Wikipedia:Editing bug reports

This is an archive only of bug reports from Phase II of the Wikipedia software (used before June 20, 2002). Please see Wikipedia:Bug reports for instructions on adding bug reports for the current system.

sometimes a protected page still says "edit this page" when you first view it.

This is probably because you followed a redirect to get to it: the redirect isn't protected. --mav

Edit replaced entire text of a Talk page 2/26/02

I just attempted to edit the Talk page on the article, Masculism. It brought me to a blank screen in which I wrote my comment. I previewed it, and hit the save button. I didn't think anything of the fact that there was nothing else except my text shown, until afterwards. Mine was the only comment remaining. Rgamble

Editing is not atomic

2002-06-02
I enter a new article and hit the Save button. It times out. I hit Save again. It comes up with an edit conflict in which the existing article is empty and what I tried to enter is full. This indicates that the timestamp is updated before the article. I then copy the text to the top text box and hit Save again; this time it has an edit conflict in which the existing text and the text I am trying to enter are identical. -phma

More on this bug: I looked at Family (biology) and noticed that "genuses" should be "genera". So I fixed it. Just as I hit the button, I noticed that "taxonomic" was misspelled, so I hit edit again. It gave me "genuses", and when I changed "taxanomic" to "taxonomic" and hit save, I got an edit conflict with the "genera" version. -phma

Mysterious edit conflicts

14 Feb I add the name Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov to Major figures of World War Two on the World_War_II page, hit save and scroll down to check it is there, it isn't, I hit refresh and I get a edit conflict.

See the bug below. The above is probably a dupe.

While I was working on the Complete list of encyclopedia topics pages, I was getting mysterious edit conflicts. I believe that this was due to the enormous size of the pages and Wikipedia's extremely sluggish response time; I would hit "save", and then wait half an hour(!) for the page to finally refresh. It would indicate an edit conflict, but my changes would be saved anyway. Perhaps the software was timing out and retrying the same edit after it had already gone through? Bryan Derksen, Friday, April 19, 2002

Yeah, that sounds likely to me. The solution is simple: get other people to stop using Wikipedia so there's less strain on the system for the rest of us. :) Brion VIBBER, Friday, April 19, 2002

STATUS: WAITING ON VARIOUS PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENTS

"Go back to edit some more" doesn't work

9 Nov - I cannot simply hit the back button in my browser, after I have saved a page, and make another change to the page. I do that all the time in UseModWiki, but I can't do it on PediaWiki because I get into an edit conflict with myself.
- Now you can, but after "back", you'll have to hit "reload" to correct the timestamp embedded in the HTML of the editing page. --Magnus Manske
- This is still a problem. I still get into edit conflicts w/myself. And the timestamp should come from the serverside (e.g. the script), not the browserside (i.e. the HTML).
- This is still a major bug. --The Cunctator

Clicking on link in Recent changes takes me to edit box for that link

2/19/02 6:27 ish PST. Clicked on Boleslav II Smialy in Recent Changes to see what Mr. Parker had done with the article. Got the edit box for the article, which contained a redirect to an appropriately titled page. Tried to save it as I found it, got an edit conflict. Repeatedly tried to remove what "I" had added to the lower box, and then save, got continued edit conflicts., Finally just backed out. User:JHK

Is this kind of thing still going on, or has it been resolved? Brion VIBBER, Friday, April 19, 2002

STATUS: UNKNOWN

Three tildes in preview

In preview the three tilde symbols (~) are not replaced with the user name. -- Jan Hidders

Three tildes shouldn't be replaced in pre, nowiki

The ~ is not uncommon in ASCII art such as in Stimulated emission, and should be left intact inside pre and nowiki areas. Brion VIBBER 2002/03/12

Fixed it. Will now be replaced on preview, and is left unchanged in nowiki and pre tags. --Magnus Manske, Sunday, April 14, 2002

STATUS : Solved in CVS

Konqueror 2.1.1 with KDE 2.1.2 cannot render any edit/add page. 2002-1-1

The text area for the body of the article is displayed correctly; however, the "summary" text field is rendered ""inside"" and over the article body text area. Also, nothing that would normally appear under the article body text area does not render at all.

