Wikipedia:Don't use the VisualEditor
 | This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
 | This page in a nutshell: Be careful when you are using the VisualEditor, as it can sometimes create problematic changes to wiki syntax that go beyond purely cosmetic changes. |
 | This page is aimed more at experienced users who have yet to switch to source editing. New users will still find the VisualEditor quite useful. |
The VisualEditor is a great way for new contributors to dive into editing. It allows for new editors to easily make minor changes to articles.
However, for editors who regularly edit Wikipedia, or who want to make significant or complex changes, the VisualEditor comes with serious limitations. Most frequent editors should use the source editor for most edits, using the VisualEditor only for minor or specific kinds of changes.
Differences between the VisualEditor and the source editor
The VisualEditor is a bit like Microsoft Word, or a bit like using Wix or GoDaddy to build a website. Just as these tools are great for casual editors, the functionality is limited and often poor for more advanced users. Using the source editor to edit the wikitext markup language on a page provides far more power and control than WYSIWYG editors.
Some problems with the VisualEditor include:
- it can misalign comments in templates,
- it can mess up tables constructed in a specific manner, and
- it can change spacing in headers without the editor making the change
- it sometimes, for unknown reasons, adds extraneous numbers to reference names (see T375306)
- it has problems with copying and pasting ISBNs and other identifiers (see T174303 and T162291)
- it sometimes deletes HTML comments (see T247498)
Problems documented with the VisualEditor
 | This project page or section is in a state of significant expansion or restructuring. You are welcome to assist in its construction by editing it as well. If this project page has not been edited in several days, please remove this template. If you are the editor who added this template and you are actively editing, please be sure to replace this template with {{in use}} during the active editing session. Click on the link for template parameters to use.
This page was last edited by Jonesey95 (talk | contribs) 3 months ago. (Update timer) |
- Messing with line breaks after multiline parameters and comments [1]