Wikivoyage talk:How to edit a page

Marking a minor edit

When I edit, I don't see a 'This is a minor edit' checkbox. Is that a browser incompatibility (I'm using IE5) or is that some recent software change or something?

It should be right under the edit textarea. Are you sure it's not there? This is the first I've heard of it, and there's lots of people using IE5. --(WT-en) Evan 16:07, 21 Dec 2003 (PST)

You need to Login for this to work. Since January, anonymous users have not had the option of marking an edit as minor. See Erik Moeller's post on Wikitech-l for the details. Angela 19:08, Dec 21, 2003 (PST)

Edit text appended to name of town

Archived from the Pub:

Cannes France has a paragraph of text that belongs in the opening "understand" but it seems to be appended to the town name and has no "edit" function with it. Its real messy and does not follow the required style. How can I get rid of it? Very Newbie but trying!

((WT-en) Andrew 13:50, 10 October 2008 (EDT))

At the very top of the page, just above the "Cannes" title, there are a series of tabs. The one marked "edit" will allow you to edit the entire contents of an article, inclduing the messed up text.

The inline edit will do individual sections if you only need to change a small section. If you are doing wholesale changes to many sections, it is easier to use the edit tab at the top and do all the edits at once rather doing individual sections.

(WT-en) Epolk 15:39, 10 October 2008 (EDT)

Brilliant! So obvious with hindsight - thanks! ((WT-en) Andrew 13:44, 11 October 2008 (EDT))

Minimum listing?

Archived from the Pub:

Is there a minimum of information required for a hotel, restaurant, or other listing? If a hotel listing has only the hotel name, or only the name and a web site, should it be removed? I see a lot of these. The listing policy doesn't seem entirely clear on this: it suggests what information should be there, but it doesn't say what minimum is required, that I could see. Personally, I think a listing with only a name or only a name and link should be removed; it's not much use in a print-out. (WT-en) Sailsetter 18:58, 2 December 2008 (EST)

But someone might come along and expand it later. I would say leave it, in anything below a guide article. Once the article is already a guide, any additional entries should then be high quality, I would say. --(WT-en) Inas 19:29, 2 December 2008 (EST)

Even just the name and contact info (web site, phone, e-mail) of a hotel can be useful if you're trying to arrange lodging in advance. (WT-en) Alingelb 04:22, 10 December 2008 (EST)

Yes, but some don't even have that. (WT-en) Sailsetter 09:57, 10 December 2008 (EST)

There are occasions when minimum listings are work in progress for a User, it would be disappointing if the User returned to find their work in progress missing. (WT-en) Brianeric 15:01, 13 February 2009 (EST)

Editing wrong section

Swept in from the pub

In the San Jose (California) article, if I click the edit button at Eat or any of its subsections, an edit window is opened for part or all of the Get in section. Is this a MediaWiki problem or something local? Peter Chastain (talk) 12:57, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I have dealt with this problem myself. Most likely, one of the listings in the "Eat" section doesn't have </eat> at the end of it. It screws up the formatting. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 14:37, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! It was actually a missing </do> in an entry that I added (whoops!) Thanks also to the "IP address" user who fixed it for me. Peter Chastain (talk) 20:27, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

Excessive changes to an article in one edit

Swept in from the pub

I just noticed that an anonymous editor has made significant changes to the Hong Kong article. Some of the edits I agree with, and others not so much.

The problem is that it is really hard to compare the changes made and this makes it very difficult to check each one. Undoing the change will lose all the good edits the person made.

