Community Wishlist Survey 2023/Miscellaneous/Show syntax highlighting on View Source/protected pages

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Show syntax highlighting on View Source/protected pages

Discussion

  • I had a similar idea on WP's idea lab a few years ago: Allow previewing protected pages. SD0001 suggested that it had already been declined by devs on the grounds that it would be confusing to newcomers, but I don't buy that because we can show sufficient warning before they can preview it. Nardog (talk) 07:35, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • Newcomers are a very important user group for us, that we are trying to accommodate as much as possible, so it might very well be that we decide in their favour. I do understand the thought of the wish though, it can be helpful to understand the template code. KSiebert (WMF) (talk) 10:54, 25 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    • Note WikiEditor is already loaded on protected pages where CodeEditor is loaded (example). I imagine it would be a relatively simple flip of a switch. The absence of the "Publish changes" button already communicates the situation quite clearly, and, more to the point, I fail to see how loading of WikiEditor could affect newcomers' ability to understand it. Nardog (talk) 06:29, 26 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]
    Not sure why syntax-highlighted wikitext would be more confusing to new editors than non-syntax-highlighted wikitext. I'd worry about performance implications though - CodeMirror can be quite slow for large pages. --Tgr (talk) 02:23, 1 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's a good proposal. It's probably too late for that, but I'd put it in the Editing section and not in Miscellaneous. --Amir E. Aharoni (talk) 11:58, 22 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Voting