Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback/Archive 2013 10

Image link
Image link is not working when adding files from wikimedia commons SariSabban (talk) 08:27, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * to get this clear, you are trying to create a LINK to an imagepage on Commons, not to "include" an image from Commons ? That indeed isn't possible right now (just as including a link to the Polish Wikipedia isn't possible). This might be slightly confusing I guess because the Commons pages are 'first class' citizens when including them as images. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:54, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Problems with the logo


I've noticed a few problems with the logo. The line spacing seems to be messed up, it looks its been set to "1ex", 3ex is a more typical value. However the insertion cursor is looking like its been give an 220% fontsize. There is also a bug with the insertion cursor partially obscuring the character under it and shifts the character under it leftwards. (The line spacing might be baseline:subscript, but that can't be as VE does not support subscripts.)

I've tried to reproduce the bug using CSS: visua | editor

Should I file a bug report? We would not want the logo to give a negative impression of the project. --Salix (talk): 14:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Where is this a problem? — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Enable VE for editing one section or subsection at a time.
I find Visual Editor useless for long articles, because even when I use the Edit tab on one subsection, the system insists on loading the whole #$%?&* article and scrolls at the speed of molasses. Yesterday I wanted to make a very simple edit - to change "is" to "are". Unfortunately the article was 73K long and VE loaded it all, then it took 5 minutes to scroll and find the sentence which needed changing as Ctrl-F worked VERY slowly, and I finally changed "is" to "are". Then I tried to look at my edit before saving - possible but took another 5 minutes! Then I saved at looked at the revision history, and was horrified to see that my revision was marked not (+1) for adding one (net) character, but (+4,036)! The system had duplicated a whole table from one point in the article to another, and a quote box as well, and the article was now not 73K but 77K. Possibly I clicked somewhere I shouldn't while waiting for the interminable load or the interminable scroll. Fortunately I was able to undo the damage much more quickly with Edit Source; I reverted my own edit and then edited the one subsection and changed "is" to "are" again all in 1-2 minutes.

This was all very frustrating and I will not be using VE again except for the shortest articles, at least until it is possible to load and scroll a single (sub)section and edit it alone in isolation as is possible with Edit Source. Dirac66 (talk) 20:07, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for reporting. I went and looked at your recent edits and found that you had edited Chemical element.  I investigated the problem with the table duplication and as it turns out the problem was with Template:Periodic_table_(nutritional_elements) which had an unclosed table which I fixed.  While this wont solve the slowness issue you experienced, this should at least fix the problem with duplicating a table.  Ssastry (talk) 21:17, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for finding the error - now I know it wasn't something I did 8-)) This means though that Visual Editor is susceptible to some embedded errors with Templates. When I redid the edit 3 minutes later with Edit Source no such problem occurred. Dirac66 (talk) 21:47, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

A proposal to make the "Reference" panel awesome
First of all, the panel is currently almost totally unlabeled, which is very confusing. Anyway...

It seems to me that almost all citations are (and should be) created via templates, but this interface encourages manual formatting, which seems like a Bad Idea. Sure, you can include a template with the dauntingly-named "Transclusion" button, but then you are staring at another bafflingly labeled panel with a text field. This doesn't really make finding the template you need easier.

So here's what I propose: Templates work with Wikipedia categories. So why not set up a category namespace just for citation templates, with a nice taxonomical structure. Then you have a UI in the reference panel for drilling down through that structure. So if I wanted to cite a podcast, I might click "Multimedia", then "Audio", then "Podcast". Or if I wanted to cite a journal article, I could navigate through "Print -> Academic -> Journal". Then I'd be taken to a form to fill out the fields for that template. This could be a walk through sort of "wizard" or just a tree-view like any old file browser. Doesn't really matter. Note that a template could still be in more than one category if it made sense, e.g. "Map" could be filed under both "Multimedia -> Visual" and "Print -> Reference".

There are several really nice features of this proposal. First, it would be totally backward compatible with how things already work; it just needs UI on top of it and volunteers categorize the templates. Second, it finally fixes a major pain point in adding actual substance to articles, since searching for citation templates has always been laborious for occasional contributors (I have at least once given up on an edit because I lost patience). Finally, it would make the organization of the citation UI totally user driven - was the template for "DVD notes" not where I expected it? I can fix it myself! mistercow (talk) 00:47, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * There are only fifteen specific citation templates, plus an overall Citation template, per Citation templates . You're not really proposing a separate namespace with a total of sixteen pages, are you? Similarly, given the relatively few citation templates, why is searching for citation templates "laborious"?


 * There has been some discussion of just putting citation templates on a menu, within the References dialog box. They you'd only need a single click to select the citation template you want. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:59, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Citation templates does not list all of the templates there are. There are 28 templates under Category:Citation Style 1 templates alone. I understand how it seems aesthetically awkward to create a namespace for a relatively few pages (though far more than 16). But the purpose of using a namespace for this is to use an existing technical feature to mark those categories as meaningful to the reference editor. The main purpose of namespaces in programming is to keep names sanitary. The number of items in a namespace really isn't that important of a consideration.


 * The same effect could be achieved by using a specific category within the main Category namespace, but that is more likely to lead to accidental contamination by users. A new namespace would make it clear that these particular categories are of special importance to the MediaWiki software. Also keep in mind that MediaWiki is not just used by Wikipedia. Other wikis will have different citation templates. Giving a category special meaning to the software without a new namespace would be an exceptionally bad idea. mistercow (talk) 12:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Five templates, cite book, cite web, cite journal, cite news, and citation account for about 95% of templated citations. Most of the existing ref tools focus supported between 3 and 8 templates.  One can cover most use cases with a relatively small support set.  Dragons flight (talk) 16:31, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * That seems a sensible way to improve the VE cul-de-sac. sfn and efn with convert are the two templates I need all the time during page generation. These should be a one touch control key sequence- it is a shame the Ctrl-t is already taken. The notes/footnote/citation blocks are c&p'ed from a similar article and the unused ones deleted at the end,  thank goodness you can safely C&P all these references from a similar article . The other task is to hunt out cn templates and convert them into sfn, cite book, cite web, cite journal, cite news, and citation.
 * Finally, WP code is written for 'users' convenience not that of the 'coders'- so when will this made-up word 'transclusion' be replaced with a term that is Joe Bloggs normal vocabulary. Take a step back- just try googling for it in the non wikiworld. -- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Content transclusion causes WTF mode
{{answered|text= {{Tracked|52198}} I have stumbled upon a hidden variant of VE that I like to call "WTF mode". While VEditing, click the Transclusion button, then do one of the following actions:


 * Click "add content", write anything (or nothing), click "apply changes".
 * Click "remove template", click "add content" (order does not matter). In content module, write anything (or nothing), click "apply changes".
 * Click "add content", click "add content". Write anything (or nothing), click "apply changes".

The first two actions activate WTF mode. The third action allows you to add markup directly, which may cause other problems if abused. Anywho, symptoms of WTF mode:


 * The transclusion button is now non-functional.
 * Pressing "enter" at the end of a paragraph will create a copy of the paragraph.
 * Images may disappear.
 * The text cursor may stick to one location even while typing in another location.

I suspect this is an incomplete list. Possibly the wierdest behavior I have seen in VE thus far. I will explore further when I get the chance.

Using Monobook on Firefox v22.0 on Windows 7

--Cryptic C62 · Talk 06:38, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * "WTF mode" is well named. I can find it with Vector/Win7/FF22.0. I was puzzled at first because after clicking the "Transclusion" icon there is no "Add content" button visible, but I found it lurking behind a + icon in the bottom left corner. Mousing over that produces two icons - a puzzle-piece "Add template" and a [ ] "Add content". (Comment: these are not described in the User Guide).


 * Steps to demonstrate WTF mode. Starting with this test page in edit mode
 * Place the cursor in one of the three paragaphs, and remember which one
 * Click the puzzle-piece icon
 * Mouse-over the + icon at bottom left, click on [ ] "Add content", type something in the box, and click "Apply changes". Now you are in WTF mode. The symptoms I observe are:
 * The text typed in the "add content" box has not gone anywhere
 * The "Transclusion" icon has no effect
 * In the two paragraphs where the cursor wasn't, you can add and delete text as normal, but
 * In the paragraph where the cursor was things are odd, and inconsistent:
 * a) Sometimes you can add text, but not delete it: the "Backspace" key only moves the cursor left without deleting, and the "delete" key has no effect
 * b) Sometimes use of the "Backspace" or "Delete" keys makes the whole paragraph vanish.
 * I don't know what decides whether (a) or (b) happens.
 * Sometimes when you click to reposition the cursor it appears in the new place, but when you type the changes appear at the old cursor position.
 * I haven't observed the paragraph-duplicating effect.
 * JohnCD (talk) 11:42, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Absolutely correct, this "functionality" is not described in the User guide. When/if it ever becomes stable, and has a clear purpose, I'll be happy to include it there. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * {{replyto|JohnCD}} Thank you for clarifying. Yes, I was referring to the lurking + icon. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:49, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Double content transclusion enabled markup editing
Elaborating on a point I hinted at above: While VEditing, click the puzzle icon to open up the transclusion box. In the bottom left, hover over the + icon, then click [ ] "Add content" twice. Any content added this way will ignore the VE "no markup allowed" rule. This allows the user to add a variety of markup options that are otherwise inaccessible in VE.

For example, at the top of a page, use double content transclusion to add a  tag. At the bottom of the page, use the same method to add a  tag. Before saving, none of the page's content will be affected, but upon saving, it will all be struck out. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * That's fascinating. It's still challenging to do markup without actually being able to see it (as one can with the wikitext editor), but still, this could be very helpful for something like doing blockquotes, if one wants to stay use VE to do that for some reason. And, yes, it does work - I did strikeout in one edit, and changed some text to a smaller size in another edit, both using VE.


 * What I can't figure out is why - is this an undocumented but deliberate way to allow wikitext markup, or is this something that no one planned for the VE software to do, and it's really WTF mode? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:15, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * WTF mode, unfortunately :/. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

}}

Error loading data from server: Unsuccessful request: Invali
Keep getting this error on edits Error loading data from server: Unsuccessful request: Invalid token. DennisDaniels (talk) 07:23, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Oh dear; that looks like a timing out bug. Does it occur regularly/consistently? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Gallery layout issues
The gallery at the bottom of GNB2 renders very differently in VE for me in Firefox, with three columns instead of four. The Gallery invocation for that page is at PDB Gallery/2783. Has this type of problem been reported? John Vandenberg (chat) 11:48, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * This gallery is a 'width' based gallery, and does not have a fixed amount of columns. It seems the width of the cells is slightly different in VE mode. Minor issue. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:46, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Worse is that it has double captions, caused by incorrect interpretation of the inline mode of image transclusion. This is part of the VE that is still heavily in development. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 12:48, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * , thanks for figuring it out. Have you seen a bug about this?  I couldnt find one in the 'visualeditor caption' quicksearch list. John Vandenberg (chat) 14:46, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

VE should be disabled for certain pages
The Visual Editor should be disabled for the following types of pages (in main and user space) because it is of absolutely no use there: — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:07, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * the Main Page - Rarely will one encounter a Main Page with editable content; it is usually just transcluded pages or parameter-less templates.
 * user .js and .css pages - a no-brainer; VE is useless for editing code.

(Removed unrelated personal opinion.) I would appriciate not hijacking this thread to spew personal opinions. Let's keep on topic. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 15:45, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The Main Page is editable only by admins, since it's fully protected; I wouldn't expect the VE team to be interested in coding an exception just for admins.


 * I looked at a user .js page and a user .css page, for me, and I didn't see VE enabled for them. So either the VE team anticipated your proposal, or reacted very quickly to it, or the two of us are seeing different things. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 19:20, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * It seems they already fixed that one indeed. That leaves the Main Page; VE is pretty useless there, even for admins. Besides, it would save loading stub code for VE that is not used there anyway, which could save quite some bandwidth for the most openend page. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 20:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Try copying the mainpage to a user subpage, and editing in VE. It might work fine. John Vandenberg (chat) 21:29, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Doesn't work at all; all content is transcluded. — Edokter  ( talk ) — 22:11, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * On the Main Page, your point is well taken - the English version gets 9 million page views per day, on average; that's an opportunity to load VE stub code 9 million fewer times per day,just for the English version of that page. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 21:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Non-admins don't see VE on the main page, and I doubt the VE stub is the biggest performance hit with regards to bandwidth of the main page. ($.ime appears to be one of the biggest problems on a cold cache, as it is not needed to render the main page (but it might be needed for the search box?)) I'm sure the network guys will yell at the devs if they leave too much unneeded JS being sent 9 million times per day ;-) John Vandenberg (chat) 03:13, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * With the way the devs are treating us editors with our comments its unlikley they would do anything even if the network guys did complain. Kumioko (talk) 13:30, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

A trip to German Wikipedia.
I followed a link to German Wikipedia, so lets give you a few more bugs. It was an interesting trip to make. Are we going to be given statistics for VE take up in the other wikipedias? When can we expect global opt-out?-- Clem Rutter (talk) 23:39, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I have done everything possible to opt out of the the shoddy beta version- to my horror, you have to opt out all over again. Instead of the clean 'bearbeiten' we now have 'bearbeiten/quelltext bearbeiten'.
 * Following the ?BETA button on the top bar I get a popup telling me to read the manual.
 * I cant cut and paste the text here as C&P is disabled.
 * I click on the link Lies das Benutzerhandbuch and I linked to the English Language version which suggests to me that these messages have been hardcoded- rather than filtered through a data-dictionary, so whole of the Visual Editor source code will need to be rewritten when a new language is added!
 * The German feedback page is regimented into threads which IMHO makes it deliberately unusable.
 * There is no table on this page to links to similar feedback pages.


 * You'll find dashboards for VE on other Wikipedias at meta:Research:VisualEditor's effect on newly registered editors. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:10, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Just for information, the German Wikipedia created also a poll about VE, overwhelming consensus against the deployment as the default editor de:Wikipedia:Umfragen/VisualEditor_Opt-in. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 04:26, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor has been changed to opt-in at the German Wikipedia, per this statement from the WMF. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:20, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * So what's it going to take to get the same treatment here?&mdash;Kww(talk) 16:32, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * A similar poll ? (wishful thinking...) --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 16:37, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Die Verwendung von Wikitext wird selbstverständlich auch nach der
 * Wiederaktivierung des VisualEditor möglich sein. Der VisualEditor ist und
 * bleibt optional, und kann während der Beta-Phase auch komplett aus der
 * Benutzeroberfläche entfernt werden.
 * -- James Forrester, Produktmanager, VisualEditor-Team 
 * I don't want to spoil good news but why, when you have opted-out of VE in one language do you get thrown back into it when you enter another. und kann während der Beta-Phase auch komplett aus der Benutzeroberfläche entfernt werden  seems a little ingenuous, or out of touch. So what was de:wikipedias secret, could they share with us a pointer to the type of pressure they used to rescue their users? -- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:00, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't know if anything could lead to a similar treatment here, but I will highlight what I think dewiki did right. They avoided distractions.  Their poll was a simple actionable question.  Given the current state of VE, it should A) be deployed by default for anons and everyone else, B) be deployed by default for registered users but not anons, or C) be made opt-in only for all users.  (This was slightly undermined by the addition of a confusing fourth choice after polling started.)  If you want to give clear guidance about what people think about a software package, it helps to ask clear questions.  By comparison, enwiki's discussions have been scattered and the polling we have done on the subject has been confused by too many options or questions that don't easily lead to actionable responses.  Dragons flight (talk) 18:35, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree with you, that's why I talked about a similar poll (the one that was held on enwiki was too confused and too far from being neutral). I also think that there's been a beginning of change in WMF position about the same time as Jimmy got back from holidays (first, the option to opt-out, then this decision for dewiki). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 18:40, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Should we run a new poll here? I mean, WP:VE/FAQ already shows fairly strong support, but I'm not that concerned if it's preferred to restart. We should probably have a sitenotice, though, to get widespread input. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I think a new poll would be a good idea. I wouldn't have thought a community poll would be enough to sway them but now that the precendant has been set we should go forward with the idea as well. I also think it needs to be limited to 2 options. A) Keep the editor enabled by default, as it is now; B) Make the Visual Editor opt in only. We can always reenable it for all users later when the problems have been resolved but I think we nearly all agree that there are just too many problems currently. Kumioko (talk) 19:00, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The elephant in the room: the German Wikipedia already made one credible threat to fork, over the image filter. It is much easier to give them the off switch than to risk such a movement again - David Gerard (talk) 19:41, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

I also think a new poll would be a good idea, with just a choice between "enabled by default" or "opt-in" (and if "opt-in" is decided, it can be changed later). And eventually a site notice or edit notice to have user know about the poll. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 20:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * For what it is worth, if we are going to have another poll, I would include all three states that the WMF has been using in their deployment choices, i.e. enable for all, enable for registered users only, opt-in only. Dragons flight (talk) 20:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Its all to do with pushback. I had an email exchange with Sue Gardner, basically all the angst about VE was expected. I think they were planning for a lot of "resistance to change" (my words) for the release. People screaming for it to be switched off was expected. People calling it a buggy piece of rubbish was expected. The foundation was actually surprised how little pushback there was before July when you had to opt-in, and pushback now is about what is expected.

