Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback: Difference between revisions

VisualEditor is available here at the English Wikipedia alongside the original wikitext editor if you opt-in, by changing your preferences. VisualEditor is not available to unregistered users here or to users of Internet Explorer at any Wikipedia. The developers are working on support for IE9, IE10, and IE11.

Your feedback about the VisualEditor beta release

This page is a place for you to tell the Wikimedia developers about issues that you encounter when using the VisualEditor here on Wikipedia. It is still a test version and has a number of known issues and missing features. We do welcome your feedback and ideas, especially on some of the user interface decisions we are making and the priorities for adding new functions. All comments are read, but personal replies are not guaranteed. If you have encountered a problem or have found a bug, then please include your web browser, computer operating system, and Wikipedia skin (usually Vector, sometimes Monobook).

A VisualEditor User Guide is at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User_guide.

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Archives: (generated by MiszaBot II)

• 2012: 1
• 2013: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13
• 2014: 1, 2, 3

I just bit a new editor by using Visual Editor to clean up their article, and managed to delete three images in the process. The edit is [1]. As you may be able to see if you open Visual Editor on the "before" image, the images themselves are off-screen, and the image slugs are invisible. Mac Chrome. I saw a note in the comments for (resolved fixed) bug 47790 that there was some thought at one point about making these more visible in general, but I couldn't find more information on what the current plan is to try and avoid this sort of UI difficulty?

This is a really easy error to make on new editor AfC submissions, since excessive vertical space is a common feature of such drafts. --j⚛e decker^talk 21:21, 17 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm really glad you posted this, I nearly just made the same mistake myself and only didn't because I read this first. I still don't know what an image slug is though, presumably it's not one of these. SpinningSpark 08:59, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It's a known problem. I'll ask what the current status is. Do you have any suggestions for what it should look like? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:48, 18 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well for sure rendering it as a blank line is about the worst possible thing to do. That positively encourages editors to delete it, while rendering it invisible (like it is in the article) will most likely be left alone (unless a block spanning a paragraph boundary is deleted). If the line is going to be rendered it should have an icon on it so we know that it is an image. A better approach in my view though is to render exactly as in the article, but not to delete any images unless they are positively selected. That means that if a block of text is selected and deleted (or copied, or moved), any embedded images should not be deleted, copied or moved. If it is intended to delete the image as well then select it with Ctrl-select. By the way, Ctrl-select allows non-contiguous portions of text to be selected but only one actually gets deleted on pressing delete. Seems like another bug (ed:Bug 69737 raised) to me. SpinningSpark 02:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whatamidoing, I'm honestly not sure. I'm used to working in systems that have a variety of kinds of slugs that need to be differentiated (visual HTML code editors, page layout tools, etc.), and part of me expects something looking like an image icon. But I may very well not be the average user. Hmm. --j⚛e decker^talk 18:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I edited High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program using VE (actually a fairly pleasant experience - cut-and-paste worked well, and so did creating a new cite web citation). When I saved my edit, the result is what is shown in the screenshot - the title of the article is repeated in a smaller font below the normal title.

I did a second edit to confirm what I'd seen. (Mac OS, Chrome, Vector). I'm not inclined to believe this has something to do with my selecting, as a preference, the gadget "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article", but I note that for the sake of completeness. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:15, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It appears to be a conflict between VE and the gadget "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page", which I suppose you have enabled. Someone ought to fix the gadget. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:53, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, disabling the gadget appears to solve the problem in Firefox. Safari doesn't seem to be affected. (I've seen triple titles in Firefox.) I'll leave a note at the gadget's talk page about this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I filed this as Template:Bug. The blame is split between VE and the gadget, but it's a lot easier to fix in VE. :) Matma Rex talk 16:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If you use VE to edit Sirens of TI, you'll see an asterisk at the end of the "References" section. I can't figure out how to delete this using VE, and I also can't figure out why it's visible in VE edit mode (and wikitext edit mode) but not in Read mode. (Additional information: There was an external link after the asterisk, which I deleted.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:32, 19 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed it for you. The process is: Place your cursor on the line. Go to the List formatting menu. Choose the bullet list item (to de-select it/remove list formatting from the line). Save page.

