2017 wikitext editor/Feedback/2017/10

Post your feedback about using the first iteration of the 2017 wikitext editor as a Beta Feature. While you can disable it by unchecking the New wikitext mode checkbox in your Preferences (Beta tab), the Contributors 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. You can learn how to structure well your submission.

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). Also, while editing to reproduce a problem, please try to append &safemode=1 at the end of the URL; if the problem disappears, you are using a gadget or script that interferes with the editor.

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

Welcome!

A bug was fixed that meant you didn't get access to the 2017 wikitext editor despite having indicated in your Preferences that you did want to access all the new beta features.

So, while you can disable it simply by unchecking the New wikitext mode checkbox in your Preferences (Beta tab), the Contributors team appreciates you "playing" with it for a bit before doing that ;) and looks forward to hearing from you about what aspects of it you like, what could maybe use some improvement and what is crucial to your editing experience that may currently be missing. You can also see upcoming work for the team, and wishes that have already been flagged. More info in the box on the right side of the Feedback page.

Thanks for your attention, and talk to you soon. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 07:48, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

@Elitre (WMF) Little problem: I can't disable it on itwiki. Mannivu · ✉ 13:36, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T170055#3428886 ? (to be fair, https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T177478 probably predates that.) Elitre (WMF) (talk) 14:22, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Yup, that's it. Thanks :) Mannivu · ✉ 14:25, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Bug when pasting reference

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I getting an auto no wiki code when pasting a reference. Also prefer the standard toolbar with standard bold text format option clearly visible. Prokaryotes (talk) 12:52, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

What did you copy for the ref? The raw wikitext code from an editing window, a copy of the code on a wikitext page (e.g., the doc page for a citation template), the ref from the article (the blue "[1]"), or the ref from the visual mode? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:06, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

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Two issues and a question

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I've just started trying this. First the question: is there any way to preview edits?

The issues: it is very slow to load, up to 15 seconds. Second, I needed to look at the deleted edits of a red link, but the wikitext editor opened as soon as I clicked on the red link, which meant the deleted edits were no longer a clickable link.

Update: I've just found how to preview. There's no indication that first you have to click on save.

An external link in the post didn't show up properly in preview.

When previewing a new short ref, one using sfn, it wouldn't let me click through to the long ref, so I couldn't check that the templates had worked. When I clicked on any short ref in preview, it opened the current version of the article in another window, which doesn't help if the reference hasn't been saved. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:26, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi there. Thank you very much for stopping by!

About the deletion log, your thoughts would be very welcome at https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T176070.

Would like to take a look at that malfunctioning link if possible. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 13:03, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

I left a note on phabricator, but I see that someone else had already raised it. It means that admins working on certain issues would have to keep disabling the new wikitext editor. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:29, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

SV, the "New editor" was actually build as a wikitext-mode inside of Visual Editor. Performance is atrocious on larger articles. (The last time I tried to preview the United States article, it took over 60 seconds.) It also works kinda like Flow, using VisualEditor as a fake-preview mode. That results in a large variety of rendering errors in the preview. Audio and video files didn't display at all last time I checked, and various types of wikitext get mangled in odd ways.

See March 2017 Village Pump RFC with 90+% consensus to file these issues as deployment blockers.

Thus far there is no indication that they can fix the performance issue at all. They also refuse to provide genuine previews. Instead they say they eventually want to switch over article-read-views to VE's rendering engine. In theory that would (mostly?) "fix" the rendering problems, but it would "break" the current wikitext editor's previews.

As for the location of the preview button... I think they plan on some sort of change. However The Powers That Be somehow consider the preview button less important than the various Visual-Editor-type buttons. Last I saw they were undecided-but-resistant about giving the preview button equal placement next to the save button. Alsee (talk) 07:50, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Performance is literally the key goal for this quarter for the team... Elitre (WMF) (talk) 12:36, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Not being able to check that citation templates work before saving is a major issue. I had to stop using it for that reason alone. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:32, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

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Citation tool

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Issues with the citation expander:

1. with citations expanded from pmid, it repeats the PubMed url in the url field;
2. it doesn't give the url to the article/abstract on the journal's website where this is available;
3. it repeats all the names of the authors, instead of using "et al." after a certain number;
4. it doesn't offer jstor;
5. it regularly isn't able to expand from the doi. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:10, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

I've numbered your list to make it a little faster for me to reply:

