On the Moodle sandbox demo site (demo.moodle.net – Moodle 2.8.5, Build 20150310), and on a local new Moodle 2.8 install (Moodle 2.8.6 (Build: 20150511) on my end, I'm noticing a problem on the "Edit Role" page. The default description that's supposed to be present for each role isn't actually there – you can see the descriptions on the Roles page, but the description is not present in the editing window on the Edit role page. If you enter and save something here, this will be saved and will display.

Also, with Atto editor as the default, the editing window for the Custom description fills the entire content area, and the label ("Custom description") is missing. Note that the label does re-appear above the editing window as the page size shrinks.

I hope this is helpful. Thanks... Brian

edited: the "Custom description" field does not show the content of the default description for the preset roles (such as "student", "teacher", "manager", etc.), so it is not an error here. Similarly the "Custom name" field does not show the content of the default role name.