Community Wishlist Survey 2021/Editing/Make edits auto-recoverable if the editor's network crashes

Random proposal ►◄ Editing  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Make edits auto-recoverable if the editor's network crashes

• Problem: An WP edit is lost when the editor's network goes down. Saving in-progress work is a feature in VisualEditor and the 2017 wikitext editor, but not the older wikitext editor
• Who would benefit: Users of classic wikitext editor who develop a post off-line.
• Proposed solution: Like GMail, routinely autosave an editor's in-progress work
• More comments: Again, like GMail, create periodic saved-data (a snapshot of work to date) that can easily take over from the lost data of whatever type (message, article text, etc.)
• Phabricator tickets: T75241
• Proposer: BrettA343 (talk) 23:36, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Discussion

• This exists for VisualEditor and the 2017 wikitext editor, as a result of the #7 wish in the 2017 survey. @BrettA343: I'm assuming your wish is to enable this feature for the older wikitext editor? Or were you unaware the feature already existed? MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 22:23, 21 November 2020 (UTC)
  • Is the feature enabled on all wikis? I've only noticed it on en.wiki. Would be cool to have a save button, or to know when a save has been made. Many editors publish (way too) often in fear of losing their changes. Ponor (talk) 03:05, 22 November 2020 (UTC)
    • Yes, this feature is enabled everywhere. Your edits are stashed in local storage almost instantly (every second or so). ESanders (WMF) (talk) 16:42, 24 November 2020 (UTC)

1) I am curious, in which cases/situations the VisualEditor and the 2017 wiki text editor are able to restore the lost sessions? If I close a browser tab with non-saved edits, and restore, my edits are gone. Unlike by the Reply tool (Discussion Tools). What is the difference?

2) Is T75241 ticket about a different topic? If not, is it resolved already? Samat (talk) 15:56, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

3) How this topic is related the Draft extension? Is it already in use for any of these tools? Samat (talk) 17:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Motivation for my questions: request for an auto-save (restore) feature on the local wishlist, and I am not sure how and where to address it here: does it need new development, or only implementation of existing features. Samat (talk) 17:52, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Edits are stored in sessionStorage, which means they should be recovered if you restore the same tab, but not if you reopen the page in a new tab. In order to support that we would need to use localStorage, but that comes with issues around storage limits. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 13:55, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

2) that is the same as this request

3) it isn’t as it stands ESanders (WMF) (talk) 14:02, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

• I've boldly clarified the proposal to be about the classic non-VE wikitext editor. Best, MusikAnimal (WMF) (talk) 16:29, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
• Have been having this problem for a while also. Yes, my edits are stored locally in some cases but in some others it is still able to be lost. The most recent that I remember was some months ago when a user starts editing a page after I started editing it and then they published it before I published mine. My edit was gone completely and I need to start it all over. Often happens by vandals or bots on Wikipedia. It has also happened before when my Internet went down so my edit was not published and when I went back in my browser, it showed the "can't connect" page so my cached edit was lost. RXerself (talk) 00:31, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

• On iOS, LocalStorage is limited. I often lose work when a tab reloads in mobile-editor, VE, NWE, etc. But in the classic editor, I get prompted to resubmit the form and can recover to the last preview. Preview early, preview often. This is one of the major factors that keeps me on the classic editor over the alternatives. Pelagic (talk) 09:54, 18 December 2020 (UTC)

