User:DWalden (WMF)/Copy paste diffs/2021-10-21 dwalden
Charter
editTesting diffs in RTL languages, for https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T290731.
In particular, I wanted to answer the questions:
- Is what is being copied from the diffs correct? What if I copy it to back onto the wiki?
- How well does this feature work with edit conflicts?
Coverage
editBrowsers | Firefox (78) |
Languages | https://he.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org, https://fa.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org |
Skins | Vector (new) |
MediaWiki version | 1.38.0-alpha (9a7d9c1) 06:09, 21 October 2021 |
Notes
editI wanted this to be a reasonably stressful test so I picked articles on he and fa beta wikis which were reasonably complicated and wrote a script to randomly modify their wikitext. I hoped to have fairly large and complicated diffs.
After I saved the modified wikitext for an article, I then viewed the diff when comparing the latest revision with the previous revision. I opened the source editor for the same article on a different page and I copied the wikitext from the diff itself into the source editor. I then viewed that diff (by clicking "Show changes"). My hope was that I would see no changes, as the wikitext I copied from the diff is the same as the wikitext saved to the article.
In practice, there were some differences as a certain amount of extra whitespace is picked up when copying from the diff. Notice below the copied wikitext on the left. I have select some text to highlight the fact that extra newlines and tabs are included when you copy from the diff.
I did this for several articles, but found nothing other than the extra newlines and tabs when copying from diffs.
I briefly tested edit conflicts. While editing a page, if another user saves an edit to the page, when you attempt to publish your changes you get the edit conflict interface, which includes a diff. I have no experience with them before, so I am not sure how users use them. I assume that a reasonable use might be using the diff to isolate only the wikitext that is different and copying from there into the source editor.
When doing this there is a certain amount of reformatting that the user will need to do. So far, I have only had to remove extra tabs and newlines. See below for an example.
Compare to production (screenshot below) where there is more extra formatting included when copying from the diff.