Talk:Talk pages project/Replying/2020/02

The team would value any thoughts and/or questions you about this project: Replying to specific comments.

Little glitch

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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The software reached the servers today, and the Reply tool was accidentally visible on the four target wikis for about two hours. Several people used it, nobody complained about problems or lost comments, and it's been (correctly) hidden again until the team can do some more testing in situ. If you want the code to do a little testing yourself, please ask here. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

Well done —Aron Man.🍂 edits🌾 02:36, 19 February 2020 (UTC)

I just noticed one problem: the pages I reply on get out from my watchlist. (At first I thought I just accidentally hit the watch star, but I couldn’t have done by accident it twice.) I hope this will be easy to fix, or maybe it’s already being fixed. Tacsipacsi (talk) 23:16, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

This bug has been fixed. I tested it [1] and the page stayed on my watchlist. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:45, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

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

Add (short) abstract what the feature is at the top of Talk pages project/replying, or create a separate page to explain to non-developers.

Perhaps for the developers, current situation may be sufficient, but Talk pages project/replying is linked from Tech News. Therefore, this page also has a role as an explanation page to introduce the function for non-developer users. The current situation is not enough for an explanation page. Improve this page with adding (short) abstract or create a separate explanation page for non-developer users (like me).--~~~~
HaussmannSaintLazare (talk) 04:39, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Did you see the screenshot image at Talk pages project/replying#Design? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:04, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Conflicting edits get reverted

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T246726

I freakin' love the "reply" feature! Every detail of it. The live preview is amazing! The placement of the reply and indention make a lot of sense, in my opinion. More specifically:

• I'm used to the German Wikipedia convention of ::::: indention, which is what the tool did in my test edits on beta.
• I can see two possible placements for a reply: Directly under the post I replied to, or at the end of the thread, which is what the feature does right now. I feel the later indeed does make more sense, even if it's different from the convention on German Wikipedia talk pages.

Unfortunately, I experienced a major issue: I tried to mess with the page in another tab, intentionally creating an edit conflict. When I replied in the original tab, my previous edit got reverted without any notice! That should definitely not happen. A reply should never touch anything else on the page, but only insert the reply. If this is not possible, an edit conflict should be triggered. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 10:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

If you check the history of the test page, you will see that even pretty "old" replies got reverted Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 11:40, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this bug report.

@Matma Rex, could you please make sure that I've linked the correct Phab ticket? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:21, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't know the code, but this ticket doesn't sound like it is related. There is nothing about an "edit conflict" or "revert" in this ticket, as far as I can see. If I would need to guess, it looks like the reply feature is calling an API without the base revision ID (or base timestamp) parameter being set. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 08:55, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, I don't think this is T240519. And we definitely send the base timestamp (as of change 557030, mid-December).

You did not get an edit conflict because you made both actions from the same account, and MediaWiki will never treat that as an edit conflict – it will just override the earlier version with the later one. This is reported as T175745.

If you performed either the edit or the reply using a different account, it would be correctly treated as an edit conflict. In this case, I think MediaWiki's built-in "merging" would resolve it. If that fails, we also have a different approach to conflict resolution in DiscussionTools (change 572399, this was just merged so might not have been in place when you tested yet). And if that also fails, you get an error message about the conflict. Matma Rex (talk) 21:15, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't get how any of this is related. The feature presents itself as if anything it will and can ever do is adding a new paragraph to an existing section. That's all I, as a user of the feature, can see and do: I specify what the new paragraph should contain, and where it will appear. This and nothing else is what I, as a user, expect when I click the button. I might run into a conflict. Ok, fine. But never, under no circumstances ever, should a feature like this revert something, no matter who made the other edit.

It might indeed be that giving such a guarantee is hard, maybe even impossible with the way MediaWiki handles edits. Still I believe you can do better to massively reduce the amount of such unacceptable results. Without knowing the actual code I would suggest to fetch a fresh copy of the paragraph that's going to be edited, find the insert position again (e.g. by finding the previous paragraph, assuming it did not changed), insert my new paragraph, and only then make the edit. Don't forget to send the editRevId along with the edit. This should greatly reduce the chance of bad edits, possibly even eliminating them.

