We approached Wikipedia in 2012-2013 about using the extension, but the technical
evaluation led to the decision not to deploy [1], even though the RFC response was
positive [2]. In response to this, we totally rewrote the extension and released version
2.0 [3] last month. The new extension was also thoroughly tested for performance impact.
A technical report [4] describes our design choices, testing results, and challenges with
reconstructing pages.
We’ve also written about the functionality that Memento can bring to Wikipedia [5], and
demonstrated it in use at WikiConference USA 2014 [6] [7].
Currently, for Memento users, we have a proxy that simulates Memento compliance for
Wikipedia. A demonstration is here [8]. It is not nearly as powerful as the extension.
It cannot render old templates, old images, but only redirects to the oldid page. It also
cannot provide metadata for use by robots. We had to build exceptions into the Chrome
Extension to deal with this [9].
We’ve expended a lot of effort to bring web time travel to the greater web, paying special
attention to MediaWiki/Wikipedia. It would be nice if it could be seriously considered
for cases where the functionality it provides is required.
You mentioned that there are many users who wish to see the true earlier state of content.
We’re looking for support from the community to make Memento in Wikipedia a reality.
Do you know which others would be interested?
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Memento
[2]
https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34778
[3]
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Memento
[4]
http://arxiv.org/abs/1406.3876
[5]
http://www.mementoweb.org/wikipedia/
[6]
http://www.slideshare.net/shawnmjones/reconstructing-the-past-with-media-wi…
[7]
http://www.slideshare.net/shawnmjones/using-the-memento-mediawiki-extension…
[8]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtZHKeFwjzk
[9]
http://bit.ly/memento-for-chrome
Shawn M. Jones
Graduate Research Assistant
Department of Computer Science
Old Dominion University
Email: sjone@cs.odu.edu<mailto:sjone@cs.odu.edu>
Research group:
http://ws-dl.blogspot.com
Twitter: @shawnmjones
On Jul 1, 2014, at 1:11 AM, Bináris
<wikiposta@gmail.com<mailto:wikiposta@gmail.com>> wrote:
2014-07-01 1:54 GMT+02:00 Shawn Jones
<sjone@cs.odu.edu<mailto:sjone@cs.odu.edu>>:
The Memento extension renders past versions of pages, including templates.
Sounds well, but the problem is that many of these templates are deleted. I
guess not Even Memento will show them.
Will this extension be switched on for Wikipedia? There are many users, who
wish to see the true earlier state of content (or other) pages when they
look at page history, completely disregarding central notices.
Would be great!
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