join as Product Manager James Forrester discusses VisualEditor and upcoming plans. Logs will be posted on Meta after each office hour completes. (If office hours are heavily attended, it can be difficult to get to all questions, but if you want to ask a question and cannot attend or do not speak English, please let us know your question here by the day before and a community liaison will present it among possible discussion topics).

We’ll post a reminder close to the date as well.

Regards, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:22, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

I won't be able to attend, and have this question:

What does engineering see as the major technical issues that led to the en. rollback from opt-out back to opt-in? What's the current status of fixes to those issues? Anticipated status by the 13 January 2014 expanded rollout deadline in the timeline? --Elvey (talk) 05:08, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I'll pass your question along. I'd personally be very interested in hearing your answer to the first question (offline and embargoed, if you are worried that your answer might influence theirs). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:54, 24 December 2013 (UTC)

I would love to hear the answer to this as well -- did this ever get answered on wiki? Also, are there more office hours scheduled? -Pete (talk) 21:15, 4 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi there, I need to verify if we managed to present that question to James and in case sum up his answer here. And yes, office hours are held monthly, and we'll announce the upcoming ones properly on each Wikipedia ASAP. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:55, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Hi, User:Peteforsyth. We try to put the announcements on local projects closer to date, but the next ones are already scheduled and listed at m:IRC office hours, February 15th and 16th. The times are there, with a link to a handy conversion chart. (You can see the logs of previous office hours, by the way, at m:Category:VisualEditor office hours logs. I wasn't able to attend the last office hour due to a family conflict, but I know it was on the list to ask. Priority is given to questions of people who attend in person, and unfortunately it looks like several of the questions on the list didn't make it because that particular office hour was pretty busy. :/ Those questions carry over, though, and I'll make sure it's bumped in priority for the next one - although it's really helpful to have somebody in attendance to help talk about, particularly since they may have followup questions. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

I've rearranged the page to make it a little more obvious that the schedule is linked there (to the extent that it is known, which is almost never more than two months in advance). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Office hour in March

Hi all, the office hour for this month is scheduled for Monday, March 17th, at 15:00 UTC. Please join as Product Manager James Forrester discusses VisualEditor, new features and upcoming plans. For more information on office hours, including how to attend, you can see meta:IRC office hours. If office hours are heavily attended, it can be difficult to get to all questions, but if you want to ask a question and cannot attend or do not speak English, please let us know your question here or via email by the day before, and I or another community liaison will add it to possible discussion topics, as usual. (Complete logs are always posted and categorized at meta:Category:VisualEditor office hours logs after each office hour completes anyway, for your convenience).

Regards, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:43, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

New RfC about VisualEditor

I started drafting a new Request for Comments about whether to re-enable VisualEditor for anonymous users. While the previous proposal was clearly against this, in the past 7+ months there has been significant improvement to the feature, so the community may be willing to change its mind. What do you think? Is it too soon? -- Ypnypn (talk) 17:46, 11 March 2014 (UTC)

Problems

I was using the VisualEditor on Wheel of Fortune UK on the gameplay section and as I am about the save, I tap the save button but it will not let me save! Why is this!? Wonderwizard (talk) 11:17, April 4 2014 (UTC)

This should be reported here. You should also mention what browser and operating system you are using (don't forget to mention the version). Also, are you using Vector or Monobook? Also, what happens when you click the save button? Do you get an error message? What does it say? Or maybe nothing happens? The more details you provide, the more likely you are to receive help. The Million Rabbit 17:28, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Wonderwizard,

Thanks for your note. That page seems to work all right for me. I'm not sure what happened. Can you tell me what color the Save button was? Can you tell me what you did, if anything unusual happened? Information about your web browser and computer operating system would also be very helpful. Finally, would you mind going back and trying it again, to see whether it happens again? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:24, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

Office hour in April

Greetings! As you know, the Wikimedia Foundation's engineering department holds monthly office hours to discuss VisualEditor. Please join Product Manager James Forrester to discuss the product and upcoming plans in April.

Saturday 2014-04-19, at 20:00 UTC.

The discussion will be on IRC (w:Internet Relay Chat) at irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-office. For more information on office hours, including how to attend, please see m:IRC office hours. Logs will be posted at Meta afterwards. If office hours are heavily attended, it can be difficult to get to all questions, but if you want to ask a question and cannot attend or do not speak English, then please let us know your question on the feedback page by the day before, and someone will add it to possible discussion topics. Thank you! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:51, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Newsletter template for user pages?

Is there a VisualEditor newsletter template like this one for transcluding the Signpost?:

Template:Signpost-subscription

I prefer transclusion to having to clear out my talk page periodically of the many newsletters I get. I am asking each newsletter for a template instead. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:08, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Hi Timeshifter,

There's no template, and since the newsletter could be cancelled at any moment, I'm not sure that it would be worthwhile to create one. Also, since it doesn't have a bunch of separate stories, the template would be as big as the newsletter itself, which might not be so pleasant.

Have you looked at WP:Flow? User:Quiddity (WMF) can tell us what the current state is, but I believe that Flow is supposed to make subscriptions much easier (including auto-archiving). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:39, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

I haven't actually paid much attention to the state of Flow or the VisualEditor or much of anything on Wikipedia in awhile. Been busy, plus no one seemed to truly listen concerning what I wanted concerning the VisualEditor the last time I paid attention a long time ago. Maybe VE now works more like I would like it too. Will have to check it out again by trying it out. All I mainly wanted was true fast section editing and instant back and forth between wikitext editing of a section and VE editing of the same section. And fast saving. Speed and ease of section editing.