PS: I see the patch gerrit:572399 does something like this, but only does this when the first edit fails. It looks like the first edit is intentionally (?) made based on a revision that is known to be outdated. In other words: Does the code intentionally revert everything, hoping it would run into a conflict? Why should it? If the later edit removes stuff, how should the backend know if this removal was intentional or not? Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 13:12, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Thiemo, everything I wrote was to explain the cause of the bug you reported. Please re-read it if you don't see how it's related to your comment ;) I agree with you that the behavior is incorrect, I was just explaining what is causing it.

I don't really understand your last paragraph, so I'm not sure if this will answer your questions, but let me try to explain how the reply posting works anyway. The first edit attempt is based on the most recent revision of the page that existed when you started writing your comment (the "base" revision). Ideally, it would be based on the most recent revision when you try posting (the "latest" revision). But fetching the revisions can be slow for large pages (e.g. village pump), and we must fetch the "base" revision when you start writing anyway to verify that it's possible to reply to that comment, so we try using the same revision for posting the reply as an optimization. This is actually exactly the same as how regular editing of pages works, and the backend resolves the conflict based on the basetimestamp and starttimestamp parameters, like for a normal edit.

Anyway, I wrote that code before I realize that MediaWiki doesn't detect self-conflicts, so maybe we'll need to change it all. But apparently both WMF and WMDE are working on edit conflicts right now, so maybe someone will just resolve T175745. Matma Rex (talk) 21:18, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

(I filed T246726 with a summary of the problem.) Matma Rex (talk) 23:19, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I responded in phab:T246726 with more technical details. Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 15:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

(Task T218460 also describes the same problem, I just found it now.) Matma Rex (talk) 21:31, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

There were A LOT of revertions that were not made by the same account. Check the test page history! Almost any diff will do. Most will have deletions of previous replies. Many with "red" byte changes. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 00:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

I set up a two edit conflicts, and both were handled without reverting to an older version.

In the first attempt, I typed two replies (using two different browsers and two separate accounts) and clicked the button to post them within seconds of each other. It auto-resolved the conflict. In my second attempt, I typed a reply in one account, and then edited the section to remove the comment that I was replying to. This gave me an error message. See phab:F31647664 for the error message on my second attempt. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:58, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

It is clear that you guys at WMF don't want to look at the really serious, and in my opinion, blocking issue.

If the tool randomly revert and deletes other users messages, it can't be deployed.

Please check, without biases, just check, this sample of selected diffs, taken from the very test talk page you provided. ALL the diffs have the tag "Reply", so they were made using the new tool.

1) https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cats&diff=414541&oldid=414538 MADE by: 90.127.224.201. Deleted several messages by 117.202.204.72, user Andreas, 92.41.51.117, made 5 hours before, even in different parragraphs.

2) https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cats&diff=414519&oldid=414518 MADE by 2.207.24.1. Deleted several messages by User Titi, 186.67.71.38, 193.224.131.43, and a WHOLE SECTION of messages, made by IP 186.67.71.38 (myself). All made in the hour before.

3)https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ACats&type=revision&diff=414722&oldid=414643 these two replies by 213.127.58.211. Duplicated almost the whole page several times, adding 46k of content.

JUST LOOK Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 11:29, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

These aren't looking like edit conflicts. Unless it's taking these users multiple hours (five hours for the first) to type a little test message and press return, then I don't think that's the problem.

I have finally managed to duplicate it, and I think it's basically a case of getting what you deserve, when the page has a broken table on it. The visual editor seems to handle it a little more gracefully, so there is probably room for improvement. In practice, I don't expect this to be a problem that editors encounter very often. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:03, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I thought the WMF was bad, but I didn't thought it was that terrible.

Now volunteers "deserve" to get their messages deleted without notice, because of some faulty code.

It took me literally one minute searching in the history to find

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ACats&type=revision&diff=414481&oldid=414480 this diff, MADE by 91.65.183.96. Deleted several messages by 151.64.101.0, User:Ppelberg-test, User:Shizhao, and 185.229.4.5. Before any "broken table" was introduced in the page.

