User talk:Arthur Rubin

Test signature Arthur Rubinen (talken 04:26, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Test signature 2 Arthur Rubin en.Wiki (talken.Wiki) 11:10, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

Colors
In case you'd like a little more detail: It's theoretically possible to change the color in the visual editor, but you have to either use a template (and presumably enwiki doesn't have any black-on-black text-coloring templates) or trick it into accepting the wikitext code for setting the colors, at which point the fact that you happened to use the visual editor rather than one of the wikitext editors is superfluous. In terms of the effort required to do this in the visual mode, I use the  highlighting codes fairly often, and the (non-)support level for those tags is the same. While I do know how to force those through the visual mode, it's a lot easier to switch to the wikitext mode. It's the kind of thing you'd probably do only if someone (e.g., some dev) was complaining that the visual editor didn't support something, and you wanted to make a diff to tease them. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:02, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * User:Whatamidoing (WMF); I don't think my comment was about VE specifically, I was trying to say that some vandalism is difficult to detect without looking at the Wikitext. On the other hand, it is probably easier to intentionally create subtle damage pages using the Wikitext editor than by VE.  (I say, intentionally, because a good fraction (probably 10%) of VE edits to articles I watch have bad links, and I suspect they are unintentional.)  Arthur Rubin en.Wiki (talken.Wiki) 23:17, 29 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The specific example was black-on-black text: we can't have rich text if we want to avoid vandalism, because we'll end up with silly things like black-on-black text.  I think that's testable:  we have rich text right now, and we can check for vandalism.  On the specific example, we don't seem to have an outbreak of black-on-black text, or even any single example of that happening.  On the general question, back in the day, the research showed a slightly lower risk of reversions marked as vandalism for the visual editor than for the older wikitext editors.  Now – that was then, and that kind of behavior does change.  It could also have been user perception (e.g., I associate some removals in the WTE with vandalism, but these other removals in the visual editor must be a good-faith decision).
 * Why do you think that rich text is inherently a bigger risk for vandalism than a markup language? It seems like a fairly irrelevant consideration to me.  Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Rich text allows for adding "Easter Eggs" (including vandalism) which cannot be seen by the naked eye, but can be seen when highlighting or applying other user-side modifications. In the markup language, you can see them, or at least see there is something suspicious.
 * I think most experienced editors on en.Wikipedia assume that most of the errors in Visual Editor edits may be undetectable to (or at least undetected by) the editor, and hence may not be vandalism, even though they would clearly be vandalism if intentional. Many of the bad links I have seen in Visual Editor edits are of that form.  Arthur Rubin en.Wiki (talken.Wiki) 19:59, 30 May 2019 (UTC)