The thing to remember is that the history of a page is the history of the wiki markup for
the page, not the history of the rendered HTML. It would be misleading if edits were shown
in the markup history for an article each time a template or Wikidata item changed because
reverting the markup to that version wouldn't actually revert the change. I think what
curators with specific specialties want is the ability to automatically expand their
watchlist to include all templates and data items that could affect their watched pages.
Then a way to view the merged watchlists from multiple projects would be helpful. There is
room for improvement in global account integration. For example, I just noticed that I
need to set my timezone on Wikipedia and Wikidata independently.
From: g.m.hagedorn(a)gmail.com
Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 15:53:43 +0200
To: wikidata-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikidata-l] Page history and properties
My concern is, that the Wikidata editors, those not with random
editing behavior, but those who are curators/caretakers of specific
pages, experience a disempowerment, because they loose control.
I view the decision to inform about wikidata changes only in the
short-lived recentchanges, but not in the page history, as
problematic. Page editors will now be informed that the page has
changes, but this change is not recorded in the page history, and it
cannot be seen in the version-diffs. This is breaking a lot of
assumptions of trust. Wikipedia can be be collaborative because of
this trust in the versioning system and because of the accessibility
with reasonable, of the version-diffs (transparency).
Some editors will probably leave the Wikipedia project due to the
introduction of Wikidata, no matter how much Wikidata reaches out to
them. I feel that the number is much higher in the present
"disempowerment" implementation, which is why I try to argue here for
making content changes that come from Wikidata and affect Wikipedia
pages transparent on Wikipedia, not only Wikidata.
This discussion is about proposing potential elements and ideas; there
may be much better ideas. I am not convinced by the arguments against
the proposed means: I fear the thinking is a programmers thinking, not
a content editor thinking. Denny, I feel that your proposal that some
html-version archiving somewhere, which is not integrated into the
wikipedia editing workflow, does not take sufficient care of the needs
of the editors, especially the need to be able to use the version
comparison, not just find rendered versions somewhere in isolation.
But neither of us can see into the future. I think Wikidata is a great
achievement as it is, and we all agree that it can be made better by
better integration into existing Wikipedia workflows. Let us focus on
the importance of this and try to find the best means that are
achievable with existing resources.
Gregor
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