In practice, I don't expect this to be a problem at all. It can't happen not even once, not without noticing the user. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 13:42, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ninovolador, do you think this issue is limited to the beta cluster, or do you think it would be possible to replicate it on one of the wikis where DiscussionTools can currently be used? Jc86035 (talk) 17:04, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

I can't possibly know that. Maybe the only way to know will be to actually deploy it. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 18:59, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

In case you weren't aware, it is already possible to use DiscussionTools on the Dutch, French, Arabic and Hungarian Wikipedias by appending the parameter ?dtenable=1 to the page URL (e.g. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_utilisateur:Exemple?dtenable=1). I would suggest creating a subpage of your user talk page in one of those Wikipedias to use as a test page. Jc86035 (talk) 20:32, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

The Beta Cluster can be subject to strange behaviors. What they will need, though, is a method for reproducing this bug. I can do something like it by putting a broken wikitable on the page. I can't reproduce it through edit conflicts or through editing old versions of the page. If we can't reproduce it now, it may have already been fixed. If it's not fixed, but we can't reproduce it, then there is no way for the devs to know whether their changes have actually fixed it. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:06, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Whatamidoing (WMF) That's funny. It took me ten seconds to reproduce it.

I just made two replies:

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cats&diff=prev&oldid=415250

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Cats&diff=next&oldid=415250

Both deleted previous messages. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 20:14, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Check the history of

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discussion_utilisateur:Ninovolador/Brouillon

I just opened two tabs with the "TEST 1" as final message, and replied "TEST 2" in the first, and "TEST 3" in the second.

No warning, no nothing. Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 20:37, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ninovolador I have explained in my comment here a few days ago (#flow-post-vhjieu1h0uityns0 – hm, can you even link to Flow posts like that?) that edits by the same user are not subject to edit conflict detection in MediaWiki, and therefore you can accidentally overwrite your earlier edits. This is a poor behavior, and it would be nice to avoid this, but you can only lose your own comments in this way and only if you were posting on the same page simultaneously in multiple browser tabs.

I think your other examples were not caused by edit conflicts per se, but rather by adding a reply while viewing an old revision from the page history. This incorrect behavior is already fixed (T235761). All of your examples are edits from February 24 or earlier, which is when this was fixed.

If there are any situations where we cause data loss, where the edits were made after February 24, and there are at least two users involved, please let us know. Matma Rex (talk) 20:56, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

(I filed T246726 with a summary of the problem, and I promise we're going to work on it soon.) Matma Rex (talk) 23:19, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

@Ninovolador This issue should be fixed now on https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/, and should be fixed next Thursday on https://fr.wikipedia.org/ (per the deployment schedule of 1.35.0-wmf.25, see MediaWiki 1.35/Roadmap). Matma Rex (talk) 20:20, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

I tried to repeat my experiment, and it looks much better now! Awesome! \o/ Thiemo Kreuz (WMDE) 18:28, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Reply to comments with bullet lists

If a comment ends with a bullet list, the bullet list propagates to all the replies. I feel it is not the desired output Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 11:42, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Can you give me a link or example? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:02, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Cats

In the last section.

My comments with numbers "ONE TWO" etc... All replies In the comment that finishes with *THREE have also bullet Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 11:24, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

So you are concerned that if the conversation says:

:My two major concerns are
:*ONE
:*TWO
:That's all [[User:Example|Example]] (talk) 11:44, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
::I forgot about
::*Three [[User:Example|Example]] (talk) 11:45, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

then the next bit will be

::**AND FOUR? [[User:Example|Example]] (talk) 11:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

instead of

:::AND FOUR? [[User:Example|Example]] (talk) 11:46, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Right? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Exactly Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 20:40, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I think the main justification for using the same indentation as the parent is that indentation is not consistent between different communities and parts of communities. For example, the Russian Wikipedia uses * for most discussions. In this very early version of the software, it would be acceptable to use this simplified logic.