The theory as I understand it (i.e., not extremely well) is that the MediaWiki parser suppresses such stray/empty lists, because readers don't need to know about that. VisualEditor displays them, because otherwise editors would be unable to (intentionally) remove unwanted blank list entries. This is another instance of VisualEditor being a rich-text editor rather than a WYSIWYG editor. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:06, 20 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Very helpful. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:41, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Further to Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive_2014_3#Excess_tabbing_through_Cite_mini-editors (bugzilla:69512): In template / citation edit dialogues, the behaviour of ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ is not tabbing through the info and delete icons, while Tab ↹ is tabbing through those icons. Which tabbing behaviour is preferable might be debatable, but in either case, ⇧ Shift+Tab ↹ should just do the opposite of Tab ↹. I'm using Vector / Chrome / Win 7 if that's relevant. - Evad37 [talk] 05:29, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I get the same behavior in Safari and Firefox on my Mac, so it's probably happening everywhere. TheDJ has mentioned this on the bug, along with a suggestion for fixing both of these annoyances at the same time. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:21, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jdforrester (WMF): (and other WMF people) Why is the WMF, when it is not bullying through MediaViewer, failing with Flow or repeating all the previous experiences with Winter, still spending most of its developer money and resources on VE instead of on the wikitext editor?

On the French Wikipedia, which is probably the largest wiki-version where VE is the default, the results are that after more than a year of VE deployment, less than 10% of the edits are made using the default editor (VE) and more than 90% are made with the cumbersome, old-fashioned, outdated, editor-frightening wikitexteditor.[2]. In every single user group, including IPs and newly created accounts, is the wikitext editor more popular than the VE. The same applies (with slaightly different figures) to the Italian wikipedia[3], the Swedish one[4], Russia[5], Poland[6], ...

The reality is that after all the work you spent on VE, it simply isn't what the editors in general want or need. What probably many of them would appreciate though is some improvements in the wikitext editor, incorporating ideas and improvements from VE, like e.g. the file chooser, the template editor, and, er, that's about it I think. Plus some unrelated but much needed improvements, as indicated by e.g. the cries for help from the mathematics editors.

Are there any plans to match WMF spending and resource allocation to this reality? Fram (talk) 07:14, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You know you won't get any answer, except maybe the development of a new special right to prevent contributors to say anything bad about WMF... Otherwise, I agree with your statement about how badly the resources are spent, while there are some rather easier things that could be accomplished to help all editors... --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 10:11, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My preferred view is the breakdown as a percentage of users in a particular group (anon,new,regular). Those present a less grim picture for anons on fr with about 34% of anons using VE, 17% of new users and 3% of regular users. I've taken the averages of percentages for the last month for a few wiki's

Obviously figures are much lower for de and en where its opt in, but there is very little take up by regular users across the board. It would be interesting to see how many new users continue to use VE after a month or so if they decide to switch. Comparing results from 6 months ago might be interesting.--Salix alba (talk): 15:28, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was an early critic of VE, and continue to believe that it should have stayed in beta testing mode for at least another six months. But it has become significantly better (more features, fewer major bugs), and - as importantly - it's starting to have functionality that the wikitext editor doesn't (and can't) have - image searching, checking the validity of external links, easier creation of citations, etc.

It's going to be years - if ever - before VE is a better choice for the most experience (wikitext) users, particularly some power users doing wikignome chores. But that's not VE's target audience - it's those who have never edited Wikipedia. For them, today, I'd definitely recommend VE, despite its numerous shortcomings. Slightly buggy software, missing some advanced features, is still preferable (for newcomers) to dealing with gnarly text that looks like code.

So yes, the way that VE was introduced was botched, badly, and the VE team still lacks the openness and interactivity with the community that would not only build confidence but would better focus its programming efforts. But VE continues to improve, and eventually Wikipedia will be the better for it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:53, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

John, why do you say that wikitext can't have some functionality ? I do believe that everything you have listed could be implemented in the wikitext editor, it would only require WMF to dedicate a small portion of the resources that have been allocated to VE development. In my opinion, many features could be added to the wikitext editor, probably at a lower cost, and for a much larger audience. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 17:19, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Citations are on the list of planned improvements for the wikitext editor. mw:Citoid is intended to be useful everywhere, even though the immediate work has been integration into VisualEditor.

As for why the WMF is doing this, I suspect that the community's identification of a rich-text editor as the #1 product priority recommendation a few years back has something to do with it.

