Under Page Settings/Advanced Settings there are options to disable section editing in a page.
This option isn't relevant to 99% of the pages and having it available in VE is harmful:
I think it should either completely removed from the VE, or should be hidden when editing pages that are not on talk pages and not portals (since VE isn't enabled in those namespaces, it effectively the same)
Reason: (use enwiki_p;)
select page_namespace, count(page_namespace) from page_props inner join page on page_id=pp_page where pp_propname='noeditsection' group by page_namespace ;
+----------------+-----------------------+
| page_namespace | count(page_namespace) |
+----------------+-----------------------+
| 0 | 156 |
| 1 | 61040 |
| 2 | 5611 |
| 3 | 89227 |
| 4 | 12402 |
| 5 | 14198 |
| 7 | 26 |
| 8 | 36 |
| 9 | 151 |
| 10 | 2644 |
| 11 | 1569 |
| 12 | 136 |
| 13 | 122 |
| 14 | 14 |
| 15 | 52 |
| 100 | 7262 |
| 101 | 195 |
| 108 | 1 |
| 109 | 1 |
| 118 | 2 |
| 119 | 3 |
| 447 | 4 |
| 828 | 232 |
| 829 | 30 |
+----------------+-----------------------+
The same is true also for nonewsectionlink/newsectionlink magic words:
+----------------+-----------------------+
| page_namespace | count(page_namespace) |
+----------------+-----------------------+
| 0 | 12 |
| 1 | 61062 |
| 2 | 5665 |
| 3 | 87083 |
| 4 | 3549 |
| 5 | 16550 |
| 7 | 26 |
| 9 | 113 |
| 10 | 53 |
| 11 | 1570 |
| 12 | 67 |
| 13 | 122 |
| 15 | 51 |
| 100 | 236 |
| 101 | 172 |
| 118 | 21014 |
| 119 | 6 |
| 447 | 2 |
| 829 | 30 |
+----------------+-----------------------+
No. VisualEditor is intentionally a full-service editor. De-featuring it is fine, but we're not removing the functionality.
I'm sorry James but you probably don't understand the purpose of NOEDITSECTION feature.
Please discuss with someone who do know it (for example @WhatamIdoing ).
A NOEDITSECITON option in the page settings is like a disc format near the start menu - users accidentally enable it and other users don't understand why they can't edit sections.
NOEDITSECTION has a very specific use case, that should be used by "power users".
You are mistaken. I know very well what it does. I was an editor well before we had this feature, and I will be an editor well after we remove this feature from MediaWiki. But until that day, the request to remove it from VisualEditor is an absolute "no".
So please explain how should we handle users who mistakenly press on this button and other users don't understand why did the edit buttons dissappeared? (this already happen too many times...)
As a sysop, should I block those users and call them vandals just because they press this button? and what use case it does serves - creating a new main page using the VE??
VisualEditor is intentionally a full-service editor.
I feel the importance of this sentence was not understood. Since a few months, the goal was established that VisualEditor must be able to do everything action=edit does and in general be an improvement also for experienced editors. (More or less.)
There is probably some high-level mediawiki.org page where the principle is featured prominently and where eranroz's perspective would be most useful.
For what it is worth, the setting is under advanced settings so it is quiet unlikely new editors disable the heading edit links by mistake. Most probably they are playing with option and feel the end result is nicer without the editing links.
The information icon on enwiki states:
You can stop the edit links from appearing next to each section in the unusual case where that is appropriate.
Maybe it can be slightly rephrased on enwiki to discourage its usage on the main namespace.
So, the bug will remain forever?
See T100691#1377356. Can someone link a mediawiki.org page where the high level principle underlying the "decline" is expressed, so that people can understand/comment/challenge the principle if they wish?
The NOEDITSECTION keyword is a feature of MediaWiki itself and VisualEditor just implements the possibility for people to add it instead of having to edit the Wikitext. From my previous comment T100691#1377477:
[..] the setting is under advanced settings so it is quite unlikely new editors disable the heading edit links by mistake.[..]
From there, if one would like to discourage the use of this feature, I would recommend to override the information icon on a per project basis. One can state that the use of that feature is discouraged on the project.
The information icon on enwiki states:
You can stop the edit links from appearing next to each section in the unusual case where that is appropriate.
The corresponding l10n message is visualeditor-dialog-meta-settings-noeditsection-help editable on enwiki at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Visualeditor-dialog-meta-settings-noeditsection-help . Maybe it can be slightly rephrased on enwiki to discourage its use on the main namespace.
As for the original request to remove the NOEDITSECTION feature, the removal request need to be proposed for MediaWiki itself. If it was accepted, VisualEditor will catch up and remove it. I am pretty sure MediaWiki will keep NOEDITSECTION, hence this task is declined.
Hope that clarify and that editing the information message is a good workaround.
As I shows in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T100691#1320853 NOEDITSECTION is not being used in main namespace, though it is cool to have NOEDITSECTION in VE for talk pages...
Yes - unless you convince product owner/devs that it is bug and this should be removed.
I doubt you can find a more convincing argument than the DB query in my first comment that shows that this feature is being used by 156/5000000 pages in enwiki.
Anyway, if you get community consensus in specific project you can disable it by CSS:
.ns-0 .ve-test-page-settings-noeditsection { display: 'none' }
This isn't a nice solution since changes in the VE code may break it, or even worse - you may break the VE design of the page settings.