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.

Report a new bug in Phabricator

You can post in any language here, preferably English or German.

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 This would be very because you could select individual changes that should be withdrawn, and all the rest of the positive to leave.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.

Great tool; well done to everyone who worked on this, for making something really cool and solving a tough problem.

Hi, just want to say thank you for the tool, which I have just been confronted with for the first time and which I find really helpful. Good job :-)

Fixed.

Please add rule .diffchange-inline { white-space: break-spaces; } because Google Chrome incorrect displays diffs with deleted trailing spaces, which tagged inside .diff-deletedline. See Diff Test in Google Chrome. ~~~~

Thanks for the report, Unfortunately this is unrelated to the two-column conflict-resolution interface. However, thanks to the super helpful example it was easy to create a patch, see gerrit:651181.

You accidentally left the old rule white-space: pre-wrap;.

That's called a fallback for browsers that don't understand the value further down. MediaWiki still needs to support Internet Explorer 11, that's why I did it like this.

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.

Quite frequently I post a reply and find an Edit Conflict alert, but then discover that my post was published and that the edit conflict notification is actually with myself. It's as if I've double-clicked 'Publish', and my second (blank) edit is trying to overwrite my original response.

I find this quite annoying, though I do generally like the interface as I edit at a very active Forum (the English Wikipedia Teahouse). I am using Winndows 10 Home 64 bit, on Chrome browser Version 86.0.4240.198

My one suggested improvement is to provide a 'Click to copy contents' button so I can quickly select my reply text and ensure I don't completely lose it if things don't work.

Hi, that should not happen. Most likely it's not due to the Paragraph-based Edit Conflict Interface but due to some other changes on the software. We know that a team of the Foundation currently works on something very related. If this happens again, could you please send us an screenshot and the link to the edit?

Yes - will do that.

I can confirm this exact behavior. At least one other editor on cs-wiki also encountered this :https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedie:Pod_l%C3%ADpou_(technika)#Edita%C4%8Dn%C3%AD_konflikt_na_diskusi . It seems to happen occasionally on discussion pages. The last time it happened for me today here: https://cs.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Diskuse_s_wikipedistou:Polanka,_Jando%C5%A1,_%C5%A0%C3%ADma,_Pechmann&action=history . First version of the page (13:31 CET) is the result of clicking on "publish" button. At the same time, the editation conflict interface was inicialized, reporting editation conflict, presumably with myself. The second version of the page (13:32 CET) is the result of "resolving" that editation conflict.

Editing in wikitext editor 2010, Chrome browser, desktop. Other editor on our wiki reports this behavior from Chrome browser on desktop as well, but also from Chrome on Android, classic (not mobile) view.

I have received some responses from editors at the en-wiki Teahouse (see here) who have also experienced edit conflicts with themselves. I have also captured a screenshot, as requested. See here.

Having tried saving a few edits with very rapid double-clicks of my mouse, I am now starting to wonder whether this might actually be more of an issue caused by over-responsiveness of the blue 'Publish' button which ought not to be able to act on a second mouseclick (or tap) immediately afterwards at all. I tried this intentional rapid double-click on my own talk page, which did cause an edit conflict report . Resolving the conflict only modified the timestamp (rather than adding in a duplicate copy of what I'd posted), but the time wasted in wondering why one has got an edit conflict is probably quite significant - and especially so on busy, talk pages and help fora.

Maybe the folks behind this tool can push to get that over-responsiveness of the mediawiki software Publish button addressed if, as now seems probable, the fault actually lies elsewhere?

I found that this option never worked for me. The only time I encountered conflicts was when writing something in a discussion page and have someone write something before I post my own.

In that case I would like to have the current version and add my own. But the interface seems to force me to choose between one of them.

What I normally do is go back, copy my text additions, and re-edit the page. The conflicts page merely gets in my way, as in the original interface I could have at least (in most cases) copied and edited the text within it.

Am I missing something?

Hello @Tzafrir, thanks for your feedback!

If you want to keep both versions with the new interface, what I suggest you to do is: Copy e.g. your version, and then select the other person's version. You find a small edit pen in the corner of the other person's text field (e.g. see the sceenshots here). If you click that, you can paste your version underneath. When you save, this new version will be published.

Just in case you are wondering, why we did notdesign the feature with specifically this use case in mind: Although many experienced editors encounter edit conflicts the same way as you, about half of edit conflicts actually appear in the main namespace, e.g. on article pages., and all other namespaces make up at most 1/4 of the main namespace conflict volume.

I have to agree with Tzafrir. All the edit conflicts I'm encountering are no conflicts at all, it's annoying not having the option to simply append your own comment to the already existing comment, every time I have to skip the edit conflict page to paste it in manually. This feature doesn't help me at all.

+1 on this report. The tool should be smart enough to do the right thing, or at least offer a single-clik "accept both changes and edit further" when writing in a threaded discussion on a talk page. I've been slowed down many times by this.

I have also encountered this issue on talk pages. Would it be possible to have some kind of "keep both" (enhancement request to choose the order) when the conflict is on a talk or Wikipedia page, and the conflicting edits consist only of the addition of full paragraphs which happen to be in the same place?

I agree. This feature does not help me at all. Copy and paste my own text, and the insert it into the most recent version, that is something I can to without the feature anyway. What is the problem the feature is supposed to help me with?