https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2021/Editing/Allowing_VisualEditor_to_edit_by_section

One of the concerns is that people have become accustomed to the current behaviour (cc @Whatamidoing-WMF), where section edit links take you to that section in edit mode, but leave the rest of the document visible.

On possible approach is to add a button to switch from section editing, back to full page editing. Here is a demo:

https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/40db087476c7c630987aedc2694d6f7e/w/index.php/Ars%C3%A8ne_Wenger?veaction=edit&section=18#Increase_in_worldwide_players

1. I like the button solution @Esanders
2. I would feel more comfortable if we did some kind of test between the solutions to:
   • validate if this is a change that is warranted (although I personally am a fan of the standardization)
   • validate if the button solution works (and if there are edge cases we should think about)

In T221908#6678146, @iamjessklein wrote:

2. I would feel more comfortable if we did some kind of test between the solutions to:
   • validate if this is a change that is warranted (although I personally am a fan of the standardization)

We did a lot of user testing in mobile, from which we learnt:

• the editor loads faster (sometimes much faster)
• users are not surprised they can only edit one section

We’ve also been “testing” the feature in wikitext mode on desktop for ~15-20 years :)

• validate if the button solution works (and if there are edge cases we should think about)

Given this an extra that isn’t available in the other forms of section editing (yet) I think it’s reasonable to experiment in the field.

In T221908#6722309, @Esanders wrote:

• the editor loads faster (sometimes much faster)

A recent example of this:

When loading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_storming_of_the_United_States_Capitol?veaction=edit, my browser spent:

• ~2s download HTML
• ~1s converting DM
• ~6s rendering CE & UI

section editing would cut down most of that 6s, cutting the load time from a frustrating 10s, to a more reasonable 3-5s.

In T221908#6677334, @Esanders wrote:

https://patchdemo.wmflabs.org/wikis/40db087476c7c630987aedc2694d6f7e/w/index.php/Ars%C3%A8ne_Wenger?veaction=edit&section=18#Increase_in_worldwide_players

Not sure where else to comment this, so: the regular wikitext editor renders used references from a section while previewing it, so maybe it is something to replicate here for the convenience of editors. Ignore if this is already done.

Thanks. We do have a "Templates used" dialog in the visual editor, but it won't break the templates down by section. If that is an important feature you can file a separate task. Note also that this task is only about visual mode.

In T221908#7008930, @Esanders wrote:

Thanks. We do have a "Templates used" dialog in the visual editor, but it won't break the templates down by section. If that is an important feature you can file a separate task. Note also that this task is only about visual mode.

Hmm. Maybe I wrote my comment in a confusing way, but I do not understand how the ‘Templates used’ relates to this. Wikitext editor (2010) has this feature (heading says ‘References preview’):

I was saying that it would be beneficial to add this in the section editing for visual editor, too, since this is a convenient way to preview the references from the article. ‘Templates used’ dialog does not render the templates.

Sorry, I misread "references" as "templates"! I think will suggest the same approach though: to file a separate task.