So far the pushback from en wikipedia has not be strong enough, de was more organised with a greater number of votes: 480 for opt in our RFC with only 39 for disabling just does not measure up. de has also been better in taking things to bugzilla, which is where the developers listen. Posts on-wiki have little effect where the foundation/developers are concerned. The Dutch wikipedia has done even better you can't even use VE there, but this is mainly due to a bug which badly affected that wiki. We have had some success and have been successful with the disable VE preference, we are likely to see action on the hover effect on edit|edit source .--Salix (talk): 21:18, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I think they are mistaking "resistance to change" with people being fed up with the deployment of a buggy, unfinished and non fully functional software (which is an objective statement I think, and not just "resistance to change"). The fact that they got less pushback than expected before July is a clear indication that it's not just resistance to change, but really a resistance to buggy software: before July, I think most people here didn't believe that WMF would really proceed with the deployment (as the number of bugs was important and major features were even thought through). So, people just took it quietly, expecting bugs to be fixed and features added before the roll-out.
 * dewiki and nlwiki handled things a lot better, but they also had a few weeks to prepare themselves, here we were fighting every week to stop the deployment for going an other step further. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 21:43, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

See below.&mdash;Kww(talk) 03:04, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Less imposing
This edit makes me fell like im more likely to make changes as it looks less imposing 142.162.223.104 (talk) 01:36, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Great to hear! Let us know if you see any bugs. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:04, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposal: WikiProject VisualEditor
I think we should, if there is sufficient interest, create a WikiProject for VE, at WikiProject VisualEditor. At Wikipedia talk:VisualEditor, I've listed a number of tasks that such a WikiProject could work on. Please comment on this proposal (including an interest in participating) at that talk page, not here. Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 20:16, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

RFC over default state
VisualEditor/Default State RFC has been opened. Be nice. Be respectful. Don't vent.&mdash;Kww(talk) 01:30, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Pretty please, countdown to end of VE beta
Pretty please with sugar on top, could we please get a countdown to the end of the VisualEditor beta? For whatever reason, there are a group of people that miss all the messages when there's a change. I fear that when the beta phase of the VisualEditor ends, we will have to go through the whole VE switchover thing all over again. So I think it would be helpful if there was a CentralNotice that counted down the last 5 days before the VisualEditor beta period ends and the switch to VE becomes finalized.

There are a lot of good people helping others learn how to use the VisualEditor and answering questions, but they have been through a lot recently and I would hate to see them have to go through that all over again. I think a countdown would help these dedicated folks and their efforts to help others with the VisualEditor. Thanks for considering this suggestion. 64.40.54.39 (talk) 01:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, we'll definitely need to do lots of communications around the end of the beta time period. It's almost certain that some users will continue to hide VisualEditor completely via a gadget, as well. Markup editing is not going anywhere -- users will continue to have the choice between the two modes.--Eloquence* 02:58, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks very much, Erik. You've done a great deal of work improving our projects over the years, so it means a lot to me to have your support. I sincerly appreciate your efforts. Kind regards. 64.40.54.39 (talk) 03:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

References - still dreadful
I've not followed all the discussions about references, but it's still a nightmare. Click on "Add a reference", and unless you know about "cite web" etc there's no clue what to do except to add a free-formatted reference with no links etc.

Having added a couple of references, I want to re-use one of them. There's a helpful looking button saying "Use an existing reference". It leads me to a box asking "What do you want to reference"? What? I want to re-use my existing Ref 2, at the point where I've got the cursor. What sort of question is that? No clue as to how to do anything. Will have to add that reference out in Edit Source. (Have the existing references got names? If not, will have to add a name, too). Not going well. Pam D  11:04, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It would be good if the most common cases were intuitive. i.e. adding a webpage or journal article can be done without any help pages. We could add an icon after the transclusion icon, which offers : webpage, journal, book, doi, pmid ; clicking on one of them would automatically set up the right transclusion dialog. John Vandenberg (chat) 11:41, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I too think that adding new references is comparatively cumbersome in VE. I find the referencing tool in the old editor very convenient. However, for reusing an existing ref, I think the VE is more convenient. If you look below the box saying "What do you want to reference"?, the existing refs should be listed there. You can click on any one of them and go on to reuse them. Actually, the box containing the message "What do you want to reference"? is a search box. If you type any word in that search box, the list showing existing refs would be whittled down to the refs containing that word. So, finding the desired ref is easy. You can click on the desired ref, and reuse it.OrangesRyellow (talk) 11:56, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks, Oranges: my two refs weren't listed as you describe, so I don't know what was going wrong there.


 * In general terms, when I've clicked on "Add reference", there should be some buttons for "Get help to add a reference to a: book / website / journal article / newspaper item", to lead to the citation templates, rather than expecting the editor to (a) guess to click on the transclusion icon, and then (b) know the name of the template they want. We could bypass those two stages and lead the editor to the appropriate citation template. And within that template, having added one or more parameters, we need "Add another parameter" rather than having to click back on the template name. I don't think an inexperienced user has a cat in hell's chance of adding a reference at present. Pam  D  12:38, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, reopened it in VE and the "use existing reference" worked like a dream. I wonder why it didn't work first time? Pam  D  12:46, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Did you save the two refs before trying to reuse them? Reuse function does not work on refs which have not been saved yet. I second your request to bypass the two stages you described. I guess we are requesting a workflow similar to the referencing workflow in the source editor referencing tool. I think improvement in the referencing technique of VE should speed up its usage across Wikipedia. I think the VE has the potential to have a referencing technique superior to the source editor. It just needs some tweaking to the community's tastes.OrangesRyellow (talk) 12:55, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm actually talking to James about this today. I'm going to try and write up what comes out of the conversation. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:18, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Apart from reproducing the old cite toolbar functionality, a nice feature to include would be another button beside "Use existing reference", one that says something like "Modify existing reference and use here". When you click on this it brings you to essentially the same list of existing references, but when you click on one of them in this list, it makes a new reference but copies all the old information from the existing reference that was selected and then places it in this new reference, and then the dialog goes back to the original reference view so that the editor can change the page number, etc.  This allows quick referencing, comparable or perhaps even quicker than source-code, of the same work or volume when just a new page or chapter is being cited; since most articles don't use Template:rp.
 * On top of this another couple of useful features would be (1) some note in the normal reference view when a reference is used more than once, "This reference is used in multiple locations in this article." And (2), when this is the case, a checkbox with a label like "Modify for this location only."  Then, if this checkbox is checked, and any changes are made, when the editor presses "Apply changes", a new reference is made with the content as modified and put in that location, but the old reference is left unchanged. This way one can change an incorrect page number without having to create a new reference, nor run any extra risk of accidentally changing a reference for all locations when only one location needed fixing. -- Atethnekos (Discussion, Contributions) 18:57, 25 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I think I like this idea. If you've got several similar sources (e.g., side-by-side articles from the same periodical or chapters from a book), you could save some time by copying the one and changing only the titles and authors.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:59, 25 July 2013 (UTC)


 * @Okeyes. Thanks. IMO, the important things to keep in mind is that, like in the source editor referencing tool(SERT), getting to the common ref templates like cite news, cite web, cite book, cite journal should require as few clicks as possible. Like in the SERT, clicking on those templates should provide a ready-made form with 5-10 commonly used parameters visible all at once, with an option to show some additional less commonly used parameters, so that most users can get done without requiring to add parameters one by one. Having to select and add parameters every time one wants to add a ref is cumbersome. It can be made even better if users had an option to devise and save their own ready-made forms with pre-selected parameters for any ref template, and access these self devised templates from buttons on the VE. Next time they want to use the ref template with the same set of parameters, they just need to click a button and start adding the data. This should be a big advancement on the SERT, and please power users, besides being convenient for eds who use various types of specialized ref templates. I understand adding a functionality like this may not be easy. I am willing to give it some time...OrangesRyellow (talk) 09:18, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * In the meantime, would someone mind submitting a bug report that the search box hint, "What do you want to reference", should say "What existing reference do you want to use?" Because, as Pam pointed out, the existing hint can be read as asking the user "What text do you want this citation to apply to?" Hopefully this is something that is easy to change. Maybe it's something that we here can fix via localization rather than waiting for the VE team to react? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:22, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The search bar should actually have been removed; are you still getting it? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:00, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The search bar in the References dialog box, visible after one clicks on "Use an existing resource', is very much still there (Chrome, Firefox, Safari). Are you saying that it's going to be removed, or that a different search bar has already been removed? (I ask because I'm trying to keep the User guide current.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:37, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Neither; it should've been removed, and has been for me. How very strange :/. O...kay. I'm going to go down to 3rd and headscratch with the devs about this.
 * Unrelated; I had the chat about referencing with James F on Thursday. Basically they're looking to make some general improvements to reference editing as it stands, but more importantly integrate (on a per-wiki basis) equivalents to the cite functions that exist in the markup editor. You'll get a set of buttons pointing at commonly used templates, and clicking will open up a template dialog populated with the various parameters. Obviously this can be made more elegant (and the template dialog itself needs to be made more elegant) but they hope to have that in place in August (taking into account Wikimania). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:44, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * @ Okeyes (WMF). Thanks for the update. The plan looks good. The search bar is still there for me. Besides not having to learn and wade through complicated wikicode, the search bar is one of the smartest things about VE. It is very easy to reuse refs through that search bar, particularly when the article contains a large number of refs. (Try reusing a ref in an article with 100-150 refs through source editor and then in VE through search bar, and you will see the argument). So, I would request that the search bar should be kept. I feel most people do not know about the search bar because the present caption "What do you want to reference ?" seems confusing and does not provide a good clue that it is a search box. I think the caption should be changed to something like "Search and reuse existing references". That should immediately convey the meaning and purpose of the search bar. I guess, people will like the VE lot more if they saw this search bar there. Reusing refs in source editor seems comparatively difficult to me and the VE clearly outscores it there. Why delete a smart feature?OrangesRyellow (talk) 07:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't treat this as a permanent removal; more a "we know bits don't work very well, so let's strip it down to something more basic and build off that". This isn't to say the search bar won't be returning - I don't know the answer to that question, I'm afraid - but instead that something being removed doesn't mean it's gone forever. The restoration of the old interface serves as a good case in point, I reckon :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Templates for dealing with problem cases
For problem cases like List of X-Men (TV series) episodes where Visual Editor cannot be safely used, I've developed two little templates: disable VE top and disable VE bottom. Any text that lies between those two templates cannot be edited by the Visual Editor. If you place them in an article, please make sure that an edit notice like Template:Editnotices/Page/List of X-Men (TV series) episodes is in place to make editors aware that the inability to edit the section is intentional.&mdash;Kww(talk) 05:44, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * If we add a specific class to that template as an option, we can use MediaWiki:Common.css to hide the edit links to the VE on these pages using the same rules as found at VisualEditor/Opt-out, leaving only 'edit source' links which go to the SE. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:22, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I've got no objection to that, but I think we'd need a wider consensus than just us. The template as it stands can be used to protect a subsection as well: if there's an individual table that causes trouble, only the table needs to be protected.&mdash;Kww(talk) 06:32, 28 July 2013 (UTC)
 * "only the table needs to be protected" - have you tested that? John Vandenberg (chat) 14:50, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Not heavily. Certainly wouldn't hurt if you wanted to play with it.&mdash;Kww(talk) 15:44, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The only problem I see: when the dev team releases a significant update, we'll get a better sense of the update's effectiveness if this template isn't used. Many eyes make shallow bugs, right? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:54, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Ctrl+A throws errors on large pages
Procedure: Go to George W. Bush. Click "edit this page" to activate VE. Press Ctrl+A, the shortcut to highlight all text. I got the following error:





Alternatively, if I scroll down a bit before pressing Ctrl+A, my browser scrolls down to the bottom of the page and then freezes for a few seconds.

Using Monobook in Firefox v22.0 on Windows 7

-- Cryptic C62 · Talk 00:47, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Ctrl+A isn't one of the shortcuts listed at VisualEditor/Portal/Keyboard shortcuts. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:15, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Listed or not, it certainly functions as expected, and selects everything on the page.&mdash;Kww(talk) 03:22, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I have intentionally avoided looking at any documentation pages, including the keyboard shortcuts page. I'm not interested in seeing how VE reacts to some hypothetical contributor who colors in between the lines. I'm interested in seeing how VE reacts when you actually try to use it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 12:41, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * This page is certainly a nice performance test case. On my 6-year-old 2Ghz desktop PC, I can't reproduce the aforementioned issue either in Chrome or FF. It definitely takes a while to load the whole thing, and then CPU is usage is pretty high, so with a slower machine it seems likely to be operating near the limit.


 * Is it just Ctrl+A that triggers the warning, or does it also happen if you interact with the document in other ways?--Eloquence* 06:06, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * After highlighting the entire article, pressing the bold, italics, or numbered list buttons cause the multi-error behavior that John describes below. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 12:41, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * It takes my Dell Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8400 @ 3.00GHz (5985 bogomips) computer 2'15" to switch into VE mode on the GW Bush article, with the busy script warning appearing twice. After pressing Ctrl+A, then delete, the warning appeared 10 times, and I gave up and cancelled it after 10 minutes, and I am left with a half deleted article.  This computer has no problems performing other tasks for my day job, and Google Docs never causes that warning.  Just to compare, I copy the entire G W Bush article into a Google Doc, and it is instantly visible and I can scroll through it - No worries - I dont get a script warning.  However to be fair, Google Docs eventually tells me I am disconnected from the server, and it hasnt saved the document ;-)  However I've worked on some large spreadsheets and docs without problems, so I think their app doesnt like something about the G. W. Bush article. John Vandenberg (chat) 07:33, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * It's bizarre to see it be that much slower on a faster computer. What OS/browser is that? Here's a full measurement on my machine (4000 bogomips/2 Ghz):


 * Chrome 28/Ubuntu 12.04
 * Switch into VE: 13 secs
 * Ctrl+A: instant
 * Delete all: about 5 secs
 * Firefox 22/Ubuntu 12.04
 * Switch into VE: 26 secs
 * Ctrl+A: instant
 * Delete all: 5 secs
 * Delete all: 5 secs


 * I wonder if there's any other JS that might be slowing down execution. Do you see the same performance editing a long article as an IP?--Eloquence* 15:23, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I do seem to remember that VE/Parsoid is very dependent on caching. So probably if you reload the same page twice, it will be significantly faster. Another issue might be cache fragmentation between users due to options these users have set. If you have an option enabled that is 'not default', it might be that it has to start from scratch for certain users. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 15:55, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

My test results, all done on List of jōyō kanji on Windows Vista (2.00 Ghz):

Quick summary: Load times and errors do not appear to be affected by user status, but are affected by browser. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:07, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

More problems for occasional editors
Adding a reference link is too hard for your target audience. I did ask weeks ago for the planning documents, design mockups, or whatever concerning the reference template interface. Maggie said she'd look into it. Did these ever turn up? - David Gerard (talk) 18:27, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * We've already changed the references panel a fair bit, getting rid of the confusion of presenting the user with a prominent choice of selecting an existing reference. The mid term plan is to implement support for citation templates (in a manner where each community can configure its set of preferred templates, if any). I know Vibha (Interaction Designer) has done some initial thinking on that, let me ping her to see if there's anything in shareable form yet.