That's the fault of Konqueror; tried to scroll down? I get that sometimes with the "Search" button, and scrolling down usually fixes it. Also, reduce the number of lines of the edit box in your user preferences. --Magnus Manske

Impossible to edit some pages

(2002/03/16) I cannot seem to add anything to Feature requests. It refuses to allow any editing and returns an error beep. I can edit this and other pages. Vignaux

What browser are you using? Excactly when do you get the "error beep"? I can edit Feature requests just fine. AxelBoldt

Microsoft Internet Explorer (mac) 5.1.3(3905) on a Mac Cube. I get the beep whenever I try and insert a character, such as a return, into the editing window. It is still happening. Despite that, I can modify this window OK Vignaux

Vignaux, are you still having problems editing the feature requests page under the current software revision? Brion VIBBER 2002/03/27

(2002/03/28) Yes, I have just tried with Explorer and the problem has developed on this page now! But I have now switched to using Netscape 6.2.1 and it can edit this page at least. Vignaux

Huh. I'd consider it an IE bug, then, I don't know what's triggering it. Try contacting Microsoft support if you dare... (shudder) Brion VIBBER, Thursday, March 28, 2002

I have tried numerous times to edit this page with Mozilla/Galeon and it doesn't submit, it just sits there, so there is some problem with that browser. It might be the size of the page, as I edit other pages without problems. This is submitted with NS4.77. Seindal

This appears to be a bug in Mozilla that appeared circa 0.9.9 (?), please file a bug report at bugzilla. Brion VIBBER, Thursday, March 28, 2002

All of the above "cannot edit" bugs could be due to the fact that our edit page contains broken HTML. Click on "Edit this page", then on "Validate this page" and you'll see what I mean. AxelBoldt, Thursday, March 28, 2002

I thought of that, but I doubt it. First, I'd expect the problem to happen with *all* pages, since the broken HTML is on *all* edit pages. Second, any problem caused thereby would be likely to be with rendering, not with submitting the form. Unfortunately I can't reproduce the problem on my test server, with or without fixing the HTML. I've submitted fixes to CVS (though I'm leaving the WRAP in, it should cause no problems); try it again when Jimbo installs it... Brion VIBBER

Further, I tried saving the form from the live site, fixing the HTML so it validates, and submitting from the fixed version. Still doesn't work with Mozilla 0.9.9. So no, it's not the HTML bugs. For the time being, I just edit long pages with Konqueror... --BV

(2002/03/29) I am now editing this page in Opera. It still does not work in Explorer. I validated the page as suggested and there is an error on line 34, col 50. More to the point, I noticed that the editing window text is truncated in Explorer at the following place (the last word is cut off in the middle):

Each page should have a separator between the article and the bottom navbar. Currently, the article is flowing right into the navbar, which is very difficult to read. There appears to be neat separati

Is that any help? Vignaux

Well, you cut off a chunk of this page, too. :( (Now restored.) I've uploaded a copy of the feature request edit page with the HTML errors fixed -- try it at media:wik3.html Same problem? Brion VIBBER, Thursday, March 28, 2002

I am terribly sorry about that. I am sure I cancelled after attempting to edit. Yes, same problem with Explorer; the editing panel is truncated at :Oh, and another thing,. Vignaux

I still cannot edit this page with Mac Explorer though I can with Opera (as I am doing now). The symptom is the same: just a beep if I try and enter a character. I can edit other, smaller, pages. Vignaux (2002/04/15)

The page was truncated again -- I think I like IE's beep better than Opera's delete-large-swaths-of-text method. Exactly what versions of Opera and IE, and what version of Mac OS are you using? Brion VIBBER, Sunday, April 14, 2002

Today I tried to edit the article on Georges Méliès, and when the editing screen came up, it was a blank "Describe the new page here" page, for "Georges M*li*s". (I had this problem with Netscape Communicator, but I did not have this problem with Internet Explorer.) There must be some problem with recognizing accented letters in page titles. Joel Schlosberg, Thursday, April 4, 2002

Does this link work correctly? If so, the problem should vanish with the next wiki software upgrade. Brion VIBBER, Saturday, April 6, 2002

Another page that I can't edit for some reason: Log talk:Page Deletions. When I try, I get "cannot edit this page!" The log talk page hasn't been created before, perhaps that has something to do with this? Bryan Derksen, Friday, April 19, 2002