I have much more experience now with templates. I don't see why one couldn't be created. Anybody can start a template. Then paste in the VE newsletter each week, or however often it is put out. I could then create user pages just for my selections of newsletter templates. I could even choose my combinations for specific user subpages. Several subpages if I wanted to. --Timeshifter (talk) 18:23, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

If it's been a few months since your last use of VisualEditor, then you'll find that it's faster now for opening, editing, and saving (although not as fast as wikitext editing, which is actually faster than just reading the page.)

Section editing in VisualEditor would actually be slower than whole-page editing, because to do true section editing, VisualEditor needs to read in the entire page, to find things that are typed elsewhere but display or affect the one section that you want (e.g., references that you might want to re-use). So it would read everything just like it does now, but then add a minor delay while it throws away all the stuff that isn't related to the one section that you want. (Saving might be slightly faster with section editing, although probably not enough that a typical editor would notice. If you were editing from a developing country, it might be helpful. There are no benefits related to edit conflicts, since those are either resolved automatically in exactly the same way regardless of whether you pressed the 'Edit' button at the top of the page or the 'Edit' button for the section.)

You can now switch to wikitext, but it's a one-way, one-time switch.

As for the newsletters, I believe that you could subscribe using a subpage, which would at least put all the clutter out of your way. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 21 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. It seems that some newsletters let one assign the subscription to a subpage and some don't. VisualEditor does allow it. A subpage helps in some ways, but hurts in others. I like having the newsletters on my talk page so that others learn about them. I just prefer that only the latest copy of each newsletter be there. I want to stack them at the top of my user talk page.

I point out that finding out where to subscribe is nearly impossible for someone seeing the newsletter. There is no subscribe link on the newsletter itself. A separate page for subscription signup is needed. That link would be better than linking to this difficult-to-find page section:

Wikipedia:VisualEditor#Newsletter

I just ran some tests. Saving my long user page takes around the same amount of time now in both editors. Around 15 seconds. The time is the same whether starting from a section edit or by clicking the edit button at the top of the page. The edit summary popup adds a few seconds in VE. I suggest eliminating that popup, and putting the edit summary form back below the edit window in order to save time.

The major difference is that the wikitext editor opens up an edit window much faster. Around 3 seconds whether starting from a section edit or by clicking the edit button at the top of the page. VE is intolerable. 15 to 20 seconds to start editing from any edit link.

I do not know the mechanics of how VE works. All that matters to me, and most people, are those opening times. Whatever it costs it needs to be fixed. Even if it means a complete rewrite of VE. Feel free to move the relevant parts of this to the feedback page. --Timeshifter (talk) 07:04, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

They're working on speed, and I plan to keep reminding them about that, but let me say that you don't really mean "whatever the cost". They looked briefly into an option that would make opening VisualEditor the work of a single second, or even less. The method would have made loading pages (for reading) take 15 or 20 seconds.

Thanks for the suggestion to run another link to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. It's been a couple of months since I last ran one. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 22 April 2014 (UTC)

(unindent). I did not know of that page. Better than linking to a subsection of another page. Signpost has permanent toolbars of links at the bottom of its template and main pages:

Its subscription page is linked from the toolbars, and offers many ways to get the Signpost (including the template):

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/Subscribe

My long user page takes 8 seconds to fully open now for reading. So taking 15 to 20 seconds to open similarly long pages for reading would make a lot of people stop reading as much on Wikipedia.

My preference is that the Wikimedia Foundation spend whatever it costs, even tens of millions of dollars, to make things work fast for section editing with the Visual Editor.

References do not slow down the wikitext editor's ability to open sections fast for editing, and it should not slow down VE. VE should open sections and pages in 3 seconds for editing. Just like opening email windows for editing.

I think the Wikimedia Foundation were far too ambitious in what they tried to do with the Visual Editor, and should have concentrated on fast section editing of basic stuff. They should have made it easy to switch back and forth instantly between VE and wikitext without losing anything.

Editors would be able to edit text, bold, italics, and wikilinks within Visual Editor intuitively just as they can now in VE, but do the complex stuff like references and tables within wikitext editor. Then people could learn at their own pace, and do more and more within VE, as VE improves. From what I have seen months ago the wikitext editor does some things much better still. --Timeshifter (talk) 09:34, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

The existence of reference don't slow down VisualEditor. The existence of references—and the ability to reuse them—means that VisualEditor needs to read the whole page to find all of them.

Here's the problem with references: If you want to re-use a reference in the wikitext editor, you can do so while editing a section, even though the wikitext editor doesn't know that the other ref exists. You need to know that <ref name=Whatever> is defined elsewhere, because you are physically adding the code in the section. (Or on a page that the ref is not defined in; the wikitext editor isn't capable of noticing when you create errors like that.) However, if you want to re-use a reference in VisualEditor, then VisualEditor needs to know that <ref name=Whatever> is defined elsewhere, because VisualEditor is physically adding the code in the section. And the only way for VisualEditor to know that this exists... is for VisualEditor to read the entire page in, rather than just one section of it. There's simply no way around this. Either they break references (and layout, and a few other things) for people who want to do section editing, or section editing takes at least as long (and probably longer than) full-page editing to open.

Also, in my tests, the wikitext editor takes the same four or five seconds to open all of Barack Obama vs just one section. I get the same results at WP:ANI. The speed doesn't seem to depend on the length of the page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Yes, the wikitext editor takes around 4 seconds for me too to open sections or whole pages for editing. As I said before, I don't understand the mechanics of why the Visual Editor takes so long to open sections or whole pages for editing. If reused references is the problem, then I suggest VE should treat them the same way as wikitext editor does. If I am getting this right I believe the wikitext editor does not look at the rest of the page when it opens a section. It has to look at the whole page though, when it saves edits. In order to find those reused references.

So maybe VE should not look at the whole page when it opens up a section. True section editing with VE would mean it would not be possible to edit any other section. But that is not the case currently. It makes the whole page editable whether one clicks a section link for editing, or the top of the page link.

