Forum:Formatting broken by fancy editor?

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I've noticed that a few recent edits have introduced a ton of extra newlines, making the pages borderline unreadable. See [1] for just one example. I suspect this is a bug in the fancy editor.

Also, many people are placing their content above the title in forum posts, and not signing with four tildes--presumably because they aren't seeing the comment that tells them to do so, because the fancy editor doesn't show comments, and shows the forum header as just a little weird icon.

There are a variety of other problems caused by the fancy editor as well.

I'd suggest changing the configuration to use the wiki-code editor by default for new and unregistered users.

Failing that, can someone look into the bug that's adding all the newlines? --Falcotron 09:48, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

This has been brought up before (at the start of the year), and I did contact Wikia Central about disabling the rich text editor, Wikia Central said it was possible to disable the rich text editor for an entire wiki, however:

"it makes such a significant impact on the number of new editors, and the number of edits that they make, that we would very much prefer not to. We would need to see a community consensus that all editors want it turned off, and even then it's important to remember that the RTE is most helpful to the new editors who are least likely to participate in such a discussion. We would much rather work with you to solve any remaining bugs so that there is no community desire to turn the editor off."

I can only assume when people are editing they're adding several spaces (or hitting return/enter to add several spaces/perceived space) to whatever they're editing, which doesn't show up on the rich text editor). --Tangerineduel 13:38, May 23, 2010 (UTC)

I don't think they're explicitly adding them.

For example, if you look at the discontinuity pages that I've fixed, in every case, there's an extra couple of newlines added after each asterisk and before the following text. I don't think it's even possible to do that intentionally in the rich editor--at least I couldn't figure out a way to do so.

Also, the newlines that separate paragraphs are all tripled, perfectly consistently. While it obviously isn't impossible for someone to do that, I find it hard to imagine anyone going through 3 pages of text to add an extra two returns after each paragraph.

If you want, I can dig up some of the examples of bad edits and give them to the people at Wikia Central (if you tell me where to submit bugs).

The more minor problems might have simpler/less dramatic solutions. For example, is there a way to put the bit about writing below the forum header and signing posts outside the editors, instead of only in a comment that the RTE doesn't display? --Falcotron 02:27, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Before contacting Wikia Central I'd suggest posting in the Wikia Community Central Forums (who are generally quite helpful) W:Forum:Community Central Forum, they should be able to help. --Tangerineduel 15:45, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Maybe it's a good idea to advise people to use the code version of the editing. If you hit the source button on the control bar up top, it brings you to the basics, and doesn't use the RTE. That's how I prefer editing, and perhaps it'd be easier for others too. --The Thirteenth Doctor 15:52, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

If we can show community consensus we should be able to get Wikia central to disable it (but as they said in their response they'd rather not as it assists new users etc). --Tangerineduel 16:01, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

I hate the RTE. It ruins everything. So many bugs. It removed headings before on another wiki. I say disable it. ☆The Solar Dragon ^(Talk)☆ 16:07, May 24, 2010 (UTC)

Obviously I agree that the RTE sucks. But I think we should do as Tangerineduel suggests and bring our issues to the Wikia Community Central Forums and give them a chance to convince us, before trying to convince Tangerineduel to get Wikia Central to disable it. --Falcotron 06:07, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

You should see all of the comments on the new blog on Community Central. None of them positive about the RTE. None says "Yeah, that's cool". Especially mine. ☆The Solar Dragon ^(Talk)☆ 06:23, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Well, I posted here. Feel free to chime in and link to your blog posts and whatnot.

By the way, that forum has a really annoying bug with tables. If any forum post's title is long enough to wrap, it also causes the date column to wrap, which means the page ends up twice as long. Nice. --Falcotron 06:54, May 25, 2010 (UTC)