The software doesn't currently consider "Log:" and "Log talk:" to be valid namespaces, so it refuses to let you edit pages there. This is presumably intentional, so that the logs can't be tampered with. (I mean, they're *logs*, right?) However, "Log talk:" could be useful. Magnus, what do you think? Brion VIBBER, Friday, April 19, 2002

When I try to edit particularly long pages - ie. 'Feature Requests' and 'bug reports' (before it was broken up into subpages) Netscape 4.7 will NOT allow me to insert any text - it beeps at me once and ignores anything I type on the keyboard. I assume that the page is too long for the buffer or something similar and when it happens I have to use the page back button to exit without altering the page. It's annoying because I can't add text to those pages, but hardly life-threatening KJ Mon 13 May 2002

Editing on not current version

2002/04/12 - while editing second-order desire, I normally started form the recent changes page that linked a version of 03:43, but when I had the page edited, I casually went to that page's history and I realised that there was another version (03:51), later than the one I had modified, that was not the one linked in recent changes and which text was not in the editbox. Probably, the database had a delay (half an hour?) in recording the latest version (03:51), even if my version was immediately recorded at 04:20. --Gianfranco

Most likely, the 3:51 change occurred after you loaded RecentChanges and before you loaded the edit page -- your 4:20 change includes everything from the 3:51 change, so it was definitely the 3:51 version that you modified, not the 3:43 version. When exactly did you load the RecentChanges page? Brion VIBBER, Friday, April 12, 2002

The main fact is that I certainly opened the RecentChanges page and the edit page after 03:51, because I modified the article in no more than 10 minutes, let's say a quarter of an hour for all the process - certainly it wasn't half an hour. Ordinarily, the 03:51 edit should have already been recorded when I opened (really, refreshed) the RecentChanges page.

In the 03:51 version, you can see a link to stereotype (first paragraph after the numbered list) that I had never seen until I realised of this version and opened it: for sure it wasn't in the editbox' text, I would have edited that text too. So, actually, I edited the 03:43 version at least a quarter of an hour after the other user had edited the 03:51 version.

Moreover, if you look at the diff for last version (mine), there is no evidence of that link, that disappears after the previous diff page (03:51 from 03:43).

I can only add that that both 03:43 and 03:51 versions are from the same author; could this fact having interfered? --Gianfranco

There is no possible way that the changes between the 3:43 and 3:51 versions would have been preserved in the 4:20 version (which they were) unless the 4:20 version was edited from the 3:51 version. Unless, that is, you yourself typed those paragraphs exactly as did the previous author, and somehow avoided getting an edit conflict screen. I guarantee you the 3:51 version was in the editbox when you edited it; there is no other reasonable explanation for your saved version including text that did not exist prior to the 3:51 version. The link you cite (to stereotypes) is indeed not in the 3:43 version, but *is* in the 3:51 version and *is* in the 4:20 version which you saved. Therefore it *was* in the editbox when you edited it. This cannot be denied, though you may not have noticed or read the paragraph in question. You edited the 3:51 version, not the 3:43 version.

That out of the way, the remaining question is that of the 3:43 edit being listed when you loaded RecentChanges. If, indeed, you did refresh RecentChanges after the 3:51 edit but saw only the 3:43 edit listed, that would be an unusual and unexpected occurence; my first thought was that, perhaps you simply had 'hide minor edits' enabled in your preferences, however this ought not to affect this case, as neither edit was marked as a minor edit. (If you do have that option enabled, let me know and I'll double-check the code...) So we have three possibilities:

1. 1. 1. Time flies when you're having fun (you spent more time editing that article than you think, and you simply hit RecentChanges before 3:51 and "edit" after 3:51)
    2. The 3:51 edit was actually saved after 3:51 and after you hit RecentChanges (but before you hit "edit"), and its timestamp is somehow incorrect
    3. There is a malfunction in 'hide minor edits' that caused it to ignore a non-minor edit (if you have 'hide minor edits' enabled)

At least, that's all I can think of for now. Brion VIBBER, Tuesday, April 16, 2002