Is there any policy or precedent dissuading this kind of editing behavior? --Andrewssi2 (talk) 12:17, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

It's usually not considered a good idea, precisely for the reasons you point out, but there's no hard rule against it. Powers ^(talk) 13:55, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I recommend taking the time to go over all the changes this user made and making a new version to this article which would contain only the best parts from both versions. (if this user would keep adding some specific bad parts, open a discussion about those specific additions in the discussion page of the article and strive to reach a consensus about the ideal version). good luck. ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 15:20, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the recommendation ויקיג'אנקי, however that method would actually take more time than the time spent making the edits in the first instance. As part of the collaborative spirit I believe all edits should be made so that specific changes can be checked with the minimum of effort. --Andrewssi2 (talk) 17:51, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

From experience, things don't work like that in any Wiki based platforms. That is basically one of the major downsides of inviting the whole world to help develop content collaboratively. You can not expect everyone to do things exactly the way you want them to be done. For that reason, in many instances there is no other way but to develop the content in a longer, more tedious process which involves (1) making several/many bold additions/changes based on your own common sense (2) striving for consensus on specific edits through getting many people to share their opinions in the discussion page regarding what ideal final version would be (and make the changes based on the support you'll get). ויקיג'אנקי (talk) 18:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I'd say yes, ideally do what ויקיג'אנקי suggested, but in the meantime, revert to the previous version and then start a discussion on the talk page there, linking to the change-comparison view of this big edit in question. Especially if you don't have time to go through it all yourself in one go. Texugo (talk) 18:54, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I haven't checked this edit. In general however, I'd say reverting to the previous version just for lack of time is okay if someone is introducing (even a limited amount of) explicitly wrong information or deleting whole sections. If it's rather a matter of not liking all of someone's choices for cleanup, I'd say the edit should be allowed and you can change it later or discuss on the talk page. It's really not uncommon for regular editors to "clean up" or rewrite one or two whole sections at once: I know I do. I would not be pleased if you'd bluntly revert me just "until you have the time" to review, discuss or change individual elements I've changed. We encourage people to plunge forward. Of course we keep a closer eye on new users, but their edits should still be judged on merit, not on the person who wrote them. JuliasTravels (talk) 19:58, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

From what I have seen the two edits don't look a problem. It is a matter of taste whether the old or more spaced out new layout is better. All the edits are to the get around section, and it is perhaps even good that these have been done in two edits rather than 20. What I find more irritating is when somebody does one edit that is against policy and then follows with five minor edits which are ok - this gives the impression of hiding the the "bad" edit. AlasdairW (talk) 21:07, 30 October 2014 (UTC)

I guess that means there isn't very much to be done in this instance. I wasn't suggesting there was anything untoward going on, just that I didn't agree with this particular method of editing. Andrewssi2 (talk) 04:40, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

One annoying thing is changing order of paragraphs in the same edit as changes to the paragraphs themselves, especially if the latter are not explained in the edit summary. I do not think we can forbid such edits though (and some edits are hard to do so that diffs are sensible). I would still recommend checking the diff to see whether the changes are clear and e.g. join or separate paragraphs in a separate minor edit (a practise I try to follow myself). A better diff algorithm would help in some cases (the engine is absurdly weak at matching paragraphs in some situations) – this and an easy-to-use tool for diff analysis would be a good project for WMF.

A tips for editors trying to see what changes have been made: make edits to the old version yourself (mirroring what the other user seems to have done) without saving, until the diff you get to the current version makes sense. Sometimes just a trivial change (such as adding and removing whitespace) makes the diff clear. If you need saving (e.g. if the current version is irrelevant), copy the relevant versions to a subpage to your user page (User:NN/sandbox; also comparing different pages is possible, manually inserting the oldid parameter).

--LPfi (talk) 07:12, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Andrewssi2, when I was new at en.wp, I once had someone complain because I made a lot of changes in a lot of edits, exactly the way you recommend here.

LPfi, you're right: the diff tool is absurdly weak in some situations. Maybe User:Rdicerb (WMF) would like to put that on her list of irritating problems that editors have to deal with all the time (along with edit conflicts), and that some attention from the WMF devs might be able to improve. (If anyone has other ideas that should go on the list, then please leave a note for her or send her e-mail.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Definitely it would be great to have a better diff tool! For example it would great to compare specific sections even if they are moved to a different part of the article. Andrewssi2 (talk) 01:02, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Couple of things about the visual editor

Swept in from the pub

Hi, everyone. I've got a couple of things that I want to run past you.