 * I suspect also plays a role here; the fact that URLs show up as plaintext is confusing.--Eloquence* 20:31, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I think it's more that adding references is actually harder with the VE, and that how to give a text label to a URL is still all but undiscoverable. (I remember there's a way, I forget what it actually is, and if I have to read a manual then the VE interface has failed.) - David Gerard (talk) 20:56, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The easiest way is type text->select text->add link. The reason it doesn't show a "link label" type dialog when you add a new link or edit an existing one is that this would require yet another full-fledged VisualEditor invocation, as links can be made around mixed content (including e.g. inline images). However, we could show a link label input when a new link is being added, and possibly when we detect that the link is purely unformatted text (the majority case).--Eloquence* 21:42, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * See 50945 and 48789 for discussion about link label input. Thryduulf (talk) 11:05, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't like it.
While I was hoping for a visual editor, it just makes it more difficult to make things like infoboxes, references, etc. MatthewHoobin (talk) 21:45, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * VisualEditor is still very much a work in progress and so things should get better as bugs get fixed, etc. If you have any specific issues then please note them here so particular improvements can be identified and tracked. Thryduulf (talk) 11:19, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Improvement in template support
The recent (last couple of days?) improvement in the template interface -- presenting some documentation information on screen in the jigsaw puzzle piece dialog -- makes a huge difference in usability; thanks for that. I have been using VE whenever I could while editing an article with lots of templates, and was unable to quickly figure out how to use the parameters in a template I wasn't familiar with. That's no worse than ordinary editing; normally what I'd do is bring up a second tab with the template documentation and work from that. However, now that the params have definitions on screen, the interface is significantly better than with the wikitext editor -- I'm still going to have to go to the template page for some things, but this is a big milestone and very welcome. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:03, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks! I'll pass this on to the dev team :). Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:45, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Issues with Images
I've experienced issues to do with image search, size and captions. AFAICS these aren't fully documented in the existing bug reports:
 * When adding a new image, the media search feature doesn't find long names.
 * Steps to reproduce (tested in Chrome 28.0.1500.72m on Windows 8 Pro 64-bit, logged in to https:enwiki as ):
 * 1. Find an image on commons with a long filename (e.g. File:St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograph.org.uk - 501812.jpg).
 * 2. Choose a relevant article in which to insert it (e.g. W. S. Lach-Szyrma).
 * 3. Click the "Edit" tab to edit the entire page using VE.
 * 4. Place the caret at an appropriate insertion point and then click the media button.
 * 5. Enter the filename in the search box (e.g. St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograph.org.uk - 501812.jpg)
 * The image is not found
 * 6. Progressively trim the filename by destructively backspacing from the end of the string. After each backspace, pause to allow the search results to refresh:
 * In my test, the search first succeeded with the string "St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograph.or"
 * Search also succeeded with "St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograph.o"
 * Search then failed with "St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograph."
 * Search then failed with "St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograph"
 * Search then succeeded with "St Peter's Church, Newlyn - geograp" and all shorter strings
 * 7. Save the page (the result was this version).

Thanks - Pointillist (talk) 11:04, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The image was inserted with a fixed size (in this case 225x225px). As discussed (here) a few weeks ago the Forced image size guideline discourages this, saying that fixed image sizes "should be avoided where possible, since it overrides the user's default." Bug 50379 says it would be preferable to have no explicit size. It might be better to make  be the standard for newly inserted images.
 * The VE provides convenient grab handles for resizing images. I question the need for this. It is just making it easy for inexperienced users to do something they shouldn't be doing. If an experienced user has a valid reason for using a non-standard image size, they can edit the source. Image resizing should be done using the  parameter anyway. Ideally an attempt to re-size an image using VE should convert the pixel-based width into the equivalent   parameter using the contributor's current or default preference. That would transparently promote best practice rather than undermining it. It would also help with bug 47804.
 * For similar reasons the proposed image property dialog (bug 38129) should default to using -based ratios.
 * When I clicked on the search thumbnail to select the picture I wanted, the image was immediately inserted into the article. I had to manually invoke the Caption dialog. The contributor should automatically be prompted to provide a caption when inserting a new image. Perhaps this could be added to the improvements listed in bug 49662 or bug 38129.


 * To elaborate on the last item - currently there are two image-related dialogs: "Insert media" and "Media settings". There should be just a single dialog: Media. If the dialog begins with an image selected, then it would offer various edit options, plus the options to replace and to delete the selected image. If it begins without an image selected, then it would offer the option of selecting a new one. In both situations, the dialog box would include edit options for thumb versus frame versus full (radio buttons; default is thumb), the text of the caption (including retaining the existing caption for a replacement image), and left versus right alignment (radio buttons; default is right). And selecting an image would not terminate the dialog; it would move the user to the choices related to that image, including size. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 16:12, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * That sounds like a very good approach. - Pointillist (talk) 17:12, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

WONTFIX on nowiki's
There is now a provisional WONTFIX on the nowiki bug. JDF thinks its better left to an abuse filters, like Special:AbuseFilter/550. As there is no likelihood of this getting better we might need to toughen up the filter. One thing which could be done is to set it to "Prevent the user from performing the action in question" but only if the edit comes from VE. I'm not quite sure how to test for such though.--Salix (talk): 16:19, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The point of the bug was to have what the AbuseFilter currently does baked into the software. I'm not sure how rejecting that request means we need to strengthen the AF. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Because as it stands, the abuse filter can't block the edit. It has a non-zero false positive rate, and VE's habit of placing the nowikis in really odd places relative to what it is trying to escape makes a regular expression nearly impossible to code. On the other hand, if VE would just stop behaving in a way that every user that has commented on it says that it should not, the problem could actually be fixed.&mdash;Kww(talk) 16:49, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it also still the case that VE doesn't tell the user in any manner useful to humans why an edit blocked by the edit filter didn't succeed. Thryduulf (talk) 17:06, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That has been fixed: the edit filter notice is displayed properly now.&mdash;Kww(talk) 18:28, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Can I just clarify: are you saying that there is no intention to stop VE spraying text with nowikis? -- Clem Rutter (talk) 18:36, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes; James and Erik have stated in some detail (I can't find the specific bug, I'm afraid) that this will remain the case. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:49, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Then I think using VisualEditor/Default_State_RFC to ask the WMF to turn VE off is the right step, if VE is not going to be fixed. Look, I'm trying to rant less, but I really do think the VE team is horribly ignorant of what users actually want out of VE. Adam Cuerden (talk) 18:58, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * In that case, a major task for the proposed WikiProject VE will to plan and organise a permanent, ongoing clean-up-after-VE task force: devise scripts to list affected articles, see how much can be entrusted to bots and how much will have to be done by human volunteers. There will be a lot of work: I see that Filter 550 was tripped 50 times in the hour from 18:00 to 18:59. JohnCD (talk) 19:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Even at 50 trips per hour, this can be managed feasibly with AWB. I am not competent enough to start doing this on my own, but am teachable. We need the edit filter that logs new nowiki tags to produce a list of articles, so we can review each one quickly in AWB. AWB can automatically remove the nowiki tags, and the operator can skip any new tags that are warranted (which appears to be the small minority).
 * Just so we are clear though - we are talking about maybe an hour of experienced editor time to manage this, every day forever, because WMF is unwilling to accept feedback on how the software is actually used. Sheesh. VQuakr (talk) 19:55, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah that's pretty much correct. Creating a script for AWB or something else to strip the nowiki tags is easy. The problem lies in that we have no way of knowing for sure of the nowiki tags on an article were placed in error by Visual Editor or were there already for some valid reason. It would be better IMO to assume that the users want stuff to display rather than assume they do not and surround the text with nowiki tags. This adding of nowiki tags wsa stupid to begin with there is no reason to continue doing it. It needs to stop. That's not a request or a suggestion. That is a requirement if the WMF wants VE to be accepted by the community. Kumioko (talk) 20:17, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed that we cannot write a bot to remove all article space nowiki tags, for the same reasons that we cannot block all nowiki tags via an edit filter. Fixing this will require a person in the loop, and will be more efficient if performed using a semi-automated script. VQuakr (talk) 21:40, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That clearly demonstrates that the VE leader doesn't give a damn about the encyclopedia quality, with hundreds of articles being damaged every day for nearly a month. Stop that nonsense and shut VE down. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 20:40, 30 July 2013 (UTC)


 * On a more constructive note, WPCleaner now has some functionality to deal with 550 errors (see Wikipedia talk:WPCleaner). There was also some discussion at WP:BOTREQ about coding a bot, but that has been archived. I remain convinced that a bot that posted a note on user talk pages would really be helpful: "You seem to have damaged [article name] with [diff this edit]. Please help repair that damage. If you intend on continuing to use VisualEditor, please don't use wikitext. If you used VisualEditor by mistake, you may want to opt out." -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 01:28, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Meh. We can discuss more on the bot page about notification functionality, but do we really need another bot throwing out notifications that no one will read? Putting the cart before the horse by attempting to modify user behavior to fit a crappy interface never works. Better to just clean up the nowikis and move on. VQuakr (talk) 02:19, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Can 550 be set to identify VE edits and disallow? That would solve 99% of the problems. Black Kite (talk) 02:23, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * There is presently no way to distinguish VE edits from other edits with the filters. There is a bug report requesting that ability.  Dragons flight (talk) 02:30, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Bah. I was hoping it was possible to distinguish ?veaction from ?action. Black Kite (talk) 02:37, 31 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I am confused by 550 log entries. There are lot of entries there, but only a fraction (~110 in 12 hours that I counted) have a diff link that corresponds to a nowiki being actually added.  I looked at last 500 entries tagged VisualEditor and found only 5 entries in the 1 hour that the log corresponded to (21:46 to 22:46 CST).  So, the current rate of nowiki seems to be < 10 an hour and not 50 an hour as has been claimed earlier in this thread. Can someone independently verify this?  Ssastry (talk) 03:57, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The filter has been set to warn editor before they save, giving them a chance to correct their work. This means some have "Actions taken: Warn;" (a warning to the user) and others have "Actions taken: Tag;" (the edit was actually saved). You can ignore the warnings. Also of note is the filter instructs them to try source editing to remove the nowiki, so you do see a number of cases where the user corrects in a subsequent edit.--Salix (talk): 05:45, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

VE slows Wikipedia even when NOT used?
Over the last few days- possibly the same time frame where the "opt-out" was introduced- I'm getting several-minute load times and pages that load with no content. Edits and previews may time out instead of completing. This is browser-specific and site-specific: The slowdowns occur only on Wikipedia and only in Safari 5, which is unsupported and doesn't even give me the option of using VE in the first place. It's clearly not a CPU issue, or the fan would rattle loudly. Yes, the obvious answer would be to use a different browser, but I have my workflow set up. A new computer is not in my near future, so it's only a matter of time before VE supports none of my browsers. It's just a web page: It ought to work.

I don't have a complaint with the existence of a visual editor, but it should be an "opt-in" thing, not the other way around. It could be handy for small edits, but I do a lot of copy editing, the kind of project that works better in a text-based editor. Why make it harder on the people who have demonstrated the most commitment to the site in an effort to accommodate those who have made little or no commitment? Is there really a huge pool of talent just sitting there waiting to make its presence felt if only there were a visual editor? Dementia13 (talk) 14:44, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I too have suggested the "opt-in" but like everyone else on here making valid suggestions, it was shot down in the rudest manner by people who seek to remind us that wikipedia is not a democracy. What future does a website have if it doesn't listen to the people who use that website? The answer is it doesn't have one. I too have had the problem of slow loading times and glitching and thus have been going elsewhere to find my information. I say vote with your feet and do the same. You're not going to get civility, sensible answers, compromise or common sense from the people running this fiasco. --Rushton2010 (talk) 18:30, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * - Just to be clear, have you opted out via the new preference (the one on the editing tab, not [just] the one on the gadgets tab)? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:23, 28 July 2013 (UTC)


 * It's possible this is an issue with the Universal Language Selector, which was introduced at the same time and gave strange bugs of this sort. Ask on Village pump (technical) - David Gerard (talk) 08:24, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm opted out via prefs: There's no sense opting out via gadgets, as VE doesn't display in my browser anyway. Regarding ULS, I tried the suggestion of loading some different Wikipedias that have not yet enabled VE, and I'm having trouble with those as well. This suggests that ULS might be the problem, and it offers even less recourse. I've heard of Safari slowdowns with the introduction of style sheet elements that it can't render, so I'll give that style sheet-based solution a shot. If that doesn't help, I might finish the article I've been working on and then ride off into the sunset. Dementia13 (talk) 16:19, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I imagine speed improvements are probably high on the list of ULS focus areas; I appreciate this is very frustrating. any updates coming down the pipe? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:02, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Another case of a horribly mangled table via VE
Might want to take a look at this, where a good-faith attempt by an unregistered editor to update a table on a sportsman's page resulted in...very strange things happening to the table. - The Bushranger One ping only 18:52, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks to me like it's just "tidying" the formatting of the table code. This may or may not be desirable, but is essentially harmless - unless I'm missing something and it has altered the table display at all? Thryduulf (talk) 19:01, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it did, see the lower right corner. I just encountered this, possibly related. The table originally contained invalid html-leftovers, but displayed correctly. VE tidied that up by adding more invalid code, with a result that wouldn't display as a table anymore. Of course it's not VE's fault if there is invalid code beforehand, but we have to expect that such invalid, but correctly displaying code is present on many pages, and transforming it into invalid, wrongly displaying code is not too helpful... &mdash;&thinsp; H HHIPPO  19:13, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I see the problem in the first diff now, it seems to be an instance of . The second diff you give is a different bug, but I don't have time right now to investigate whether it's a known one or not. Thryduulf (talk) 19:57, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * So in the second case the > definitely wasn't intended? The rankings table actually doesn't look broken to me. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:22, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry, try the immediately following edit. That added another >, this time on the line the table starts, which breaks it. It's definitely a VE artifact, you can verify that by editing one of those revisions: make a trivial change anywhere else on the page and then 'review your changes'. What triggers VE to do that seems to be the extra > at the end of the line the table starts, but I've no idea why it's doing it. &mdash;&thinsp; H HHIPPO  21:26, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

This needs said
Why abuse nowiki for situations such as ? Shouldn't it be marked ? If marked correctly, it also has the advantage of being far easier to find the bad nowikis. Adam Cuerden (talk) 20:09, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Another option is .  GoingBatty (talk) 03:05, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, we could, but it would prevent the problematic text being visible at all, and would cause snarl-ups once we get HTML comment viewing and editing fucntional within the VE. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:42, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Error loading data from server: Unsuccessful request: Invali
while attempting to change List of Minor Recurring Characters in Star Trek The Next Generation. Error happens in beta version, on Fx 22 AllanVS talk contribs 20:35, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * This is some sort of timeout error, see the section with this same title further up this page. Thryduulf (talk) 21:43, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Is this happening consistently? How long did you have the page open for prior to hitting save? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:43, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist notice
There's a request to advertise VisualEditor/Default State RFC at the watchlist at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details. Participation in either or both discussions is appreciated.&mdash;Kww(talk) 22:31, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Related poll at German WP of 98% to make VE only opt-in: The similar, but 2-day, poll (27 July 2013) at German Wikipedia logged 98% of 465 reponses under the choice to keep VE as only Opt-in. See 458 responses (in German) on page:
 * de:WP:Umfragen/VisualEditor_Opt-in
 * That thread translates as "VE only as Opt-in (like before)" and had 458 responses (98.49% of 465) within 2 days, while 7 responded to extend VE as the default for IP users (although one said the extension was to increase WMF's damage to the German Wikipedia, to show more people what the Foundation was planning to do). Anyway, the only-Opt-in decision, of the German WP poll, was submitted as to leave VE configured as the initial user-opt-in feature. -Wikid77 (talk) 08:38, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That bug is marked "RESOLVED". Here's why (7/29 posting):
 * In response to community feedback, VisualEditor will be temporarily switched back into opt-in mode on the German Wikipedia. We don’t intend to otherwise alter the near-term VisualEditor deployment schedule, except in case of emergencies.


