Are you considering adding a "History Pruning" feature in MW1.4? Doing it with SQL isn't very easy.
History sometimes becomes very big and uses too much disk space. Why not get rid of it?
In NerdyPC and Adapedia the authors' names and the changelog are included in the article text, so that we can delete the history and free up disk space whenever we want.
I just think this scheme is more efficient.
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 03:54:51 +0300, NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
Are you considering adding a "History Pruning" feature in MW1.4? Doing it with SQL isn't very easy.
History sometimes becomes very big and uses too much disk space. Why not get rid of it?
I believe some wiki engines do indeed do this. The main reason MediaWiki doesn't is, I think, because it is felt that preserving the history is a nice automated way of preserving authorship information, as required for the GFDL.
Of course, you also have to make sure you don't automatically prune that part of a vandalised article's history that comprises the last non-vandalised version.
In NerdyPC and Adapedia the authors' names and the changelog are included in the article text, so that we can delete the history and free up disk space whenever we want.
Including this in plain text has the obvious disadvantages of making it editable (this being a wiki) and it looking ugly if it is displayed along with the article itself. A proper "list editors" feature, though, sounds very handy. By "changelog", do you mean a kind of selective history - only recording significant milestones in the article's development? If so, you essentially do want *old* history stored, just not every single minor edit.
One thing which I believe has been discussed is diff-based storage, which would dramatically decrease the space needed for storing an article's history. This would probably work by storing "key" revisions, and then cumulative diffs for more minor revisions in between. If a system were included for manually defining key revisions, this could form the basis of a 'changelog'-style history, and the in-between revisions could be pruned out.
On Saturday 23 October 2004 05:18, Rowan Collins wrote:
Including this in plain text has the obvious disadvantages of making it editable (this being a wiki)
All pages in the main namespace are protected and only a sysop can change them. Users can only update the Test: namespace where the articles are developed and this has replaced the Talk: namespace which is substituted by phpBB threads. Anons are of course not allowed in the wiki but they are more than welcome to post in the forum.
In my wiki emphasis is given in allowing authors to promote their name. People who copy a GFDL or CC (each page has its own copyright rules) article from us, usually done with a bot but also by hand, will most probably also copy the "Authors" section thus preserving authorship information.
along with the article itself. A proper "list editors" feature,
Nobody would click on that so the names of the authors would not be promoted in this way.
though, sounds very handy. By "changelog", do you mean a kind of selective history - only recording significant milestones in the article's development? If so, you essentially do want *old* history stored, just not every single minor edit.
See:
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Editing_process
http://nerdypc.wikinerds.org/index.php/Help:Article_versions
These processes haven't been tested in reality in a large group of collaborators because the site is so new, but I believe it is a very good process.
One thing which I believe has been discussed is diff-based storage, which would dramatically decrease the space needed for storing an article's history.
That's great! I wonder why this is not implemented already. Do you have enough programmers in MW? Does WMF pay for development costs?
On Sat, 23 Oct 2004 05:47:06 +0300, NSK nsk2@wikinerds.org wrote:
Does WMF pay for development costs?
No, we don't currently pay for development costs. All of Wikimedia's developers and systems administrators are volunteers. We do occasionally offer payment for specific tasks, such as setting up Foundation membership forms (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Developer_task/membership ) but no developer has taken up such an offer so far.
Angela.
NSK wrote:
One thing which I believe has been discussed is diff-based storage, which would dramatically decrease the space needed for storing an article's history.
That's great! I wonder why this is not implemented already. Do you have enough programmers in MW? Does WMF pay for development costs?
I regret to say that the World Monetary Fund has yet paid for such developments. Their funding of mega-project development in the third world appears to be driven by profitability. :-)
Ec
On Saturday 23 October 2004 05:18, Rowan Collins wrote:
selective history - only recording significant milestones in the article's development? If so, you essentially do want *old* history stored, just not every single minor edit.
I should note that I discourage excessive editing in my wikis and I encourage extensive discussion and collaboration in the mailing list and the forum before applying changes in an article. The motto is: "first we discuss, then we edit". In addition, changes are filtered by an article maintainer who should also check for copyright violations and after some time an admin validates the article and publishes a new milestone (version). But in any case the under-development "unpublished" article is always visible to anyone by just accessing "Test:{{PAGENAME}}".
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