Well, it seems quite a strange fact that now the three versions and the page's history work well: when I wrote the previous reply, the previous versions and the final article (04:20) were exactly as I described, while now this link (stereotypes) is in the article. I read minor edits too, they are not hidden, so this shouldn't be the reason. And I would be quite sure about editing time, I remember I made it very quickly (perhaps less than 10 minutes), while usually it takes me more - in the average - due to language; also, I had no "Edit conflict" notice. I can on my side guarantee that I only read the 03:43 v. while editing, and I confirm you the situation was as described. :-)

Just to see if I could help somehow, I asked my technician too (he knew the program in a prior version), and he suggests me also, as a possibility, some notes that I transmit in case they could help:

1. 1. 1. The MySql database could have temporarily cached (on server) the 03:43 version and output this, perhaps due to a queue or a timeout, then my input was "virtually" on the 03:51 v. even if I was served and shown the 03:43 content; but input should have been evaluated as "differential", in the sense that the database should be collecting the differences from previous version, rather than replacing the whole content (if this is how it works). In this case, as the paragraph that includes the link was not modified, no input was given about it and the served page included the cached text with the modified paragraphs only (not the paragraph with the link because not in cache and not modified). The "diff" function might have reflected this if it is operated (and content is created) on the fly - in the sense that there is no permanent record or previous cache of differences among versions in the directory - and in fact now it works correctly, as well.
    2. For some reason, the 03:43 version could have been sorted by subject, as the first in alphabetical order, instead of by date order, if alphabetical is the default setting; the record should have then been "without a sorting instruction" for a while. This however would not explain why the final article now includes the link and it didn't before, unless the paragraphs are not singularly checked for the "diff" function, as above, and still needs a temporary caching to have happened (maybe due to partial or corrupted packets of data sent by other user - or a partial timeout in sending?).

Hoping we can discover what happened, let me thank you for your attention :-) --Gianfranco - Wednesday, April 17, 2002

(1) isn't possible, because the database doesn't merge edits, it replaces the whole text. The 3:51 text was in your edit box, there is no other possibility about that whatsoever. That doesn't mean it was there when you read the page _before_ clicking the edit link, though. (2) isn't possible, because only the most recent edit is in the cur table which is queried by the RecentChanges list; an older edit could only show up in the list if the cur table hadn't been updated yet when the query was made (or if 'hide minor edits' is on, in which case it also queries the old table which contains previous revisions). Brion VIBBER, Wednesday, April 17, 2002

The 03:51 text was not in my edit box, and the famous link was not in the previous versions. For some time this 03:51 version wasn't visible. --Gianfranco - Saturday, April 20, 2002

Are you sure? I believe you just didn't notice the added sentence when you were editing. Whether 3:51 was visible in various other places or not, it must have been in your edit box, because every change from 3:43 to 3:51 is also in the 4:20 text that you submitted. Brion VIBBER, Friday, April 19, 2002

Editing new pages

When I follow a link to a new page, instead of being greeted with the edit box, I get a page that appears to already exist, with the text "Describe the new page here.". I know what to do -- click on "Edit this page" -- but this is doubtless quite confusing to newbies. I think that we should either go back to the old system or make the default text explain the new system instead of the old one. -- Toby Bartels 2002/05/15

Correction: This only works incorrectly when following a link to a nonexistent talk page. So it's a namespace bug. -- Toby Bartels, Thursday, May 23, 2002

Redirects creating Protected Pages

I've been transfering user information to user pages using a redirect, but now it creates a protected page and won't let me add any information to it. I'm not sure whether it's the redirect command at fault, or the user: command or the combination, but it's paralysed the transfer of user info out of the mainspace. ~ KJ 17th May 2002

I just redirected User:Chris Markides (while logged in) and User:Stephen Rapley (while not logged in) and had no problem with either. Could you try leaving one of these bad redirects in place for a bit so I can examine it? Brion VIBBER, Friday, May 17, 2002

I think the redirect only work if you leave a space between the "REDIRECT" and the link you're redirecting to. This wasn't the case before, was it? jheijmans

That's the first thing I checked (since that recently came up), but Karen's redirects included a space. They look just fine, and identical to the ones I put in that worked. So I'm a bit stumped for now... Brion VIBBER

Wait, wait... Karen, does the problem look the same as from this redirect page: Devangari alphabet? (That is, it takes you to a page entitled "#REDIRECT [[Devanagari]]" or similar, *with* the "#REDIRECT" and brackets in the title?) The redirect there looks fine, with a space and everything; I suspect an endline character weirdness or something... Possible fix now in CVS. Brion VIBBER, Friday, May 17, 2002