Salix alba, one of the problems with the "edits" numbers is that we call them "VisualEditor" and "wikitext", but it's actually "VisualEditor" and "not VisualEditor". If you add a tag via Twinkle, that's labled as "wikitext", even though the wikitext editor wasn't actually used. Looking at fr.wp right now, about 15% of the allegedly wikitext edits didn't actually use the wikitext editor. (I'm sure it varies; I just looked at the last 100 mainspace edits.) A similar trip through en.wp's RecentChanges page shows 27% of allegedly wikitext edits that were done by script, bot, undo, or other methods that aren't actually someone choosing to use the wikitext editor. I suppose it would be possible to make undo use VisualEditor (which it would, if VisualEditor were actually "the default", rather than merely being "available by default"), but why bother? It would make more sense to have accurate statistics that differentiate between "I choose to use this editor" and "I was using a script or tool instead of choosing which editor I wanted to use". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

":::::As for why the WMF is doing this, I suspect that the community's identification of a rich-text editor as the #1 product priority recommendation a few years back has something to do with it. " In what way does that page, written completely by WMF people, represent the community and its priority recommendations? As far as I can tell, this is the vision of a few Wikipedia developers based on some nebulous research, some cherry-picked quotes from non-editors, and no real community input. One of the major forces behind this paper is still the main force behind most botched WMF software of the last few years. Oh, and you have at least one error in the rest of your reply as well: bot edits are explicitly excluded from the stats I linked to, so you shouldn't remove these from the wikitext editing percentages we are discussing. Plus, of course, things like AWB edits are equally useful as many VE edits, which are also often typo corrections and the like. That AWB (and its users) doesn't want or need VE doesn't mean that these edits shouldn't be taken into account in a comparison.

Finally, none of what you say explains one bit why the usage of VE isn't growing, if it is so good, or why the drop in new editors hasn't been reversed now that we have the long-awaited top priority intuitive user friendly modern tool. Apparently, somehow, it isn't working as predicted. Fram (talk) 19:58, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

More than a thousand people participated in the planning done on strategy.wiki. I don't find your name among the accounts there, so perhaps you did not choose to participate in that process, but "more than a thousand" still exceeds the number of WMF employees in 2009 by an order of magnitude. The page I linked is not the only page to identify a rich-text editor as a key priority. You will also find it mentioned in the strategy:Wikimedia Movement Strategic Plan Summary, under "Increase participation".

As for "why the usage of VE isn't growing", have you looked at the data? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

"Have you looked at the data?" Whataamidoing, are you still trying deliberately to be as offensive and unhelpful in your replies as possible? I have looked at the data over the months, I have given the current data at the start of this discussion. You haven't given anything at all, but of course you know better and wwe have to believe you. How hard is it to provide links to what you believe is evidence, instead of sending us of on a wild goose chase? I can find [7], which lists things from 2010 as having the status "doing". Even better is this of course. Perhaps we can lay down a simple ground rule; any "information" you share without a link to evidence will be treated as false. Probably you refer to the 900 proposals, where you can probably find a few for a "visual editor". No good search system is given for these proposals, so it's a bit hard to tell. Oh, and the list of participants, is that this list where I can't find someone called Whatamidoing? Just checking... Fram (talk) 06:53, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You presented links to data from a single point in time. You then ask why usage is not growing. It is not mathematically possible to determine whether usage is growing by looking at any single point in time.

I didn't choose to participate in strategy.wiki. I looked it over occasionally, decided that I didn't really care what the five-year plan for the WMF was, and left it to the people who did care—a group that apprently didn't include you, either, which brings us back to my original point: you don't actually know who made which proposals or how successful proposals were identified. You therefore might want to stop asserting that you know that building a rich-text editor was only "the vision of a few Wikipedia developers" with "no real community input". I'm perfectly willing to stick to the obvious facts: VisualEditor is being developed because a major, multi-project community consultation that involved more than 1,000 people spent more than a year talking about what the WMF should do for the following five years. They created a five-year plan that included the creation of a rich-text editor as a major priority. When said plan was duly adopted by the WMF's board, it set the WMF's priorities for the next five years, i.e., until the year 2015. So why are they still working on VisualEditor? Because 1,000 people in the movement talked about what the WMF should do, and they concluded that this should be done. The plan "expires" next year. Perhaps different priorities will be set then. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@NicoV: I generally find debating counterfactuals ("what if X had been done instead of Y") to be not all that useful. But in this case, I want to point out that with wikitext editing, the MediaWiki software doesn't understand what's happening until either (a) a preview is done or (b) a page save is done. That makes it impossible, in wikitext editing, to have a generalized interaction with editors (if they do X, then the software does Y, to help them). It also makes it impossible for editors to get instant feedback (as in, for example, moving or resizing an image). That is why Parsoid was written, as a new underlying basis for editing, and why VE has taken so much time to create (because it can't build on the wikitext system).