If I am understanding what you are saying, VE tries to figure out the reference map during the preparation of the page for editing. I think this is the problem. As far as I know the wikitext editor does no mapping or other scripting when opening a page or section for editing. It is just loading the page source (wikitext layer) in the edit window. That is why it is so fast. It does the reference mapping during the save, not the opening of the edit window. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:35, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

The wikitext editor doesn't reference mapping at all. It receives what it believes to be a perfectly meaningless string of letters from the server and displays it for you; when you save, it sends the modified, but as far as it is concerned, still perfectly meaningless string of letters back to the server. The interpretation is all handled separately.

Have you tried to re-use references in VisualEditor? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:27, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

I started a newsletter subpage. I will add more as I find the templates. See: User:Timeshifter/Newsletters. I just tried using references in VE. Incomprehensible. I couldn't even add a link. I did find the list of references when one clicks the "Use an existing reference".

I discovered that VE opens smaller pages very fast for editing. Around 4 seconds for Global Marijuana March.

If reference mapping is what is slowing VE down when opening longer pages for editing, then eliminate reference mapping from the initial opening sequence. Only map the references when someone clicks "Use an existing reference". Problem solved.

Frankly, I have to ask; Why are the VE developers so clueless? People have long been wanting VE to be faster. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:02, 25 April 2014 (UTC)

The devs have long been wanting VisualEditor to be faster, too. It's not an easy problem, especially if you start with the requirement that nothing else be slowed down in compensation (the speed of opening VisualEditor is not given priority over the speed of reading pages, for example) and that it depends significantly on other things. For example, if the API's slow, then VisualEditor is slow. They've got no control over the API.

As for adding new references, you add a link in the reference dialog exactly the same way that you had a link in the main article. See mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide if you haven't ever done that before. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:44, 26 April 2014 (UTC)

(unindent). You did not directly address my main point about only mapping the references if it is needed. That may solve the problem with opening long pages for editing, or pages with many references. Now that I see that VE opens short pages fast for editing that gives me great hope for VE. For the first time.

Has anybody passed that idea onto the devs? Is there a bug specifically for this idea? Do you pass on good ideas to the devs? I have long had the impression that you (and others) spend a lot of your time on the VE feedback pages apologizing for VE, or justifying VE, or poo-pooing people's complaints about VE. Just like admins, WMF staff, etc. tried to sell LiquidThreads to people.

This is absolutely one of the most frustrating longterm problems people have with the WMF. Its increasingly bureaucratic yes-man nature. It is totally unlike the frank, honest, and equal discussion that occurs on the Village Pumps, and on article talk pages.

I have played around more with adding links with VE on my sandbox page. It sucks. I could explain in detail. But I am not convinced at all that you are really listening, or passing anything on. Plus it should be a new thread. And I think it is a minor problem compared to the page opening problem. Fix that problem, and VE is basically good to go. --Timeshifter (talk) 13:42, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Timeshifter, the only question I see that you asked above is "Why are the VE developers so clueless?" - which I'm sure you'll understand is a tough question to speak to, since our answer is likely to be "They're not," and people who feel otherwise are likely to discount that kind of answer as "bureaucratic yes-man nature"...even if it really reflects what we believe. Devs don't do everything the way I want it or in the order I want it, but I don't think they're clueless.

The WMF is working hard to incorporate feedback from people on the hundreds of websites they host - including hiring the liaisons who have spent many hours filing bugs and feature requests reported at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback and talking to developers about people's concerns. If you have a message you'd like them to convey, you can most easily do it at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback, but if you do it elsewhere, please make clear that you are not just expressing your opinion but requesting that they carry your message for you.

If you don't want them to carry your message for you, you would be very welcome to speak to Product Manager James Forrester directly and in real time during our monthly office hour. These are held at staggered times each month to try to accommodate people from multiple time zones, but if the scheduling of these has not been convenient for you, we're happy to see if we can adjust them further. Alternatively, you can open your own bug or feature request at bugzilla. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Timeshifter, the situation with section editing is basically unchanged since you and James F talked about it in July. It is still true that the easy solution (loading everything but not allowing you to change anything outside the one section) makes opening the page slightly slower than giving people access to the whole page, and it is still true that the hard solution (having quick, low-bandwidth loading of only the one section) is "a mammoth piece of work".

Mapping only the references "if needed" would not solve the basic problem. You will notice above that I gave references as "e.g.", meaning "one free example". What you really mean to ask is, "Could they map all templates, all transclusions, all references, all images, all tables, all formatting tags, all language settings, and anything else on the page that might possibly relate to or affect the formatting of this one section 'if needed'?" The unfortunate answer is: until they map all of these elements, they cannot know which of them are needed. Anything on the page that isn't plain old text might be 'needed'.

As for links: T55973, T51928, T59506, and I hate the < symbol for closing, although not enough to remember the bug number. Also, I hate the fact that there's no way to cancel: if you open a link, start to change it, and then realize you've screwed up, then there is no way to cancel with no changes. Your options are to either remove the original link or to add your mistake. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:18, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the link to T50429. It seems so long ago. :) Less than one year in developer years or dog years is an eternity in some ways. It seems almost everybody in that thread agrees with me. Tim Starling's comment is very interesting. His link is even more interesting:

http://article.gmane.org/gmane.science.linguistics.wikipedia.technical/3433

I believe Wikipedia is what it is today due to changes made from that 2003 message from Erik Moeller, and probably many others who pushed for those changes to create section editing with the wikitext editor.

Like I said, I am not a developer. So I don't understand why there is a need to "map all templates, all transclusions, all references, all images, all tables, all formatting tags, all language settings, and anything else on the page that might possibly relate to or affect the formatting of this one section".

Images in preceding sections can be safely ignored, even if they float into the next section. Tables too. It is not necessary to see right and left-side floating elements in order to edit a section. We edit and preview sections in the wikitext editor without seeing floating images and tables that extend from preceding sections.

