Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Editing/Avoid VisualEditor edits changing only the link text or only the link target

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Avoid VisualEditor edits changing only the link text or only the link target

Example of a VE edit diff where the user tried to correct a year with unintended results

Problem: There is an uncountable amount of VisualEditor edits changing only the link text, not the target, especially dates, like this (it’s far less common the other way round, but it should be accounted for as well).
Who would benefit: Readers by not getting confusing links, editors (mostly bot owners) by not having to fix them.
Proposed solution: I don’t know. It’s a long-standing problem, no ideal solution appeared so far. The main task is to find the solution, not to develop it.
More comments:
Phabricator tickets:
Proposer: Tacsipacsi (talk) 17:49, 11 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

This was touched upon in T55973#2792012, I agree that we could try to catch common errors like this. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 18:37, 15 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

One proposed solution is T56947 (show some kind of warning to users when they change only the text). T55973 itself proposed showing the link text in the edit dialog. That has been implemented, and anecdotally it has been ineffective, although I have not seen hard numbers on this yet. (Unfortunately filtering for these kinds of edits based on a text diff is not easy.) --Tgr (talk) 07:07, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This is a big problem for patrollers because VisualEditor's behavior is so unintuitive that even users with lots of experience fall victim to it, including trusted (autopatrolled) users, in which case patrollers will never see the change. The Hungarian editor community is pretty close to disabling VE over this (which makes it a big problem for outreach/growth as well). --Tgr (talk) 09:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A possible solution - By default, changing the text of a link on visual editor will Automatically delete the link (the text of the link will become normal text). editors will have to Manually recreate a new link. autopatrolled users would be able to cancel this condition in the preferences. Netanel488 (talk) 23:03, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Voting

Support Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 04:46, 17 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Szalax (talk) 08:56, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Eddie891 (talk) 12:35, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Krokofant (talk) 05:55, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Trizek ^{from FR} 10:44, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support β₁₆ - (talk) 11:26, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 13:11, 19 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Novak Watchmen (talk) 01:11, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Vulp here 05:14, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Visual editor lacks many flexibility. It is often less user friendly than text editor. It needs more power and flexibility. RIT RAJARSHI (talk) 19:28, 21 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support DannyS712 (talk) 20:07, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wargo (talk) 23:07, 22 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Vojtěch Veselý (talk) 00:29, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Karthikeyan-Nandhini (talk) 02:56, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Mbrickn (talk) 21:37, 23 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Arne (Amjaabc) (talk) 08:48, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Tgr (talk) 09:23, 25 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support PJTraill (talk) 22:48, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Szalakóta (talk) 08:45, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Vépi (talk) 08:56, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support This was actually improved recently, but needs more work. Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 09:10, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support – Balint36 ^{🚌 bus stop} 09:41, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Samat (talk) 09:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Dvorapa (talk) 13:17, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Merhad77 (talk) 13:59, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Zache (talk) 14:03, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Framawiki (talk) 18:49, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Alensha (talk) 18:58, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Ogodej (talk) 20:28, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Kemenymate (talk) 20:44, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Puskás Zoli (talk) 21:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Szaszicska (talk) 21:30, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Hkoala (talk) 21:36, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Risker (talk) 23:54, 27 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Fauvirt (talk) 18:27, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Netanel488 (talk) 01:22, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support XXLVenom999 (talk) 18:28, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Cymru.lass (talk) 20:31, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wiklol (talk) 21:02, 29 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]