2017 wikitext editor/Feedback/2017/02

Post your feedback about using the first iteration of the 2017 wikitext editor as a Beta Feature.

If you are reporting a problem directly on this page, please include your web browser, computer operating system, and wiki skin (usually Vector, sometimes Monobook).

The Editing team welcomes your feedback and ideas, especially on user interface decisions and the priorities for adding new features. All comments are read, in any language, but personal replies are not guaranteed.

We are trying to keep the page tidy by providing links to relevant tasks while closing threads. You can help by adding {{tracked|T######}}. By all means, feel free to re-open a thread if you need to!

See also:

View open developer tasks – Complete workboard – Report a new bug in Phabricator – Join the IRC channel

Changes are not shown as "read" in my watchlist after save

I've seen it several times, but don't know about the concrete circumstances, that after I saved my last edit and go back to my watchlist, my last edit is shown as not read, i.e. bolded. How can it be, that I haven't read my own edit? Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 16:50, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Here's a screenshot of the version history:

I was logged in as Sänger while I made the screenshot. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 16:50, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

This has been reported occasionally for at least two years. I've never heard a solid explanation about how it happens, and if often goes away if you wait a while and reload the page. However, since the problems have been reported before this Beta Feature became available, it is not caused by the new editing mode. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:55, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

The screenshot was from 17:51:12, how long do I have to wait for this? And I only saw this behaviour in Connection with the 2017WE, but I have to confess, I don't use the VE, because it's loading times are far too excessive. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 07:46, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

In my experience, it usually resolves within a few minutes, but you must force-reload the page.  OTOH, if you read the page or check the diff, it will probably resolve immediately. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:52, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Yep, that will be the case. The problem is not, that it's disturbing me, the problem is, that it's there at all, without any fathomable reason. And it's definitely a bug, it's something I connect with 2017WE, as it was only with this editor that I experienced such stuff. Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 18:04, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes it is really annoying

Bekah Jones BekahJones (talk) 19:46, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Copy and paste does not work

There are serious issues with copy and paste, both from editors on my machine and from other wiki pages. I just tried to copy and paste the title of a page on enwiki to a talk page on dewiki in order to create a wikilink back to enwiki, and it did not work. The text was correctly pasted as a heading, but it was not possible to re-format it as a simple paragraph. When I tried preview, no text was shown at all. The same in version comparison view. In fact my text was lost I could not save it and quit the editor.

When I tried to copy and paste from TextEdit two paragraphs got lost and were not included in the browser editor window.

Also, the signature on talk pages is not correct. We sign with two -- characters before the four tildes.

I'll switch the new editor off now, said enough. I'll take another look at it in a year or so.

Thanks for looking into this.

Tested with Firefox ESR 45.7 on Mac OS X 10.11.6. Aschmidt (talk) 21:58, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

BTW, I don't like the discussion system you are using here. I prefer wikitext in a simple editor window with discussions in a thread from the top to the bottom, as we have been discussing on Wikipedia since I joined in 2005. Aschmidt (talk) 21:59, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to share your experience. I really appreciate it.

1. The copy-paste bug is phab:T155836, and the fix should reach the Wikipedias later today. This bug is on my list as perhaps the most disruptive problem we've seen so far.
2. Some things aren't pastable. If it was basically text, then those missing paragraphs may have been 155836 again. But if it had complicated formatting ("complicated" from the machine POV, which is not always very obvious), then it may be a case of the software deciding that this material wasn't wanted (e.g., links to external images) or translatable into wikitext.
3. Signatures are a matter of local convention. Most wikis use plain signatures. A few use other conventions. If your wiki insists upon including two hyphens (presumably, it's meant to be a proper dash instead of two hyphens?), then that should be set as the local default for all signatures (see MediaWiki:Signature), and then all of the software will then use that. In the meantime, you can get those hyphens by typing -- before the signature, exactly like everyone who dislikes taking their hands off the keyboard has been doing for years. (You can even type --~~~~ in visual mode, and it will auto-convert it for you on the spot, so you can see your signature before you save.)