 * As we did in the case of Dutch Wikipedia, for instance, which was exempted from the phase 2 rollout, we try to accommodate community concern in the process of this rollout. VisualEditor is the single largest and most disruptive change to the user experience in the history of our projects. Not only is it still beta software, it also depends on us working together in partnership to update documentation, add template metadata (which is used by VisualEditor to make templates more user-friendly), and deal with unexpected issues. We appreciate your patience and feedback, and we have no intent of taking your partnership for granted.


 * We also recognize that there are still significant areas for improvement (e.g. performance, handling of tables, insertion of special characters) as well as work we can do to reduce the incidence rate of problematic markup changes. As we continue to support the beta where it is deployed, we’ll also update the German Wikipedia community on progress in these areas, and prepare for re-enabling VisualEditor later in the calendar year.


 * As a reminder, VisualEditor has always been optional to use, and can now also be completely hidden from the user experience (as an individual preference) in wikis where it is enabled by default.


 * -- James Forrester, Product Manager, VisualEditor team


 * -- John Broughton (♫♫) 15:45, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Focusing on improvements
I think we should recognize that VisualEditor is the future and try to spend time and energy focusing on possible real, actionable improvements to VisualEditor. --MZMcBride (talk) 17:19, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't personally believe its the future but if the WMF is going to force us to use it, then I agree it needs to be improved. Its still a long way from being a useful integrated part of Wikilife IMO. Kumioko (talk) 17:23, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Kumioko: Nobody is being forced to use VisualEditor. But from everyone I've talked to and listened to, it does seem that VisualEditor will be a major part of the next chapters in Wikimedia's history. We can work together to provide, for example, an easier opt-out mechanism for VisualEditor (going to Special:Preferences is annoying and disruptive to user workflow). --MZMcBride (talk) 18:04, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Again, I understand what your saying but we disagree. The WMF is forcing us and others to use VE whether the application itself or cleaning up all the mess and problems it leaves behind. That's why I haven't edited much for the last month or so. The WMF doesn't want to listen to our concerns but wants us to clean up their mess. I have a major problem with that mentality. But we do agree on the underlying problem that the VE app needs to be improved. We just disagree with why. Kumioko (talk) 18:20, 31 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I've got no problem with the idea of working to improve Visual Editor so long as improving Visual Editor doesn't get in the way of improving the encyclopedia.&mdash;Kww(talk) 17:30, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Kww: I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. In fact, I think the two go hand-in-hand. :-) We can focus on both making VisualEditor better and making it easier to disable/re-enable. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:06, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Absolutely. That's why I spend time working up little test cases and trying to find the simplest cases that can reproduce bugs. I don't see that as conflicting with my drive to ensure that unwitting people aren't exposed to buggy and incomplete software.&mdash;Kww(talk) 18:17, 31 July 2013 (UTC)


 * The reason why I spend time on this page is to try and enable those improvements by making the devs aware of what needs to be done, and making the commenters on this page aware of what the devs do and don't know. I'm not a good content editor myself, so I spend my time trying to enable those that are to add that content and trying to help readers find the content those people add. Thryduulf (talk) 17:50, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * And as I mentioned in one of the above sections, you deserve a medal for that. I genuinely mean that. I can't imagine where the WMF would be without the kind of help and support you've given here, and I'm certain they can't either. I hope they've tried to imagine it though - such a thought experiment would be educational for them. Begoon &thinsp; talk  17:58, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Thryduulf: I see the "Feedback" page as somewhat distinct from the "Improvements" page. "Feedback" is basically a way to filter/triage issues before they reach Bugzilla. "Improvements" is a way to (hopefully) focus on the most annoying/cumbersome/painful aspects of VisualEditor and try to see what can be done to immediately improve the user experience. I think there are also some higher-level issues (such as advertising that VisualEditor is beta software) that wouldn't get reported on a "Feedback" page, but could be discussed on an "Improvements" page. --MZMcBride (talk) 18:02, 31 July 2013 (UTC)


 * @MZMcBride: I'm ok for talking about improving VE, but just reading the first sentence of improvements made me go away from this page (The ongoing default state RFC ... does not seem to be particularly constructive). The feeling for many users is that currently VE is doing more damages than good on the encyclopedia, and that the VE team isn't even listening to that (the bugzilla which creates most of the nowiki in filter 550 has just been marked as WONT FIX): the opt-in would allow to reduce the rate of damages and focus on improvements. So, honestly, if you want editors to help on improving VE, that kind of introduction should be removed...
 * About improving VE, I still don't understand why the VE team is not proactive on that: they never came here to ask what important features of VE should do, and how. Why don't they launch focused discussions on some points: template editor, reference editor ? From my point of view here, they seem to be developing features without specifying before. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 21:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Bug -- Can edit page in view-only mode
Hey - I'm able to edit this page 'Omerta' when I should be in the view-only mode. Please address this issue asap. -- 170.121.14.12 (talk) 20:59, 31 July 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not seeing any page protection for Omertà. Assuming you're talking about another page, my guess is that you can go into edit mode (that's a bug, though a minor one), but are still prevented from actually saving your changes.


 * It would be helpful if you did a very minor change (for example, inserting an extra space at the end of one sentence, immediately after the period) and then tried to save your edit. If you actually are able to save the change, please let us know. Thanks. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 00:39, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

No VE
I've got no VisualEditor option even though I have "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" in my Preferences unchecked. Please fix this. --Sp33dyphil ©hatontributions 07:47, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * What browser do you use? VisualEditor does not work with InternetExplorer and some other browsers. Try using Firefox or Chrome.--Salix (talk): 08:27, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Same here. I disabled it originally because it was so buggy but now I can't find it again. I also have "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" in my Preferences unchecked, and under Gadgets > Editing I have "Remove VisualEditor from the user interface" unchecked. This in spite of the fact that I must have checked at least one of them in the past to get rid of it in the first place. Odd. Using a rather old Firefox (aka Iceweasel) v 3.5.16. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 19:57, 29 July 2013 (UTC) [Update 20:02, 29 July 2013 (UTC). Same issue with Epiphany 2.30.6]
 * Yeah, it's not going to work (read: ever) on firefox 3, I'm afraid. I think it appeared to start with because of blacklist/whitelist problems that are now fixed. what browser are you using? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 29 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Opera v15. It worked originally but for some unknown reason the VE option has disappeared. --Sp33dyphil ©hatontributions 05:34, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Opera after version 12 look like they are supported. It was removed from the blacklist on the 29th and should be useable on this wiki in a day or so.--Salix (talk): 06:29, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Problem is fixed. Cheers --Sp33dyphil ©hatontributions 06:57, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * OK, thanks Okeyes. It would be nice if the "no dice" help messages included a bit more about older browsers than just IE. &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:57, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
 * the one on the VE page, or...? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:09, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, also the FAQ and anywhere else that explains you need a modern browser; explain that the user won't even see VE as an option in the UI unless the browser is supported (or whatever). Maybe also add a FAQ question "Why can't I see VE in the UI, even though I have disabled the options to turn it off?" &mdash; Cheers, Steelpillow (Talk) 10:29, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I also get "no VE". Also while using Iceweasel v3 — perhaps not considered "modern"? Well, I'm fine with this feature, but perhaps there ought to be a notice somewhere (user preferences?) when options are curtailed on the basis of the browser one is using. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:01, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Village Pump
Since all VE talk is lead here, this should be a Village Pump page. -DePiep (talk) 01:37, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Meh, this may or not be an active page in the long run. VP/T may become the target for VE comments once the volume comes down. VQuakr (talk) 04:01, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Indeed. All AFT5 comments went one place, all Page Curation comments went one place... we'd end up with a village pump for every extension. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:50, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Far too slow and doesn't seem to work in Opera.
What it says in the title really. Takes ages to load, and when it has loaded, doesn't seem to actually do anything except enable the spell checker and make the page slow to a crawl. --Muzer (talk) 14:14, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * what version of Opera? Are you getting a note warning about Opera support when you load the editor? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 19:09, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Just been told that it is now working in Opera. With Opera 12.14 (the last usable version for me) it also loads very slowly. I did not try and edit anything before I rapidly disabled it in my preferences. I got the note warning me it was not a version officially supported by VE. Dsergeant (talk) 05:51, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Darn. It's hard to tell if that's Opera-specific or general slowness; does anyone here have Opera + experience using the VE in other browsers? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 17:51, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Spellchecking wikilinks causes odd behavior

 * The following table of results may be helpful.
 * {| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed"

! colspan="4" | Detailed results ! Pattern !! Original !! Spellcheck !! Ctrl+Z (undo only) || gloading || loading || gloading (undo only) || wrenchj || wrench || wrench j
 * rowspan="4" | No change || shamrads || shamrocks || shamrads
 * turkleglove || turtledove || turkleglove
 * trugde || trudge || trugde
 * droconian || draconian || droconian
 * rowspan="4" | Multiword || rowspan="2" | metacritic || meta-critic || meta c ritic
 * meta critic || meta c ritic
 * rowspan="2" | dumpnuts || dump-nuts || dump n uts
 * dump nuts || dump n uts
 * rowspan="6" | Lead break || blumpkin || pumpkin || blumpkin
 * apathosaurus || brontosaurus || apathosaurus
 * chrsky || Chomsky || chrsky
 * hotsaucebottle || bluebottle || hotsaucebottle
 * aoeign || foreign || aoeign
 * coroglian || Carolingian || coroglian
 * rowspan="2" | Lead break
 * dump nuts || dump n uts
 * rowspan="6" | Lead break || blumpkin || pumpkin || blumpkin
 * apathosaurus || brontosaurus || apathosaurus
 * chrsky || Chomsky || chrsky
 * hotsaucebottle || bluebottle || hotsaucebottle
 * aoeign || foreign || aoeign
 * coroglian || Carolingian || coroglian
 * rowspan="2" | Lead break
 * hotsaucebottle || bluebottle || hotsaucebottle
 * aoeign || foreign || aoeign
 * coroglian || Carolingian || coroglian
 * rowspan="2" | Lead break
 * coroglian || Carolingian || coroglian
 * rowspan="2" | Lead break
 * rowspan="2" | Lead break
 * vbirth || birth || vbirth
 * rowspan="3" | End break || soliquilistry || soli loquies || soli q uilistry
 * lethrym || leth argy || leth r ym
 * lrkwd || l egwork || l r kwd
 * rowspan="2" | End break
 * lethrym || leth argy || leth r ym
 * lrkwd || l egwork || l r kwd
 * rowspan="2" | End break
 * rowspan="2" | End break
 * rowspan="2" | End break
 * cubew || cube || cube w
 * rowspan="2" | Full break || meepblossom || blossomy || meepblossom
 * bumguitar || guitarist || bumguitar
 * }
 * I've developed an incomplete understanding of the different patterns, but it's not always clear why a particular pattern will occur for a given string (or why the bug occurs at all). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:57, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * bumguitar || guitarist || bumguitar
 * }
 * I've developed an incomplete understanding of the different patterns, but it's not always clear why a particular pattern will occur for a given string (or why the bug occurs at all). --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:57, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

I've not done any better at understanding this, so I've now reported it as 52372. Do say if you gain any further insights. 07:53, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks, both! This is a great catch. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:20, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Comment on this page's edit notice
If I see a notice where the first heading, which is larger than all the later headings, is "If ..." (eg "If you are here for information on disabling Visual Editor") and the condition is false, I will probably not look at any of the box including the two sections with smaller headings, inferring that the irrelevant content has sub-sections. The edit notice might be more useful if the three headings were the same size, or if in some other way we highlight that the second and third paras are independent of the first heading. Pam D  22:53, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi PamD, thanks for the feedback. Usually, I'd be bold and reduce the size, but the two threads below suggest me it wouldn't help much ;) Rephrasing the first sentence might not work as well, because different sizes, as you say, seem to imply that the rest of the content is still related to the first one. Also, since it actually isn't, it needs to stay separated, and this text would be read even less if it was just attached at the end of the first paragraph. So, apart from increasing the size of those two headings, does anybody else have another solution? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:25, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Would making it into two separate columns help? Put the info about disabling VE into the first column with a header like "How to disable VisualEditor" and give the right column an equally sized "Other issues" (or similar) heading. Thryduulf (talk) 09:48, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I thought of this as well; we would not even need a real table, writing something to the left and the rest to the right of a vertical bar might do, but I am no expert in doing it so that it shows up nicely :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:58, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * A bit of fiddling has produced this:


 * That's probably bad coding/syntax and I can't get the header centered, but other than that how does it look? Thryduulf (talk) 10:24, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's why I did not even try in the first place :p It might work, if you ask me. Let's wait for more feedback though. Thank you. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:37, 1 August 2013 (UTC) PS: I am also wondering, after reading VisualEditor/Feedback, if info about browsers belongs to this editnotice space instead than to the top of the feedback page, where only IE is mentioned? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:40, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

What a f***ing nightmare!
How freaky, what happened to the wikitext editor? (i know i know it's a beta-run but what a goddammed unpleasant surprise) Beuurrkk! --2.0.94.224 (talk) 22:53, 31 July 2013 (UTC)
 * The wikitext editing method is still available as noted elsewhere on this page. Just choose to "edit source". --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 00:23, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Is there anything specific that doesn't work for you? Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Some refs not displayed...
{{answered|text= {{tracked|52371}} When editting Christian Scott, I noticed only ref #1 is displayed, out of five well formatted ones. Changing above a table. Examples: 1, 2, 3, 4. Every edit using VE has added the code. Is this a bug? Woody (talk) 14:31, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, it's {{phab|51839}}. I've added the missing quote that it was failing to correctly deal with so you shouldn't see this problem on that article again. Thryduulf (talk) 15:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

VE strips some table attributes for no reason.
This is a Parsoid issue. I filed a bug reported and updated the table above. Ssastry (talk) 19:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Redirects
On going to a redlink, I'm offered "Createbeta" or "Create source". If I click for VE, I get a notice telling me - among other things - that I can look for another title to redirect the page to. However, there's no apparent way to create a redirect using VE. Until this functionality is included, should we suppress this suggestion? Andrew Gray (talk) 18:11, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, but it isn't as simple as that unfortunately. That text is pulled from MediaWiki:Newarticletext and is the same as appears above the edit window in the source editor (note the MediaWiki page generates different content based on the namespace, so it doesn't look the same when viewing the MW namespace page). AFAIK there is no way for MediaWiki messages or editnotices to detect whether they are being displayed in the source or visual editor. I've raised as a request for this. Thryduulf (talk) 18:51, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Error: No response from API
I tried to leave feedback, but received this error. — rybec   18:44, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Rybec, did you mean "leave feedback" about an article with the relevant feature? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

overly long text not fully displayed
In Firefox ESR on Linux, the text below was not fully readable. I suggest shortening it, increasing the size of the window it's shown in, providing a scroll bar, or (if possible) having a window that adjusts to the size of the text.

