Forum:Can we please talk about Visual Editor?

Forums: Index > Rin's Travel Agency > Archive > Can we please talk about Visual Editor?

Previously I was told to just "Deal with it" when I voiced my opinion on this, but now an anon has complained about the clusterf*** that is Visual Editor- see here - and you can see that despite his/her good intentions, I then had to wade in to clear everything that Visual Editor messed up.

It's doing this on a regular basis, duplicating links and adding spans everywhere and inserting links in the wrong places. I don't know why as I'm not a coding expert, and care to know less as it won't help me sort it out. But I'm finding it a bit of an annoyance, I'm sure other users are too, and now we know that anonymous users might be struggling and don't know what to do. They probably think we're the ones who forced this upon them. Monterossa has previously said he found a way to bypass editing via Visual Editor by removing the "V" from the URL but when I voiced this in the IRC I was quickly shouted down.

Can I please get an opinion from someone who isn't going to tell me to deal with it, just because I don't have to be subject to Visual Editor? Thanks. Tia-Lewise 20:31, July 3, 2014 (UTC)

You of course, are referring to me. What I said was that complaining in the IRC will do nothing and also it's against ToU to tell every anon to not use visual editor just as it is to disable it. In fact, what I made very clear was that your problem is with Wikia and you should contact them. We cannot fix the Visual Editor but they can.

'Remove "ve"' isn't the best suggestion either. It would make more sense to tell users to use source edit because that's the exact same thing without URL editing. When editing sections, VEedit and source edit handle it differently, so the URLs don't match up. JBed (talk) 20:41, July 3, 2014 (UTC)

The whole "deal with it" thing is a shitty argument. Because this is something that is put on us. Reverting edits that VisualEditor makes is annoying, tedious, repetitive and a complete waste of time. If anons used source editor, not only do they actually learn how to edit properly, they don't cause harm. Because most anon edits are not even intended to cause harm. But seemingly every non-JBed anon edit is a VisualEditor one that breaks pages unnecessarily.

When a ton of edits that, based on the edit summary of the anon and the non-massive format screwup changes, are intended to be completely harmless, and they have to be reverted frequently, there is an issue. This is not a "deal with it lul" issue. The anons are not trying to cause any detriment in the slightest, yet their contributions have to be reverted because despite their intent, they are accidentally screwing with stuff. Before one argues "bah its just adding ton of spaces and it forces correct format lul", allow me to point out that it does more than that. I have seen frequent occasions where it has added its own HTML spans in addition to the quote templates, duplicating them for no purpose. And not just that, if we wanted to force correct formatting, then Cat or I can do it with Intangir Bot, which has scripts that do that.

Wikia have told us before if we let them know that they can disable it. Why are we keeping this useless, detrimental and poorly designed editor around? Even if Wikia will force it on us, why do we have to have it now, when there are so many useless edits being made? There is literally no benefit. And if an anon has to rely on this editor to do anything, and cannot learn, then I will be completely frank: they were probably not going to be a good editor anyway.

I do not even support its existence. But if Wikia really do want us to have it, then they should at least let us disable it until they are CONFIDENT that there are no remaining bugs. This tedious task for all our RecentChanges patrollers is an unfair waste of their time.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 20:45, July 3, 2014 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't going to name any names, but there we go. And yes, I know we have to contact Wikia, but I want a few more opinions before we go ahead and do that. Tia-Lewise 20:47, July 3, 2014 (UTC)

And not just that, if we wanted to force correct formatting, then Cat or I can do it with Intangir Bot, which has scripts that do that.

Actually, cosmetic_changes works alongside all other bot edits, so this is already happening.

However, that doesn't help us with stuff like this where the visualeditor failing to show a utility template causes anons to write redundant code. C A T U S E 23:37, July 3, 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. Sorry I left, I felt a sudden urge to sleep. Tia-Lewise 09:23, July 4, 2014 (UTC)

Hm, I thought you had to tell it to perform that script.

Anyway; yup, that's one of my main flaws with the editor, it replacing some templates with duplicate text for no reason, which is annoying and unnecessary. Whether or not Wikia do intend to fix it, I would support its temporary disable.

Slightly related, but my previous post, as I mentioned on IRC, was overly abrasive and unfair, so I apologise for my aggressive tone and do not mean offense. My main frustration is a personal dislike of the idea behind the editor.-- Technobliterator ^T_C 11:55, July 4, 2014 (UTC)

Check your user-config.py (gedit user-config.py & from the command line) for the variable cosmetic_changes. If it's set to True then cosmetic_changes.py will run.

And the text bug should be enough to convince Wikia that the editor should be disabled. C A T U S E 18:25, July 4, 2014 (UTC)

I just checked through Intangir Bot's edits. The ones by me included "; cosmetic changes" in the summary along with my edit, so I suppose it is running. (20:41, June 30, 2014 (diff | hist) . . (+4)‎ . . m Gohn Meteorite ‎ (Robot Techno: Meteor (Final Fantasy V) to Meteorite (Final Fantasy V); cosmetic changes) (top) was one)-- Technobliterator ^T_C 20:13, July 4, 2014 (UTC)

If nobody has anything else to add, I'll send a message to Wikia tomorrow morning. C A T U S E 01:24, July 5, 2014 (UTC)

And done. Probably going to get a response in a few business days; i.e. around Tuesday-Friday. C A T U S E 01:15, July 7, 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Cat. Tia-Lewise 10:47, July 7, 2014 (UTC)

In case Wikia hasn't looked at this yet, I'm gonna compile a small gallery of VE stuff I've had to undo.

• It completely mangles anything related to our utility templates.
• It does unnecessary bloaty stuff to external wiki links.
• It can do some really strange stuff to links (there's another one where it split the first T in Theatrythm Final Fantasy into its own separate link somehow but I don't want to drown this page in links).
• It throws chunks of text around the page.

In short, it's glitchy and unusable. In the events where it's caused by user error (I'm thinking those last two links are example of that), then it is clearly not doing its job of making editing easier, and the whole wiki suffers for it. And that's not taking into consideration the dirty diffs - while the fixes that VE does to our tables may be technically correct, whenever it happens it adds a whole lot of essentially nothing to the page, and I actually like having our coding be as compact as we can get away with. -- Some Color Mage ~ (Talk) 01:50, July 8, 2014 (UTC)