Help talk:Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface

Feedback and discussion page for the Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface.

Update: We completely revised the interface for this feature based on user feedback and user test.

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On my local dev wiki, the (just installed) feature is broken : I choose thanks to the radio buttons which version I want to keep, but when I click save, the page reloads and every conflict paragraph is highlighted in red. None of the options I chose are memorized. If I start over and try to save again, the same thing happens.

Unfortunately that's not enough information. How was the conflict resolution interface triggered? How many rows of radio buttons appeared? Is JavaScript enabled? Does the JavaScript console show some error? It might also be the configuration of your webserver or PHP somehow not accepting array-structured form variables. But this is all speculation. Sorry.

Thanks for your swift response.

I trigger myself the conflict resolution thanks to two separate accounts (since it is my dev wiki) on two separate browsers (I tried a bunch, does not seem to be the cause of it).

I run MediaWiki 1.35.6 on a local EasyPHP dev server (Apache 2.4.25 x86 - PHP 7.4.19 x86 - MySQL 5.7.17 x86).

Javascript is enabled and works fine. No particular message in browser console either.

The error happens whether there is more than one paragraph or just one.

It seems that if I choose the newest, not saved yet, revision, the page reloads with a red "alert" background-color on conflicting paragraphs and deletes all choices.

If I choose the already saved revision, the paragraphs that had conflicts just disappear, but the page is still not saved: the interface shows then only the unchanged paragraphs, which is really weird.

I hear you about the PHP version, but every other extension works perfectly, so that would be odd.

Might be linked to my other extension configurations, I'll try on a fresh install and keep you posted.

That sounds really strange. Sorry, I have no idea. I even went back and tested this older version (it's almost 2 years old by now) and it seems to work fine for me. The error sounds like parts (?) of the POST request are lost. Maybe it's an overly aggressive security or spam protection plugin in Apache or PHP?

I've probably commented here before, but I just got another instance of this and felt compelled to talk about it. Every time I'm dropped into the EC tool, I'm totally befuddled as to how to proceed. I'm a software developer, I'm used to merge conflicts. Every merge conflict tool I've ever used has some way to say, "Keep this version", "Keep that version", "Keep both". I don't see any of that here. I see a box which shows "Conflicting comment", and another box which shows "Your comment", and no indication of how I'm supposed to proceed to select which, or both, I want to keep. I'm going to do what I always do; copy my text, abort the edit, and start again from scratch, pasting in my saved text.

I'll add that edit conflict resolution is something people do rarely. That means they don't remember the details of how the tool worked the last time they used it, so it's got to be totally obvious how things work in order to be effective. The developers who wrote the tool use it all the time, so it's hard to step back and ask themselves, "If I knew nothing about how this worked, would I be able to figure it out?"

I agree, and have been annoyed by this often. If it isn't going to give me useful instructions, why doesn't it just say, "Your edit has been aborted. You can copy it and try again"? ~~~~

I agree—I just bull my way through and seem to get random consequences—as if some critical timing issue picks an outcome with no meaningful interaction on my part. (What request initiated this beta offering what were the goals?