We do not map references in the wikitext editor. If people screw up a reused reference in the wikitext editor a big red warning message shows up when the save occurs. As you said the wikitext editor does not "think". It just passes on the edited wikitext to the server, and the server does the "thinking".

The only reason all that stuff is mapped is because developers are insisting on editing the whole page with VE.

Even if the whole page is opened for editing it could be opened a lot faster by VE doing less "thinking". Opening whole pages for editing in VE could be faster for people with broadband, as long as VE did not try to map everything. I now see even more though why trying to edit the whole page with VE is impossible to do fast.

That leaves people with dialup, etc. in poorer parts of the world, or the USA, with very slow editing. So true section editing should still be the ultimate goal. But I would accept fast opening of whole pages for editing for people with broadband. Though now I am not sure that is possible.

Feel free to move this thread elsewhere. It is hogging this talk page. --Timeshifter (talk) 01:45, 29 April 2014 (UTC)

I just left a meeting in which Erik mentioned his creation of section editing (and table of contents). Specifically, he said that when he created section editing, people yelled at him for ruining Wikipedia with a pointless feature that nobody really needed or wanted.

As for the rest, I really don't know how you could provide section editing without mapping all the tables, because sections can begin in the middle of tables, like this:

A A	B B	C C
A1 Alice and Bob	B 1	C 1

That doesn't preview correctly in wikitext, but you can edit the cell contents in VisualEditor, because VisualEditor opens the whole page, rather than just the subsection that contains half of a table.

I don't know how you could re-use references in VisualEditor if there's no list in VisualEditor of the existing references to choose from. (I'm guessing you haven't tried to use that feature yet, but you don't type in the ref name.) The same basic types of problems happen with each of these items.

I think at some level you're just going to trust that the devs know what they're doing: The fact is that visual editing of sections, without looking at the context that the section is in, is not going to provide good experience, it will break some heavily used tools, and, in a few unusual situations, it might even corrupt pages. Eventually, they hope to provide good support for section editing, but it's not going to be a simple task, and it's not going to happen this year. They do not choose to let things break, just so that they can claim to support a (mostly worthless and occasionally dangerous) version of section editing right now. I suspect that anyone who has spent as many hours cleaning up corrupted pages as I have (and there are some people who have done far more than even I have) will support the devs' desire to get this right. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 30 April 2014 (UTC)

I am beginning to see more and more that true section editing in VE is the only solution for many pages to solve the problem of slow opening for editing.

I have edited a lot of tables. I help edit Help:Sorting. I don't remember seeing edit links inside tables. Maybe there are, but it can't be often. That shouldn't be the deciding factor anyway about not implementing true section editing. It is easy to fix. If someone clicks an edit link for a section with such a table, then have Visual Editor pull up all the other sections inside that table too.

It is funny that concerning Erik and section editing in the wikitext editor, "people yelled at him for ruining Wikipedia with a pointless feature that nobody really needed or wanted." As I pointed out it is one very important thing that made Wikipedia much faster, and very popular. Proves my point that there a lot of clueless people in the Wikipedia hierarchy along with the very smart ones such as Erik, Tim, and Brion.

The Visual Editor needs a major rewrite in many ways. Including how it deals with references. I looked a little at some of the reference bugs you linked to, and agree with some of the problems discussed. --Timeshifter (talk) 00:15, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

The only reason I know that you can have section headings inside tables is because there was a problem with a page a while ago as a result. If it were up to me, wikitext would reject that. But presumably someone, somewhere, thought it was a good idea. Also, I'd ban the use of "{" inside ref names, because there's a badly written script that has been setting ref names with templates in them (like <ref name="{{template}}">), and which is basically nonsense. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:04, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

I think it comes down to choices. Anything that would mess up true section editing should not be allowed, if it can't be accommodated or fixed. Nesting templates inside other templates and references is an area that should be better policed too. --Timeshifter (talk) 20:54, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor citation tool going live

I've just enabled the citation tool in VisualEditor, which adds a prominent menu in the toolbar listing the most common citation templates to insert as new citations. You can also use this tool to edit most existing references that use these templates, bypassing the need to edit a template inside a reference. Feedback welcome!

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 14:38, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor office hour in May

The Wikimedia Foundation's engineering department holds monthly office hours to discuss VisualEditor. Please join Product Manager James Forrester to discuss the products, upcoming plans and features like the one he just introduced above on Monday 2014-05-19, at 18:00 UTC.

The discussion will be on IRC (w:Internet Relay Chat) at irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimedia-office. For more information on office hours, including how to attend, please see m:IRC office hours. Logs will be posted at Meta afterwards.

If office hours are heavily attended, it can be difficult to get to all questions, but if you want to ask a question and cannot attend or do not speak English, then please let us know your question on the feedback page by the day before, and someone will add it to possible discussion topics.

Thanks! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:54, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014

Hello everybody. This is a one-time posting to this page to remind people to the availability of this opt-in newsletter. If you do not already receive it (about one per month) on your talk page and would like to, please add your page link to the subscribers' list at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:52, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Newsletter

Did you know?

The cite menu offers quick access to up to five citation templates. If your wiki has enabled the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" menu, press "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" and select the appropriate template from the menu.

Existing citations that use these templates can be edited either using the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽" tool or by selecting the reference and choosing the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu.

Read the user guide for more information.

Since the last newsletter, the VisualEditor team has mostly worked on the new citation tool, improving performance, reducing technical debt, and other infrastructure needs.

The biggest change in the last few weeks is the new citation template menu, labeled "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cite-label⧽". The new citation menu offers a locally configurable list of citation templates on the main toolbar. It adds or opens references using the simplified template dialog that was deployed last month. This tool is in addition to the "⧼visualeditor-dialogbutton-reference-tooltip⧽" item in the "Insert" menu, and it is not displayed unless it has been configured for that wiki. To enable this tool on your wiki, see the instructions at VisualEditor/Citation tool.

