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Visual editor’s link editing is unintuitive for simple links
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Description

Used visual editor for a bit, and found these interface behaviours wildly unintuitive to an average user:

  1. Changing a simple link ([[link]]) in the text changes the text, but not the link, where the more intuitive decision would be to change both when they match ([[link]][[pink]], not [[link]][[link|pink]]).
  2. Changing a simple link target ([[link]]) via link dialog popup changes the link, but not the text, where the more intuitive decision would be to change both when they match unless they stop matching.

I can’t provide any examples yet, but this routinely causes problems for new users when they try to change, for example, dates in articles ([[1920]][[1921]]) and instead change it to something like [[1920|1921]]. I think proposed changes would make the link editing a lot more intuitive for the cases of simple linking and would conform to WYSIWYG way a lot more.

Event Timeline

You may be interested in T55973 which contains a lot of arguments about the cases that break in either direction.

The most-obvious issue introduced if we synchronized the text and link would be edits that pluralize a word, or removing the disambiguation-parenthetical from links that don't need it in context.

I’ve just realised I wrote (2) in an exactly wrong way. Apologies, fixed.

The most-obvious issue introduced if we synchronized the text and link would be edits that pluralize a word, or removing the disambiguation-parenthetical from links that don't need it in context.

That is indeed a problem for (1). I’m just not exactly sure that, aside from experienced editors, people get and recognise that changing the inline text will not change the link target. Especially with the default visual diff mode, where users do not get that they have not edited the link unless they hover at it (see F34472549, apologies for bad cropping).