In T272543#6813911, @ppelberg wrote:In T272543#6806635, @Tacsipacsi wrote:It’s a pretty big deal: if one doesn’t specify a section title, the new section becomes part of the previous section. Power users may use it purposefully and appropriately (e.g. by subst’ing a template in the body that includes a section title), so it has legitimate use, but otherwise it just messes up the page.
We agree with you in thinking that by implementing soft vs. hard validation, we are increasing the likelihood that people could, unintentionally, publish a topic without a title and for that topic to become a part of the previous section.
If we observe this happening often [i], I think it makes sense to adjust the approach this ticket is implementing, as you've started to describe in T272543#6789217.
Description
Description
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T295509 Don't ask me to put a section heading in the section heading field if I'm typing it in my new section | |||
| Resolved | ppelberg | T334163 New topic tool should not allow adding sections without a header | |||
| Resolved | ppelberg | T274221 [SPIKE] What percentage of new topics are added without a title |
Event Timeline
Comment Actions
Here's a simple query to give you an approximate answer, based on the fact that when adding a topic without a title, we generate no edit summary. (Users can change the summary, but most don't.)
https://quarry.wmcloud.org/query/74706
The numbers vary between wikis. I only checked a few large wikis randomly:
- English Wikipedia: 5%
- Polish Wikipedia: 2%
- German Wikipedia: 2%
- French Wikipedia: 12%
Comment Actions
As described in T334163#8957810, I believe it would be useful to determine *why* people did not add a title, if possible.