Eventually, the VisualEditor team plans to add autofill features for these citations. When this long-awaited feature is created, you could add an ISBN, URL, DOI or other identifier to the citation tool, and VisualEditor would automatically fill in as much information for that source as possible. The concept drawings can be seen at mw:VisualEditor/Design/Reference Dialog, and your ideas about making referencing quick and easy are still wanted.

There is a new Beta Feature for setting content language and direction. This allows editors who have opted in to use the "Language" tool in the "Insert" menu to add HTML span tags that label text with the language and as being left-to-right (LTR) or right-to-left (RTL), like this: English. This tool is most useful for pages whose text combines multiple languages with different directions, common on Right-to-Left wikis.
The tool for editing mathematics formulae in VisualEditor has been slightly updated and is now available to all users, as the "⧼math-visualeditor-mwmathinspector-title⧽" item in the "Insert" menu. It uses LaTeX like in the wikitext editor.
The layout of template dialogs has been changed, putting the label above the field. Parameters are now called "fields", to avoid a technical term that many editors are unfamiliar with.
TemplateData has been expanded: You can now add "suggested" parameters in TemplateData, and VisualEditor will display them in the template dialogs like required ones. "Suggested" is recommended for parameters that are commonly used, but not actually required to make the template work. There is also a new type for TemplateData parameters: wiki-file-name, for file names. The template tool can now tell you if a parameter is marked as being obsolete.
Some templates that previously displayed strangely due to absolute CSS positioning hacks should now display correctly.
Several messages have changed: The notices shown when you save a page have been merged into those used in the wikitext editor, for consistency. The message shown when you "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-cancel⧽" out of an edit is clearer. The beta dialog notice, which is shown the first time you open VisualEditor, will be hidden for logged-in users via a user preference rather than a cookie. As a result of this change, the beta notice will show up one last time for all logged-in users on their next VisualEditor use after Thursday's upgrade.
Adding a category that is a redirect to another category prompts you to add the target category instead of the redirect.
In the "Images and media" dialog, it is no longer possible to set a redundant border for thumbnail and framed images.
There is a new Template Documentation Editor for TemplateData. You can test it by editing a documentation subpage (not a template page) at Mediawiki.org: edit mw:Template:Sandbox/doc, and then click "Manage template documentation" above the wikitext edit box. If your community would like to use this TemplateData editor at your project, please contact product manager James Forrester or file an enhancement request in Bugzilla.
There have been multiple small changes to the appearance: External links are shown in the same light blue color as in MediaWiki. This is a lighter shade of blue than the internal links. The styling of the "Style text" (character formatting) drop-down menu has been synchronized with the recent font changes to the Vector skin. VisualEditor dialogs, such as the "⧼visualeditor-toolbar-savedialog⧽" dialog, now use a "loading" animation of moving lines, rather than animated GIF images. Other changes were made to the appearance upon opening a page in VisualEditor which should make the transition between reading and editing be smoother.
The developers merged in many minor fixes and improvements to MediaWiki interface integration (e.g., edit notices), and made VisualEditor handle Education Program pages better.
At the request of the community, VisualEditor has been deployed to Commons as an opt-in. It is currently available by default for 161 Wikipedia language editions and by opt-in through Beta Features at all others, as well as on several non-Wikipedia sites.

Looking ahead: The toolbar from the PageTriage extension will no longer be visible inside VisualEditor. More buttons and icons will be accessible from the keyboard. The "Keyboard shortcuts" link will be moved out of the "Page options" menu, into the "Help" menu. Support for upright image sizes (preferred for accessibility) and inline images is being developed. You will be able to see the Table of Contents while editing. Looking further out, the developers are also working on support for viewing and editing hidden HTML comments. VisualEditor will be available to all users on mobile devices and tablet computers. It will be possible to upload images to Commons from inside VisualEditor.

If you have questions or suggestions for future improvements, or if you encounter problems, please let everyone know by posting a note at mw:VisualEditor/Feedback or by joining the office hours on Thursday, 19 June 2014 at 10:00 UTC. If you'd like to get this newsletter on your own page (about once a month), please subscribe at w:en:Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Newsletter (or at meta:VisualEditor/Newsletter for any project). Thank you!

Request for Comment: VisualEditor RfC 2014 part 1

Request for Comment is active at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/VisualEditor RfC 2014 part 1. Please participate if you are interested. --Pine^✉ 07:37, 7 June 2014 (UTC)

Updates related to VisualEditor

Hi, everybody. This is a reminder that we invite you to discuss VisualEditor's recent development and plans ahead during the next office hours with James Forrester (Product Manager):

If you are not able to attend but have a question for James, you can leave your question at mediawiki.org or on my talk page by the day before, and I will try to get a response. We plan to continue these monthly sessions as long as there is community interest, and to announce them through the VisualEditor newsletter as well (please subscribe your talk page there to get the latest news about the software).

Most of the VisualEditor team will be at Wikimania in London in August! You'll be able to meet the developers during the Hackathon or at the following sessions:

VisualEditor — helping users edit more easily, Saturday, August 9;
VisualEditor — engineering against the odds, Sunday, August 10.

WMF community liaisons will share a booth with community advocates at the Community Village and look forward to talking to you there. Thanks for your attention! --User:Elitre (WMF) 17:19, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Where is the installation guide?

I wonder where the installaion guide is. This article should have an instruction of the way to download and install this extension for the people who are trying to building a wiki-like website for themselves. -- Yejianfei (talk) 17:03, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

See mw:Extension:VisualEditor. -- Ypnypn (talk) 21:55, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Reminder: Weekly VisualEditor triage meeting tomorrow at 20:00 UTC (12:00 PST)

As a reminder, on Wednesday, 11 February 2015 at 12:00 (noon) PST (20:00 UTC) there will be the first of a weekly series of open triage meetings about VisualEditor.