This is our new, easier way to edit. It's still in beta, which means you might find parts of the page you can't edit, or encounter issues that need to be fixed. We encourage you to review your changes, and we welcome reports abou t any issues you might encounter in using VisualEditor (click the 'beta' button to submit feedback). You can keep using the wikitext editor by clicking the "Edit source" tab instead - unsaved changes will be lost. — rybec   18:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe this happens because ESR is not supported. There's a bug about it here, and I am adding your comment there, please read that discussion, and add here or there the number of your version. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:24, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Too easy to delete invisible templates within current editing session, as well as later
This is covered by ("Hidden templates should display as an icon in-page so they can be interacted with (e.g. a puzzle piece?) ") which has a high priority major impact rating. Other than encouraging the relevant people to fix that bug I don't know what can be done. Any ideas? I have had an idea - just treat them like &lt;noiki&gt;s and make them undeleteable in VE. Occasionally it might leave in ones that were intended to be deleted but that's going to be very rare and this would just be a workaround until they were handled properly Thryduulf (talk) 19:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

adding text to an existing hyperlink is inconvenient
I have an existing document that contains a hyperlink enclosed in square brackets, like. Instead of this being displayed as a number enclosed in square brackets, I want to add text that will be displayed, like example.com Web site. In the traditional editor I would insert, after the hyperlink but before the closing bracket, a space and the link text, and I'd be done. In VE I clicked on the number, then on the chain icon, and found nowhere to add the link text. The "Editing links" section of the user guide covers the case of adding a hyperlink to text that already exists, but not adding text where the link already exists. It seems that completing this task in VE may involve either:


 * 1) clicking the existing link
 * 2) clicking the chain icon
 * 3) highlighting the URL happens automatically
 * 4) copying the URL
 * 5) closing the hyperlink dialog
 * 6) typing the desired link text
 * 7) highlighting new text
 * 8) clicking chain icon
 * 9) pasting URL into dialog
 * 10) closing dialog

or retyping the URL. This seems inefficient. — rybec   19:06, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a frustrating bug. At present the method that should work is to change the text to what you want the link to display as, select the link and all that you want to show as the link, open the link dialog and confirm the existing link. However, this is buggy and can produce all sorts of strange wikicode. For the requested improvement see (comment #3). Thryduulf (talk) 19:31, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

There needs to be a way of adding a ref name inside VE
There needs to be a way of adding a ref name inside VE, or I end up adding the ref in VE, then placing the ref name and the child references in the source editor. Insulam Simia (talk) 19:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Can you clarify? I thought about requesting this enhancement but so far I haven't found I need it; I just add the new reference in VE, then click "Use existing reference" to add it in other locations. Is that not what you're looking for?  Mike Christie (talk - contribs -  library) 19:14, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well the my problem is that when I added a new ref to the Danny Worsnop article, it didn't show up in the 'Use an existing reference' feature. Insulam Simia (talk) 21:16, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * This has to do with the absence of a full featured preview mode; in such a preview, everything edited would be available to build upon through the interface. The classic editing preview is about as full featured as you can get.  The VE preview has a long way to go to catch up. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 22:09, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, that is a known issue - . It is marked as "highest" priority so hopefully it shouldn't be too long before it is fixed. Thryduulf (talk) 22:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

User Manual should open in new tab/window
I've reported as. As a workaround you can hold down CTRL while clicking on a link and it will open in a new window/tab. This will work on almost every link on almost every website so it's a useful one to know. I don't expect you'll have to wait long though as the similar which asked for the same thing for the "wikitext" link in the popup warning was fixed rather quickly. Thryduulf (talk) 19:40, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * When I said it would likely be quick I didn't think it would have been fixed in less than 2 hours! Don't expect to see the fix instantly though as James' comment when marking it fixed was "next scheduled deployment is not until 15 August, however. :-(". Thryduulf (talk) 20:29, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks: Good that it's been "fixed", rather depressing to hear that, if I understand James rightly, nothing about VE, including this, is going to get any better for almost a fortnight. Ye gods. Pam  D  22:50, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well if anything major crops up then I'm sure the fix will be deployed as fast as they can do it, as they did with the save page issue. If that happens then other fixes waiting in the wings will, I think, be deployed too. The chances of that happening are slim though :/. I'll ask whether adding something like "(hold ctrl while clicking this link to open it in a new window)" could be added to the note sooner. If it can then that would help a little bit. Thryduulf (talk) 23:17, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * James has commented on my suggestion, "The text is controlled by MediaWiki:Visualeditor-help-label - but I'd counsel against putting a lot of text into it, as it may not look very good.". Brevity is very much not my strong point, so suggestions please! Thryduulf (talk) 23:45, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

visual error
the create account / login button in the top right is covered up poorly while in edit mode. maybe hide it when entering edit mode? 74.202.39.3 (talk) 19:30, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, actually it shouldn't be covered in that, when you are at the top of the page, the bar should load below. Browser/OS/wikipedia skin? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

extraneous "nowiki" tags and numeral added to hyperlink without link text
With the traditional editor, I made a page containing only:

I wanted to try using VE to change that to:

by the procedure I described in another feedback post


 * 1)    clicking the existing link
 * 2)    clicking the chain icon
 * 3)    copying the URL
 * 4)    closing the hyperlink dialog
 * 5)    typing the desired link text
 * 6)    highlighting the new text
 * 7)    clicking the chain icon
 * 8)    pasting the URL into the hyperlink dialog
 * 9)    closing the dialog

I didn't bother deleting the original hyperlink; the numeral "1" surrounded by brackets (what one would see while viewing the rendered wiki) and nowiki tags was added to the document: [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Rybec/sandbox-ve&diff=566894817&oldid=566893046]. — rybec   19:38, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding new August changes
I'm not sure where to post this since the talk page of that subpage redirects to the main WT:VE, but my comments are indeed regarding this. I think this is a good idea. I have a habit of clicking right next to the "read" button and I often end having to wait for the buggy VE to load before being able to change to the wikitext editor. In addition the clear "beta" label was a good idea. Finally, a step in the right direction. &mdash; kikichugirl  inquire 19:48, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks Kikichugirl, here will do :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:12, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Topicons don't work
In the WYSIWYG editor, the topicons do not appear where they normally would and there are blank lines around them that do not appear in the rendered page. APerson (talk!) 22:00, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is a known issue - . Thryduulf (talk) 22:18, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Nowiki gone wild
So this happened. Anyone know what's up? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 22:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * When VE does things like that it's often (but not always) due to a formatting error somewhere in there. Particularly check whether there are any unmatched quotes anywhere. I'm neither awake enough nor sober enough to spot anything at that level of detail! That might not be the cause but it's not a bad place to start looking. Thryduulf (talk) 23:22, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Cite toolbar
Can the cite toolbar be made available in VE?

I had to switch to "Edit Source" in order to cite a source for an edit that I otherwise happily made using VE. APerson (talk!) 02:01, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * This has been asked before, and the answer apparently is no (I can't remember why, sorry). It is known that there needs to be significant improvements to reference editing in VE, and I the aim is for it to become at least as easy as the cite toolbar, but it's not there yet. Thryduulf (talk) 06:27, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Named references
When referencing, can there be a field so you can put in the name of a named reference?

You could put the text field in the "Options" section, along with the group. APerson (talk!) 02:09, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is something that needs to be done - see . I've added your suggestion there, thanks. Thryduulf (talk) 06:31, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Unable to move earlier than bullet at start of article
This article version starts with a bulleted list (i.e. there is a star as the first character). When I tried editing it in VE, I was unable to move the cursor earlier than the first bullet, to add something before all of the bullets. Neither mouse clicks nor arrow keys worked. OS X / Chrome / MonoBook. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:14, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I was not able to find a related bug, I'd need a second search, but in the meanwhile, hope you can appreciate a workaround for this: after clicking Edit beta, click on the bullet list and then press Enter. You should now be able to add text, you just need to put the first item back in the bullet list. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:32, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Load time experiment
Hey all, I've spent the past few days collecting data on VE load times for large articles in different browsers. The main graph is at right. Full results can be found here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:31, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * That's both very interesting and very useful data, thank you. Pinging to make them aware of this. Thryduulf (talk) 06:41, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I wonder what makes it exponential (lined up in semilog plot) instead of linear. Anyone know? 70.59.30.138 (talk) 08:20, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that's a valid conclusion. If you look at each browser individually, they look not far from linear up to 400KB, and there are only a few data points larger than that, which are probably unusual articles -- lots of references or lots of templates, maybe. Looie496 (talk) 22:52, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Are you serious? each browser individually is much closer to exponential on this graph than linear. 70.59.30.138 (talk) 01:49, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The graph looks linear because the t-axis is displayed with a logarithmic scale. If you check out the full study results, you'll see every exponential regression has a significantly higher correlation coefficient than the corresponding linear regression. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 22:18, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I attempted to edit List of United States counties and county-equivalents in Firefox ESR on Linux. First I tried the traditional editor: the load time was around 5 seconds. On my first attempt with VE, Firefox informed me that "A script on this page may be busy, or it may have stopped responding. You can stop the script now, or you can continue to see if the script will complete.

Script: https://bits.wikimedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=ext.visualEdito r.core%2Cicons-vector%7Cext.visualEditor.viewPageTarget.icons-vector%7Crangy&skin=vector&version=2013080 3T022159Z&*:131" and the browser became generally very slow to respond, and I noticed in top that it was consuming around 520 MB more RAM. I closed Firefox without letting the page load completely in VE.

I had had some other tabs open (as I had with the old editor). I made another attempt, with nothing else opened.


 * Firefox showing just a blank page consumed 549 MB
 * 612 MB for the page opened in the old editor [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_United_States_counties_and_county-equivalents&action=edit] with JS turned off
 * while loading the page in VE [//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counties_and_county-equivalents?veaction=edit], RAM use gradually increased, peaking at around 1518 MB
 * once the page was fully loaded, RAM use dropped to 1398 MB
 * load time with the old editor was around 7 seconds
 * load time with VE was around 10 minutes 44 seconds
 * loading was CPU-bound, with Firefox showing ~100% CPU usage
 * during my second test, the Firefox process was small enough that swapping was unnecessary
 * once the page loaded in VE, I clicked on "cancel"; cancelling took around 52 seconds

Figures for "RAM use" are from the "VIRT" column shown by top: o: VIRT --  Virtual Image (kb) The total amount of virtual memory used by the task. It includes all code, data and shared libraries plus pages that have been swapped out. — rybec   22:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Safari on iPad editing - leading to a suggested revision of scope for VE development
I am trying to use the Visual Editor as my predominant editor while working on my personal computer (Chrome / Linux). However, I've found it quite difficult to use VE on Safari on the iPad and have decided not to try any longer, using the Wikitext Editor when on that device. This does seem counterintuitive as VE would seem to be a more touch-friendly interface than WE. One thing for further development to consider is a revision of scope for VE, focusing down on editing from a mobile device. I think this would be an area for major improvement over the Wikitext editor and would align reasonably well with the massive increase in use of mobile devices over deskbound PCs in general. There are some stats available somewhere related to what platform people are editing from, I think -- anyone know where these stats are? --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 01:47, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * What specific things are not working/could be done better? I don't recall seeing any stats about which platforms people are using to access VE, but I would be interested in them if anyone knows where they are? Thryduulf (talk) 06:23, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I should come with specifics, yes. One of the problems is the invariant size of the dialog boxes like those used to add a reference or a template.  These should be better scaled for the mobile platform.  Another item is mouseover behavior; as far as I can tell, on the iPad there is no equivalent of mouseover behavior, so clicking an element is always equivalent to doubleclicking and the mouseover event is not supported as a "fingerover" event. A third item is the edit/save bar which in a browser like Chrome under Linux floats and is present when you scroll down a page; on Safari on the iPad, it is necessary to scroll up to the top to get to this toolbar (i.e. in order to add a template or save the page), which is doable but quite inconvenient. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 12:48, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

A separate version of VisualEditor is being worked on for iPads and mobile editing. When it's released (no reliable date announced, AFAIK) I think you'll find many fewer of these problems. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Chrome on iPad 3
I started fiddling with VE in Chrome on my ladypal's iPad 3, and I've found some usability issues as well:


 * Broken spellcheck/undo is back with a vengeance
 * No way to resize images
 * Toolbar stuck at the top of the page
 * Loading VE on large pages causes the browser to freeze

I'll update this list whenever I get more fiddling time. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:26, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

good idea, not mature enough for primetime
great idea,... work more before pushing this: by first experience was *****, lots of black boxed instead of images?! (chrome) Sorin Sbârnea (talk) 07:52, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't find related bugs and it's the first time I hear this. Can you try with a different browser? Also, Wikipedia skin and OS? It sounds more like a browser-related thing than a VE one (maybe some plugin/extension interfering)? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 08:09, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi Sorin Sbârnea,
 * Were these small boxes where you should have seen words? Which article did you attempt to edit?  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:57, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

New articles
Of the 50+ articles created since 10AM until now, only 1, Populin, was created using VE, and the editor creating it with VE then made 8 further edits to the article, 1 with VE and 7 with the "old" tool. It's anecdotical evidence, but it does give the impression that VE is not used to create articles, and that it isn't sufficient to create decent stubs either.

Is there any research in the percentage of new articles created with VE, and has there been any research in the findings of the authors of these articles? It may give a different perspective as to what is lacking and what is working well in VE. Fram (talk) 11:29, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Not sure about research into this but I've created a couple of articles recently with VE and found it a much easier experience than I would have done had I created them with just wikitext. VE is more than sufficient for article and stub creation.  W a g g e r s  TALK  11:48, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Not sure whether there's a way to show up only VE-created articles, but it is definitely being used (see TeamGale works on Defiance episodes). At it.wp I maintain a short list of such articles, it needs to be updated by hand but is certainly useful for those wondering not just if it is used, but also if it can be used effectively. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * One reason might be that if you click a red link you are thrown straight into the wikitext editor instead of having to make a conscious choice which one to use. --WS (talk) 14:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for suggesting this, it's very useful info. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:16, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Non-WYSIWIYG elements
If you want a true WYSIWYG, then you have to change


 * 1) How to edit template parameter values
 * 2) The preview changes as it is now
 * 3) Page settings: languages
 * 4) Page history: compare versions
 * 5) Elements that are not shown in the VE mode the same way they are in the view mode (e.g. in The Adventures of Tintin, near the bottom, there is an audio file; in VE, there is a "no icon" text and some other changes compared to the actual result)

Anything else? As long as these exist, the VE can't be claimed to be a true WYSIWYG in the mainspace, and editors can't be "blamed" for using wiki-markup in it (never mind those aspects that you simply can't do yet in VE, liking editing galleries and creating or modifying redirects). Fram (talk) 13:15, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, VE uses some WYSIWYG techniques in some of its work to serve the "principle of least surprise" (which I'd re-dub "principle of least fear", because sometimes the code can be pretty scary!). But as you can see from more or less official descriptions of VE, it is never called as such: this is very much a secondary objective, because actually the project aims to create a reliable rich-text editor. As also stated here, the result might be very similar, but it really ain't the same thing. While working on VE, developers sometimes break this model to make it easier for us to do tasks we want to do. :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:55, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * More (I changed your list to a numbered one):


 * 1) - A duplicate of this bug was closed with James saying this is going to be supported soon;
 * 2) - looks related to this;
 * 3) - the settings are available from the Language settings on the left, did you mean something different?
 * 4) - might be added to #2 bug?
 * 5) - it is a known, . Thanks! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:14, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * 3. The language settings are also included in the "Page settings" at the top (where you also find the categories). There, they aren't VE but old school