wieralee — Dziś o 17:09 kurczę [17:09] dwa razy poprawiałam stronę spisu [17:09] i nie zapisało mi [17:09] KONFLIKT EDYCJI [17:09] godzina w plecy [17:13] sześć stron zmian nie chce wejść Seboloidus — Dziś o 17:13 Gdyby się spodziewać tegoż, to można jeszcze skopiować całość przed zapisaniem. Ale zazwyczaj się nie spodziewamy. wieralee — Dziś o 17:14 za pierwszym razem się nie spodziewałam wieralee — Dziś o 17:16 masakra Seboloidus — Dziś o 17:16 Nie wiem, mnie praktycznie nie zdarzyły się konflikty. Może ze dwa przez 2 lata. wieralee — Dziś o 17:17 no tak, ale kiedyś konflikt edycji był, jak dwie osoby przycisnęły równocześnie enter [17:17] moja edycja jest 6 minut późniejsza [17:17] i nie wchodzi [17:17] W OGÓLE [17:18] jeszcze mi piszą, że "Dokonane przez Ciebie zmiany zostaną pokazane natychmiast po przejrzeniu przez uprawnionego użytkownika." [17:18] tyle, że na OZ-tach nie ma żadnej mojej nie przejrzanej zmiany [17:21] no nic [17:22] zostawię ten indeks [17:22] szkoda mojego czasu [17:23] tyle pracy na nic... Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:23 sorry wiera [17:23] ale jest przecież OK wieralee — Dziś o 17:23 nie [17:23] wykasowałam wszystko co zrobiłeś [17:24] i wkleiłam swoją drugą wersję [17:24] wtedy dopiero weszło [17:24] teraz by trzeba to porównać Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:24 czyli jest twoja wersja, to dobrze wieralee — Dziś o 17:24 ale nie mam już siły Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:24 ja to przejrzę wieralee — Dziś o 17:24 dzięki [17:25] ale widzisz [17:25] nowe oprogramowanie nie przewiduje że ktoś nam pomoże [17:25] musimy się umówić, kto robi jaki indeks [17:25] może lepiej będzie robić osobne indeksy dla każdego tomu? [17:26] to nie Twoja wina Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:26 albo może wróce do mojej wersji, powiedz, jakie zmiany zrobiłaś wieralee — Dziś o 17:26 tylko gości od "ulepszeń" Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:26 i je wpiszę, będzie łatwiej mi wieralee — Dziś o 17:26 no każde hasło linkowałam od nowa [17:27] wcześniejszy zapis był takim zapisem "w trakcie" [17:27] żeby mi nie uciekło [17:27] wszystko wieralee — Dziś o 17:31 to była edycja od 14:38 do 17:19 [17:31] w tym czasie zrobiłam dwie wersje i żadna się nie zapisała [17:32] a cały czas w tym siedziałam, z przerwami na życie Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:32 poprawię po prostu twoją wersję i tyle, jakoś to będzie wieralee — Dziś o 17:32 jestem wściekła na ten zespół "ulepszający" Draco flavus — Dziś o 17:32 a dzisiaj jest dzień konfliktów (naszczęści u nas tylko takich) - to samo miałem, gdy ci odpisywałem w dyskusji wieralee — Dziś o 17:33 no bo to wina oprogramowania [17:33] a jak cofniesz, to nie pokazuje już tego co miałeś przed zapisem [17:33] chociaż inne strony można cofnąć strzałką przez kilka wersji [17:33] tak samo, jak mimo wszystko chcesz zapisać, to nie pozwala [17:34] pełna blokada, trzeba zaczynać zupełnie od nowa [17:34] tyle razy mówiłam, że jak nie pomagają, to żeby chociaż nie przeszkadzali ci z sekcji "ulepszeń" [17:35] ale oczywiście nie [17:35] trzeba wszystkich zniechęcić do projektu [17:36] wiem, że w ich oczach jestem nikim a moja praca jest nic nie warta [17:37] nie wiem, po co nam te wszystkie narzędzia, skoro wychodzi na to, że trzeba edytować w wordzie [17:37] i po cichu szybciutko wklejać

For some reason, this "tool" posts my comments duplicate times, as if I have an edit conflict with myself. I then have to go back and remove the excess comments from the page. This has happened more often than not with this tool. When I have a chance, I'll try to figure out how to disable it.

Thank you for the report. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what kind of response you expect? Are you able to post some example links where this happened? That would help a lot investigating this issue further. So far it sounds like a long known issue with the edit conflict detection algorithm in MediaWiki core, which is what TwoColConflict depends on. See for example phab:T28821, phab:T36423, phab:T59264, or phab:T222805. TwoColConflict is essentially just an interface on top of that.

Well, when the Beta feature pops up, I get a message to come here to offer feedback so that's what I did. I don't know if I have expectations, I just followed the suggestion to come here and post.

You can see one example of this if you look at my contributions and look at the posting to WP:ANI at 21:03, November 5, 2021. It posts twice in the same moment and the next edit I delete the duplicate entry.

I would love to do something about this. Let's see. There are two edits, the first at 04:03:14 UTC, the second 27 second later. That's not exactly the same moment. Furthermore, the second edit is marked as a revert. Why is that?

