1

If, for example, you click the “Edit” link for a subsection of an article, the entire editor for the “Steps” section is opened. For example, on Sandbox , go to Part 2 and click the “Edit” link. The entire “Steps” section editor is now opened, rather than only Part 2. Very confusing and have been meaning to file this for a while.

Now, do it on the mobile version of the article and the expected behavior occurs - only the Part 2 subsection appears in the editor.

2

Thanks for checking, but this is ‘known’ and something we decided doesn’t need changing (IIRC it was at the time of one of the MW upgrades, several years ago, although I might be misremembering). Those links within the Steps section will always open the whole Steps section at once on desktop. In other words, they’ll always open the == section (including all the === within). Been that way for years now without stopping us all sailing ahead so I think we’ll be ok:slight_smile:

3

@Anna - Any idea why it’s like that on the desktop site? It kinda gets inconvenient when you want to edit a specific part or method and have to find it in all the wikitext.:frowning:

4

I don’t remember the exact specifics but I do remember that it was a conscious decision, weighing up the engineering complications/priorities at the time vs the scope of the benefits (especially since many people seem to hit the Edit links at the top instead and edit the article all at once, rather than editing section by section).

Priorities do change over time, of course, but this still seems like a fairly low impact difference. I’m not really following how it’s more difficult? Seems like you’d be hunting for the exact part in the larger chunk of text anyway - either looking manually or with Ctrl+F, and there are section headers in the wikitext to help orient you as well. Since it’s not step-by-step editing either way (ie you’re always looking through a larger chunk of text), I don’t see a huge difference in viewing and editing one part or all the parts at once. Maybe it depends on how you use editing, though? 

I can keep an ear out for whether this is an issue to a significant number of people, and pass it on to the devs for consideration accordingly (again within the reality that they’ll have to weight up the priorities/engineering considerations/scope of the benefit). So far, I think this’d be the first complaint I’ve heard of it in all these years, so I think and hope it’s not slowing too many folks down:slight_smile:

5

@Anna - Good alternatives. If there’s ever time for the engineers to do so, is it possible this could be an option under the Editing tab of Preferences?:slight_smile:

6

I can certainly note both variations of the suggestion in case there’s a time when we’re looking for projects! I think it’s relatively likely it’ll need to be back-burnered to other more impactful to-dos, but I appreciate the food for thought. You never know: sometimes suggestions like this lead to changes or even act as a jumping off point for new feature ideas down the line:slight_smile: