Last modified: 2014-02-28 23:52:53 UTC
Consider VisualEditor as the default editing method, and suppose you are a new user arriving at one of the articles currently listed under [[Category:Pages with missing references list]] (or its equivalents in other languages). Somewhere in the page there will be messages such as these: * There are <ref> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist}} template (see the help page). * There are <ref group=$1> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=$1}} template (see the help page). But since your few edits were made using VisuaEditor, you have no idea what are "<ref>", "<ref group=$1>" and "{{reflist|group=$1}}". There are many other messages like that which are exposed to (inexperienced) users (either by MediaWiki core or one of its extensions). They should try to describe the problem avoiding talking about the wiki syntax, which will not make sense if VisualEditor is the only way someone is able to edit. This bug report was inspired by the following feedback: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:Editor_Visual/Comentários?oldid=38180789#fonte.2C_pede_sempre.
I'm not sure this is a VisualEditor-specific bug, but yes, MediaWiki and its extensions' messages make occasional assumptions of the use of wikitext. This is much more acute due to local communities' over-ridden messages, which much more frequently make this mistake.