This is a follow-up to T197581, which introduced an inconsistency: While it is now possible to reach a user's list of contributions from a mobile diff, it is not possible to do so when clicking on a red link to a user page on a e.g. a talk page, except when one opens the link in a new tab.
To replicate:
- visit https://en.m.wikipedia.beta.wmflabs.org/wiki/User_talk:Jdlrobson (or find any other talk page post by a user without a userpage)
- Make sure there's a red link in that page to User:MMiller Test 01
- Click on the red link to the user page of the user MMiller Test 01 (or any other link to a user page which has not yet been created)
- Observe that there is an overlay displayed:
- Clicking on create page leads to the mobile wikitext editor. There, clicking on the cross in the upper left-hand corner to close the editor immediately returns back to the village pump. (Clicking on no thanks just closes the overlay.)
- Now, instead of clicking on the red link, open the link in a new tab (on smartphones usually possible via a "long click"). Again, the editor opens, but thanks to the changes made in T197581, one stays on the user page and can continue to e.g. the user's contributions.
The expected behavior would be to stay on the user page in the first scenario as well. In general, one rarely wants to create a userpage for another user anyway (this is usually against community etiquette), but quite often would like to check their contributions, e.g. to find out what exactly the problem is they ask about or how long an editor has been active. Therefore it might be worth considering to not ever open an editor when someone follows a link to a user page.
Recommended design
We should aim to have the same behavior as we do when navigating to a user-redlink from a diff, i.e. after tapping the redlink the person lands on the read-version of the nonexistent userpage:
diff | empty user page |
tap on username | |
QA steps
- Here it should be possible to reach the user page of the user Filzstift (e.g. to check their past contributions or leave them a talk page message)
- On this talk page there are multiple red links to user pages (IP or registered). It should be possible to follow these URIs and access their contributions from the icons at the top of the page.
Developer notes
I (@Jdlrobson) chatted with @alexhollender today (Sep 17 2018) and we plan to resolve this as follows:
When clicking a red link and before showing the Red link drawer, we will scan the uri and determine whether it is to a user page.
If the redlink is to a user page we should not show the drawer, we will drop action=edit from the URI so the user can navigate to their user page.
We also discussed how this behaviour is also "broken" on desktop (although in desktop with the editor open you can still use tab navigation), so there is argument to be had that this should be reviewed site wide on desktop.
Signoff criteria
- Set up a task for follow up on plan for other namespaces
QA Results
Status | Details |
❌ Deferred to T220114 | T201339#5080279 |