When using the option printable=yes, "UI stuff" like editsection links are hidden via skins/common/wikiprintable.css:

/* Hide ugly UI stuff */
#quickbar, #topbar, #footer, #siteNotice,
.editsection, .toctoggle {

display: none;

}

This means that they are not displayed - but they are still present. If a user tries to copy MediaWiki content to his favorite word processor or text editor, the hidden stuff gets visible. I think that happens quite often, for example when users don't want to print a whole Wikipedia article, but just some specific sections. (Of course you can do funny jokes with a print-out copy that has edit-links on it ("hey, strange, this edit link does not work, the page must be semi-protected or something..."), but doesn't really have a use).

I don't know whether it's the web browser's job to fix this, or MediaWiki's job, but I think it should be fixed.

Version: unspecified
Severity: minor