  The classic mobile editor does not have auto save. We use sessionStorage for VE/NWE. I’m surprised that reloaded tabs in iOS are not recovering. I would file a task about that if you can reproduce it. ESanders (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Jax MN (talk) 18:43, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Definitely supporting that feature. I had an issue once during editing and I had to refresh the page which made me lose my precious time that I spent on editing in my own wiki. That feature would also be beneficial to Wikipedia users. MarioSuperstar77 (talk) 18:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support আফতাবুজ্জামান (talk) 19:05, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Also, please dont disable the save button in visual editor for network failures during save. Its yust stupid neding to add a dummy space somewhere yust to be able to save the edit. If you realy want to do that, maybe keep track of how often the current edit failed to save, and only do that for more permanent failures Victor Schmidt (talk) 19:59, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Sure. I had countless minor edits gone due to crashes but there's once I am really angry as I had almost an 丙级 (en:C Class) article gone at the moment the network crash, I spent almost 4 hours on it. Some recovery tool will be good. I had also several near misses too, thankfully my cache is still there. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 20:03, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Yes! Please! and although I know this suggestion is "different", but edits can maybe identified by some sort of session (like an etherpad session) where also multiple editors can work when invited. this might be too much changes to the way edits are stored in the database and the such; but it would be great if that would be the trajectory of this change. Uwe a (talk) 20:28, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Even now, edits will sometimes, but only sometimes recover. There should be a draft version saved somewhere where it can be easily accessed and continued working on. It doesn't have to be public, it can be saved on user's computer or on WMF servers. I've lost hours of edits because of browser tab crashes and network outages. Ponor (talk) 22:00, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Very useful idea, the edit page often crashes (automatic reset) on tablet after a long time without writing. Tubamirum (talk) 22:33, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support There are similar user scripts, but native should be. It may need to be manually enabled or warned for privacy and validity. YFdyh000 (talk) 23:42, 8 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Imetsia (talk) 00:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 00:49, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Eric0892 (talk) 01:13, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support PianistHere (talk) 01:29, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support BugWarp (talk) 01:45, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Xinbenlv (talk) 05:53, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support it has often happened to me that I have lost a lot of what I have written, so this would be a very nice feature. Kogge (talk) 08:35, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support YasuakiH (talk) 10:17, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Thomas Kinz (talk) 10:35, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Oui Mylenos (talk) 12:09, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Петър Петров (talk) 18:02, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support — putnik 18:59, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support dwf² (talk) 22:54, 9 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support - Darwin ^Ahoy! 01:53, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support badly needed Mhare (talk) 17:39, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Srđan (talk) 21:56, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support RSLitman (talk) 02:20, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Adamoszkovics (talk) 10:17, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support ArnabSaha (talk) 15:12, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Szalax (talk) 16:50, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Noel baran (talk) 16:51, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support I've installed a browser plug-in specifically because of the days of work I've lost due to not having this. I use the 2010 editor with syntax highlighting. czar 17:07, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Ahecht (TALK
  PAGE) 18:42, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support. Meiræ 21:50, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Vince789 (talk) 22:09, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support As others have mentioned, the current feature does not always work. DGG (talk) 01:11, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support It will benefit editors using VPN Jingkaimori (talk) 08:52, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Francois-Pier (talk) 10:50, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support ~Cybularny ^Speak? 11:22, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Yiyi (talk) 19:23, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support LM150 (talk) 22:15, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Emperork 🐋🐰 00:18, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 02:39, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support DMySon (talk) 12:13, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 17:10, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support 4nn1l2 (talk) 17:19, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Cesc97 (talk) 19:30, 13 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Tgr (talk) 08:37, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Yes: i have lost many changes, several times...! RavBol (talk) 21:31, 14 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Oh yes, oh yes. I've lost many entire articles because of this problem, despite using various browser add-ons that attempt to back up the contents of form fields (the lack of a specific identifier for a specific instance of the main editing window generally defeats these things, unless you strictly work on one page at a time).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  06:52, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support RanuKanu (talk) 09:10, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Edits are still not always restored after some types of crashes in WE2010 (e.g. after ERR_CACHE_MISS). — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 13:06, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Thanks, EDG 543 (message me) 15:48, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support SeGiba (talk) 18:17, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Vacant0 (talk) 18:39, 15 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support This is a long overdue functionality. Vanisaac (talk) 02:07, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Wolfmartyn (talk) 14:20, 16 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Sultec (talk) 11:19, 17 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Grüße vom Sänger ♫^(Reden) 22:08, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Neon Richards (talk) 23:09, 18 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Iva (talk) 18:22, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Anjen01 (talk) 20:47, 20 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support Ahmad^talk 03:44, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support —2d37 (talk) 10:24, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
•  Support David1010 (talk) 13:08, 21 December 2020 (UTC)