Changing links is unintuitive -- user changes link text, but that dosen't change link target --see also this diff https://et.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Joel_Luhamets&diff=3899205&oldid=3861224

• Bug 57506 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

I am a bit of a VE ambassador in the Hebrew Wikipedia and an experienced user asked me about this today. I know there are over a thousand other bugs and I don't mean to nudge, but this keeps coming up and I am curious whether this is considered as a needed feature on a product design level.

In T56947#1266454, @Whatamidoing-WMF wrote:

Okay, that "better" method is live, and we still have this problem.

We need people (especially experienced editors) to be warned that this is happening. When they see [[2010]], and they change the visible "2010" part to say "2015", they expect the result to be [[2015]], not [[2010|2015]].

Solutions could be a soft warning, like asking "Do you want to change the destination link to match?", but sirens and flashing lights and a blinking banner that says something like "DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! IT LOOKS ALL RIGHT ON YOUR SCREEN, BUT THE ACTUAL LINK IS STILL SECRETLY GOING TO THE ORIGINAL PAGE!!" would be good, too.

imo, solution should not be "soft warning". solution should be something like
"internal links are not directly editable on page. when editor tries to edit an internal link, popup the "link" tool instead".

peace.

@Whatamidoing-WMF, to what extent do we still have this problem? Now, anytime your cursor is within a link range, you get a big popup showing the target, along with a helpful picture in many cases; I'm not sure how much more visible it's possible to make the target without making it severely distracting.

At any rate, if it still is a major problem and we decide it needs to be addressed, I feel strongly that a more fundamental design change, not a reminder popup, would be the right solution. When a user type <ref>, for example, we don't bring up a comment saying: "Did you mean to add a reference?". We just pop up the citation dialog.

I may be missing something, but to me it's pretty obvious that changing the blue text "2010", which happens to point to [[2010]], to "2015" must change the link target to [[2015]].

In T56947#1294891, @Amire80 wrote:

I may be missing something, but to me it's pretty obvious that changing the blue text "2010", which happens to point to [[2010]], to "2015" must change the link target to [[2015]].

@Amire80, are you suggesting that when a link has the same text and target (e.g. [[2010]]), changing the text should automatically change the target? Consider that this would make it impossible to change, for example, [[Impressionism]] to [[Impressionism|Impressionist]].

Another pretty common mistake I find is people modifying [[Wikipedia]] to [[Wikipedia|Wiki]]pedia (probably a drag and drop problem).
Sometimes I see also [[Wikipedia|wikipedia]] or [[wikipedia|Wikipedia]] (VE seems to ignore first letter is case insensitive).
Finally I seldom (let's say less than 20 occurrences per month) find [[Wikipedia|Wikipedia]], still wrong but easy to fix via bot.

In T56947#1294934, @Neil_P._Quinn_WMF wrote:

In T56947#1294891, @Amire80 wrote:

I may be missing something, but to me it's pretty obvious that changing the blue text "2010", which happens to point to [[2010]], to "2015" must change the link target to [[2015]].

@Amire80, are you suggesting that when a link has the same text and target (e.g. [[2010]]), changing the text should automatically change the target? Consider that this would make it impossible to change, for example, [[Impressionism]] to [[Impressionism|Impressionist]].

It won't be impossible if the inspector is shown, as it already is. An editor who really wants to change the text, but leave the target, can use the inspector to change it.

What I'm saying is that common sense tells me that when when the text and the target are the same and the text is changed, the target should be changed by default automatically. It makes little sense to alert the user that the target should be changed, because it's likely that that's what the user wants anyway, and double work should be avoided. It there's any alert, then it should be about the opposite: that maybe the user wants to keep the target.

@NicoV: Isn't there an edit filter on the French Wikipedia that would show every time this happens?

@Whatamidoing-WMF
Only for links to years which are easy to detect by a filter and (almost ?) always an error
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sp%C3%A9cial:Filtre_antiabus/241

+1 to that "better" method is live, and we still have this problem.

Maybe whenever someone changes the link text which initially was the same as the link target, and the new link text is the name of an existing article, show a small warning in some easy-to-notice color in the link widget saying "[click here] to update the link target as well"?

@Whatamidoing-WMF
In addition to the abuse filter that was put in place last year, I've also recently run a bot on a dump from frwiki to find the incorrect links to pages related to years like [[2000|2015]] or [[2000 en musique|2015]].
Result is at https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projet:Correction_syntaxique/Analyse_526

Analysis on February dump found more than 6.000 articles with this kind of problem (and it's only for years related links, we are probably missing the majority of incorrect links)

I've then run a bot to add a warning after each problematic link with a template
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod%C3%A8le:Lien_%C3%A0_corriger
It displays a warning message and puts the article in a tracking category
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat%C3%A9gorie:Article_avec_un_lien_%C3%A0_corriger

It helped reduce the number of articles with this problem to about 5.400 articles

This shows that this problem is far from being anedoctic (and I don't know how to evaluate how many articles have the same problem, but not for links related to years)

(Just a quick comment about the query linked above:
it includes links to pages which are not years and not added by mistake;
it includes pages where the visual editor was never used, and the mistake is almost certainly a typo;
it includes pages where the visual editor was never used, and the editor seems to have made a deliberate choice about the link target.
There may be more, I'm not going to dig deeper though.)

@Elitre
Yes.

For the 1st and 3rd, I know, but there are only a few articles in these cases (5 of them exactly in total). And they appear at the beginning of the list, because they are recognized as special and my bot didn't flag them with {{Lien à corriger}}... So none of them appear in the dedicated category "Article avec un lien à corriger", and are not counted in the "more than 6.000 articles"

For the 2nd, I never said that all errors were due to VE, but most of them are. We are still talking about thousands of VE mistakes

On frwiki, the problem appeared in the following pages between the February and March dump, I haven't checked what is the proportion of VE edits.
Problems with only [[1990|2000]] are not listed here but can be found with the abuse filter
https://fr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sp%C3%A9cial:Journal_du_filtre_antiabus&wpSearchFilter=241