 * As for your general point about this not being a true wysiwyg: fine, but then the major philosophical argument against allowing wikimarkup like double brackets for wikilinks is invalid as well. Fram (talk) 06:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Quote box
In The Adventures of Tintin, there is a quote box. It seems as if I'm unable to open or edit this with VE (but I don't get the green diagonal lines either). Fram (talk) 13:16, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Note: apparently this only happens with the first quote box in that article, I can edit the second one like any other template. Strange... Fram (talk) 13:19, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The transclusion icon is there, it's to the right of the "History" header (in the middle of the infobox). On my monitor i can barely see it on top, when i scroll the quotebox to the botton of my screen. The problem is, that the infobox pushes the quote box down, far away from its intended original placement. Apparently the icon placement depends on the element's location in the source - and should be recalculated after moving the quote box. GermanJoe (talk) 13:31, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * A related issue is the missing table of content, which causes misplaced article elements near the lead section, but that's a known bug afaik (?). GermanJoe (talk) 13:44, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Ah, thanks. Fram (talk) 13:56, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Tracked . --Salix (talk): 14:30, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Bug for the missing ToC is, but with no news lately. GermanJoe (talk) 14:39, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Message popups
Some of the editor message popups get stuck (sometimes in the English wiki, mostly in the Hebrew wiki) and hide the text or controls. 93.173.235.19 (talk) 00:15, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, don't they disappear if you click on them? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:43, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * See also, below. As I noted there, the warning message/popup lacks any visible indication that clicking on it will close it. Perhaps people think that if they fix their (wikitext markup) error, VE should detect that and then close the warning box, since it no longer applies? (I realize that's extremely difficult to do for any software; I'm not suggesting that VE do it, but rather that it more obvious what to do with the warning box.) -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 18:16, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks John, see below: here I just needed to make sure that the "stuck" issue can be solved with a click :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 18:34, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Laggy
Clicking objects the first time lags alot, running latest stable version of Firefox 122.108.156.85 (talk) 10:49, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, are you referring to videos, or something else? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:19, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't allow creation of random parameters for templates with templatedata
For templates with templatedata specified, it should not be necessary and possible to add random parameters by typing a name in the search box. In addition, when there are no unused parameters left, there should not be a search box for parameters at all (either not displayed or greyed out). --WS (talk) 11:28, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I don't agree, I think it should be possible to add unknown parameters, especially unnamed parameters. Some templates can accept a long (even unbound) list of unnamed parameters, and you don't necessarily want to document them with TemplateData. Displaying a warning should be enough. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 11:34, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Why wouldn't you want to document them (or at least the first of them)? - Pointillist (talk) 12:49, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I find this interesting, can I see examples of such templates with parameters that can only be added by Those Who Know Them? :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:04, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * and are examples if I've understood this correctly. Thryduulf (talk) 13:17, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Over at Wiktionary, wikt:Template:homophones and wikt:Template:also are perhaps even better examples. Thryduulf (talk) 13:23, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Basically, some templates are developed to use their unnamed parameters as a list of elements: parameters 1, 2, ..., 100, ... are just elements of a list. So, documenting them would mean adding as many parameters as you want to be able to handle (the limit may not even be defined), and the description will be the same for each parameter... Usually, you document the first one saying that the next ones can also be used: with your request, VE wouldn't allow to use the next ones since they are not defined ;-)
 * Eltire, I was talking about unnamed parameters, so not really parameters that can only be found if you know the template ;-)
 * Or an other way would be to be able to tell TemplateData that parameters from 1 to X (possibly unbounded) can be used as a list of elements. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 13:32, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I thought we were not discussing parameters such as the positional ones (I think this is their real name? anyway everything is documented about the templates Thryduulf linked - thanks BTW). I understood this more as if, say, Hlist had a parameter named "color" which works with it but is not documented :) But not every template has those, right? What's wrong with preventing people to add "fake" parameters to templates once you have already added all the real, supported ones? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I guess there might be an issue if someone updates a template because a need arises and then has to update the TemplateData and wait for that to propogate to VE before it can be used. It would also be an issue if a template only had partially defined TemplateData - nobody will be able to write in one go for example. Thryduulf (talk) 13:48, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In the first case, the slow propagation is the problem to be fixed. In the second case, there could be a specific setting in the templatedata to (temporarily) allow freeform parameters. --WS (talk) 13:53, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Slow propagation is not really a problem anymore as long as you can do a null edit. I've found things now update within 10 min and it may be much quicker. Only problem for some template you need admin rights to do a null edit, so you might need to find a friendly admin (eg me) to do it.--Salix (talk): 14:19, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

If a template uses unnamed variables it should also be documented in some way in templatedata so that an 'unnamed' option is always displayed in the unused parameters list, so you can add them one by one. In case of sequentially numbered variables that are used to hold several values for the same parameter: the most helpful thing would be to only show the next one when the previous one is in use (only show entry2 if entry1 is already in use). Undocumented parameters should not exist IMHO, but if there really is a good use case for them, it should be specifically specified in the corresponding templatedata, so that all other templates can prevent addition of bogus parameters. --WS (talk) 13:53, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

The citation templates may prove a problem here. Since being written as a module, it allows for parameters, , ... and there is no upper limit (I think). There are a lot of these numbered parameters see Module:Citation/CS1/Whitelist.--Salix (talk): 14:19, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * So, we probably need an enhancement in TemplateData (and then VE) to be able to handle these kind of parameters (eventual prefix + counter, with lower and upper limit). --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 16:03, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've created bugzilla 52582. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 16:09, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

bad edit
I used VE on this edit to insert a hyphen, and it messed up some other stuff. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 14:43, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * This looks like, thanks for the report as it shows that the previous time I saw something like this it wasn't a one-off. Thryduulf (talk) 15:07, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The table at the end was not closed. I fixed it (for consistency's sake, I used the s-end template) and VE edits and saves should not introduce dupes on this. Ssastry (talk) 19:28, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

BETA dropdown
In VisualEditor, there is a button in the toolbar labelled "BETA".


 * 1) The button itself should not be labelled "Beta", not "BETA". The latter looks like it might be a mysterious acronym.
 * 2) The default behavior of the "Read the user guide" link should be to open in a new tab or window. Yes, most browsers will give the "unsaved changes" warning, but even with that, computer novices might not know how to open links in new tabs/windows.
 * 3) When the dropdown is open, if the mouse cursor is anywhere inside the dropdown or hovering over the "BETA" button, both the "BETA" button and the "Leave feedback" link become underlined. (occurs in Firefox/Monobook and Safari/Vector, may be universal)
 * 4) It is possible to break the "Submit feedback" form by doing the following procedure:
 * 5) * Shrink the browser window so that there is at least an inch or two between the top of the browser and the top of your screen (in other words, don't maximize the window size)
 * 6) * Drag the "Submit feedback" form as far up as it will go
 * 7) * Click and hold the top edge of the form to begin resizing, then drag the mouse up to the top of the screen.
 * 8) ** In Monobook, this causes the "submit" and "cancel" buttons to disappear off the bottom of the form.
 * 9) ** In Vector, this causes the bottom chunk of the form to become disconnected (see screenshot).

Meep. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 20:08, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Quick replies in order:
 * Good point, particularly now that the edit links use lower case.
 * PamD raised this the other day. has been fixed and is just awaiting the next deployment (scheduled for 15th August I believe).
 * Yes I can reproduce this in Firefox 22/Monobook/Linux. What I can't do is work out how to concisely summarise this for a bugzilla bug summary - suggestions welcome!
 * Reported as . Thryduulf (talk) 20:37, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Beta button and Leave Feedback links getting unexpectedly underlined? (I am not a particularly creative person, and English is not my mother language :D ) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * How about Beta button and Leave Feedback links: inextricably intertwined interface items ? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 21:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Better than anything I came up with, so I was about to use it but when doing so it told me about which is this exact issue. Thryduulf (talk) 21:44, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Parts duplicated
Following a report on frwiki, I tried a simple modification by changing a text into a wikilink. VE messed up the article by duplicating parts (not even complete parts), see diff. It seems to be reproducible on this article. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:51, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you think this is the same bug as in the previous section ? Thryduulf (talk) 15:55, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Maybe, but there's also a nowiki tag that has been partially deleted... --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 15:58, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the report guys. I'll investigate this and the one above this later today.  Ssastry (talk) 16:39, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * This has been a tricky bug to nail. I have so far narrowed this to a performance optimization in Parsoid.  Hard to describe it without spitting a lot of detail.  Now to reproduce the bug in testing conditions and fix it.  FWIW, the latest version of the page does not seem to have this problem.  Ssastry (talk) 17:14, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

TemplateData ideas
I just finished a moment ago creating a TemplateData for Infobox website. I've got some ideas. --Rezonansowy (talk &bull;&#32; contribs) 21:10, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) Parameters section and TemplateData section looks similar. Can we merge parameters section with this in all templates.
 * 2) Can we enable wiki markup in TemplateData?
 * 3) I've added this to the template doc, but I don't see any effect in VE's transluction panel.
 * 4) VE's transluction panel searchbox shows all subpages of (for example) infobox website. I think, it shouldn't.


 * Is there any reason this can't just be done by removing the parameters section where it duplicates TemplateData? In some templates, might the parameters need more explanation than TD allows? (related also to point 2)
 * There is an open request for this already, but I can't immediately find it. Watch this space! Found it: Thryduulf (talk) 21:38, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In theory it should be near-instantaneous (although you'll probably need to reload VE if you had it open before you wrote the TD). If it hasn't appeared after a few minutes then make a null edit on the template page and it should fix it.
 * Yes, this is requested at (typo fixed GermanJoe (talk) 07:42, 7 August 2013 (UTC)).

Thanks for the reports. Thryduulf (talk) 21:32, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I suggest we do adopt the term "transluction"! --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:46, 6 August 2013 (UTC) PS: thanks for adding TD :)

Size of explanatory popup
The popup window is not high enough. At least the last line of text is clipped. (Caused by my having text size larger than usual? can't say.) Firefox; up to date.

--BenTremblay BenTremblay (talk) 05:46, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If you mean something like the screenshot to the right, where an edit notice is larger than the window, then this is that I reported this morning. Thryduulf (talk) 08:30, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Creating redirects
What is the current status with creating/turning pages of content into redirects with VisualEditor? Insulam Simia (talk) 07:34, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Presently VE doesn't support editing or creating redirects at all. is where handling redirects is noted as an enhancement request, including converting content pages into redirects. It's marked as a normal priority enhancement, but the only date mentioned was "post July" by James back in mid-April. Hopefully one of the WMF-liasons will be able to give an update, but I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for it. Thryduulf (talk) 08:23, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * As you know many people are away at Wikimania and the next deployment is scheduled for August 15th I think, but I might have mentioned redirects in an email to the team. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

referencing
Please could you help me? My references will not work- it may be a bug? Daredevil Project (talk) 10:29, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi! Anything that is not covered already at VisualEditor/User_guide? There may be advanced editing not fully supported yet. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:32, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It looks like the problem was that they used wikicode, which was &lt;nowiki&gt;ed according to current VE behaviour. Thryduulf (talk) 11:30, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Is VE broken?
VE had been working OK for me in Win7 with Firefox 22.x.  Now, it will not come-up after clicking on the Edit tab. Meclee (talk) 17:15, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I can use it right now, I suspect this depends on the page you are trying to edit. Can you share its title with us? :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

A majority of editors want VE to support basic wikitext, alongside other keyboard shortcuts.
What now? Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:50, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that supporting wikitext in VE should be done as an addon rather than a native feature. In other words, default behavior would be to not support wikitext, and to support wikitext addition one needs to invoke a gadget.  This would allow independent lifecycles for the VE and "legacy" (hmm, maybe shouldn't use that term in this case?) editing functionality. --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 13:02, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think that calling Wikitext "legacy" is a good way to start another crusade against VE at this point. Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:31, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'd also comment that decisions on features for VE need input from all wikis, not just en-wiki, as opposed to discussions of the rollout on en-wiki, which is clearly a local issue. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:35, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Also software development is not ruled by (English) Wikipedia consensus, but by developer consensus. Developers (paid and volunteer) are open to being convinced to the ideas of the community, they are however not under the control of the community. At most, the community might sway the WMF, which might influence the paid developers. However even then WMF does not have full control. (Basically the return of the preference option to disable the Visual editor, is to a large degree based on the insistence of volunteer and even some paid staff that the position of the WMF was un-realistic) —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 10:29, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Very well to say that, but the developers want people to use VE, right? Listening to what the community wants is an important part of that. The arguments about other wikis' desires are meaningless without evidence the other wikis feel differently; the default assumption, one would think, is that the desire would be consistent. Adam Cuerden (talk) 11:16, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I wonder: if the developers weren't listening at all, do you think we would have had things like this, or the changes in the schedule? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:58, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I never said they weren't listening, I was responding to TheDJ's claim that the developers shouldn't listen to the community. Adam Cuerden (talk) 02:07, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * While I don't disagree with you at all, Adam, that developers need to work with community to come up with a software that suits users, TheDJ didn't claim that. :) He said, "Developers (paid and volunteer) are open to being convinced to the ideas of the community, they are however not under the control of the community." --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 13:09, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Comments from a content editor
Someone above (I can't recall who -- perhaps Thryduulf?) wondered what the feedback on VE would be from editors primarily using it to edit content, as opposed to performing Wikignomish tasks. I've been using it on radiocarbon dating for a couple of weeks, and here are my main impressions. For context, I have about 25,000 edits, have been here since 2006, am an IT professional with decades of computer background, and spend a lot of my time here writing featured articles.

The main positives:
 * It's much easier to make simple copyedits in VE. (Not quicker, but simpler.)  There are times when I have made an edit, spotted something in another section, and fixed that too; couldn't do that before.  It also avoids the need to do a preview, which is a reflex for many editors, myself included; that saves a page refresh.  If it became faster I would love it; as it is I already find myself preferring VE for these edits.
 * References were not intuitive for me in VE initially, but now that I've learned how they work, and what the capabilities and limitations are, I really like the interface. I find it much easier to add a new ref to the references section with wikitext, by copying and editing another reference.  Once that's done, though, it's easy to add citations.  This is a big deal for me because heavily cited text is a pain to read in wikitext, and leads to lots of page previews.
 * Adding a template isn't quite as easy as adding a citation but I still find it preferable to using the wikitext approach, simply because it guides me through the params.

Things that would benefit my editing (in other words, this is not a list of what bugs I think should be fixed next, just a list of what I ran into that I'd personally benefit from):
 * Symbol inserts -- em dashes, en dashes, and non-breaking spaces, particularly inside citations; Greek letters and odd symbols such as ‰.
 * Superscript and subscript -- not a huge deal since the chem template handles most of what I need, but it seems likfe a natural thing to put next to the bold and italic buttons.
 * Reliability -- once in about every ten or twenty edits I get a token error. This rarely causes lost work since I just copy the text and try again, but it's annoying.  If I can reliably reproduce this I will report it here.
 * Better drag and drop, or at least copy and paste, for templates; currently it only works if they are within a text string. There are about a million chem templates in radiocarbon dating, so perhaps this is one of those things most people wouldn't care about.

