1522378 - Erratic bug when creating new paragraph when editing Wikipedia

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: DOM: Editor, defect, P3)

Description

[Mel]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:64.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/64.0

Steps to reproduce:

Trying to create a new paragraph when editing using HTML editor in Wikipedia delivers doesn't work, but as it happens erratically it's very difficult to reproduce. Sometimes, in the middle of an edit session when it's been working fine, it just refuses to create a space and new paragraph as it should when pressing enter.

Actual results:

Pressing enter should start a new paragraph and creating a space line should show a space line when you preview and save.
There is a fuller description in this thread on Wikipedia help page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Help_desk#Bug_when_editing_-_closes_up_spaces - with at least 2 users experiencing it.
Sometimes using <br> helps but sometimes makes it worse because it produces too much space.

Expected results:

Erratic results - sometimes spacing down about 10 lines shows one space, then when you preview again, more or fewer spaces.
I think that I am going to have to use another browser for my Wikipedia editing in future as this is very frustrating!
p.s. Sorry but I cannot easily find what version of Firefox I am running. I have the latest update though.

Comment 1

[Andrew Overholt [:overholt]]

Thanks for the report. To find your Firefox version (on Windows), go to the three-horizontal-line menu (the "hamburger menu") > Help > About Firefox.

Comment 2

[Mel]

Ah, thanks Andrew. I must have been tired and frazzled by the time I reported this, because I had found my way to About Firefox okay, but somehow completely missed seeing "64.0.2 (64 bit)"!

Someone on the Wiki help page has suggested something to try within the Wiki editor (setting one or both of two edit options off), which I will be experimenting with. My initial testing today has shown no sign of the bug, but if it reappears I'll see if I can isolate it to one of those two. It is very likely something within Wikipedia so probably not worth spending a lot of time on it at your end. I'll comment again with any useful update in the future.

Comment 3

[Makoto Kato [:m_kato]]

Mel, could you create test case for this issue?

Comment 4

[Mel]

Hi Makoto

Thanks for your reply to my report.

Firstly, would you please remove my email address from display? I tried to clear it but it is still displaying. (It's not my real or primary address, but I don't want it public, please!)

About the bug. It's very difficult to reproduce because it occurs so erratically, but with another Wikipedia editor's help have narrowed it down to only occurring when using a specific editing script written by a programmer/editor on Wikipedia, called WikEd (not the default Wikipedia editing tool), which I had been using. The other editor who has also been experiencing the problems has now reported it to the one who created WikEd, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cacycle/wikEd#wikEd_bug_report:_blank_lines_deleted. There is a link to the original discussion on the help page too.

I hope that this is helpful, but I suspect that it may be one for the WikEd creator to solve rather than a Bugzilla debugger.

Comment 5

[Makoto Kato [:m_kato]]

(In reply to Mel from comment #4)

Hi Makoto

Thanks for your reply to my report.

Firstly, would you please remove my email address from display? I tried to clear it but it is still displaying. (It's not my real or primary address, but I don't want it public, please!)

Bugzilla's system needs email address, so when logging in buzilla.mozilla.org, email address is shown. So, If not logging in, email address is never shown (comment #3 is Flags: needinfo?(<your name>)). If you don't want that this address isn't public even if logging in, we need to change to other address.

About the bug. It's very difficult to reproduce because it occurs so erratically, but with another Wikipedia editor's help have narrowed it down to only occurring when using a specific editing script written by a programmer/editor on Wikipedia, called WikEd (not the default Wikipedia editing tool), which I had been using. The other editor who has also been experiencing the problems has now reported it to the one who created WikEd, here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Cacycle/wikEd#wikEd_bug_report:_blank_lines_deleted. There is a link to the original discussion on the help page too.

OK, I understand. But we want exactly reproduce step if possible.

Comment 6

[Mel]

Oh, I see, thank you.

That link contains the most accurate description of how and when the bug occurs. I have no further information to add to what has already been described, and the only way I can reproduce it is to start using WikEd (which is an optional editor) and see if it occurs again, randomly.

As mentioned, we think that it may be a bug in the WikEd script and not caused by Firefox. So maybe give it a while and see if the developer on Wikipedia adds a comment there or addresses it?

Comment 7

[Jack Gomez]

Attachment: same problem

Thanks from rioderluco1989.