We will discuss the release criteria for VisualEditor, and jointly prioritise the work of the team, talking about the bugs and features which are most important to you. We particularly welcome the presence of volunteers who enjoy contributing MediaWiki code.

The joining instructions are available on MediaWiki.org. Hope to see many of you there.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

Edit tab

Could the edit tab on VisualEditor be called something other than edit?

I would like to start trying to use it, and tried it out today, intending to use it when I could and switch to wikitext when I had to. The problem is that, because the VE edit tab is labelled edit and the other edit source, I kept hitting the former automatically and getting VE when I didn't want it. In the end it was so annoying I disabled it again. Could the VE edit tab be labelled VisualEditor (or similar) instead? Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 00:51, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry you were frustrated. It takes a lot of people several days of steady use to get accustomed to a change like that. You might find the keyboard shortcuts a little easier: it's "e" for edit and "v" for VisualEditor (plus whatever meta keys are required for your OS).

The answer to your question, unfortunately, appears to be "no". It's the same label in the MediaWiki system for getting VisualEditor (if enabled) or wikitext source (if not enabled): MediaWiki:vector-view-edit. If you change it to "This is not the Edit button you want", that will appear for all editors regardless of their configuration. But the problem will go away later, because the choice between editing environments will eventually happen within the editor, rather than before you open it (with a stick pref so that you'll always get whichever one you used last). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, WAID. I don't think I understood the part about it being the same label in the MediaWiki system. What I'm suggesting is that edit should always denote the same act. Having words mean the same thing will make it easier for editors to transition. Sarah (SV) ^(talk) 01:10, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

How to add a default field to a reference template?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T97482

I went to edit a reference and add an accessdate. In {{cite web}}, accessdate isn't one of the default values that comes up in VE, and it really should be. How would I make a field one of the default fields to fill in? - David Gerard (talk) 16:04, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Hey, David. What do you mean, it's not one of the default values that comes up in VE? "URL access date" is the 4th field I see when I try to add Cite web manually through the Cite template. (Citoid autofills that field, instead). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:25, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

For existing references, click on Add more information while in the template inspector: URL access date is the 2nd item there. HTH, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:28, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I did that. I thought it should appear by default. I assume then that for existing references, it just shows what values have already been filled in, not any that should be there but aren't? - David Gerard (talk) 18:26, 3 April 2015 (UTC)

Hi again, generally speaking, that is not a required parameter - it's a suggested one. So if those with the asterisk didn't all show up immediately, that would be an issue, IMHO. It seems to me that the params are showing up in a certain order in the dialog, and suggested ones do appear before optional ones. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:45, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

OK, if it's all as designed that's fine :-) - David Gerard (talk) 17:42, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Getting really good. Citoid suggestions

I am an experienced, 10 years, Top 100 most active contributors, and I am more and more impressed with your progress. Good job. In particular, your recent Citoid is excellent; it does a much better job than http://tools.wmflabs.org/refill/ . It is, however, not as intuitive as it could be. It activates if you click the button, but it is missing from the pull down list next to it. I just spend one minute remembering how to access it - I was looking for it on the pull down menu. So I suggest that at minimum, you add it to the pull down list; or combine the both into one. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 02:23, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, @Piotrus:! I appreciate the praise from you. I know the problem you noticed (about the menu) is filed as a bug, though I don't have the # offhand. We're also making it more clear by replacing the icon (which was confusing for many users in user testing) with the word "cite" to make it easier to remember. —Luis V. (WMF) (talk)

This might be the related bug, also note the other Design work mentioned there. Best, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:50, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

No view of warnings in hidden text?

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T99024

It is common practice to use hidden text to warn editors about certain kinds of changes - don't change this subhead because section redirects link to it; don't change this song genre because it has been agreed to by consensus - but I am told that an editor using VE will not see these. Is there some way to either make hidden text show in the VE edit view, or otherwise alert editors to conditions attached to certain text items? bd2412 T 20:01, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

It's already supposed to be tracked, and a release blocker. I don't know whether that is actually the case. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:55, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

It was a "high-priority enhancement" before July 2013.... — Arthur Rubin (talk) 23:15, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Hey bd2412, Arthur Rubin. I believe you're talking about hidden HTML comments, which can indeed be seen and edited in VE (also added via the Insert menu). Look for the grey ! icon in [1] for an example. HTH, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 05:48, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

My apologies. I've only occasionally used VE, and apparently not on any articles with hidden comments. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 06:05, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Don't worry. Just because something's been around for a while we're not going to assume everybody already knows. Wondering how many other cool things people haven't noticed yet, these days... --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 06:09, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

By way of example, at Wastewater treatment, the "Wastewater treatment plants" section has hidden text noting that Wastewater treatment plant redirects there. In VE mode, an exclamation point in a gray circle shows up below the header, but if an editor intended to change the header, I don't know that this would do anything to alert them. The change itself can be made without ever reading that warning, and it falls below the header itself, so it might not even be noticed. bd2412 T 14:21, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

It should also be noted that VisualEditor handles edit notices as well, which are more visible since they're displayed prominently every time an article is opened in VE, as in, they need to be dismissed manually (classic example). --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:31, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

I just changed the "Wastewater treatment plants" header at Wastewater treatment to "Wastewater treatment plant places" using VE. I received no kind of notice that this would break incoming links, and no notice when I changed it back. bd2412 T 14:37, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

As expected, I'd say. VE can't know what the comment says and prevent you to do anything it says :) My comment above meant "if you think a hidden comment isn't enough for a user to notice, maybe turn the warning into a much more visible edit notice?" Or, if you think the visual design of the hidden comment is just inadequate, we may suggest improvements via Phabricator. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:42, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

Can an edit notice be made that warns the editor not to change the particular section header? If so, can something be done to find existing section headers that are section redirect targets, and apply such a notice to them? bd2412 T 15:10, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

An edit notice is displayed at the top of the page when you open it. See the two "Attention editors" notes on 10th United States Congress as examples.

What we really need is a robust method of redirecting to sections, so that manual updates to redirects aren't necessary in the first place. Failing that, a bot to fix mistakes would be good, because (a) many section redirects don't have comments at the target (or the comment only lists some of the redirects) and (b) WP:Nobody reads the directions (or at least, not everyone reads the directions). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 15:42, 5 May 2015 (UTC)

What is it on the page that creates those "Attention editors" notes? How can I make that happen with respect to section headers? bd2412 T 16:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

Those are Wikipedia:Edit notices. They appear in the box above the wikitext editor or in a pop-up within VisualEditor. They cannot be tied to specific locations in the article. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:15, 15 May 2015 (UTC)

nowiki

VE is still adding unnecessary <nowiki>...</nowiki>, such as with this edit by Ingafube (talk · contribs). --Redrose64 (talk) 20:37, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Hi Redrose, the word from the devs is that this particular type of nowiki tag should be a rapidly declining problem, as people's caches get the new version. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

VisualEditor Userboxes

Hello everyone! Great job on the VisualEditor so far! When I first tried it a year or so ago it was slow, buggy and just not ready for primetime. I recently tried it again after receiving a headache manually editing a particularly complex cite farm, and while it is not yet perfect, it is very much improved. I now use it whenever appropriate, though I still use the source editor for quick edits.

Anyway, I noticed there is no userboxes for VisualEditor users, so I created a pair of prototype ones. I also created a pair of userboxes for those power users who will probably decide not to use the VisualEditor themselves, but nevertheless support the aims of the project.

Which is best, blue border, or green border?

UsesVE-Blue

{{Userbox | border-c = #2BA9E0 | border-s = 1 | id-c = #FFFFFF | id-s = 14 | id-fc = black | info-c = #FFFFFF | info-s = 8 | info-fc = black | id = [[File:VisualEditor-logo.svg|110px]] | info = This user edits using ''[[Wikipedia:VisualEditor|VisualEditor]]''. | float = left }}

This user edits using VisualEditor.

NoVEBut-Blue

{{Userbox | border-c = #2BA9E0 | border-s = 1 | id-c = #FFFFFF | id-s = 14 | id-fc = black | info-c = #FFFFFF | info-s = 8 | info-fc = black | id = [[File:VisualEditor-logo.svg|100px]] | info = This user does not use ''[[Wikipedia:VisualEditor|VisualEditor]]'', but thinks it's a great tool for new and less-technical users. | float = left }}

This user does not use VisualEditor, but thinks it's a great tool for new and less-technical users.

UsesVE-Green

{{Userbox | border-c = #9ACC59 | border-s = 1 | id-c = #FFFFFF | id-s = 14 | id-fc = black | info-c = #FFFFFF | info-s = 8 | info-fc = black | id = [[File:VisualEditor-logo.svg|110px]] | info = This user edits using ''[[Wikipedia:VisualEditor|VisualEditor]]''. | float = left }}

This user edits using VisualEditor.

NoVEBut-Green

{{Userbox | border-c = #9ACC59 | border-s = 1 | id-c = #FFFFFF | id-s = 14 | id-fc = black | info-c = #FFFFFF | info-s = 8 | info-fc = black | id = [[File:VisualEditor-logo.svg|100px]] | info = This user does not use ''[[Wikipedia:VisualEditor|VisualEditor]]'', but thinks it's a great tool for new and less-technical users. | float = left }}

This user does not use VisualEditor, but thinks it's a great tool for new and less-technical users.

AnotherNewAccount (talk) 23:10, 1 July 2015 (UTC)

There's another at User:Listroiderbob/VEUBX/User VE. I'm happy to leave the color choice in your hands. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 2 July 2015 (UTC)

Beginning gradual availability of VisualEditor for new users

Last month, I made a proposal at WP:VPPR about gradually enabling VisualEditor alongside the wikitext editor for new editors here. Given the consensus in that discussion, I'm moving ahead with that change, starting later this week.

At first, I will restrict the configuration so that only 5% of new accounts (chosen randomly) have a choice of which editing tool to use. As promised, I'll report back on how well this goes, before increasing the rate to a larger proportion and monitoring from there.

If you have any questions or see any problems, please alert us. The fastest way to reach the team is by contacting us on IRC at #mediawiki-visualeditor ^connect, by filing a report in Phabricator, or by leaving a note at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Yours,

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk), Product Manager, VisualEditor – 18:05, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

About time! -Sigeng (talk) 05:21, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Jdforrester (WMF), could you please link to any analysis done by your team, or any reports made to the community, since this was implemented approximately a month ago? Are we still at the 5% of new accounts level, or has this been escalated with or without a report to the community? Risker (talk) 14:04, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

@Risker: Hey there. I posted an update on VPM where more people were, to avoid splitting the conversation. As indicated there, we bumped the level up slowly from 5% to 10% and continued to monitor. Since then, we increased to 25%, and a week ago to 50%. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

When will unregistered users be able to use VisualEditor

when will unregistered users be able to use VisualEditor as my brother wants to try it but he cant because he has no account and he does not want a account A8v (talk) 23:33, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I also wonder when will it be available for the unregistered users? I think it will be very useful for unregistered users and wikipedia generally. I also think that VE option will make people think that "I can also edit wikipedia easily without the need to learn ugly and hard wikitext interface." It may take months for millions of people to become aware of easily editibality of wikipedia but after some time I hope wikipedia project will benefit from this with increase in number of active editors, total number of articles and quality of articles. Mecnunsaskin (talk) 11:39, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Hello, A8v and Mecnunsaskin,

Thank you for your notes and your support. There are currently no plans to offer VisualEditor to IPs at the English Wikipedia. That might come later, but it depends on whether the current editing community wants to do that. (If such a discussion starts, then I'll make sure that someone posts a note here, so you might keep this page on your watchlist.)