• [[3 Mustaphas 3]]: <nowiki>[[1990 en musique|1986]]</nowiki>
• [[Alexandra Lacrabère]]: <nowiki>[[2016 en handball|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Alexondra Lee]]: <nowiki>[[2012 au cinéma|1998]]</nowiki>
• [[Anaïs Delva]]: <nowiki>[[2014 à la télévision|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Andra Akers]]: <nowiki>[[1978 à la télévision|1979]]</nowiki>
• [[Andy Samberg]]: <nowiki>[[2016 au cinéma|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[Annapolis]]: <nowiki>[[2010 aux États-Unis|2000]]</nowiki>
• [[Anne-Violaine Brisou]]: <nowiki>[[2010 en sports équestres|2009]]</nowiki>
• [[Arthur Brown (musicien)]]: <nowiki>[[1992 en musique|1993]]</nowiki>
• [[Baudouin Taslé d'Héliand]]: <nowiki>[[2011|2016]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011|2015]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011|2013]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011|2012]]</nowiki>
• [[Billy Talent]]: <nowiki>[[2001 en musique|1999]]</nowiki>
• [[Boris Tokarev (acteur)]]: <nowiki>[[1967 au cinéma|1976]]</nowiki>
• [[Bruno Léandri]]: <nowiki>[[2014|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Carlos Edwards]]: <nowiki>[[2008 en football|2011]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2014 en football|2011]]</nowiki>
• [[Cesare Danova]]: <nowiki>[[1980 à la télévision|1981]]</nowiki>
• [[Chair de poule (film)]]: <nowiki>[[2015 au cinéma|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Charles Chaynes]]: <nowiki>[[1995 en musique|1958]]</nowiki>
• [[Charlie Rowe]]: <nowiki>[[2006 à la télévision|200]]</nowiki>
• [[Claude Mann]]: <nowiki>[[2014 au théâtre|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Claude Scasso]]: <nowiki>[[2015 à la télévision|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Claudio Lemmi]]: <nowiki>[[2007 au théâtre|2008]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2006 au théâtre|2007]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011 au théâtre|2012]]</nowiki>
• [[Club Atlético San Lorenzo de Almagro]]: <nowiki>[[2016 en football|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Construction navale]]: <nowiki>[[1631|1931]]</nowiki>
• [[Coupe de Tunisie de football (FFF)]]: <nowiki>[[1921 en sport|1922]]</nowiki>
• [[Courrier international]]: <nowiki>[[2014|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Croc-Blanc]]: <nowiki>[[1992 au cinéma|1991]]</nowiki>
• [[David Zucker]]: <nowiki>[[1993 au cinéma|1983]]</nowiki>
• [[Dominika Minicz]]: <nowiki>[[2001 en sport|2003]]</nowiki>
• [[Drowning Pool]]: <nowiki>[[2013 en musique|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Du Caurroy]]: <nowiki>[[1750|1850]]</nowiki>
• [[Dunkerque Handball Grand Littoral]]: <nowiki>[[1992 en handball|1978]]</nowiki>
• [[Déborah Heissler]]: <nowiki>[[2005 en littérature|2004]]</nowiki>
• [[En dépit des étoiles]]: <nowiki>[[2016 en littérature|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[Ermin Šiljak]]: <nowiki>[[1999 en football|1998]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2000 en football|2001]]</nowiki>
• [[François Guérin (réalisateur)]]: <nowiki>[[2011 au cinéma|2000]]</nowiki>
• [[Frédéric Gaillard]]: <nowiki>[[2006 en football|2008]]</nowiki>
• [[Fury Records]]: <nowiki>[[1957 en musique|1987]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[1957 en musique|1987]]</nowiki>
• [[Fédération camerounaise de football]]: <nowiki>[[2012|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[Gaëtan Vassart]]: <nowiki>[[2015 au théâtre|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Georges Beuret]]: <nowiki>[[1800|1803]]</nowiki>
• [[Gianluigi Buffon]]: <nowiki>[[1987 en football|1997]]</nowiki>
• [[Grand Corps Malade]]: <nowiki>[[2014 en littérature|2012]]</nowiki>
• [[Guerre FISA-FOCA]]: <nowiki>[[1978 en sport automobile|1979]]</nowiki>
• [[Heidi]]: <nowiki>[[1937 au cinéma|1973]]</nowiki>
• [[Hervé Jolly]]: <nowiki>[[1990 au cinéma|1991]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[1991 au cinéma|1990]]</nowiki>
• [[Hot Rod (rappeur)]]: <nowiki>[[2010 en musique|2011]]</nowiki>
• [[Houari Ferhani]]: <nowiki>[[2013 en football|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Hugo Moulinier]]: <nowiki>[[2008 en sport|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[Ion Ansotegui]]: <nowiki>[[2003 en football|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Ismaël Bangoura]]: <nowiki>[[2013 en football|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Jaime Penedo]]: <nowiki>[[2005 en football|2006]]</nowiki>
• [[James LeGros]]: <nowiki>[[2015 au cinéma|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Jamie Lee Curtis]]: <nowiki>[[1983 au cinéma|1984]]</nowiki>
• [[Jardin botanique de Liège]]: <nowiki>[[2010|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Jason Bard]]: <nowiki>[[1939 en bande dessinée|1969]]</nowiki>
• [[Jean Arp]]: <nowiki>[[2005|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Jean Sagols]]: <nowiki>[[1988 à la télévision|1989]]</nowiki>
• [[Jean-Paul Daoust]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en littérature|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Joe Stone]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[John Kenneth Galbraith]]: <nowiki>[[1979 en littérature|1980]]</nowiki>
• [[Jon Abrahams]]: <nowiki>[[2004 au cinéma|2005]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2007 au cinéma|2009]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2008 au cinéma|2009]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2013 au cinéma|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Jovan Ćurčić]]: <nowiki>[[1995 en football|1976]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[1996 en football|1977]]</nowiki>
• [[Jérôme L'Hotsky]]: <nowiki>[[2013 au cinéma|2012]]</nowiki>
• [[Kaamelott]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en bande dessinée|2017]]</nowiki>
• [[Kaisa Alanko]]: <nowiki>[[2013 en sport|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Katé-Mé]]: <nowiki>[[1995 en musique|1996]]</nowiki>