Weirdness after editing a Talk page

After I save an edited Talk page (and only then - not when I look at one), there's this error message on top:

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/wiki-newest/work-http/wikiPage.php on line 215

Warning: Supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /home/wiki-newest/work-http/wikiPage.php on line 219

The page itself looks fine if you leave and then look at it again (I didn't try what might happen if I immediately reloaded the page.) I only noticed this happening as of today. -- Marj Tiefert, Friday, May 17, 2002

This happens whenever you save a new page for the first time; it does seem to be new (within the last few days). I'm not quite sure what's wrong, but it looks to be related to the bit that checks for pages that link to the new page and clears their cache. It's mostly harmless; it just means that links to newly created pages might continue to look like nonexistent links for a while. I'll try to fix it... Brion VIBBER, Friday, May 17, 2002

Got it; coupla one-character typos in the code. Sigh. Brion VIBBER, Monday, May 20, 2002

STATUS: FIXED IN CVS as of 2002-05-20

No minor edits possible

When editing some pages (including this one), I cannot use the "minor edit" checkbox anymore, while it was there when I created a new page. May, 23, 2002, jheijmans

I had the same problem several hours ago -- however before saving I looked up and instead of seeing my user name on the login panel I saw my IP address. But when I saved, the save was logged as being created by my user name. Everything is OK now. --maveric149

This is a symptom of the same long-suffering(-causing) cookie path problem that makes http://www.wikipedia.com/ not appear as logged in. (Users who aren't logged in can't make minor edits, so the check box is missing from the edit page.) A fix for this is in the development version; once it's installed, you can log out and log back in to fix your login cookie. In the meantime, you can manually fix your cookie. (If you're using Netscape or Mozilla this is easy; I don't know about Internet Explorer or Opera or other browsers...) First, close your browser so it doesn't write over your changes. Now, edit the cookies file (cookies, cookies.txt, or some freaky collection of a million files as in IE) and find the cookies for www.wikipedia.com named WikiUserID, WikiLoggedIn, and (if you checked the 'save password' box) WikiUserPassword. There should be a "/wiki/" in the list of cookie goodness for each of these; change it to "/". Save, close, open up your browser again, everything should work.

If you're not brave enough to mess with your cookies, just hit the "preview" button before actually saving; it'll come up with you logged in still, and you can check the minor edit box there. Brion VIBBER, Thursday, May 23, 2002

This isn't much of a solution. Basically, it means that the only times I can use the "minor edit" box are (a) when I'm creating a completely new article and (b) when I do a preview first. In other words, it only appears on the two occasions when I am least likely to want it. user:Deb

Did you skip the part where I explained that the problem is already fixed (for the future) in the development version, and that you can fix it yourself to work properly NOW by editing your cookies? If you're neither patient nor willing to tinker yourself, well I'm very sorry, but there's not much I can do about it. --Brion VIBBER, Monday, May 27, 2002

FWIW, I edited my cookies and the problem is still there. I'll have to take a closer look (at the files on my computer, that is — the programme code is your end). But in the meantime, I'd like to strongly suggest that one always press Preview before pressing Save, no matter how minor the edit — better safe than sorry. Given that, you just need to get into the habit of marking your edit as minor towards the end of the editing process rather than towards the beginning. (Also a good idea, since I've noticed that sometimes minor edits end up not being so minor once I'm through with them!) — Toby Bartels, Tuesday, May 28, 2002

Thank you for your helpful responses, gents. I had understood the "explanation" above to mean that, if one logged off and then logged on again, the problem should be resolved - evidently it meant something else. I also didn't realise that the words, "some freaky collection of a million files" were designed to enable me to find the cookies in order to edit them. Bravery doesn't come into it.

Deb Tues, May 28, 2002

I want to edit it and it answers back

Whoever did this had some skills and nothing better to do with them. I edited "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back". After that, I try to edit it a second time, and instead of the text, I find a smart-ass reply in the editing box. I didn't try to edit it again, I was too pissed off. I don't know if it would do the same think to you, try it out yourselves.

Wednesday, February 11th, 2004