Things VE can't do that aren't a big deal for my editing patterns:
 * Math markup -- there's math in the article but I can handle that separately; it's not an impediment to 90% of my edits.
 * Section editing -- I don't care about this except for the speed issue

This is all just one editor's opinion from working with VE for a while; I make no claims to general validity for any of my comments above, but I thought it might be useful feedback. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:13, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It definitely is, Mike, thanks for posting this. From what I recall (can't retrieve relevant bugs now, sorry for that.) these are all common requests (I think it is practically what I also heard until now from Italian users) and I do hope that at least some of these can be satisfied in the near future. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:19, 5 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thank you, it was me that was wondering about this and it is very useful. As for your comments: Superscript is covered by, subscript by , symbol insertion by and dragging and dropping of various things is . There have been several issues about tokens, but they are marked as fixed, so if you can figure out what causes this it would be really useful. Thryduulf (talk) 15:35, 5 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Hello, I've both been using the VisualEditor on my personal wikis for the past month (a personal notebook at home and a lab notebook at work) and to write a Wikipedia article (User:Ruud Koot/Computer science/Lambda calculus) as well as the occasional copy-editing of Wikipedia articles. My overall verdict is that the visual editor is quite usable for the former (small-scale wikis), but not for the latter (Wikipedia). Problems I'm encountered include:
 * The visual editor is unreliable, which forces me to make changes in small increments, saving in between to avoid losing work. In particular:
 * When performing structural editing tasks (i.e. things which are slight more complex than changing typos or adding a sentence in the middle of an existing paragraph) it is very easy to get the editor into some weird state where it is impossible to get out of other than aborting the edit session and trying again more carefully. This includes things like introducing "bulleted headers" and "bulleted bullets", which cannot possibly be represented as wikitext.
 * Occasionally, after a medium-sized editing session, the visual editor will silently refuse to save my edits. When clicking the save button the progress bar appears, disappears, and you stay in editing mode, with no new revision appended to the history. Trying again sometimes resolves the problem, sometimes it requires edit operations to be done in a different order or be broken up into smaller increments, saving in-between. Do you keep any statistics on how often an editor presses the save button versus how many times this actually results in a new revision being saved?
 * Copying and pasting around text and editing pages with tables are fairly reliable methods of triggering the two above mentioned problems.
 * I've had occasional weird, random and unexplainable corruptions of wikitext on save (e.g., a  being replaced with a copy of the categories.)
 * As it is quite hard to predict if the visual editor is going to succeed or fail for a particular edit, either due to one of these reliability issues or due to on of the following "missing features", I finding myself to err on the safe-side more and more and just use source editor.
 * The visual editor is lacking intelligence:
 * People have come to expect certain things of a WYSIWIG editor: when I input a bulleted list by starting my line with an asterisk (ironically, just as you would in the source editor), the editor should automatically convert this to a proper bulleted list; when I input an enumerated list by stating my lines with numbers followed by a dot, the editor should automatically convert this to a proper enumerated lists; etc. Microsoft Word provides exactly this kind of functionally. For an experienced editor like me, having to using my mouse to click a toolbar button takes more time than inputting this in the source editor. A novice editor, who likely is experienced with Microsoft Work, might expect the editor to be this intelligent and not even recognize the toolbar buttons for what they are.
 * Related, I'm missing an easy way to insert sub- and superscripts and various special characters (for which I would have used SGML entities in the source editor), in particular en- and em-dashes. How about automatically converting  and   into en- and em-dashes, respectively? On the other hand, please don't go overboard with this either: it should perhaps be possible for experience editors to insert more "advanced" forms of formatting like underlining and font colour, but novice editors should not be encouraged to use formatting that would likely violate style-guidelines.
 * Several heuristics need to be added for generating proper hyperlinks, it currently does not respect the conventions of Wikipedia. When I link a plural word ending in -s, it should be linked to the article in singular without an -s. E.g., when linking, I don't think the suggestion box even gives me   as an option. It certainly should not generate the wikitext   instead of  ; this is quite impolite for people who prefer or are forced to use the source editor. Additionally, I think a good heuristic might be to try and avoid linking through a redirect, as novice editors will not be aware that it's preferable to link   directly to   instead of through the redirect.
 * The former, combined with the occasional unexpected insertion of a random, and no clear way of fixing this from the visual editor, have forced me already to abort several copy-editing tasks and try again from the source editor. As I lose time and work this way, this made me much more hesitant to use the visual editor even for copy-editing tasks.
 * There are no automatic edit summaries or even suggestions based on previous summaries. This makes one of the things the visual editor is currently very good at&mdash;minor copy-editing&mdash;unnecessarily painful.
 * Furthermore, and this distinction is primarily what makes the visual editor usable on my personal wikis, but too painful to use on Wikipedia, is that the visual editor does not handle the complexity of Wikipedia articles sufficiently well yet:
 * Editing templates, references and categories is currently much, much too painful for experienced editors to be usable. I would conjecture it is too complex for novice editors to figure out the user-interface. (Also, do not underestimate how powerful the technique of learning by-copying-and-pasting is, that the visual editor currently obscures. It does not even allow me to copy-and-paste templates, WYSIWYG-style.)
 * More "complex" objects like inline mathematics and even quotes cannot be edited at all, requiring one to often and quickly switch between the visual and source editor. I wouldn't consider the visual editor usable for any kind of article writing (as opposed to copy-editing) until I can seemlessly switch between the two without losing intermediate changes. However, "source editor" can be interpreted loosely here: it can also be a variant of the visual editor that used some kind of "underwater mode"&mdash;displaying and allowing one to edit parts of the wikitext directly from the WYSIWYS editor&mdash;like one could find in WordPerfect or some HTML editors.
 * Finally, I have the, by now usual complaints, of it being too sluggish on large articles (even on my Core i7, it must be considerably worse for people using an Atom-based netbook), not having real section editing (wouldn't the latter help partially solve the former?), the visual editor not focussing correctly when clicking on a section edit link. This, together with a much greater tendency for the visual editor to even property render the article in edit mode for long and complex articles, makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be smarter to initially limit the beta to shorter and less complex (for appropriate definitions of those two terms) articles, as the user-experience will be much more positive for those articles while quantitative still making up for the largest part of Wikipedia.
 * While I can image that as a developer you would see many of these problems as minor bugs or low-priority feature requests and are anxious&mdash;perhaps too anxious&mdash;to release a product you've been developing for several years now, for me, as an experienced editor, these make the difference between an unusable alpha-release and a usable beta. Novice editors are quite likely to be put off if they encounter one of the reliability issues. —Ruud 12:41, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * One additional remark: working with semantic objects like lists and headers in the visual editors sometimes works flawlessly, but sometimes it doens't "feel" quite right. This has traditionally been a weak point of WYSIWYG editors, as you cannot position your cursor as exactly as you can in a source editor: you can't always tell whether your cursor is inside or outside or a particular object, element or tag, or say that should be inside or outside of it. I feel that it is currently not doing as good as a job as, for example, even Microsoft Word does, while given the highly semantically annotated structure of wikitext over an unstructured document, it should be able to do a much better job. It is, however, very difficult to express exactly what doens't always feel quite right about it. If there is one piece of advice or homework exercise to the development team, it would be this:
 * "Take a few dozen featured articles and try to recreate them from scratch using the visual editor, preferably without looking at their original source code."
 * It think this experience will let you find more bugs and design flaws than any amount of unit testing or user interviewing ever would.
 * —Ruud 13:26, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your thoughts, Ruud. I need to look for appropriate venues where I can leave them (I noticed that User:Trhyduulf is very good at this, I'd appreciate his help in this as well :) ) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've had a look through but quickly realised I need to be more awake than I am now to ensure I fully understand everything. I'll probably get chance tomorrow. Thryduulf (talk) 22:53, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Going through your issues in order: Hopefully that's helped you with some of your issues, but I know it's probably not what you were hoping for. Thryduulf (talk) 10:58, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've reported your issue 1.1 as, it's possible that isn't unrelated.
 * re 1.2, I'm not aware of any such statistics and it's almost certainly not possible for anyone other than the devs to do so. I've reported the issue as, including the question. I'll ping JamesF about it (in another edit to make it easier for him to find), but he's likely busy with Wikimania atm so may not respond quickly.
 * 1.3 (see above two bullets)
 * 1.4 the specific example (" replaced with a copy of the categories") I've reported as . It might be an instance of  but that one is written in technical language that I don't fully understand so I'm not sure.
 * 1.5 Unfortunately this is an aspect of it being unfinished software. Beta should be more polished than this behaviour though, which is more like I would expect from an alpha state product. I'm not in the driving seat with this though so there isn't anything I can do, sorry.
 * 2.1 Starting bulleted lists as in MS Word is which is marked as low priority unfortunately, but I've copied your comments there. I've reported the similar request for numbered lists as, but I expect it to be given an identical priority when it is triaged.
 * 2.2:
 * Superscript is covered by, subscript by , symbol insertion by and en/emdashes from sequences of hyphens is lowest-priority . Setting font colour I've reported as.
 * Shortcuts like ctrl+i and ctrl+b work for italic and bold etc.
 * I've reported your idea about discouraging certain formatting by novice editors as, but rather than the tools being unavailable (which might require new classes of editor permissions) I've suggested that instead they should just not be shown by default.
 * 2.3 Linking to redirects is a good thing in some situations (e.g. redirects with possibilities), but asks for editors to be informed if they link to a redirect. The piped link rather than trailing link issue is
 * 2.4 See my response to 1.5
 * 2.5 This is which is sadly marked as low priority, despite it being one of my most missed features.
 * 3.1 Actually experience has shown that many editors are finding the template editing better than with the source method, but yes copy and paste can be improved. An improved reference editor is one of the most requested features, with almost everybody preferring the reference toolbar used in the source editor. Categories I haven't seen much discussion on, but this seems to generate mixed opinions - some people like it others don't.
 * 3.2
 * Maths and quotes are among the features that are coming but have not been written yet as they weren't prioritised as necessary for the beta release. Personally I think that so many missing features is another indication this is alpha rather than beta, but I'm just an editor here not anyone who made those decisions.
 * Switching between editing modes is often requested here and is tracked at.
 * There are many suggestions for ways to edit wikitext from within VE -, and  are some  of them.
 * 3.3
 * Performance is a known issue the devs are working hard on.
 * VE does correctly target section links, but only after it has fully loaded and only if you haven't moved the view at all while it was loading. This is a known issue but I can't immediately find the relevant bug, sorry.


 * Thanks Thryduulf! For the edit section, I think a relevant discussion can be found here. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:08, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Can you answer to the question asked above, "Do you keep any statistics on how often an editor presses the save button versus how many times this actually results in a new revision being saved?" Thryduulf (talk) 18:40, 8 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, we were collecting this information for the A/B test - however, the data is hugely compromised in this area, and so we don't have anything we can usefully say one way or the other. (Specifically, we don't have confidence in the data collected about WT edits, so can't make a comparison without re-writing this code and running another test; we think some of the data is missing for some users, but we don't know for sure what impact this has on different types of user (logged-out vs. new vs. experienced) and so how to re-weight the data to compensate; and other issues.) I want to spend some time in the near future to re-do our data collection infrastructure so that we can answer this question and similar ones, but right now we don't have anything to share, sorry. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the quick reply. It's a shame your data collection didn't work, but I understand and agree there is no point releasing meaningless figures. Thryduulf (talk) 02:12, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Reference Section, Wellsville, Ohio page
Can not see entire page so that I know where to add edit FDLeyda (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure I understand what FDLeyda is seeing/saying; I can see the entire page (Safari, on Mac OS X). But it's interesting that in the article, Wellsville, Ohio, there are 13 references in read/view mode, yet in VE, in the Reference dialog (click "Use an existing reference"), only ten are listed, and in the main VE editing window, only five references are showing in the References section. I'm guessing that there is some wikitext (code) that is giving VE conniptions, but that's just a guess. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 17:58, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've not got time right now to investigate, but there are several known bugs relating to not all references displaying -, , , and  at least. Thryduulf (talk) 18:13, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * FDLeyda is referring to this edit. There were five references in the article, and he tried to add a sixth (which wouldn't be possible in this manner, as the other five are inline citations, but this distinction is not very clear when using the visual editor), but it turned into a header instead. —Ruud 19:29, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * , thanks for your feedback. :) Do you know what you did when that happened? I get a similar outcome only if I put my cursor on the line where it says "Further reading" and start to type, hitting return when I'm finished. If I put the cursor above that, it comes out normal font. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 18:19, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Any thoughts on optimization?
The interface is unbelievably laggy on older machines. I'm on Chrome, XUbuntu, IBM T60, Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) 1.83GHz with 2GB of RAM. It takes about two seconds to get my cursor to show up anywhere on the editor and even longer to highlight words and make changes. I like the idea behind this visual editor and I'm sure it runs fine on newer machines, but there's no reason for it not to work well on older computers. I'm definitely switching back to the old editor. BBAmp (talk) 16:10, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * "there's no reason for it not to work well on older computers" that is a bold statement :). I suspect it might work better in the future, but I doubt it will every run satisfactory on those kinds of machines and these people will likely always be tied to text mode. It would be good if we could do some sort of performance based metrics inside the editor and then do a "We note it's taking quite long to load this page: 1: Continue, 2: Edit this page in textual mode, 3: My computer is too slow; disable this editor in my preferences. —Th e DJ (talk • contribs) 16:47, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You might want to weigh in at Wikipedia_talk:VisualEditor. I'd notice that in these days that I am editing pages discussing VE here (not with VE, this goes without saying), their length is so excessive that it causes my Chrome to freeze for many seconds (not to mention edit conflicts). I don't have anything to switch back to, and my PC is usually ok ;) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * When you experience problems with Chrome freezing, are you editing entire pages, or just sections of pages? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:03, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I am not sure we should discuss this here, but thanks :) I tend to edit sections, in order to avoid conflicts. And it is really the length the problem, since I don't experience it on smaller pages. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:15, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor
I really like this idea a lot. It makes editing a lot easier and understandable. The markup of the original editing on this website was hard and it was like another language to learn. VisualEditor offers a cool new way to edit a page. I really like it. Nahkrin (talk) 00:45, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Glad to hear this, Nahkrin. Looks like you are a new editor.  Was the previous editing experience standing in the way of (blocking) your contributing? --User:Ceyockey ( talk to me ) 01:06, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Odd: Nahkrin's list of contributions shows *zero* edits using VE prior to posting to this page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:59, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Nahkrin has said he likes the idea. It may be that he edited but did not save, or he edited and saved by IP. Jacopo Werther iγ∂ψ=mψ 07:27, 8 August 2013 (UTC)


 * e.c. by my folks <3 I don't find it odd, I think his remarks can be applied to VE looks. Since he did edit earlier, he can recognize the difference. His kind of remarks are perfectly compatible with him just testing a bit without actually saving anything. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:31, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Loading forever; never completes
Up until very recently, VE was working perfectly fine. However, it has started to load forever (or at least about 15 minutes, when I gave up). The page greys out and the loading bars run, but nothing else ever happens. Perhaps this explains above? Windows 7, FF 22, Monobook:Jay8g [ V•T•E ] 02:45, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, as I said, knowing the title of the page might help a lot, do you remember any? There have been no deployments for a while and we would have heard more about such a major issue, if it affected many people. (I also use your config to edit and did not experience this.) Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:23, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * All pages I tried didn't work. Still broken on my sandbox and United Express, among others:Jay8g [ V•T•E ] 16:49, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's something specific to your configuration, Jay8g: both of those open in a few seconds for me. What browser and machine are you using?&mdash;Kww(talk) 17:02, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Can it possibly be related to this? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Although they do have several scripts installed, it doesn't look like HAPPI is one of them (that was my first thought too). It isn't the VE editing surface colour as I use that without any problems. I don't have time at the minute to test the others though. Thryduulf (talk) 18:01, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * He said "Windows 7, FF 22, Monobook" above. I realize that this is likely to be unhelpful, but have you restarted your machine any time recently?  Safari was dragging on my Mac a while ago, and it's much happier now that I restarted (and somehow magically found another 10% of diskspace, too, which is probably related).  Do you have anything odd about your firewall?  Is everything else on the web working normally?  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:38, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It now works without me doing anything. Odd:Jay8g [ V•T•E ] 18:42, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * If the issue was with one of the scripts you are using, then a fix of that would solve your problem. Thryduulf (talk) 18:55, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

VE and speedy templates?
I'm not sure if I'm going crazy, but when I saw that this edit had triggered filter 29 (removal of speedy template) I was very confused, because it seemed to me like the diff did NOT, in fact, do that. (But the filter log thinks it did.) Perhaps an admin would like to check out the diff, and see if I should, perhaps, send my tired eyes off to bed? (I couldn't reproduce it in my sandbox.)  Ignatz mice•talk 03:00, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Not an admin, but I'd also suggest to make sure that the filters are working correctly - at least one of them was reported yesterday at the tech VP as broken and being fixed soon. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:33, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Link Dialog
The add-link dialog should have a clear "OK" and "Cancel" button. Right now, you have no obvious way to get rid of it and it is not clear what happens when you click somewhere else (the dialog goes away, but did it save the changes or not?) Also, what does the strange back button (<) to the left do? and are the Link-symbol and "Hyperlink" two buttons or a description or what (nothing happens when I click on them)? The trash symbol is good and does what you'd expect it to: remove the link. Mauro Bieg (talk) 11:06, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The < button closes the dialog, since the wikilink is automatically added when you type/select the word. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:11, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, this is covered at (and partly ). Thryduulf (talk) 11:22, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Templates grouped together for no good reason
On Fresenius (company), when editing with the VE, the three templates (2 stub, 1 navigation) at the end of the article are grouped together for no apparent good reason. WS (talk) 15:17, 8 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I've cleaned up the article, and removed two templates (the article isn't a stub any more), but yes, there seems be a bug when using VE to edit this older version. Editing in VE, clicking on the first (large) template at the bottom of the page also highlights/selects the other two templates. That shouldn't happen; the templates aren't related to each other. -- John Broughton  (♫♫) 16:12, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Cancel a cancel?
Usability issue: when I hit "Cancel," it gives a dialog box with the options "Cancel" and "OK." (This appears to be a standard JavaScript alert dialog.) Please make it clear which button actually completes the cancel. (Hint: it's not "Cancel.") Perhaps the options should be "Return to editor" and "Exit without saving."

Note that on this dialog box I'm typing into right now, "Cancel" is on the right; the one I'm discussing has it on the left in MacOS. 64.131.18.26 (talk) 15:30, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * "cancel" to open the dialog box, and "OK" to confirm cancel. It's not obviously wrong, but it is definitely confusing.  Ignatz mice•talk 15:41, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Intro notice, etc.
So, I logged out a bit ago and tried to make an edit using the Visual Editor as an anon. Three things surprised me.


 * 1) The button to use the VE said "edit (beta)". It was to the right of the "edit source" button. I'm concerned that "edit (beta)" doesn't give any indication that it's a more new-editor-friendly (ideally) version. Not sure how to fix this or rephrase it to sound more appealing.
 * 2) The warning/introductory message that I got immediately after clicking that button didn't fit in the dialog; I couldn't scroll down to read it all. Not sure if anyone else has had that issue.
 * 3) The edit never showed up as saved; after about three minutes it said "Error: Unknown error" or something similar. Nevertheless, when I opened up the article in another tab, my edit HAD in fact been saved.

Anyway, after all this time, the editor seems to be working way better than before. Still got a long ways to go, but I am impressed and grateful to the development team which has poured so much time and effort into these improvements. Red  Slash  15:51, 3 August 2013 (UTC)


 * Regarding #1, I think that having VE as secondary, marked as "beta", is what we want to do at this point, given the number of problems still existing. Now that this is the secondary link, the more adventuresome - or frustrated - editors will try it, while those who are happy with the wikitext editor won't necessarily bother.


 * In general, I think it's possible to underestimate the curiosity of Wikipedia editors - at least, of those likely to stick around. Given two different "edit" links, it seems to me that the curious will try them both, and if they like VE, they're more likely to be forgiving (at the moment) preciously because it's marked as beta, and because it isn't being thrust upon them as the preferred link. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 04:14, 4 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Red Slash, are you talking about the new "this is beta, it may have errors" warning, or the other types of warning notices (like WP:Editnotices)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Whatamidoing, it was the new one specific to VE. It may well just be me that was affected, but I wasn't able to scroll through it to read it all. Red  Slash  01:38, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I think it is probably another example, and I've left comments there. However it would be useful if you could upload a screenshot (see User:Thryduulf/How to upload screenshots of Wikipedia if you don't know how). To see the beta notice again you need to delete the "ve-beta-welcome-dialog" cookie, in Firefox you can do this by selecting the "Preferences" option in the Edit menu, clicking the Privacy icon at the top, then the "Show cookies" button about two thirds of the way down on the right of the dialog box. In the search box of the new dialog type "ve-beta-welcome-dialog" (without quotes or any following spaces), make sure it is selected and then click the "Remove Cookie" button in the bottom left (the one with the red line, not the "Remove all cookies" with the mop). You can then close both the cookies and preferences dialogs. You will see the dialog again next time you load VE. Thryduulf (talk) 08:51, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the great help, Whatamidoing and Thryduulf. I feel so accomplished after having done this. Face-smile.svg Red  Slash  01:50, 9 August 2013 (UTC) WARNINGforVE.png
 * Thank you for that screenshot, it shows that this isn't what I was thinking of. It might be a different manifestation of the same bug or it might be a different one. I'm not awake enough to do anything with it right now but I'll look at it in the morning. Thryduulf (talk) 02:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I've reported this separately as although it might get merged into  or possibly  but that is less likely. Thank you again for the report and the screenshot. Thryduulf (talk) 09:54, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Opening links
Links to technical or obscure pages sometimes fail to list, for example: on Shaft I highlighted "Handle" and "Tang" which produced lists missing Handle (grip) and Tang (weaponry). There still seems to be a problem opening the link while editing (as above) and sometimes (on saved pages) links made with VisualEditor only seem to open if opened in a (right click) "new tab" - personally I think preview might be more relevant than review changes for testing that links work correctly before saving.

Occasionally (not always) VisualEditor hiccups on opening, which the source editor does not, however I think that is because my browser suppresses info-banners such as donation appeals? Otherwise, useful, especially for new users, although personally I find the source editor much more convenient. Regards, Timpo (talk) 11:30, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Links not opening on left click is desired behaviour as it stops you losing your edits. When opened in a new tab or window (right click or ctrl+click) they don't suffer this problem (although per they currently don't load the right URL).  is a request for previews in the link dialog along the lines of navigation popups, which should solve the preview issue.
 * For me, Handle (grip) does appear in the list but quite far down, while Tang (weaponry) doesn't until I add the "(w". I agree this isn't good, so I've reported suggesting the suggestions list should scroll. Thryduulf (talk) 12:16, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Template:Terminal issue
Terminal's info icon crashes. --Rezonansowy (talk &bull;&#32; contribs) 12:59, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Do you mean the "i" icon in the lower right of the template? In what way do you mean it crashes? I've tried editing this in my sandbox, and while the "i" icon is misaligned I've not experienced anything like a crash (Firefox 22/monobook/linux). Thryduulf (talk) 13:30, 8 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It might be browser dependant. Works OK for me (Chrome, Vector, Mac OSX). I've added the template data.--Salix (talk): 13:55, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Hmm, it's a bit strange, but it works properly for now. Anyway, Thanks for replies! --Rezonansowy (talk &bull;&#32; contribs) 12:58, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Trade-offs in speed improvements
Hi, as I know some of the most busy VE testers don't really hang around other discussions, I'm here to point to this thread Sherry opened to hear from all users about which type of speed-related improvement is most important to them when they're editing in VisualEditor: speed of operation, or speed of starting? Add your comments there! Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:23, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikitext error message
Ymblanter (talk) 11:02, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Hi, did you dismiss the message by clicking on it? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes. Before that, it actually physically covered the save button, and I could not click on save anyway.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:06, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I've reproduced that on Windows 7, Chrome, in the same article. I deliberately added the word test, so that I would know where the markup was. Even after removing it, I could not click on save, either. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:13, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Okay, it's really weird that I do not encounter the same problem when I do the same thing on a random article (which happened to be Maundy Gregory). I dismissed the error box, and the "save" page button works, although I aborted prior to saving. Technical people, any clue? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:14, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It does not happen for me. The button is never "greyed up", I might also save with square brackets added. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:22, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * The button didn't grey up for me, either - it looked perfectly normal, but did not respond to being clicked. Did it grey out for you, ? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:25, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No, it remained as it should be - green?. Never greyed up.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:27, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I occasionally use VE (I made may be several dozen edits) and never got this pop-up message before.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:30, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I can't reproduce this at all; the button stays green and responds to being clicked (indeed I managed to save a small edit, although I obviously removed the wikitext before doing so). I tested in both monobook and vector, using Firefox 22/Linux. Are you using Windows Maggie? If so then that's one point of commonality. It would be odd to happen in both Chrome and Firefox on Windows but no other combination though. Thryduulf (talk) 11:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I did reproduce it again on the same article, now deliberaetly inserting test . After I click on the pop-up message and remove test, whatever I add, I can not say. The save button stays light green.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:45, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Same effect in Sonkovo.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:47, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I switched to my laptop (Chrome, whatever Mac OS I have there), and it let me save. I tried it again on my desktop and found that if I clicked "save" immediately after dismissing the window, it didn't work. If I persisted, it did after a few seconds. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:50, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * And I reproduced that lag on my formerly random Maundy Gregory. Ymblanter, if you persist in trying or wait a few seconds, does it work for you? --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 11:51, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I just meant that the button was green as usual: when you can't click on it (happened to me before, should find that bug again) you notice a slightly lighter green. Can this be similar to, although there are no bullets in the article? --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:53, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * No, frankly, I do not see any change of color at all.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:56, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * (ec) Yes, it works indeed if I wait for several seconds. Thanks, this hopefully resolves the problem.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:55, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, I don't know about that - you lost your edit because you didn't know. That's still a problem - that shouldn't ever happen. It's just a different problem. :) I'll log it. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:04, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Great, thanks, Maggie.--Ymblanter (talk) 12:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks for pointing out the issue. Sorry you lost your work! :( --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:12, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

VisualEditor accidentally deleting infoboxes
This is actually not my own experience, but those that I have seen on articles on my watchlist. When someone edits an article, sometimes, for some reason it deletes the whole infobox (and strangely only that, any maintenance tags at the top of the page remain). Sometimes, it even adds a nowiki tag to the article (which is probably related to the long-running bug with nowiki tags), although I can't see any mention of the infobox deletion on any of the current discussions. How can this be solved? Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 23:35, 1 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Could you link to some diffs please. I know that there has been at least one bug relating to VE removing templates, but I can't find it at the moment. Thryduulf (talk) 00:01, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Here here. Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 00:29, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Technically, this is not a VisualEditor bug. What happens is that the user backspaces one time too many, and since the entire infobox is "one character" in VisualEditor's mind, it gets deleted.  If the user doesn't notice and undo the backspace, then it's gone.   But while it's not a "bug", it's a problem, and it's already in Bugzilla so that some sort of fix can be devised.  (Perhaps you should have to confirm deletion of a template?  If you've got ideas, let me know, or add them to the bug report yourself if you've got an account there.)  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:56, 2 August 2013 (UTC)


 * One idea would be to somehow flag the templates where a confirmation step is appropriate, but it'd have to batch up the confirmation if multiple nodes are affected, and maybe have a "Don't show this again" checkbox. Feels unwieldy.--Eloquence* 01:28, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I personally think confirmation each time a person deletes a template with a "do not show this again" checkbox (which is remembered across edits) would be adequate. As you say, a single user action should trigger at most one warning. I don't find this unwieldly. Dcoetzee 02:13, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * An other way would be to do like Word do for images: the first backspace selects the image, a second one deletes the image. The same kind of behavior could be applied to templates: first select the template, then delete it on a second key stroke. --NicoV (Talk on frwiki) 06:19, 2 August 2013 (UTC)
 * A confirmation asking for permission each time the error occurs is horrible, and if you click "Don't show this again" it won't protect you, so this solves nothing. Selecting the image on the first backspace is the way to go. Diego Moya (talk) 13:54, 6 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I posted Nico's suggestion to the bug report. I think it's an idea that should be considered.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:29, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * See for example . I see this a lot with new users. Andrewpmk | Talk 14:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It's gotten worse
I've just made an edit using VisualEditor. In my edit, I merely wikilinked to a person. I did not use backspace, but once again, the infobox was accidentally deleted. And now, it appears that most of the VisualEditor edits on pages on my watchlist are having the same problem (see this and this). Does this need a new Bugzilla entry or should it continue to be tracked under the old one? (I don't have a Bugzilla account). Narutolovehinata5 tccsdnew 14:59, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'll add to that bug for you, don't worry about this. As for the "getting worst" part, I think this is also related to us having among our watched pages many pages that might suffer from that specific bug. As an example, in the previous days I had to fix some articles on the Italian WP where VE would struggle with an infobox about fictional characters. Each time someone else edited those articles, the "bug" would appear again. Now that we have found a workaround for that and those pages will be ok, I am not going to think "it's gotten better" ;) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:20, 3 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing this as well. It doesn't seem to be hitting every single edit. What is the suggested workaround, besides going back into the old article and restoring it at the end of the editing session? -AngusWOOF (talk) 16:09, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * It's not the same it.wp is experiencing. (We had two main issues, turns up the one that was solved was the infobox not allowing VE to load at all). Hopefully the deleted infobox bug will get some love as soon as devs come back from Wikimania. Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 16:58, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing a lot of infobox removals with VE these days. Just one recent example - an editor removed the infobox while editing a section that does not contain that infobox). Materialscientist (talk) 22:03, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Every time I make an edit anywhere on that page in VE the infobox gets deleted (I don't save, for obvious reasons). I notice that the infobox there is produced from four templates, which makes me wonder whether what we're seeing is actually caused by Parsoid seeing 4 incomplete tables rather than one complete one? I've added comments to this effect to  and marked it as critical. Thryduulf (talk) 23:12, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Sorry folks about this. This is  which has been fixed but not deployed yet.  Till this is deployed (after wikimania, in a day or so), on pages where this is a problem, VE can be disabled on those pages by adding Template:Disable_VE_top and Template:Disable_VE_bottom to those pages.  If it is possible to deploy this earlier, I'll update that info here. Ssastry (talk) 02:08, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Locked buttons (Cancel, Save) after wikitext warning
Maybe related to the above wikitext problem, but i don't want to mix issues. The "Cancel" and "Save" button are not properly handled after the wikitext warning message is displayed. Error can be reproduced.


 * 1) Check the green button, after entering edit mode. The whole area of the button is clickable - OK.
 * 2) Let the wikitext message pop up with some wikitext addition. Now the buttons are "locked", you can hover over the visible parts of them, but they are not clickable - OK.
 * 3) Remove the warning message with a click, no need to change anything else.
 * 4) Hover over the "save" button with your mouse again and check, where it's clickable. Its upper third and the right corner are still "locked" ("Cancel" is also only partially clickable) - not OK, buttons should be fully released.
 * 5) Those partial locks are only released, after you clear your browser cache (stopping VE is not enough) - not OK.

Sorry for the lengthy desciption, but it's a bit difficult to explain that :). Using Windows XP, FF 22, vector.js and a 1280 x 1024 resolution for test. GermanJoe (talk) 12:29, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

PS: The error depends on monitor resolution. Switched to 800 x 600 to test, and the buttons are OK. GermanJoe (talk) 12:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I was able to reproduce this. When I hover over the upper part of each button, the cursor does not change. I'd add that this behavior changes if you zoom in or out (that is, if the buttons get bigger or smaller). Is this something which might be added to the bug above? Thanks, --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:37, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * They are atleast closely related imo (not necessarily the same). I would add it to the existing one. GermanJoe (talk) 12:44, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * Added to . I don't see a change of behaviour after zooming but I do see everything else. FF23/Linux/Monobook. Thryduulf (talk) 13:38, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Get it off my computer
I don't want this program on my computer. How do I get rid of it? I have tried but it won't go. 74.109.13.108 (talk) 20:03, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * See VisualEditor/Opt-out, there are ways to disable it for IP editors.--Salix (talk): 20:43, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
 * You'll find out it is not a software, nothing was installed. If you can provide details so that we can understand why it won't work for you and look for solutions, we'd be glad to hear them. Thanks :) --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:57, 10 August 2013 (UTC)