Again, I'm not trying to defend the process by which VE has reached its current state. I'm just saying that VE is now perhaps 70% or 80% of being a virtually flawless (albeit still limited) piece of software. Nor am I saying that the VE team will make the right choices to get to 100% (as opposed, say, to giving priority to the Chinese version of VE, which after all is in the VE team's annual plan, and so is clearly more important than fixing minor VE user experience problems that affect hundreds of language versions of Wikipedia). I'm just saying that the VE team, as unresponsive and misdirected as its software development process may be, is still improving VE, so VE will get better. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:54, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It would struggle to get any worse, and it's an absolute disgrace that it's unavailable to users of IE. Eric Corbett 22:11, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Whatamidoing (WMF): You have a point about semi-automated edits. I've just used the data from the dashboard so it might be an idea to ask the stats team to add this data. I suspect this will not change the anon and new editors as they will not be using these tools. The dashboard stats exclude bots so the correction factor would be smaller. In the last 500 mainspace non-bot edits 13 were reverts (includes Twinkle and huggle), 8 undone, 18 hotcat and 2 AWB, 41 in total. Lets call this 10%. If we adjust the percentages to exclude semi-automated edits it may change the values for VE edits by regular editors on fr/it/sv/ru by half a percent upwards.--Salix alba (talk): 21:32, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Analytics will be reassigning some projects soon, so now is probably not the optimal time to ask for this sort of change, but it is definitely on my list once we know who the 'new' person to ask is. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:49, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have said before, and I still believe, that colour coding would be a massive boon in the text editor. I can't remember now whether it was said to be technically impossible. If it is possible, it should IMO be near or probably at the top of the list. 86.151.119.38 (talk) 00:00, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean something that takes nearly illegible paragraphs and marks them up like this?

{{Infobox person |name=Alice Expert{{citation needed|date=July 2013}} |occupation=Expert{{dubious|date=July 2013}} |alma_mater = Wassamatta U|awards = [[Wooden spoon (award)|Wooden spoon]]<ref name=Infobox>{{cite web |url=http://www.example.com |title=Infobox Example Citation |date=February 2014 |author=O'Nymous, Ann}}</ref>}}}} In my real wiki-life, I am User:WhatamIdoing. I've been a regular editor at the English Wikipedia<ref>[http://example.org Example]{{Dead link}}</ref> since 2007, PMID 12345678 ISBN 9781234567890 and I've been in the top 500 most prolific editors of all time for a couple of years. My interests run from [[WP:MED|medicine]] to pastry to education, with odd points in between. I also spend a lot of time working as a [[meta:Metapedianism |metapedian]], which in my case means supporting WikiProjects through the English Wikipedia's [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Council|WikiProject Council]] and helping write policies and guidelines.

There are tools like WP:WikiEd that do this. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:35, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi,

In this edit, VE completely trashed a template. It's easily reproduceable:

• Edit the Infobox with VE template editor
• In the "Parcours junior" field, remove the last two lines
• Save the modification to the template
• The template is damaged, VE has put some nowiki but not correctly to keep the template

--NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 10:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The user was confused by the wiki markup for the table code and removed the "end of table": }}. This should improve as support for table editing and support for editing template fields that contain markup improves over the next few months. —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:37, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

TheDJ There's no table involved in the example: the user incorrectly removed the end of the template "deux colonnes" (which is used inside the infobox). So VE managed to escape the pipes but completely failed to escape the {{ which was previously the beginning of the "deux colonnes" template. The result is a completely trashed template. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 15:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Template yes. I'll file an issue for seeing if the nowiki detection can be improved for this case of unmatched brackets. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:08, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

On testing this, I noted that on the French Wikipedia, the text a the top of the "show changes" box ("Relire vos modif...") is obscured by the "Revenir au formulaire d'enregistrement" button. After using that "Revenir" button, I notice the exact same thing on the "Enregistrer vos modificati..." screen, which is partially obscured by the "Enregistrer la page" button. Anywhere else? Oh yes, when I open the infobox, I see at the top "Infobox F..." with the rest obscured by the "Appliquer les modifications" button. And the same when editing a reference, inserting a comment (I think something is hidden beneath the button)...

