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"New section" editing page should not submit when user hits Enter in Summary field.
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Description

Author: creidieki+wikibugs

Description:
When a page is accessed with "section=new" on the URL, the user gets a page with
a "subject/headline" field and a text box. Currently, if the user types in a
subject, and then hits Enter, the form submits, and a new section with this
subject and no text is created. I think that this is rarely the desired
behavior, and that user confusion over this may be one of the sources of the
many "incomplete" article requests on [[WP:AFC]], and some of the ones on the
Help Desk and Reference Desk. Could this be changed so that when the user hits
Enter the cursor moves into the next text box?


Version: unspecified
Severity: enhancement
URL: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&action=edit&section=new

Details

Reference
bz4273

Event Timeline

bzimport raised the priority of this task from to Medium.Nov 21 2014, 9:00 PM
bzimport set Reference to bz4273.
bzimport added a subscriber: Unknown Object (MLST).

robchur wrote:

Well, it's not so much a case of what MediaWiki is doing as what browsers do
when handling a key press like enter. IE and Firefox, and other graphical
browsers, for instance, will look for a "default" button - usually the first
submit button in the form - and trigger that. Older or text-based browsers, e.g.
Lynx, have to be told to submit manually.

I suppose it might be an acceptable compromise to raise hell if a user's comment
box is left blank...

creidieki+wikibugs wrote:

You seem to be right. A bit of research told me that this is a known issue with
html forms, with a couple of sites telling me how to get around it with
Javascript and other ickiness. My HTML is very weak; I've asked on Reference
Desk in the hope that someone would post back some crazy oneline solution
involving "change this element to this other type of element that'll work
identically but prevent that behavior".

Short of that panning out, checking whether the comment box is blank might be a
good idea. I can't think offhand of any situation where we want to allow empty
comment boxes.

mdzzz wrote:

Creidiki, this shows everywhere in forms :

  • A "Tab" key moves the cursor to the next field.
  • "Enter" validates the default button.

People get accustomed to this, but some fields may become mandatory for those
who just try and ask a question. This is not a mere bug fix, it is another way
to use forms.
Let us restrict updates to Wikipedia forms to those usually met by newbies or
strangers : Help and Reference desk. Now, is it possible without breaking
established wiki habits ?

> It seems better to design a new special page template (see the search page

for example).
Now, who is OK to do this, and is the priority well defined, I leave this to
others. Also, lets us set the Component box to "Special pages".

robchur wrote:

Simple technical solution; detect if the summary box is blank, and if so, bounce
back with a brief error message.

mdzzz wrote:

When you type "Enter" in the summary page, the text is blank. This is what
people disagree to : Maybe people could give salutations and precisions and sign ?

An eror message could be OK.

robchur wrote:

So have a blank summary or text return to the edit form in "new section" mode?

creidieki+wikibugs wrote:

Definitely for blank text; I *think* it's also the behavior we want for a blank
summary.

The behavior is only unintuitive-for-new-users when they hit Enter after writing
the Summary field; we should prevent a blank textbox. As long as we're checking
for that, we might want to check for blank summary too.

Returning to the form with a brief error message would be great.

lupin.wp wrote:

bounce back on blank text

Here's a little patch. Since there's code to deal with a blank summary already,
I haven't changed the behaviour there. This patch only bounces you back if the
main textbox is empty.

Attached:

lupin.wp wrote:

Patch applied to CVS.

gangleri wrote:

*note*
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Sandbox&oldid=44239494
shows that it is possible to save a "new section" *without* any "Subject/headline:".

If this another bug please open a new request.

best regards reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]