First: if you haven't looked in Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures for a while, then you might want to turn on the visual editor, and if you work on multiple wikis, then try "enhanced notifications", too. (That's the "let me know here, if someone pings me at Commons" tool.)

Next: The visual editor is pretty awesome for some kinds of editing (especially tables), and I think you should consider getting it turned on by default, rather than in Beta Features. On average, half of the new editors are using it by preference, and people running edit-a-thons and training programs tell me that it is far and away the preference among new editors there. It pretty much works like a rich-text e-mail editor, or editing a word processing document. This means that "improve the article" involves "clicking Edit and editing" rather than "clicking Edit and trying to learn wikitext". I think you'll be happy with the results.

Related to that: mw:Design Research is looking for experienced editors (hundreds or thousands of edits to any project, probably more than a year old) who haven't used the visual editor before (or at least not much/not recently). The usual setup is a scheduled video chat via Google Hangout on Air (or maybe Skype?) for 30 to 60 minutes, in English. To run the visual editor, you'll need to have a reasonably modern web browser (>95% of you already do) and to have Javascript turned on. They're mostly focused on the Wikipedias, but it might be good to broaden their horizons. 😉 If anyone's interested, please let me know. A note on my talk page or an e-mail message would be great. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

What needs to be done to "get the visual editor turned on by default"? I assumed Wikimedia would do that when they felt it was ready - is there something each wiki is expected to do? -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:20, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

When the Visual Editor was initially introduced, it was turned on by default on various wikis (Wikipedia in particular). At the time it was quite clearly not ready for the world - very slow, not able to edit one section without editing the entire page, rather braindead in its handling of tables and templates. The backlash to that move left us with the odd "edit" and "edit source" links as damage control. I'm not sure I want to revisit this? K7L (talk) 19:38, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

If I understand correctly, only users with the beta "visual editor" feature enabled see "edit / edit source". If I view a page anonymously I just see "edit" and it uses the wiki source editor, not the visual editor. Ideally it should not be necessary to enable a beta feature in order to give users the choice between editing wiki text or using the visual editor. -- Ryan • (talk) • 19:52, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

I have just used the visual editor to make a couple of edits to Wrocław, fixing broken links. The editor looks better than it did a year or so ago when I tried it on WP, but needs some work before being good for WV. It needs some customisation, like we have for the regular editor, to remove cite and add buttons for inserting listings. Clicking on a listing brings up a template editor which is poor compared to our listing editor. AlasdairW (talk) 21:27, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

It also screwed up the ordering and positioning of the fields in the listing templates: for example look for "Museum of Architecture" or "Novocaina" (see diff). 129.215.90.124 11:13, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

I have also used it to edit Aberdeen and Kilcreggan, and when I reviewed the differences I noticed what looked like extra changes. Although it is a nice feature to have, and is good for fixing dead links because the template's message appears in yellow, I do think that some work is needed before it is turned on my default. It is not available for articles in the Wikivoyage space, so I couldn't use the Wikivoyage:Graffiti wall to try things, and this edit had to be made using the source editor. AlasdairW (talk) 21:01, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

Issues with Visual Editor

I thought that I would start a list of issues with the visual editor on Wikivoyage, beginning with those that I have seen in the past couple of days. Don't take the length of the list as an overall comment on the editor. Please add to the list as you find things. AlasdairW (talk) 22:35, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

1. Customisation for Wikivoyage as needed, similar to that in place for the source editor, removing features rarely used like cite and adding listing template buttons for See etc.
2. The order of entries in a listing is sometimes changed when that field is unchanged, showing spurious differences.
3. There is no obvious way of cancelling an edit.
4. When edit is selected for a section, the complete article is opened for editing. Edit summaries may give the wrong section for the edit as a result (e.g. an edit may start in the Eat section, but also make changes to Sleep, and by default the summary would be Eat).
5. Editing listings is awkward - maybe it could use our normal listings editor.
6. The table of contents links in the pagebanner appear during edits, but don't do anything.