NicoV, is this a new thing, or is it always like this? Does every single user on the French Wikipedia who wants to save anything with VE (not a common occurrence, but still...) get this very poor layout? Rather staggering, this. Fram (talk) 14:02, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fram, this is a long standing issue, reported a long time ago, even marked as High, but as usual, even if it gives an awful experience for new comers, its priority doesn't really seem so high. I think most people have simply given up complaining about VE, since most reports are marked as enhancements or minor, and stay open for so long... --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 15:04, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That's certainly what I've done, as things just don't get fixed in any kind of timely manner. Eric Corbett 22:03, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For those who didn't click through to the bug report, "a long time ago" means "less than a month ago". This problem appeared when the new, word-based/anti-icon windowing system was deployed.

Whether the words overlap at the French Wikipedia depends on your font size. If you zoom in and out, you can make the problem appear and disappear at will. For languages that are unusually long, many titles are obscured; for languages that are shorter than English, it almost never happens.

Technically, the problem is with OOjs, not with VisualEditor. OOjs is not correctly changing to the shorter names that VisualEditor is designed to display in this situation. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:54, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In my view, for a bug with "High" priority, a month with nothing done about it is a long time, but it seems we don't have the same scale for what is a long time. At least, bringing again this subject changed something (the bug was reassigned to somebody else...). And what about dynamically sizing the windows so that texts are not truncated ? In the example, you can see the texts are truncated, but even the basic message about licence and copyvio is only very partially displayed (the scrollbar on the right seems to show that only about half the dialog box is displayed) --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 07:43, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When I read this orignally, I thought you meant that the scrollbar wasn't working—that even if you scrolled down, the full text would not be displayed. (It does, of course.)

I understand that it is not possible to re-size windows at the moment. The OOjs team needs to build that ability before the VisualEditor team can use it. Whether it's a good idea is something that could be debated. I don't think that filling the entire height of the screen would necessarily be an improvement (and even then, it might not be enough. Some wikis have put a surprising number of irrelevant things into MediaWiki:Wikimedia-copyrightwarning). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:46, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When editing Hepburn romanization#Hepburn romanization charts using VE, I can double-click on the word "red" and it opens a popup that reads "This template changes the color of any supplied text to red." (Very handy!) When I double-click on the word "blue" below it, a popup opens that reads "You are adding the "Blue" template to this page. It doesn't yet have a description, but there might be some information on the template's page." If I wanted to change that description to something more descriptive, like exists for "red", is there a way to do that within VE? 28bytes (talk) 14:06, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@28bytes: Template pages can't be edited with VE, either natively or via the template dialog. Personally, I think it would be a mistake to add such functionality to the dialog, since mucking with TemplateData isn't something we want relative newcomers to do. (Consider the length of the documentation at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/TemplateData.)

On the other hand, it would be nice if there was a way for editors to post a comment or request on a Template Talk page, directly via VE, rather than having to do this as a separate edit (assuming they can figure out how to).

It would also be nice if the system were to gather (queryable) data for which templates have been seen (and with what frequency) in the VE template dialog where such templates lacked TemplateData.

Finally, fyi, I've added TemplateData for the template {{blue}}, at the page Template:Blue/doc, and did the same for the other color templates lacking TemplateData. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks John. I like your idea about gathering stats for TemplateData-less template views; that would be a great report that people could use to prioritize which TemplateDatas need to be added. 28bytes (talk) 17:57, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Filed as bugzilla:69866. —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 18:24, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Open a random page in VE. My luck of the draw gave me Zprdeleklika. Use the three lines button to get to the categories. You have two of them. Cancel the category screen. Open it again. You now have four categories. Cancel. Open. 6 Categories...

Now, add one. Whichever one you add, you get it as many times duplicated as you have done to the pre-added ones.

Let's try something. I don't know if everyone will get the same results, but again add a category. Start with typing e.g. "1995 es". Perhaps you will get a scroll bar to the right (I don't always get this for some reason). Click the scroll bar button at the bottom (to scroll down). Oops, there goes the selection list... Now, when looking through the few suggested categories, something extremely strange happens: the tool proposes some completely made-up ones. In this case, I get Category:1995 establishments in 1995 as a suggestion. Other tries gave me Category:1991 estabilshments in Belgium (sic!), Category:1992 estabishments in Indonesia (again sic!) and Category:1998 establishments) (with the final round bracket, sic).