It is possible (perhaps likely) that talk page syntax will be expanded or otherwise changed in later parts of the talk page project. If that would be the case, it might not make sense to spend time and effort to better match the current conventions only to discard the code once the syntax changes. Jc86035 (talk) 13:46, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

This has been discussed in phab:T241391. The team doesn't plan to do anything about it until after people have had a chance to use it for a while. They want to get some idea of how often this comes up, and which approach seems to be correct one often than the other (it'll still be a statistical guessing game). Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:03, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Wikidata

Hello all,

First of all, thanks for the feature! I just tried it, it's pretty awesome :) I love the preview, the fact that the signature is already included, the integration of wikicode formatting and templates. I like that it's just another way to enter wikicode and that it's not mandatory to use. It's going to be more inclusive for newcomers while not disrupting the workflow of hardcore-wikitext editors. Exciting!

Now my question is, what would be the next steps to enable the feature on Wikidata later?

Of course, we would start with a community discussion to see if a majority of editors support the feature, and I would be careful with the announcements as we don't want to push a feature on the community if they don't want it.

If they are enthusiastic, how could we included Wikidata in the deployment plan?

Is there a way to parameter on which namespaces the feature appears or not? Will it work on non-talk pages that mimic talk pages like d:Project Chat?

Is there a way to switch off/hide the feature for specific users who don't want to see the reply button, for example a checkbox in the Preferences or even a line of code to add to commons.js?

Have you been doing some research on how this feature could interfere with existing user scripts/gadgets? That's something we're very careful on Wikidata because of the many custom scripts people use to enhance editing.

Sorry for all the questions and thanks in advance for your replies :) Cheers from the Wikidata dev team!

Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 12:06, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Léa!

1. Yes, Wikidata can request to be a future test wiki. I would encourage people to try it out first. https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/Talk:Dog is one place for testing. Please remember that this is the beginning, and the tool will change.
2. The team has not decided exactly which namespaces/pages it will work on (e.g., the Project: namespace). I think thatphab:T245890 is the Phab task to follow.
3. Yes, of course there will be a prefs setting for this. Right now, it's hidden for everyone. (Go to https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Whatamidoing_(WMF)?dtenable=1 if you want to say hello to me.) Soon, it will only be available if you turn it on in Beta Features, only at the four target wikis. Later, it will be in regular preferences.
4. I don't think that the team has looked into scripts used at Wikidata. They have looked at some other scripts. I haven't heard of any significant conflicts. (I assume that there will be conflicts, but no one has complained about it yet.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 02:17, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

@Lea Lacroix (WMDE), to follow up on what @Whatamidoing (WMF) shared regarding how the feature might interact with existing user scripts/gadgets...

As a first step, we have been inviting people to share the scripts/gadgets they depend on most in this thread: Talk:Talk pages project/Updates#h-Update:_15-October-2019-2019-10-15T22:06:00.000Z

...if there are other gadgets/scripts you think we should be aware of, we would value knowing (in this thread or the one mentioned above).

Also, we appreciate you giving the feature a try and sharing your thoughts with us here! PPelberg (WMF) (talk) 02:39, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for your answer! We'll follow how the first deployments go, as we're not in a rush, and I'll ask the community if they would be interested to try it :) Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 08:42, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Random duplication of page content

I don't know how to describe precisely what happened. But i subst:ed the welcome template, and this happened:

https://en.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/w/index.php?title=Talk%3ACats&type=revision&diff=414643&oldid=414642

It seems a little too buggy for deployment Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 14:38, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

I don't think that's really about the subst:ing. If you add a template that begins with a ==Section heading==, to a line that contains any other content first, then it's not going to look pretty, no matter what editing tool you were using. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 00:06, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

And what about the DUPLICATION of several messages???, a.k.a. the main issue I was talking about?

My reply was supposed to add just the last 11 lines, and instead duplicated several messages.

It seems you guys at WMF doesn't want to listen???? Ignacio Rodríguez (talk) 11:14, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

I can't trigger the duplication again. Can you?

Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:35, 28 February 2020 (UTC)