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Empty message 'editnotice-notext' is visible as an edit notice in VisualEditor and mobile apps
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Also reported at enwiki VPT.

Appears to be the same as T265798. Was this introduced by a88084509d77d? This was removed in the suffle:

// Remove empty notices (T265798)
$notices = array_filter( $notices );

I will investigate this week. I intended to preserve the T265798 behavior, but I may have made some mistake. The soonest we can fix this is probably Tuesday, as Monday is a US holiday with no scheduled deployments.

This also impacts the iOS mobile app, and it throws the empty editnotice up “full screen” every time you attempt to edit the page.

(You can of course disable edit notices altogether, as a workaround to prevent it from displaying the empty notices, but at the loss of seeing an actual edit notice displayed automatically)

IMG_7152.png (2×1 px, 144 KB)

I had a look now. This bug was introduced by a88084509d77d, but for a different reason.

The notice it's trying to show you is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki:Editnotice-notext (a message shown when there are no edit notices), which is technically not empty (it has text hidden using CSS unless you have the necessary rights to create edit notices). This feature was previously unimplemented in VisualEditor, and I had missed that when switching VE to use the new implementation (see the review of changes that I did catch in rEVEDa88084509d77: Use edit intro messages and preloaded content from MediaWiki core).

I'll just make it omit this message in VisualEditor (and the mobile apps, which are currently using the VE API). I think that in a perfect world it should be shown, but it's not obvious to me how to do that without annoying everyone with a "fake" edit notice.

(The fix for T265798 is still present, it can be found here now: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/g/mediawiki/core/+/3683671cb9da14dc4854f14c20a078743073cfaa/includes/editpage/IntroMessageList.php#54)

Change 923771 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/923771

matmarex renamed this task from Empty edit notices are visible as blank line in VisualEditor to Empty message 'editnotice-notext' is visible as an edit notice in VisualEditor and mobile apps.May 29 2023, 1:37 AM
matmarex claimed this task.
matmarex moved this task from To Triage to Triaged on the VisualEditor board.
matmarex moved this task from Incoming to Code Review on the Editing-team (Kanban Board) board.

Change 924159 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.41.0-wmf.10] Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/924159

Change 923771 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/923771

Change 924456 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; author: Bartosz Dziewoński):

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.41.0-wmf.11] Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/924456

Change 924159 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.41.0-wmf.10] Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/924159

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-05-30T14:27:57Z] <tgr@deploy1002> Started scap: Backport for [[gerrit:924159|Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps) (T337633)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-05-30T14:29:33Z] <tgr@deploy1002> matmarex and tgr: Backport for [[gerrit:924159|Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps) (T337633)]] synced to the testservers: mwdebug2001.codfw.wmnet, mwdebug2002.codfw.wmnet, mwdebug1002.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug1001.eqiad.wmnet

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-05-30T14:35:59Z] <tgr@deploy1002> Finished scap: Backport for [[gerrit:924159|Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps) (T337633)]] (duration: 08m 01s)

Change 924456 merged by jenkins-bot:

[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@wmf/1.41.0-wmf.11] Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps)

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/924456

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-05-30T15:00:08Z] <tgr@deploy1002> Started scap: Backport for [[gerrit:924160|ve.ui.MWGalleryDialog: Fix showing the search panel (T337638)]], [[gerrit:924456|Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps) (T337633)]], [[gerrit:924458|ve.ui.MWGalleryDialog: Fix showing the search panel (T337638)]]

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-05-30T15:02:04Z] <tgr@deploy1002> tgr and matmarex: Backport for [[gerrit:924160|ve.ui.MWGalleryDialog: Fix showing the search panel (T337638)]], [[gerrit:924456|Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps) (T337633)]], [[gerrit:924458|ve.ui.MWGalleryDialog: Fix showing the search panel (T337638)]] synced to the testservers: mwdebug1002.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug1001.eqiad.wmnet, mwdebug2002.codfw.wmnet, mwdebug2001.codfw.wmnet

Mentioned in SAL (#wikimedia-operations) [2023-05-30T15:08:17Z] <tgr@deploy1002> Finished scap: Backport for [[gerrit:924160|ve.ui.MWGalleryDialog: Fix showing the search panel (T337638)]], [[gerrit:924456|Hide 'editnotice-notext' message in VE (and mobile apps) (T337633)]], [[gerrit:924458|ve.ui.MWGalleryDialog: Fix showing the search panel (T337638)]] (duration: 08m 08s)

We should probably consider some way for the editors to add those links for adding an edit notice without putting them into an actual edit notice. Seems like an easy message to add somewhere.

matmarex added a project: Skipped QA.

Fixed and deployed to Wikimedia projects.

We should probably consider some way for the editors to add those links for adding an edit notice without putting them into an actual edit notice. Seems like an easy message to add somewhere.

I think 'editnotice-notext' might have been intended to be exactly that, it just got lumped in with the real edit notices by accident. Anyway, it'd easy enough to do for the old wikitext editor, but it wouldn't really change anything in practice there, and it'd be a bit trickier for the visual editor (I'd want it to be accessible from the toolbar where the notices are now, but in such a way that it doesn't get confused for a real edit notice, and I'm not sure how to design that without it being annoying). I'm resisting the urge to do something for now :)

It’s just that IIRC they were being put on top of the editing window with some hacks, and that’s probably not ideal. You might be right that editnotice-notext is intended for that message.