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Hey wikiHow! I have a bit of a problem with editing… So I was editing this article for Mario Kart Wii (something about unlocking Baby Luigi), and I was adding some alternate methods to it. But when I saved it, it seemed like I wrote 6 methods instead of 3 (it went from 1-3, and then it duplicated the methods)! It just started happening today… FYI, I use Windows 7, I have a Sony Vaio laptop, and I use Firefox 5…

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Is it a reoccuring problem?

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It’s happened to two articles that I edited…

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Every time I try to edit this featured article: http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Mosquito-Bites-from-Itching , the headers go all skewiffy and shove the methods all over the place and it looks very ugly. So I can’t edit it. You can see my edits in the revision history, thanks.

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@Flickety I’m trying to figure out what happened - if I understand the revision history correctly, the system adds a # sign to the beginning of the first sentence in each section, even though you didn’t intend for it to be a step? @Kirby - Can you provide links please?

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@Krystle : Check out the article ( http://www.wikihow.com/Unlock-Baby-Luigi-on-Mario-Kart-Wii ). Here is a pic of it: http://www.wikihow.com/Image:Method_error_706.PNG It repeats Method 2; I just forgot to edit the bottom part. xD

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@Kirby The article doesn’t look the way it does in the screenshot. It has method 1, 2, 3. Does it still look broken to you? If so, what kind of browser are you using when you look at it?

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I’ve hit this too, http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Calculate-Terminal-Velocity&diff=prev&oldid=6344059 . All I did was change the category from guided editor.

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More issues! The alternate method boxes are not working for me. I spent a lot of time trying to work around the changes but with no luck. I wouldn’t speak up if I could work around them but I can’t it seems… I wish I had the choice to turn them off. Once I discovered I can’t even force advanced editing anymore, it seemed I had no choice but to raise the issues here. Duplication plus of the methods:Here is one example of my problems: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Wasabi . In this article alone I experienced not just duplication but triplication of every alternate method boxes and then I also found that it won’t allow === Heading === for the initial box which begins the entire steps text. Since this is one expected approach, this is hiccup number one. I couldn’t force advance this article. Hopefully that was my error and is not built into the method. No # wanted but it appears anyway: @Krystle , re query above – if I remember rightly on that article, where there is NOT intended to be a # in front of an explanatory intro paragraph before a series of steps under a method, this is no longer available to me as an editing choice. Since this curtails the freedom of properly introducing a series of steps per method, it needs to be permitted again. I could fix if I could advance edit but every time I try, the articles seem to jump back to guided editor. No ability to add photos to alternate method boxes:Working on http://www.wikihow.com/Organize-a-Flash-Mob , I found I could not add photos to the alternate method boxes. I have had to work around this by adding to the first box and then transferring down. That is pretty messy and slowed me right down. Iffy & too distant button for weaving:I’ve noticed this week that it has been touch and go as to whether or not I can add woven links inside the alternate method boxes and even if I can, the box is now so high up the page that it’s more of a chore than already. Advanced editor seems to have gone kaput:I really hope it’s me making this error and that it hasn’t gone. The inability to either force advance edit or to turn off the boxes is making the editing more complicated. Hope all this makes sense and happy to have my errors pointed out so I don’t repeat them. It has been a long week…

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Ok, I’ve filed a bug ( #550 ) for the issue where editing an article causes the subsections to repeat. @Flickety - So sorry this is causing a big headache for you. Please always report this stuff, even if you find a way to work around it. What is a pain for you is an insurmountable obstacle for new contributors and that is not what we want them to face:slight_smile:First things first - what browser are you using, and what is your default editor, guided or advanced? I have mine set as advanced in preferences so that all articles open in advanced editor to begin with - do you have this setting chosen as well?

I’m not sure what you mean - which section header were you trying to make into a subsection? If you could copy/paste or include screenshots it would help me to understand what you mean here…I looked at the page history as well as the wikitext but couldn’t figure it out.

I want to make sure I understand this correctly. You edited the article and wrote __FORCEADV__ and saved. But when you opened it again it refused to open in advanced editor, and would only open in guided editor?

When I look at 4 Ways to Stop Mosquito Bites from Itching - wikiHow I see some subsections have an introductory sentence that have not had the # inserted at the beginning. I opened the article for editing and it went straight to advanced editor (I have that set as my default) and made an edit, but it didn’t seem to trigger any of these issues. I think this ties back to the issue where you cannot seem to be able to open any article in advanced editor? Let me know.

Eek. Will investigate this and file a report. Thank you for this detailed feedback Felicity. I’ll do my best to get all these issues documented and solved!

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Update: The major bug where any edit causes the subsections to repeat has been fixed.

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@Flickety I was able to add an image within an alternate method using advanced editor: http://screencast.com/t/QkAuOpJc Were you trying to do it using guided editor? Also let me know which browser you are using so I can test with it, if I have it:slight_smile: