Forum:Formatting broken by fancy editor?

Forums → Archive index → Panopticon archives → Formatting broken by fancy editor?

This thread has been archived.

Please create a new thread on the new forums if you want to talk about this topic some more.
Please DO NOT add to this discussion.

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)

Though I quite agree with the observations made here — the RTE is most definitely undesirably buggy — I would not support a move to disable it on this wikia. I do very much take on board the Wikia devel'ment team's (sorry, I had do that weird contraction because that phrase won't pass the spam filter) point that, in theory, the RTE is a boon for the participation of new editors. At this stage, I want them to fix it, not turn it off. Now if they start saying things like, "we don't regard the hiding of non-printing text as a bug" or "we mean for it to introduce three lines of white space", then I might change my mind. But I remember editing with it when it initially went live and thinking that it had some cool aspects. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 17:45, May 25, 2010 (UTC)

Forgetting about the bugs for the moment (which I assume they're still working on, and I'm all for giving them a chance), is there anything we can do about the instructions being invisible in the RTE?

I don't know if this is technically possible, but if we could just add a line of instructions above the editor, specific to each namespace, that would probably be enough.

In the main namespace, it would just say, "Please leave puzzle pieces and other icons alone, and do not try to add extra space around pictures." In Talk and Forum, it would add, "Please put your content at the end, and sign with the signature button." (This wouldn't solve the discontinuity pages, since they're in Forum but have different rules--but honestly, even if they were in a separate namespace, I don't know how those instructions could be written clearly for RTE users anyway.)

I know this wouldn't solve all the problems, but it would mean that we'd be back to 30% instead of 90% of new editors adding comments to the top, deleting headers, not signing, etc.

More important: How many people show up, write a note on the talk page because they're afraid to change the article, immediately get corrected for ignoring a comment that they couldn't even see, and never come back? --Falcotron 00:08, May 26, 2010 (UTC)

All extremely good points, to which I don't think w have any good answers. Heck, I can't eve figure out how to turn the RTE back on. Which kinda sucks, cause I'm admittedly going off a kinda distant memory at this point. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:46, May 26, 2010 (UTC)

Hmmm, okay, I lied. I knew how to turn it back on after all. But you know what's weird? It appears to be improved from when I first looked at it. I tried to edit Susan just a second ago, and it refused to allow rich text editing because it said the code on the page was "too complex". It's allowing rich text editing here at the moment, but not there. Interesting. CzechOut ☎ | ✍ 03:54, May 26, 2010 (UTC)

I dont know if this falls under this topic of discussion but its close enough. something is quite wrong with this wiki, I cant start a new topic on the forum it just wont let me it throws me off or puts my forum as articles so I have to delete them it also said one time this wikia is suffering problems please let me know what the situation is User:Winehousefan 17:38, 26 May 2010

Winehousefan, I don't think that's related to the RTE at all, so I'd start a different thread. (Or go post about it on Wikia Central, especially if it doesn't quickly go away on its own, because I don't think anyone here could do any more than that anyway, unless I'm mistaken.)

Anyway, CzechOut, they do keep improving the RTE, and that's why I'm all for giving them a chance to keep doing so, as long as the bugs aren't too out of hand, and we can find a way around the instructions problem. One of the changes in (I think) the January update was that they figured out how to characterize which templates the RTE had problems with, and it refuses to load up those pages, which is nice. That does partly defeat the purpose of the RTE, because I'll bet new editors are more interested in contributing to major pages like Susan Foreman than simple pages like H. Parson, but it's presumably only a temporary measure, and it's better than the alternative (letting you edit the page but completely destroying the templates on it). --Falcotron 00:08, May 27, 2010 (UTC)