Forum:Disabling the Rich Text Editor

Forums: Index > Wiki DiscussionDisabling the Rich Text Editor

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I have been considering this for awhile and finally have decided to try to remove the Rich Text Editor. Many problems rise from this new feature on Wikia.

1. It reformats spacing, indenting, and bullet points to a degree where we have to watch how it responds to editing. There are ways to circumvent this, but that is beyond the normal scope of a new editor just wanting to help out.
2. It is already disabled on many pages. It is disabled on all forums (manually) and any page which happens to contain complex code. I think the best process would be to have it consistent throughout the entire wiki.
3. Most of the knowledgeable wiki editors know how to use and prefer the wiki syntax, so it would best for the wiki to follow in their path.
4. Most new users don't know you can turn it off.
5. It currently isn't up to the scale one would expect from a wiki with so many articles. Many bugs remain and are currently causing some annoying problems as explained in point one.

So, please consider this. Max21 (talk | contr) 02:55, June 6, 2010 (UTC)

Votes

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Support

1. as proposer. Max21 (talk | contr) 02:55, June 6, 2010 (UTC)
2. It causes a significant amount of problems, many pages can't be edited properly with it on, and I'm confident that editors will quickly pick up how to use wiki mark-up. Loleil ^Talk 08:41, June 6, 2010 (UTC)
3. I don't really participate to this wiki at the moment, but this thing has been a source of problems and screwups on other wikia wikis as well, inserting garbage  , putting linefeeds within title headers (thus making them no longer titles), breaking the formatting of space-indented preformated code in technical articles, and other annoyances which force someone (with the RTE disabled in his or her profile) to do cleanup duty after everyone else. Dumbing down the interface is not worth the hassles it causes. --Gez (talk) 14:46, June 6, 2010 (UTC)
4. since it causes more problems than it helps. To help editors, especially new ones, maybe we could have a list or a link to a list of the most commonly used wiki codes and templates instead? --M.harmless (talk) 18:59, June 6, 2010 (UTC)
5. Though I'm not a huge Wiki contributor, I find myself turning off the RTE more often than not when I do. I shan't miss it, but that is my own personal throwback to the days of WordPerfect 5.x when I would always work in the markup code so I could see what was going on. I second the idea of a handy link to the most commonly used templates and markups though.LegionnaireScout (talk) 21:24, June 6, 2010 (UTC)

   I could, but I am not aware of anything I can do to add it above the editing interface. However, currently, you can click Show Editing Tips while editing, and it will show you some of the basics. Most templates are often made in creation plates, but which ones did you guys have in mind? Max21 (talk | contr) 21:54, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

   I was thinking that having the things that are in the rich text editor's interface but not in the source code editor, like the different headline types, bulletin lists, numbered lists and indents, would make it easier for new editors. Of great help to anyone but the most experienced editors (and maybe even to them ) would probably be an expanded Editing and Style Guide with a glossary for the currently used markups and a preview of how they look like. (See also: this discussion) --M.harmless (talk) 11:50, June 8, 2010 (UTC)

   Well, I am currently formatting a new MoS which would hopefully explain more things. We don't want to go way out of way, especially since most wiki editing it learned by doing or making an error and having someone else point it out. We can try to put up some example pages, but not too many. Max21 (talk | contr) 12:20, June 8, 2010 (UTC)

6. It has mucked things up for me in the past - I don't trust it and was looking for a way to turn it off in my profile, if that is possible. Yes - please disable it. PurpleRayne (talk) 12:09, June 8, 2010 (UTC)

   You can turn it of in your preferences. However, it still doesn't fix the fact that the editor messes up things with all the other users. Max21 (talk | contr) 12:20, June 8, 2010 (UTC)

7. I'm not massively opposed to it as a general rule, but find it a pain in the arse myself. If it's causing problems, however, it sounds like it needs to go. Yay to whomever made Source the default. :) - wandrew (talk)
8. I got used to editing in the markup format, and trying to introduce RTE just confuses me when I'm already learning wiki. I have it turned off in my settings for all my wikis. - ameliaw90 (talk)

Discussion

Hey guys, just a note, whatever it's doing now, is not really better than what it was doing before. I had just figured out how to use the icons we had the first time, and now they're gone. I find myself typing in my lovely little window, saving, and having to view my post and go back in and edit one or 2 more times to get the spacing that LOOKED right on my screen before I hit save the first time.

It seemed like, whatever the original publisher was, worked ok...it was trying to impose rules about indent this, or edit this way that was causing difficulty. If you just tell people, "hey, double space between posts so we can see the beginning of 1 from the ending of the previous, and SIGN your stuff", that should do it. Just my 2 cents.

Thanks for the wiki, brings me great enjoyment. My daughter and her friends have started the RPG and some are LOVING all the good info here. Ozena Lyn (talk) 12:44, June 6, 2010 (UTC)

It depends on the required legibility. If you would like, I can hold a forum to decide what format would be best. I might be able to introduce something a tiny bit more readable, though. Max21 (talk | contr) 21:54, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

Rich Text Editor breaks links

Just realised that this problem is also caused by just having the RTE enabled in one's preferences. It causes certain links to get messed up if the page is edited in any way. One more reason to disable it for good. --M.harmless (talk) 12:33, June 10, 2010 (UTC)

Comments

I don't really have an oppinion about whether to actually remove it or not, but I've never liked it and always use the "source input" to have better control of what I do (or try to do ;-) ). I never seem to be able to get it just right using RTE, but admittedly I haven't really put much effort into it either. --Boise66 (talk) 18:47, June 11, 2010 (UTC)