• [[Khalid Karami]]: <nowiki>[[2002 en football|2004]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011 en football|2005]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2001 en football|2005]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2012 en football|2011]]</nowiki>
• [[Kora Jazz Band]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Krawatencross]]: <nowiki>[[2004 en cyclisme|2016]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2004 en cyclisme|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[L'Amour des trois oranges (opéra)]]: <nowiki>[[1950 en musique classique|1961]]</nowiki>
• [[La Garçonnière (film, 1960)]]: <nowiki>[[1995 en littérature|1996]]</nowiki>
• [[La Guerre de Caliban]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en littérature|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Lamine Ndao]]: <nowiki>[[2011 en football|2013]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011 en football|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[Laurent Bouhnik]]: <nowiki>[[1999 au cinéma|1998]]</nowiki>
• [[Laurent Courtiaud]]: <nowiki>[[2010 au cinéma|2011]]</nowiki>
• [[Liste des présidents de la République d'Angola]]: <nowiki>[[1992|1979]]</nowiki>
• [[Lorie Pester]]: <nowiki>[[2005 au cinéma|2004]]</nowiki>
• [[Luke Grimes]]: <nowiki>[[2018 au cinéma|2017]]</nowiki>
• [[Léon Cordes]]: <nowiki>[[1969|1974]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[1977|1974]]</nowiki>
• [[M. Chapoutier]]: <nowiki>[[1879|1808]]</nowiki>
• [[Malika Wagner]]: <nowiki>[[2010 en littérature|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Marc Renard]]: <nowiki>[[2008 en littérature|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Marcilio]]: <nowiki>[[2014 en sport|2042]]</nowiki>
• [[Marco Motta]]: <nowiki>[[2016 en football|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Marilyne Canto]]: <nowiki>[[1977 au cinéma|1978]]</nowiki>
• [[Meaghan Rath]]: <nowiki>[[2015 à la télévision|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Mickey 3D]]: <nowiki>[[1999 en musique|1998]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2006]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2009]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2010]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2010]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Mini-Star]]: <nowiki>[[1982 en musique|1983]]</nowiki>
• [[NGC 271]]: <nowiki>[[1798|1785]]</nowiki>
• [[Nicky Jam]]: <nowiki>[[2015|2014]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Néstor Ortigoza]]: <nowiki>[[2011 en football|2010]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2011 en football|2012]]</nowiki>
• [[Pascal Brissy]]: <nowiki>[[2003 en littérature|2001]]</nowiki>
• [[Patrick Béthune]]: <nowiki>[[2002 au cinéma|2009]]</nowiki>
• [[Patrick Timsit]]: <nowiki>[[2016|2017]]</nowiki>
• [[Paul Barge (1941- )]]: <nowiki>[[1970 à la télévision|1980]]</nowiki>
• [[Petr Zelenka]]: <nowiki>[[2005 au cinéma|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Peugeot 305]]: <nowiki>[[1989|1990]]</nowiki>
• [[Pierre Douglas]]: <nowiki>[[1979 au cinéma|1975]]</nowiki>
• [[Princes et Princesses]]: <nowiki>[[1999 au cinéma|2000]]</nowiki>
• [[Raouf Benguit]]: <nowiki>[[2008 en football|2013]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2015 en football|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Raphaël Didjaman]]: <nowiki>[[2012|2015]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2012|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Raymond Ochoa]]: <nowiki>[[2013 au cinéma|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Reem Kherici]]: <nowiki>[[2014 au cinéma|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Rencontres d'Arles]]: <nowiki>[[1985 en photographie|1982]]</nowiki>
• [[Rick Hoffman]]: <nowiki>[[2010 à la télévision|2000]]</nowiki>
• [[Rihanna]]: <nowiki>[[2005 en musique|2004]]</nowiki>
• [[Robert Walser (écrivain)]]: <nowiki>[[1916 en littérature|1917]]</nowiki>
• [[Rocky Balboa (film)]]: <nowiki>[[2014 au cinéma|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Romain Dumas]]: <nowiki>[[2014 en sport|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Santigold]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en musique|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Slobodan Rajković]]: <nowiki>[[2005 en football|2006]]</nowiki>
• [[Srđan Ristić]]: <nowiki>[[2001 en sport|2006]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2008 en sport|2009]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2010 en sport|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Swamp Thing]]: <nowiki>[[2013 en bande dessinée|2014]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2013 en bande dessinée|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Sylvain Marchal]]: <nowiki>[[2015 en football|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[Taken (série télévisée)]]: <nowiki>[[2007 au cinéma|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Tallac Records]]: <nowiki>[[2012 en musique|2135]]</nowiki>
• [[Thierry Westermeyer]]: <nowiki>[[2004 en musique|2001]]</nowiki>
• [[Umberto Eco]]: <nowiki>[[2000 en littérature|1988]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2004 en littérature|2009]]</nowiki>
• [[Under Two Flags]]: <nowiki>[[1867 en littérature|1897]]</nowiki>
• [[Université de La Rochelle]]: <nowiki>[[2008|2016]]</nowiki>
• [[VfL Wolfsbourg]]: <nowiki>[[2005 en football|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Villa La Reine Jeanne]]: <nowiki>[[1928|1933]]</nowiki>
• [[Villiers-Saint-Georges]]: <nowiki>[[2001 en France|2008]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2008 en France|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Vladimir Venguerov]]: <nowiki>[[1954 au cinéma|1945]]</nowiki>
• [[William Séry]]: <nowiki>[[2013 en football|2014]]</nowiki>
• [[Yann Arthus-Bertrand]]: <nowiki>[[2012 en littérature|2015]]</nowiki>, <nowiki>[[2012 en littérature|2015]]</nowiki>
• [[Yuma (Arizona)]]: <nowiki>[[2008|2010]]</nowiki>
• [[Yusef Lateef]]: <nowiki>[[2005|1989]]</nowiki>
• [[Zakaria Haddouche]]: <nowiki>[[2011 en football|2013]]</nowiki>
• [[Álvaro Magalhães]]: <nowiki>[[1980 en football|1981]]</nowiki>
• [[Éditions À la carte]]: <nowiki>[[2012 en Suisse|2016]]</nowiki>