This happens to me several times a month.

I encounter these "Edit conflicts with myself" when I try to edit my previous edit shortly afterwards to correct some mistake or other.

It is often not possible to choose between different versions (as there are no check boxes or rather check circles offered) so the obvious option is to click "publish" which results in the corrected text passage being appended to the one added in the previous edit.

See here where I tried to correct a small spelling mistake in my previous edit when the "Edit conflict" interface popped up ...

I from time to time get the Edit Conflict message, but find it to be completely useless. It doesn't tell me whether it will be preserving the other editor's edits and adding mine, or what my choice is. How do I attempt to add my edits while ensuring that the other editor's edits are preserved? It doesn't give me useful information.

~~~~

For me, it gives two source views, like in a diff, and you can analyze the two versions there and pick a version or edit a version to include parts from both. I suck at reading the source code and scanning for what's different, but on bigger edits it is very noticeable.

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T284994

Hello,

I had this gadget enabled for quite some time, but after various issues have finally bitten the bullet and disabled it. The last straw was one particular issue that I hope is just a bug: a user on English Wikipedia had gone through and inexplicably removed most line breaks. They'd made several other changes I didn't want to revert, so I couldn't just revert the entire edit, so I bothered to go back and add in all the removed line breaks by hand. This user by then had made yet another edit, so the edit conflict window came up. Despite clicking on "my side" for each option, it didn't matter - all those line breaks I re-added were thrown away. That can't have been intended behavior. Hopefully this suffices as reproduction steps, but is this fixable? I would link the edit in question but get an "abusefilter warning linkspam" when I do so...

Thanks a lot for the report! This is indeed not how the interface is meant to behave. I found the edits (1, 2, 3) and was able to reproduce and fix the issue locally. It's tracked at phab:T284994 now.

Hello

Is there any plan to deploy this feature to more wikis?

Can a single wiki ask to have it deployed as default?

Thanks!

Hi Trizek, thanks a lot for your question. I don't have an answer yet, we need to discuss this in our team first. I'll let you know once we know. :)

Best,

Johanna

In the old version, the following scenario works as expected:

1. Edit a page
2. Attempt to save, resulting in an edit conflict
3. Edit the original text
4. Click "Show Changes", to view the new diff

Step 4 doesn't seem to be available any longer. I usually like to use the diff before saving something, especially in complex situations like handling an edit conflict.

Overall, it seems like a great addition to the editing workflow!

Hello, I have a question is it possible to somehow artificially cause an "edit conflict" between two selected versions of a page? My question is motivated by the fact that this would be very useful overridden to work with flagged versions. It would allow, for example, to compare the differences between flagged and non-flagged versions by paragraphs. This would be very because you could select individual changes that should be withdrawn, and all the rest of the positive to leave. Best regards.

I'm not sure if I got the question. But it's easily possible to create diffs between any version.

• In the page's history, click the tiny radio buttons next to the two versions you want to compare and click "Compare selected versions".
• Enter e.g. Special:Diff/4513235/4694855 in your browser's URL bar with the two revision numbers you want to compare. They can even be from two different pages.

Manually triggering the TwoColConflict interface the same way is currently not possible.

You understood the question well, I know perfectly well that you can do diff, but it does not allow you to select by paragraphs the changes to leave. You can only compare versions and possibly rollback everything. Is there somewhere e.g. in Phabricator or on Github where I can ask developers about this, because they must have some way to execute this for testing.

The extension was developed by my team, but there is currently no budget to develop it further. What you ask for sounds like "partial undo". While I understand the similarities, I think this would need to be a separate feature. Phabricator is the place to discuss feature requests.

I know this would have to be implemented separately, but I was thinking of using your extension (since it already exists and is installed on the Wiki I most frequently contribute to) to present this to others and convince them that it's cool.

Probably means the Meta wiki.

Hi ineed to know what is Meta I New in this app

It's impossible to answer such a question when no context is given. The only appearance of the word "meta" I can find anywhere is in Help:Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface#Background, where it refers to the Meta wiki.