Help talk:Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface/2021

Feedback and discussion page for the Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface.

Update: We completely revised the interface for this feature based on user feedback and user test.

Report a new bug in Phabricator

You can post in any language here, preferably English or German.

First impression: great

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Hi, just want to say thank you for the tool, which I have just been confronted with for the first time and which I find really helpful. Good job :-) Czeva (talk) 10:36, 26 January 2021 (UTC)

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What is Meta means

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Hi ineed to know what is Meta I New in this app 41.114.251.169 (talk) 06:35, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

It's impossible to answer such a question when no context is given. The only appearance of the word "meta" I can find anywhere is in Help:Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface#Background, where it refers to the Meta wiki. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 07:23, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

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Problem with paragraph spacing

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Hello,

I had this gadget enabled for quite some time, but after various issues have finally bitten the bullet and disabled it. The last straw was one particular issue that I hope is just a bug: a user on English Wikipedia had gone through and inexplicably removed most line breaks. They'd made several other changes I didn't want to revert, so I couldn't just revert the entire edit, so I bothered to go back and add in all the removed line breaks by hand. This user by then had made yet another edit, so the edit conflict window came up. Despite clicking on "my side" for each option, it didn't matter - all those line breaks I re-added were thrown away. That can't have been intended behavior. Hopefully this suffices as reproduction steps, but is this fixable? I would link the edit in question but get an "abusefilter warning linkspam" when I do so... SnowFire (talk) 21:19, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the report! This is indeed not how the interface is meant to behave. I found the edits (1, 2, 3) and was able to reproduce and fix the issue locally. It's tracked at phab:T284994 now. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 14:06, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

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

Question about using this for another purpose

Hello, I have a question is it possible to somehow artificially cause an "edit conflict" between two selected versions of a page? My question is motivated by the fact that this would be very useful overridden to work with flagged versions. It would allow, for example, to compare the differences between flagged and non-flagged versions by paragraphs. This would be very because you could select individual changes that should be withdrawn, and all the rest of the positive to leave. Best regards. Zamkorus (talk) 00:46, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I got the question. But it's easily possible to create diffs between any version.

• In the page's history, click the tiny radio buttons next to the two versions you want to compare and click "Compare selected versions".
• Enter e.g. Special:Diff/4513235/4694855 in your browser's URL bar with the two revision numbers you want to compare. They can even be from two different pages.

Manually triggering the TwoColConflict interface the same way is currently not possible. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 06:38, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

You understood the question well, I know perfectly well that you can do diff, but it does not allow you to select by paragraphs the changes to leave. You can only compare versions and possibly rollback everything. Is there somewhere e.g. in Phabricator or on Github where I can ask developers about this, because they must have some way to execute this for testing. Zamkorus (talk) 11:22, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

The extension was developed by my team, but there is currently no budget to develop it further. What you ask for sounds like "partial undo". While I understand the similarities, I think this would need to be a separate feature. Phabricator is the place to discuss feature requests. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 13:12, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

I know this would have to be implemented separately, but I was thinking of using your extension (since it already exists and is installed on the Wiki I most frequently contribute to) to present this to others and convince them that it's cool. Zamkorus (talk) 13:19, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Can't see updated diff

In the old version, the following scenario works as expected:

1. Edit a page
2. Attempt to save, resulting in an edit conflict
3. Edit the original text
4. Click "Show Changes", to view the new diff

Step 4 doesn't seem to be available any longer. I usually like to use the diff before saving something, especially in complex situations like handling an edit conflict.

Overall, it seems like a great addition to the editing workflow! Skalman (talk) 18:17, 4 August 2021 (UTC)

Deployment as a default feature

Hello

Is there any plan to deploy this feature to more wikis?

Can a single wiki ask to have it deployed as default?

Thanks! Trizek ^{from FR} 15:03, 13 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Trizek, thanks a lot for your question. I don't have an answer yet, we need to discuss this in our team first. I'll let you know once we know. :)

Best,

Johanna Johanna Strodt (WMDE) (talk) 08:39, 21 September 2021 (UTC)

Argh!

For some reason, this "tool" posts my comments duplicate times, as if I have an edit conflict with myself. I then have to go back and remove the excess comments from the page. This has happened more often than not with this tool. When I have a chance, I'll try to figure out how to disable it. Liz (talk) 02:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for the report. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what kind of response you expect? Are you able to post some example links where this happened? That would help a lot investigating this issue further. So far it sounds like a long known issue with the edit conflict detection algorithm in MediaWiki core, which is what TwoColConflict depends on. See for example phab:T28821, phab:T36423, phab:T59264, or phab:T222805. TwoColConflict is essentially just an interface on top of that. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 07:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Well, when the Beta feature pops up, I get a message to come here to offer feedback so that's what I did. I don't know if I have expectations, I just followed the suggestion to come here and post.

You can see one example of this if you look at my contributions and look at the posting to WP:ANI at 21:03, November 5, 2021. It posts twice in the same moment and the next edit I delete the duplicate entry. Liz (talk) 04:10, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I would love to do something about this. Let's see. There are two edits, the first at 04:03:14 UTC, the second 27 second later. That's not exactly the same moment. Furthermore, the second edit is marked as a revert. Why is that? Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 09:23, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

This happens to me several times a month.

I encounter these "Edit conflicts with myself" when I try to edit my previous edit shortly afterwards to correct some mistake or other.

It is often not possible to choose between different versions (as there are no check boxes or rather check circles offered) so the obvious option is to click "publish" which results in the corrected text passage being appended to the one added in the previous edit.

See here where I tried to correct a small spelling mistake in my previous edit when the "Edit conflict" interface popped up ... KaiKemmann (talk) 22:44, 12 February 2022 (UTC)

Still happening, as with this edit. AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:38, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Useless Display

I from time to time get the Edit Conflict message, but find it to be completely useless. It doesn't tell me whether it will be preserving the other editor's edits and adding mine, or what my choice is. How do I attempt to add my edits while ensuring that the other editor's edits are preserved? It doesn't give me useful information. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:45, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

For me, it gives two source views, like in a diff, and you can analyze the two versions there and pick a version or edit a version to include parts from both. I suck at reading the source code and scanning for what's different, but on bigger edits it is very noticeable. Skarmory (talk) 22:51, 17 December 2021 (UTC)