The local community at this wiki has chosen to use Flow. It has some problems (e.g., it's not integrated into Special:Search). One of its advantages, however, is that you will get an Echo notification about this reply, as soon as I click the Reply button. This is particularly helpful for a wiki that has a lot of people who normally contribute to other projects. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:03, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for elaborating, @Whatamidoing (WMF). I'm glad to see you are after those bugs already. As to no. 2, I suggest to introduce "paste as plain text", as we know it from, say, the text editor in LibreOffice. As to Flow, the use case you mention may indeed be helpful to some users, but I am used to keeping a to-do list in my local bookmarks for the talks engaged in on all platforms, and I have switched off most notifications because I don't like them. But that's only my POV. :) Aschmidt (talk) 17:45, 5 February 2017 (UTC)

"Paste as plain text" already exists (⌘ Command+⇧ Shift+V in Safari on a Mac, but it varies per browser/OS). However, most people don't think to use it, and I'm not 100% certain it solves all of these cases.

(There are permalinks for each Flow thread, which you can bookmark. I think that might work better for you than bookmarking the whole page.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Add section doesn't work

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hello,

after i edited some pages today, i wanted to add a new section to a discussion site. But the button "Add section" seems not working at all. I clicked it, but nothing happened. After i turned off the NWE i started to open the old editor and i could write my things down. So i think it is a problem with NWE.

Did you changed anything in the last hours? The problem didn't happened to me yesterday. Thanks for help.

Best. Pearli (talk) 19:38, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Ok, I have tested it a few seconds ago on another machine and there is the same Problem. Nothing happens when I try to add a new section to a discussion site. I have tested it now with Chrome IE 7 on a Windows 10 Computer and a Windows 7 machine. This two ones does have a whole different configuration. So it has to be a Problem on wikimedia site and NWE.

Best. Pearli (talk) 06:22, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Looks like https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153547 ? Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:02, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

you're right. You have to Show me how you're finding this things with an easy way. I tried it two times in my life and i didn't found anything :/ Pearli (talk) 10:06, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks a lot for asking! There's a link on this feedback page on the right, "View open developer tasks". You can use keywords in the "contains words" field. This is one of the ways. Personally, I use keywords in Phab's search bar instead, and then restrict results by typing "2017w" in the Tags field (it will bring up the correct, long tag for the project). Elitre (WMF) (talk) 10:27, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Elitre finds things by magic, and she will never convince me othewise. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:49, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Cursor problem on empty line

When I'm writing text and produce some text

and an empty line and then more text (exactly as here), and then attempt to navigate in this text using LeftArrow and RightArrow keys, it appears that the empty line contain an invisible character. I always need two keystrokes to traverse it. Moreover, after I do so in the backward direction, often there remains a small leftover of the cursor in the empty line, which disappears after a second or two.

BTW: Flow in which I'm writing now behaves the same way.

Windows 10 64 bit, Chrome  56.0.2924.87 (64-bit), Vector. Gżdacz (talk) 21:50, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Tool for edit summary

Plwiki has a number of predefined edit summaries, to be inserted with one click.

New editor sometimes loads them, sometimes it doesn't. Below two screenshots, made within a minute or two. The diifs are [1] and [2], respectively. Win 10 64 bit, Chrome 56.0.2924.87 (64-bit), Vector.

Gżdacz (talk) 09:11, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

2017 wikitext overwrites change by HotCat on JAWP

It seems that 2017 wikitext overwrites the change made by HotCat, on JAWP. As matters now stand, we cannot use HotCat when using 2017 wikitext at the same time.

Check this and [[w:ja:Special:Redirect/revision/62983760]].