More

Ryan, yes, the basic process is that the WMF turns it on. However, they don't want to just surprise everyone, and they definitely want to know whether it works well first. For example, I tend to agree with the suggestion above to kill the Cite button. The automagic mw:Citoid service is awesome, but it's not relevant. Changing the "default" means that you don't have to personally opt-in to it in your preferences. (All logged-in editors would still be able to opt out.) Also, although it's probably not necessary for a smaller wiki like this, it's possible to change the default for logged-in editors and IPs on different dates. They've done that at most of the large Wikipedias, to give editors a chance to get used to it.

K7L, there's a new feature that lets you choose whether to have two tabs ("Edit" and "Edit source") or just one ("Edit") that does whatever you want it to do. It's currently visible at the Wikisources, Wiktionaries, and three Wikipedias: hywiki, plwiki, and enwiki. Most existing editors are leaving the default setting, which is a single tab that opens whichever editing environment they used last – which, for most of them, is the wikitext editor. At the Hungarian and Polish Wikipedias, the visual editor is the primary editing environment, so IPs get that first (with a button to switch to wikitext). At the English Wikipedia, the wikitext editor is primary, so IPs get that.

AlasdairW, I really appreciate your testing and starting this list, and I hope that you and others will expand it. The template editor depends upon TemplateData, which half the listing templates don't have yet. It strictly follows the order of the parameters in the TemplateData, so if the order isn't what you want, it will definitely get it wrong. (I assume the order should be what the current listing editor does). Given how few templates we have here, and how frequently the listing templates are used, I do not believe that VisualEditor should be offered to by default unless and until that has been fixed.

I can ask to have it turned on for the [[Wikivoyage:]] namespace if you would like to use it in the sandbox. This could probably be done as soon as next week, if we make the request (in Phab:) soon. It's not really designed for comments on pages like this (e.g., no support for association lists, and therefore no ability to use half of that listing style to indent comments), but it's possible to add a normal signature, and you could edit any page in the namespace. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:45, 21 April 2016 (UTC)

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T96710

Tracked in Phabricator ^(?)
Task T133725

Update: I've got two requests in the system now.

The first is about getting quicker access to the listing templates. A Wikipedia editor suggested a drop-down menu on the toolbar; what do you think of that idea?

The second is to move the Cite button out of the main toolbar, and into the "Insert" menu (just in case anyone wants to edit the Dutch phrasebook, which currently uses two ref tags). There are a couple of other Wikivoyages that seem to use footnotes more often. If anyone knows a bit more about those Wikiovoyages, I'd be happy to hear whether this will work for you, too.

I haven't filed a request to have the visual editor enabled for the [[Wikivoyage:]] namespace yet (it'd let you edit the sandbox, among other pages). I thought I should wait until someone actually agreed to that idea. We can't enable it for the sandbox alone; it's everything in a namespace, or nothing. It is available in the User: namespace, so you could always use User:Whatamidoing (WMF)/Sandbox as a place for testing. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:57, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

How to add Listings to an article using the mobile visual editor

Is there a way to do this? Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't seem to find any way to. Copy-Pasting existing listings doesn't seem to work for me either.