1. This isn't the traditional convention at the English Wikipedia, but it is actually better from the POV of readers, who know how to identify and click on an external link when it's given as the title of the article, but who mostly don't know what they're supposed to do with the string of id numbers at the end.
2. Citoid can only give that URL if the underlying (usually Zotero, for journals) translator knows how to do that.
3. This is considered correct in most citation styles, and there's no way for the citoid service to know which articles are using other styles.
4. Jstor is theoretically supported but having some problems.
5. Some DOIs don't work, but most should. If you're having frequent or consistent problems, then please provide a handful of examples. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:44, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

To start with, I really appreciate this tool, especially the citation generator. However, it would be nice if there were a way to add page numbers to book citations without having to manually edit the reference. Not the end of the world, but it would be a pleasant feature. Thanks for the great work! Mr.1032 (talk) 13:36, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

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Difficult to find the preview button

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Hello, I just de-activated the new wikitext editor for me. I wanted to change my babel templates, but the preview did not present them correctly (no box, just plain text).

Also, I found it difficult to find the preview button at all. There is only a "Änderungen speichern" ("save changes"?) in the upper right corner. If you click it, you get a larger box with many text and buttons. Somewhere below is a "preview" button. Could it be possible to show a preview button already on the edit page? Also: why is a button called "save changes " if the following action is not saving but a popup window about saving? Also, shouldn't it be "publish" instead of "save"? Ziko (talk) 21:21, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

Hi.

The issue with babel boxes is https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T169331.

There's a variety of suggestions around how to handle the previews, if you wanna join the conversations. https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/search/query/OhurOwrZGbhb/#R

I am assuming you're talking about the German Wikipedia: there are a few wikis not reached by the Save/Publish change yet. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 09:07, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

I should get back to the German Wikipedia community about the "Save" vs "Publish" language some day. There was some confusion about how it would affect new users under the Flagged Revisions system. (Spoiler: It doesn't.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:55, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

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Copy/paste (again)

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T153315

Hello! I'm very sorry to ask again, but could you help me to find that task which is about copy/paste problem? Sadly, it's still happening that if I copy the following text (from huWiki):

<tt>{{tl|szszt}}<br /> Jó szócikk státuszt megkapta: {{CURRENTYEAR}}. {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}.

I get this:

<code><code><nowiki>{{</nowiki>[[Template:Szszt|szszt]]<nowiki>}}</nowiki> <code>Jó szócikk státuszt megkapta: 2017. október 19.</code>

It's very annoying because I have to switch back to the old editor every time if I'm lazy for typing.. Bencemac (talk) 18:27, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

The old thread was at 2017 wikitext editor/Feedback/2017/01#h-Copy/paste_problem_on_huWiki-2017-01-29T13:28:00.000Z. I believe that T153315 is the relevant bug. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:50, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you, I've added a comment. Regards! Bencemac (talk) 06:34, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

Capitalization not allowed?!

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Adapted from my posting at english wikipedia Village Pump (technical):

Hi, I have suffered in my editing for about a week, since the rollout of new editor interface (wikitext editor) which I am using now. Very frequently, but not always, when I try to insert a capital letter or any character which involves the shift key (including the colon character, angle brackets, squiggly brackets at least on my keyboard), the cursor jumps to the left/beginning of the paragraph. It is exasperating! This is using Chrome browser in a Windows 10 environment, with whatever javascript or whatever user-specific settings that I have and don't particularly know about. What is going on? It seems worse editing in the Imicrosoft edge browser. It doesn't happen much in new text entry; it is horrible when I am trying to edit a reference or other template call. Help! --doncram 22:52, 20 October 2017 (UTC)

(I was informed by editor PrimeHunter that "The new editor interface is a beta feature and not default. You can get the normal source editor by disabling "Automatically enable all new beta features" and "New wikitext mode" at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures. , and I have now turned that off. But this feedback is to provide developers with my notice.)

FYI, I was sort of liking the editor's ability to switch between modes, it was getting me to try visual editing sometimes. But in my case I needed to use the source editor mode mostly, because I was pasting in incomplete references then trying to fill out the fields. For example, it was impossible to change "|accessdate=2017" to "|accessdate=October 20, 2017", say, except for by indirect editing (i.e. creating capital "O" elsewhere and copy-pasting it into place. I hope this sort of helps somehow. --~ Doncram (talk) 00:09, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

You can allways add a javascript button for the third editor and use all the three. The differense will be that the third one will not support the conversion in the middle of the edit, preserving your changes done until now. IKhitron (talk) 12:48, 21 October 2017 (UTC)

This sounds like Timeshifter's bug. Do you have "GoogleTrans: open a translation popup for the selected text or the word under the cursor when pushing the shift button" enabled in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets ? (It's the third item in the list.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:11, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

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