If this problem is already known, sorry about that. ねをなふみそね (talk) 14:34, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

I can't use HotCat at all. Schierbecker (talk) 15:26, 23 March 2017 (UTC)

menu / feedback

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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When you use editor2017, the menu "(?)"/"leave feedback about software" offered to send feedback on the page visual editor. It was expected that he would send on this page. Sunpriat 08:17, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Save changes

1) when enabled input tools - bottom right under "Edit summary" field appears input tools icon, and this icon overlaps the remaining number of bytes so that the numbers are not visible - uncomfortable

2) checkboxes "This is a minor edit" "Watch this page" have tooltip with text "[w]" "[i]", but these keyboard shortcut do not work Sunpriat 10:41, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Template preview function

Hi guys. In the old wikitext editor, there's a function where you can preview changes to a template on a page where the template is currently used (near the bottom of the editor). As far as I can see this function isn't availiable with the new editor, is there a time horizon for when such a feature will be availaible? InsaneHacker (talk) 12:03, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF), @Elitre (WMF) - Do you know anything about this? InsaneHacker (talk) 14:48, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153367 ? If so, not very soon. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 15:32, 30 March 2017 (UTC)

Text cursor disappears

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T158603

1) in the text, add a new line through Enter

2) type a few letters

3) highlight something in the text and press ctrl+c

4) click at the end inserted in (2) letters

=> you can see that the text cursor "|" is not visible or visible but not blinking

if you click where else in the text, the cursor blinking at the new location, but if you click again in the end (2) - the cursor is now definitely not visible

it scares and irritating, especially on talk pages Sunpriat 22:16, 15 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the detailed directions, Sunpriat. What's your browser/OS information? I can't reproduce this behavior in either Safari 10 or Firefox 51 on macOS Sierra 10.12. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

win 10, firefox dev edition (current at the date of writing(there disappeared)) - current today not reproduced; chrome 58.0.3013.5 dev 64 - text cursor stops blinking Sunpriat 20:19, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

lost data when switching?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Like the editor generally (a handful of things remain really much better in wikitext) but when switching from new wikitext -> VE/WYSIWYG I lost data. Not sure if this is expected/known, and I hadn't noticed it earlier. If it is expected, a warning would be nice; if not, well, just FYI that you've still got some bugs :( LuisVilla (talk) 04:08, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I need more information. Which wiki? Did you start editing in a section? Did you save the page? I see a few bot edits during your last editing session at enwiki: Did the bot edit the page just before you lost your work? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:39, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

I figured this might not be that helpful, but had to point it out, given the severity of the problem (nothing turns off users faster than data loss :/ Some answers:

• enwiki (

• I think I started editing in a section, but can't be sure.
• It is entirely possible that the bot edited between switches! That would make some sense, timing-wise. LuisVilla (talk) 19:48, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

When you lost your work, what did you see? Specifically, did it give you the whole page with none of your changes, or did it blank most of the page (i.e., everything except the section that you were editing)? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:38, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

(Also, if you started editing in a section, it should have given you a choice between cancelling the switch, or losing all of your changes.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Definitely no "cancel or lose" notice that I saw. (I was somewhat expecting it.)

Gave me the whole page with none of my changes.

Note that the flow was a VE (make changes) -> new wikitext (make more changes) -> VE (all changes gone) LuisVilla (talk) 00:14, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T158692

If you started in visual mode, then you weren't editing a single section. (You might have clicked the [edit] button for a section, but visual mode always opens the whole page.)

Do you have the Beta Feature for the 2017 wikitext editor enabled? In looking at your contributions, I'm assuming that you don't, but please let me know if I'm wrong. (It's at w:en:Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures if you want to try it out.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:51, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I started in VE. It's been my default for years ;) You can still click a section header to edit, so perhaps I misunderstood the question.