T55973#2792012 may interest some of the followers of that task.

Relevant Community Wishlist entry: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2019/Editing/Avoid_VisualEditor_edits_changing_only_the_link_text_or_only_the_link_target

And 2021: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Wishlist_Survey_2021/Editing/Unintentional_false_links_in_VE

Since this was last discussed we added the label editing field to mobile VE.

I think bringing that interface over to desktop would make these mistakes much less common as whenever you edit the link target, the link label is shown in an editable field right next to it.

By removing the existing edit label button that just puts the cursor into the surface, we would also push label editors to the same interface. Complex annotated labels could still be edited in the surface.

The volume in the above mentioned edit filter (T56947#2098243) would be a good metric for success. It might be useful to have it on more high volume wikis.

In T56947#6654173, @Esanders wrote:

Since this was last discussed we added the label editing field to mobile VE.

I think bringing that interface over to desktop would make these mistakes much less common as whenever you edit the link target, the link label is shown in an editable field right next to it.

By removing the existing edit label button that just puts the cursor into the surface, we would also push label editors to the same interface. Complex annotated labels could still be edited in the surface.

I think that would be an improvement for experienced users as well, the current desktop approach for changing the label doesn't work that well. (This is worse for external links, where you end up with an uneditable [1] that you cannot change at all without involving the mouse, but normal links have some annoying mechanics as well.)

In T56947#6654187, @Esanders wrote:

The volume in the above mentioned edit filter (T56947#2098243) would be a good metric for success. It might be useful to have it on more high volume wikis.

Note that the filter only catches changes to dates (which is a good way to avoid false positives, but it avoids the vast majority of true positives too). So it's a good way of measuring whether problematic edits become less frequent, but not a good way of measuring how frequent they are, in an absolute sense.

In T56947#6657213, @Tgr wrote:

In T56947#6654187, @Esanders wrote:

The volume in the above mentioned edit filter (T56947#2098243) would be a good metric for success. It might be useful to have it on more high volume wikis.

Note that the filter only catches changes to dates (which is a good way to avoid false positives, but it avoids the vast majority of true positives too). So it's a good way of measuring whether problematic edits become less frequent, but not a good way of measuring how frequent they are, in an absolute sense.

In addition to the abuse filter, I also generate twice a month a dump analysis which gets a bit more than the filter (same as in my post above) :

• On enWP
• On frWP