Forum:RTE problems

I've noticed a lot of problems on the Doctor Who wiki (http://tardis.wikia.com) recently with people using the RTE. I suggested disabling it, and so far everyone who's commented has agreed, but Tangerineduel says the last time he brought it up with Wikia Central, he was told:
 * it makes such a significant impact on the number of new editors, and the number of edits that they make, that we would very much prefer not to. We would need to see a community consensus that all editors want it turned off, and even then it's important to remember that the RTE is most helpful to the new editors who are least likely to participate in such a discussion. We would much rather work with you to solve any remaining bugs so that there is no community desire to turn the editor off.

The problem is that it's mostly new editors who have problems with the RTE, and the experienced editors (most of whom have turned it off) then have to go repair the messes caused by these users.

So, let me list some of the most serious problems here:


 * 1) There seems to be a bug that causes a bunch of newlines to sometimes get added.
 * Typically, you get something like every newline turning into 3, any space between an asterisk or hash and the bulleted text turned into 3 newlines, and any space between a colon and the indented text turned into 3 newlines and some more colons (not always the right number). See this edit for one example.
 * Clearly, no one would do such a thing intentionally (especially on a long page, where it would be horribly tedious), and I'm not even sure it would be possible to do it intentionally from the RTE.
 * A couple times, I've seen this happen and been able to ask the user what they did, and both times they had no idea.
 * Other times, the editors have noticed the problem and tried to edit again to fix the page manually, which still leaves things a mess, and makes it more likely that we won't be able to just undo the change to fix it.


 * 1) There are also cases where people do seem to intentionally add multiple newlines, but apparently it's because WSY is not WYG.
 * This is especially common when people add pictures--they're trying to put a little space before or after the picture, or just prevent the next section from wrapping around it, and they end up adding a lot more space than they intended.
 * See this later edit to the same thread.


 * 1) Top-of-page templates, like the forum header here, show up as a weird little jigsaw piece.
 * New editors have no idea what this is.
 * As a consequence, they often add their text above it, or move it to the end, or even delete it.


 * 1) Instructions given in comments aren't visible in the RTE (unless you know to hover your mouse over the little yellow sticky, which no new editor does).
 * This means that, for example, on talk and forum pages, new editors routinely put their content above lines that say "Please put your content under this line".
 * This also means that new editors don't sign their edits on talk and forums pages.
 * And it means that they do frequently sign their edits on pages that aren't supposed to be signed (such as this page).


 * 1) It's hard to write instructions for more complicated cases that will make sense to both RTE-using and code-using editors.
 * For example, on this page, even if the new editors saw the comment, they wouldn't understand it.
 * How would you explain these instructions to the new editors you're trying to reach?

Many of my examples come from forum or talk pages, rather than the main namespace, and a few of these issues only apply to such pages. But some of them happen on articles as well. And besides, a lot of new editors post in these areas first--they're afraid to edit the article, so they go to the talk page and say, "Hey, would it be OK if I added XYZ to the page somewhere?" If the first reply they get it, "Please sign your posts, and add to the end of the Talk page instead of the top, and..." (or, worse, they somehow find themselves turning an 80-line page into a 200-line mess full of newlines and all indenting and bullets ruined), is that really likely to inspire them to contribute? --Falcotron 06:49, May 25, 2010 (UTC)


 * Well, I obviously screwed up something with the numbered bullets. Maybe I should have used the RTE. :) --Falcotron 06:50, May 25, 2010 (UTC)