I enabled the 2017 wikitext editor on ... Friday, probably? But it isn't my default. LuisVilla (talk) 20:08, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Hey, I don't know if you saw the latest, but the bug's been found, the patch has been merged, and it will probably (usual disclaimers apply) be fixed in production a week from now. Thanks, again, for reporting this. I hate lost-work bugs, and you helped us kill it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:57, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

I did see it, thanks for ccing me. (Also saw the less good news afterwards, but such is software life ;) LuisVilla (talk) 04:19, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

WikEd - (Highlighted wikisyntax while editing articles - T101246)

Would need color coding in this editor before it would be useful. ~ Doc James (talk) 16:29, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

By the way I am unable to figure out if someone has asked this question before with FLOW. Is there anyway to search this discussion? The history tab does not allow blocks of edits to be compared. Gah Doc James (talk) 16:32, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Syntax highlighting is planned; in fact, an early version was written back in August, but it's not performant enough to deploy. "Works fine on the fastest computers" isn't good enough for deployment on the wikis, which get edited by people with a wide variety of resources. (If WikEd is working for you, then this would be fine for you. But most editors turn off WikEd because it's so slow on their computers.)

Flow isn't integrated into Special:Search yet, which is one of its major limitations at the moment. I hear that the Collaboration team is thinking about addressing that problem in the coming year. OTOH, I'm happy overall with having Flow on this page, because it means that I can see all the updates via Special:Notifications, no matter which wiki I'm on. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:46, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

WikEd is so useful that even with slow connections I use it. One can begin editing before WikEd fully loads aswell. Would be good to see it make faster as agree it does slow things down a bit. Doc James (talk) 17:53, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not really about the Internet connection. It's about how fast your computer is. So if you take your laptop to a bad internet connection, you're still (mostly) fine. But if you take a ten-year-old laptop to a good internet connection, it's still impossible. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Ah good to know. Thanks Doc James (talk) 12:14, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

The leading theory of the moment is that adding paramOrder to the TemplateData should bypass the infobox-scrambling bug. I've added it to Template:Infobox medical condition#TemplateData ; can you do a null edit on the template (the main template page, not the /doc subpage) to get the updated TemplateData active on it? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Okay done. Doc James (talk) 02:00, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! (I put this reply in a weird place, and I can't even figure out where we first talked about this problem now.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:48, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

Amplifying one point Doc James made: WikEd is extremely useful in almost all situations b/c i degrades nicely. You can load wikitext and start editing whether or not it's completed; it gracefully lets you know when it has to bail because the page is too long; it adds a highlight layer to the page (or removes it as it bails) in a way that doesn't delay normal workflow.

It can be annoying to see the switch between highlighted and non-highlighted, and requires getting used to, to use it in low-bandwidth situations; but once you're used to it, you are not slowed down.

I agree that highlighting makes the practice of editing much faster, and hope the WikEd devs are engaged in the neat things you are doing here. Sj (talk) 22:49, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

The WikEd dev does not very active these days (he did post an update today). As to whether it's useful or degrades nicely or "WFM" – for every person who tells me that they like WikEd, I hear from another who tried it and rejected it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:13, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

The key is the options. WikEd can be turned on and off in the editing Window. Doc James (talk) 20:55, 20 March 2017 (UTC)

Non-existent pages' links are blue

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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In the preview mode the non-existent pages are blue (see the picture) on huWiki, but they should be red. An example: Kanda Szajaka (on enWiki Sayaka Kanda) doesn't have an article yet but the links are blue on the picture. Bencemac (talk) 09:12, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

Hey there; this is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T153535, and we'll get around to it soon. Jdforrester (WMF) (talk) 16:50, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Bencemac (talk) 14:44, 3 March 2017 (UTC)

@Jdforrester (WMF): It's ok now. Thanks your cooperation! Bencemac (talk) 19:38, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Signature disabled

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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It would be nice to not automatically disable the signature insertion, as most of common pages are not made on the "discussion" tab. Bspf (talk) 10:28, 27 February 2017 (UTC)

I think there may be a bug there, and will look more into this later today, thanks. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:49, 28 February 2017 (UTC)

This is supposed to be fixed next week (Thursday for the Wikipedias, sooner for the other wikis). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.