Now, I cancel. I open the cats again. Oh, all the cats I added before the cancel are still there? So what was the point of cancelling? Oh well, then I just open one I don't want, and use the trash can icon. Perhaps use it twice? Three times? No, nothng happens. Perhaps I need to use the "apply changes" instead? Ooh, nice, the top of the cat frame starts to display slowly moving diagonal stripes, as if something is happening. And it goes on, and on, and on... Cancel? Too late, you're stuck!

As a user of VE, you have no way of knowing which cats exist and which don't. I fully understand that the possibility to add non-existing cats exists, this is necessary. But the system should never suggest cats which don't exist. And it should use a workable interface, obviously, not what we have here.

Basically, the category interface of VE totally and utterly sucks. Completely. More than a year after VE was implemented as the default editing environment. The general arrogance of some important people at the WMF is staggering when one takes into account the abysmal track record they have in implementing new tools and communicating with the editor community. Things like this only make people less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Fram (talk) 14:44, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The doubling of categories is a bug scheduled to be fixed shortly, per Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2014 3#Category duplication bug (display). Problems with redlink categories have been noted here, and there are related bug reports: Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2014 3#Displaying categories, particularly redlink ones. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:38, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And the invention of new cats by VE, that's a new one? Or just one that hasn't been reported yet? And the complete breakdown of all functionality? (Not a question for you, John Broughton, your help is appreciated). Fram (talk) 20:01, 21 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The duplication bug seems to have gone together with most of the other problems, the very peculiar "let's suggest cats that don't exist and don't make any sense" one clearly remains, I just got a suggestion for Category:1895 establisANONYMOUS IS LEGIONhments. Has ANONYMOUS hacked Wikipedia or VE? Anyway, can anyone else duplicate these very strange cats? Just try anything, and after a few trie syou are bound to get very strange categories in your suggestion list. :-)

Fram, I'm reproducing the problem with the strange cats: If I try adding a category starting with "1895 es", the categories suggested are: "Category:1895 essays" (good!), "Category:1895 esta6blishments" (bad!), "Category:1895 establisANONYMOUS IS LEGIONhments" (bad!), ... If I try with "19", suggestions are "Category:19", "Category:19$30s in Irish sport", "Category:19(new single digit number between 4 and 5) 8 births", "Category:19)) deaths", "Category:19** births", ... Impressive !

And an other problem: when I try to click on the vertical scrollbar of the dropdown list of suggested categories, the dropdown list simply disappears. The only way I've found to view what is after the 5th suggestion is to use the arrow keys, the mouse doesn't work at all. Win XP, FF ESR 17.0.2. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:44, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Now I'm at least certain that the problem is not with my machine, but really Wikipedia-based. How they have achieved this extremely bizarre behaviour is hard to see, suggesting things which don't exist (and have never existed) and have no relation to the article either seems to indicate some developer using too much narcotics :-) Fram (talk) 10:06, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

VisualEditor displays whatever search gives it. It would be useful to know if these problems can be reproduced anywhere outside en.wp. Apparently there were some problems with en.wp's search index recently. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:56, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Strangely (well, not really), the search never gives such results. Look e.g. for "Category:1895 est" in the search box, and you get the start of a long alphabetical list of existing categories. Do the same in VE, and you get the ridiculous results given above. Even if you explicitly search for the erroneous cats returned by VE, you are not able to get them as a result or suggestion in search. So the end result is that this is a problem that only exists when using VE, no matter what causes it. Fram (talk) 06:59, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The question that needs to be answered is whether this can be reproduced anywhere else. So far, the devs (the ones who deal with search) say that their belief is that it was due to problems with en.wp's search index. If it can be reproduced at any other wiki, then the problem (a) likely has some other cause and (b) likely won't be fixed whenever the repairs on en.wp's search index are finished. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, in this modification, VE added nowiki tags in a paragraph that wasn't modified by the contributor. As usual, the nowiki tags are not necessary, and even if escaping the single quote was necessary, there's no need to escape half a sentence when there's just a single quote. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 07:00, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sure the editor did not make a change to that section ? I think he tried to remove the space before Homo Sapiens..... —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 07:13, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ah yes, missed that one. But the second remark stays: it's the single quote that needs escaping, not half the sentence. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 07:59, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

As I understand it, the fundamental issue is that software processes "strings" as discrete units, and that said strings do not always line up with natural "words".

