Topic on Help talk:Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface

The standard edit mode has three core buttons:

1. Publish Changes
2. Show Preview
3. Show Changes

The third button is missing in the new tool. The button brings up a standard DIFF which shows what changes will be made, and it does so in a familiar, formal, and extremely precise format. My last conflict was a bit more complicated than average, I did resolve it correctly, but during the process I wasn't 100% sure I had solved the edit conflict cleanly. I was painfully hesitant to save without being able to verify it via the ShowChanges diff. (It happened to be a talk page edit conflict, and there is heightened feeling of responsibility not to screw up other people's comments.)

Hi @Alsee:, thanks for your feedback. We decided to publish the feature without the ‘Show Changes’ option, because it actually is a very complex and resource intensive function to integrate into the feature.

However, we appreciate your feedback and will consider it in any further development of the tool. -- For the Technical Wishes Team

@Max Klemm (WMDE) your comment did not match my experience. I did directly handle the text of the other person's comment. Below I will describe my edit conflict and resolution. (If requested, I could dig up a link for the conflict diff.)

In the tool I had three separated regions of conflict to resolve:

• Top conflict choice: I had inserted a new line (a template). I resolved this conflict-region by selecting my version.

• Gray unchanged text: Old comments from multiple people.

• Middle conflict choice: One side had a new comment from someone else (I believe in yellow), the other side had a new comment by me (I believe in blue). I resolved this conflict-region by CTRL-C copying their text, clicking the edit pencil on my comment-area, and pasting their comment above mine. At the time I did not see any other way to resolve this conflict-portion. Either there was no other option present, or I missed it.

• Gray unchanged text: The start of a ===subsection===.

• Bottom conflict choice: Two people had added comments in this subsection. I resolved this conflict-region by selecting their version.

We decided to publish the feature without the ‘Show Changes’ option, because it actually is a very complex and resource intensive function to integrate into the feature.

Your meaning is somewhat unclear. Did you mean you would add the button in a later publication? Or did you mean you decided to drop the button from the end product? ShowChanges is probably used less often, but it serves an important function. ShowPreview and ShowChanges highlight or conceal essentially opposite aspects of the content.

Hi @Alsee:, sorry, if the last answer was not clear. Based on your description, you did not end up in the edit conflict interface  for talk pages, but in the general edit conflict interface shown in all other cases. The edit conflict interface for talk pages or discussion-based edit conflicts appears in the talk or project namespace when two people insert a new line in the same single place on the page at the same time. The general edit conflict interface appears, when two people edit two or more parts of the same page at the same time. In your case, unfortunately, you ended up in the general interface since you added both a new line and added a new comment to the discussion on the page. This is of course not optimal, so thank you for letting us know about this case so that we can try to address it through future improvements.  

As for the ShowChanges button, currently we do not have plans to add the button. However, we will consider your feedback in any planning of changes we would make in the future and potentially come back to you for more input if you would be open to it? -- For the Technical Wishes Team