(In reply to comment #34)
> I can't believe that section editing is marked as a "lowest priority"
> "enhancement"!

"Enhancement" means "the software doesn't do this, and isn't as-written meant to do this"; it's not a judgement on whether it should.

"Lowest priority" means "the core developers of this are not intending to work on this issue any time soon"; bugs are always open to other developers coming and working on them, which frequently happens.

"Lowest" is a very clear way of me marking the bug as something that can be taken up without fear of duplication of work by a developer new to the code. (This is known as avoiding "cookie licking".)

> This is incredibly important to me.

I appreciate that it is important to some editors, but I have to balance all requested features, changes and bugs with VisualEditor against one another, and in my judgement this is, relatively, an edge case.

> The way it's currently set up wastes bandwidth and slows load time relative
> to the old editor. Both of these are important when making a quick-fix edit.

I agree with that; I recommend using the wikitext editor for exactly these use cases by power users if they prefer.

> Hardly "marginal utility". 

That specifically refers to finding a solution which you don't want.

A simpler solution - involving having the entire document available, but just not editable except for the section the user asked for - is do-able, but in that case, the benefits you're looking for (low bandwidth, fast loading time, low load on local computers) would not be present; hence, marginal utility.

Solving what you're actually asking for (a form of VisualEditor/Parsoid that loaded and edited only one section at a time) would be a mammoth piece of work, albeit with some usefuless as you describe.

> James, please try regular editing on a slow connection if you haven't done
> this before, I'm pretty sure you'll end up editing the section source.

I've edited Wikipedia (and other wikis) since 2001, including over heroically-terrible connexions through the years; I am very aware of the impact that our current site has on low-bandwidth users, even without VisualEditor, but I cannot justify spending donor funds to that extent when there are more pressing demands on the resources of the VisualEditor team.

> I'm quite supportive of visual editor in general, but if this is not going
> to be fixed, I may have to turn back.

I'm sorry that that is the case, and hope that it does not come to that. Sorry if my explanation here is insufficient.