A more graceful approach might be this: "celui d'<nowiki/>''Homo sapiens''". Or would you normally italicize all of that ("celui ''d'Homo sapiens''") in French? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The current result is ugly and completely counter intuitive for a human who will come after in wikitext mode. Even if VE deals internally with large strings, it should be smart enough to use nowiki on a reasonable scale.

In French, my preference would be "celui d{{'}}''Homo sapiens''" (using a template), immediately followed by "celui d<nowiki>'</nowiki>''Homo sapiens''" or "celui d'<nowiki/>''Homo sapiens''". I prefer with the {{'}} template, but as this template is wiki dependent, I would understand that VE produce a result with nowiki. Concerning "celui ''d'Homo sapiens''", I believe it is not a correct typography. --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 07:37, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Nico. I suggested "celui d'<nowiki/>''Homo sapiens''" at the bug report, but I would not be surprised if they take your second choice (nowiki tags around the single quotation mark) instead.

This is technically Parsoid's problem, and they seem to be treating it as a general need to be more elegant in handling this. Hopefully that will mean that not only this instance, but also any related ones, will all get cleaned up together. I don't know what their other priorities are, so I can't guess how long it will take to get this handled. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:55, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The selection box goes over menus, coloring them blue and making the covered sections unclickable. (Firefox 31, Windows 7):Jay8g [V•T•E] 17:32, 22 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jay8g, I can't reproduce that on my Mac. Perhaps it's a Windows-specific bug? Or is it only intermittent for you? (I only tried a couple of pages.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:11, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Whatamidoing (WMF): I tried again and found that this always happens if you are at the very top of the page, but if you scroll down at all (so the toolbar floats), it stops happening:Jay8g [V•T•E] 00:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the update, Jay. I've added that useful detail to the bug report. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:57, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When a single quote needs to be escaped, could VE escape only the single quote with the nowiki tags and not half the sentence ? Examples: La Horde sauvage (film, 1969), Archelon, ... --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:34, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

After more than a year of VE being made available on most wikis, we still see internal links with no text added by VE (just a nowiki tag instead of the text), like in this edit ([[Boom Fm|<nowiki/>]] and [[Roger Blackburn|<nowiki/>]]). When will this bug be fixed ? --NicoV ^{(Talk on frwiki)} 09:40, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've added screenshots of the link dialog in (a) VE and (b) the wikitext editor, because I believe this is an underlying problem for the type of problems pointed out by NicoV. I think it's clear that the wikitext dialog is better. (Though personally I'd reverse the sequence of fields, so that the dropdown selection box for wikilinks - and yes, it's available in both, but doesn't open automatically in the wikitext dialog - is at the bottom, where the dropdown won't obsure the display text.) (And I prefer "Done" as a button label, and its placement in the upper right corner of the dialog, as is done in VE, but this isn't the main issue.)

I'd really like to hear why anyone might think the VE dialog is better. Or, to be more specific, why it's undesirable, or technically not possible (or very difficult), to have the VE dialog show both fields (parameters), rather than just one field/parameter. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 21:34, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

User:Jdforrester (WMF) will have to tell you the rationale for not offering a separate field for the link label. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:19, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hangs when editing "Integrated circuit" page - section SSI, MSI and LSI - tried to remove redirect wikilinks to SSI, MSI and LSI (keywords). Chrome 36.0.1985.143 m, Win7 64bit Kozuch (talk) 21:08, 23 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Kozuch, and thanks for this report!

I just opened Integrated circuit, so it's working for me at the moment. Can you tell me if you're still having problems with it? It might be a momentary glitch, but I'd like to know if anyone else is still seeing this problem. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:21, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I see my edit was saved, but probably was later than what my patience allowed me to wait for :). I was looking at page history before cancelling the edit save, but it was not there, probably shower up later. VE interaction definitely ended up deadly though (hung on the "saving" dialog and when I canceled it the above error just was quickly show and then dialog closed by itself. See https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Integrated_circuit&diff=622517186&oldid=622152913. --Kozuch (talk) 17:48, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

How strange. I've filed the report at Template:Bug. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:01, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

When you click on a template that makes a link, like {{good article}}, it sends you to that article. This means you can not select and edit these templates, and it is generally annoying and confusing:Jay8g [V•T•E] 00:32, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jay8g: When I add {{good article}} (anywhere), I then see a template box (icon plus name) in the upper right corner. I can click on that to edit the template (though editing this particular one is pointless - it has no parameters).

I note that there may be a problem with this particular template, however: when I used VE to edit the (good) articles Serpens, I only saw that template box in the upper right corner once; in subsequent edit sessions, it was missing. I can do a screen print if no one else can replicate this. (Mac, Vector, three different browsers)

I wonder if you're seeing a link because you have selected the gadget that makes one (and thus the link isn't a VE issue). Have you selected (turned on) "Display an assessment of an article's quality as part of the page header for each article"? (It's in Preferences > Gadgets > Appearance section) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

John Broughton: It's not the gadget link, but the one in the template, that is opening. This happens on other teplates, such as {{pp-semi-vandalism}}, as well. I have not gotten around to checking other (non-topicon) templates, but will try to soon:Jay8g [V•T•E] 04:06, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tried removing the gadget, but that didn't solve the problem:Jay8g [V•T•E] 19:56, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to only affect topicons. Other templates making links (like {{stnlink}}) and other images with the link parameter set don't seem to have this problem:Jay8g [V•T•E] 20:12, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I know that there are problems with "out of skin" templates (things that are typed at one point in the wikitext code but appear in another). However, I can't reproduce this, because in both Safari and Firefox, the "out of skin" icon displays off the (right) edge of the screen. Try editing this version of my sandbox, and let me know if you can see the icon. The {{good article}} template is the only thing on the page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For consistency with most other software, the keyboard shortcut ctrl-right-arrow should move the insertion point to the start of the next word, not the end of a word as it currently does. (My experience of "most other software" here is on Windows.)

In case it matters, my editing platform is Windows 7, Firefox 30.0, MonoBook skin. Mitch Ames (talk) 01:26, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For Macs, it's [option] rather than [ctrl]. In Word for Mac, option-right-arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word. In VE (Mac, Firefox, Vector), option-right-arrow moves the cursor to the end of the word. That's also true of the wikitext editor, by the way, at least for me. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:31, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mitch Ames, and thanks for this suggestion. Would you please try a few ctrl-right-arrow and ctrl-left-arrows in the wikitext editor, and tell me if you get the same behavior in wikitext editor as you do in VisualEditor? I might well be wrong, but I thought that VisualEditor was leaving this particular thing up to your browser. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Red Fiona (talk) 20:39, 24 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is due to a recent change to MediaWiki software. Pages no longer display the ugly red warning label. There's a tracking category at Category:Pages with missing references list so that people can find and add missing reference lists as needed. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:06, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, I thought I'd done something to break it. Would there be any way of having a less "ugly" label? I think the warning is a good idea because more experienced users can fix a little oops like that in a few clicks, rather than causing more work for people.Red Fiona (talk) 02:37, 26 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What's the status of copying tables? I just tried cutting and pasting a table; it seemed to work but then when I tried to save the page VE froze. If this is supposed to be working I can post a note on reproducing it -- I tried it twice and got the same result each time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:37, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Mike Christie, what was the source?

I've successfully copied and pasted tables from other websites and spreadsheets, but I don't think I've tried to copy a table from another Wikipedia page. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:19, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The latest Tech News says, with regard to VE, "You can now add colors to links in the editor using gadgets. You can do this to see links to redirects or disambiguation pages."

I'm not seeing such a gadget in my Preferences (specifically, in the Editing, Gadgets, and Beta tabs). Am I overlooking something? Has someone written a gadget to do this, but it's not in Preferences? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:07, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, it is a bit of unfortunate wording in the Tech news. It was stated that such a thing could now be written (as opposed to before, where it would have been impossible). —TheDJ (Not WMF) (talk • contribs) 21:03, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The first step in publishing Tech/News is to re-translate it from English into Simple(r) English. The original statement was "Links in the editor can now be coloured in by gadgets if they are links to redirects or disambiguation pages." I haven't heard anything specific from the team about this, but I'm going to guess that User:Anomie's script (instructions in the VPT archives here), or something like it, is what they had in mind (although I believe that Anomie's script would have to be changed to work in VisualEditor). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@John Broughton: Yeah, sorry about that, someone simplified my words a bit too far and made it misleading and confusing. I believe that a Hebrew Wikipedia user had a script to do this, hence why we enabled it, but I'm not sure if there are any general gadgets on any wiki that do this yet. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 23:52, 25 August 2014 (UTC)[reply]