I'd appreciate any advice. Oswiu (talk) 23:52, 21 October 2018 (UTC)

Are you editing with the visual editor or the source mode editor? --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 00:15, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

As it says in the subject, the visual editor (I gather cut and paste would work fine in the source editor, but I find it a bit of a hassle to use, especially on my phone.) Oswiu (talk)

@Oswiu: Sorry, I didn't see that — I'm actually now going to bring this discussion up in the Pub, where more people will be able to see it. --Comment by Selfie City (talk about my contributions) 00:49, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

@Oswiu:, you need to put your cursor at the start of a bulleted list item, and then type {{ to trigger the template editing dialog. Then you can insert the relevant listing template (e.g., see or eat or do or sleep)

Jess, you probably want to add this to your long list of pain points. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:09, 23 October 2018 (UTC)

Please add section on editing protected pages

This page assumes the page is a normal page to edit but what if it is protected? What's the Wikivoyage way of requesting edits? Jason Quinn (talk) 07:42, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Post to the talk page of the page in question. Ikan Kekek (talk) 07:58, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

Is this suggested in the message you get when you try to edit a protected page? I suppose that would be a better place than this page, as it is comparably rare and should be easy to note for those affected (i.e. here it would need to go to the lead). --LPfi (talk) 09:06, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

There is no option to edit the page at all so there is no message. Posting on talk page would be fruitless because it's an obscure interface page with "fewer than 30 watchers" and probably zero watchers. Is there no Wikivoyage equivalent of Wikipedia's {{editrequest}}? Clearly I could just post the page and get the edit request done but for now I'm just curious about Wikivoyage's process for doing these things, if there is one but it appears there isn't. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:44, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

People are watching the latest changes, so edits will usually be noticed regardless of the obscurity of the page in question. Having a good edit summary can of course help to get the right people actually read what you write. This project is small enough that you do not need the {{editrequest}}, anything can be taken to the pub if there is no obvious place to discuss it. --LPfi (talk) 20:54, 1 May 2019 (UTC)

"Save your changes" popup appears again after clicking "Publish changes"

Swept in from the pub

I edited Tokyo/Roppongi (the whole page, because I had to move a listing from a section to another), then pressed "Publish changes...", added a comment and pressed the "Publish changes" button of the popup, like I often do on other Wikimedia sites.

Strangely, the popup appeared again, without my comment. I pressed the "Publish changes" button again.

Thanks to the history tab I know that my change has been registered. Strange bug though. I am on Firefox 68.0.1 on Linux.

Cheers! Syced (talk) 04:08, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

It does not always happen: I was able to post this message normally. Syced (talk) 04:09, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

That's happened to me, too. It seems like it mostly happens when I've been editing for a while (and then it starts happening a lot). I've just nerd-sniped a pair of devs into looking into this. I can't promise a quick fix, because figuring it out apparently involves setting up a log, which means extra paperwork, and then waiting for it to happen again, but they're on the track.

Syced, can you tell me what web browser and computer operating system you were using? I encounter this primarily in Firefox. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 17:29, 13 August 2019 (UTC)

Whatamidoing (WMF): Thanks! I am on Firefox 68.0.1 on Ubuntu 19.04 Syced (talk) 02:41, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, that had often happened to me... When I edit pages usually after I press publish changes it don't bring me to the page, but instead, the "save your changes" pops up again. But I'm not using Firefox, I'm using Google Chrome. The SmileKat40! (*Meow* chat with me! | What did I do?) 03:14, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

SmileKat40, can you tell me more? Can you make it happen on purpose? Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 05:13, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I cannot make it happen on purpose, as I edited the Mexican cuisine page trying to make this happen, but usually when this happens it is on pages that I frequently edit, such as Space and a little while ago, Moon. The SmileKat40! (*Meow* chat with me! | What did I do?) 06:07, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

I was just destubbifying Ulfborg and then I came across the same problem. Seems like this doesn't only happens on pages that I frequently edit. The SmileKat40! (*Meow* chat with me! | What did I do?) 06:36, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Just happened to me again on Mokpo, then I got a popup saying there was a conflict (most probably with myself since nobody ever edits that page). Syced (talk) 13:29, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

How do I edit text below a banner in mobile view

Hi all! In the mobile version of Tiberias article I see text between the banner and 'Page' and 'Discussion' links. In the edit source mode I don't see it anywhere, does someone have an idea how it can be changed? 08:39, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Found it myself, it comes from wikidata. Alaexis (talk) 08:58, 23 December 2019 (UTC)