It is technically possible for an IP to use VisualEditor, but it's not very convenient. You first need to go to the page, and then manually change the URL to open VisualEditor. You have to type ?veaction=edit at the end of the URL. So to open the page Example, you go to the URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example and then you change it to say https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Example?veaction=edit (and press Return). It only works on pages that support VisualEditor (=not talk pages or a few others), but it will work on all Wikipedia articles. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:31, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Gradual availability of VisualEditor for new users is now complete

Over the last few months, we have been slowly expanding the availability of VisualEditor as an option for editors. At first we ran an A/B test, and then a slow ramp-out for new accounts (A/B test announcement in May, proposal at WP:VPPR from June, note about it starting in August). This is now complete, which means that all accounts registered now will get the choice to use VisualEditor.

As always, if you have question or encounter problems, please feel free to reach out to us at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Jdforrester (WMF) (talk), Product Manager, VisualEditor – 16:19, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Proposal at VPPR

James F. has started a discussion at WP:VPPR about offering VisualEditor to inexperienced editors. New accounts will all have access to both VisualEditor and the wikitext editor now, and this proposal would (for example) retroactively opt-in editors who were missed during the last couple of months (e.g., 75% of the editors who created an account during the week of the gradual deployment process when only 25% of new accounts were being opted in, etc.) and dead accounts (accounts that haven't edited ever, or for a long time). If you have opinions on the best way to handle these accounts, then please join the conversation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:24, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

The visual editor’s preference will be moving tabs

Hey all,

This is just a quick note to highlight that the location for the visual editor’s preference is about to move – from the "Beta" tab to the "Editing" section of your preferences (as is currently the case on almost all the other WMF wikis; it doesn’t mean the visual editor is complete, or that it is no longer “in beta” though).

This action will not change anything else for editors: it still honours editors’ previous choices about having it on or off; logged-out users will continue to only have access to wikitext; the “Edit” tab will still be after the “Edit source” one.

We don’t expect this to cause any glitches, but in case there are, please let us know at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback as usual! This should be done in the next few days, and I’ll post a follow-up message then. Best, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

The visual editor’s preference has moved

Hi all. TL;DR: the visual editor's preference has moved. Previously, it was a Beta Feature; now, it is in the "Editing" section of your preferences. It still controls whether or not editors see the visual editor as an option when you edit, and it doesn’t affect the choice editors have made to have it enabled or not. It is still not available for logged-out users. It is only available if you’ve opted-in, or if you start editing today with your account. It is still the second tab, not the first if you have it enabled. It is still offered as its own tab, rather than integrated with both editors available through one tab.

As discussed a while ago, this change is necessary for consistency and performance reasons: When the community agreed to offer the visual editor to all new accounts by default, the preference was increasingly poorly labelled. The point of the Beta Features system is to offer novel, temporary new changes which people can try out and give feedback before a decision is made to offer it to everyone. Now that that's done, it didn't make sense for the option to still be shown in this way, so it was moved.

The second reason is performance for editors. The option was on track to have more than a million accounts opted in by the end of the year, and tracking accounts in normal preferences is less of a server load than tracking them in Beta Features. There is a lot of “junk” already in the preferences table which slows down the site for logged-in users on every page load, and adds more pressure to the costly servers running the site. It is important to improve the speed for everyone!

If you have any issues, I’d be glad to hear about them! Just post on Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback.

Thank you for your understanding, Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:07, 7 October 2015 (UTC)

Verifiable reference for VE's return to opt-out

VE returned to being active by default for new users since 7 October 2015 on English Wikipedia, but I cannot find a verifiable reference to cite when stating this on the VisualEditor encyclopaedia article. All I have is the newsletter update on my userpage! Any advice? T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk 10:17, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Maybe The Signpost has a story about it? However, speaking as a long-time volunteer editor, if you can't find a proper independent source about this, then it might be too trivial to include at all. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:02, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Use of ISO computer dates (yyyy-mm-dd) for retrieval dates

Does visual editor automatically insert ISO numeric dates for footnote retrieval dates? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:06, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

No, but the mw:citoid service does. These can be displayed in any format you want, using the |df= parameter in the most common citation templates. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:05, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Not sure if this is VisualEditor or not...

Vis.editor and images.

Issues I've just experienced with VE

Heuristic parameter detection

Clean up wording about IE

Office Hours to discuss VE

November office hours

December office hours

How to opt-in

With all due respect Wikipaedia...

Timetable & rollback on en

Office Hours to discuss VE

Office hour in March

New RfC about VisualEditor

Problems

Office hour in April

Newsletter template for user pages?

A1

VisualEditor citation tool going live

VisualEditor office hour in May

VisualEditor newsletter—May 2014

Request for Comment: VisualEditor RfC 2014 part 1

Updates related to VisualEditor

Where is the installation guide?

Reminder: Weekly VisualEditor triage meeting tomorrow at 20:00 UTC (12:00 PST)

Edit tab

How to add a default field to a reference template?

Getting really good. Citoid suggestions

No view of warnings in hidden text?

nowiki

VisualEditor Userboxes

UsesVE-Blue

NoVEBut-Blue

UsesVE-Green

NoVEBut-Green

Beginning gradual availability of VisualEditor for new users

When will unregistered users be able to use VisualEditor

Gradual availability of VisualEditor for new users is now complete

Proposal at VPPR

The visual editor’s preference will be moving tabs

The visual editor’s preference has moved

Verifiable reference for VE's return to opt-out

Use of ISO computer dates (yyyy-mm-dd) for retrieval dates