After whining about [[Guantanamo Bay Naval Base]] I was wondering if it would be possible to develop a split or clone tool; like the move tool but would allow a new page to be generated with the same history as the other one.
I hate copying off tons of text from GBNB and losing the history; with the clone/split tool I wouldn't have that problem. I'd think it would be comparatively easy to implement in some clever fashion ??
The Cunctator wrote:
After whining about [[Guantanamo Bay Naval Base]] I was wondering if it would be possible to develop a split or clone tool; like the move tool but would allow a new page to be generated with the same history as the other one.
Special:Export and start your own private wiki.
I hate copying off tons of text from GBNB and losing the history; with the clone/split tool I wouldn't have that problem. I'd think it would be comparatively easy to implement in some clever fashion ??
Obviously duplicating tens of thousands of revisions of page history on Wikipedia would be incredibly wasteful and expensive.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
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The Cunctator wrote:
After whining about [[Guantanamo Bay Naval Base]] I was wondering if it would be possible to develop a split or clone tool; like the move tool but would allow a new page to be generated with the same history as the other one.
Special:Export and start your own private wiki.
I asked for this exact same feature a few months ago, and I gave a good explanation as to why it is a good idea. This reply, however, is glib and facile -- and not really a reply at all. But at least Cunctator got a developer's attention.
Fact is, a clone feature is sorely needed, for more reasons than just differences of opinion. And it need not be enabled by default, for instance. Bottom line: it allows forking of pages which should be forked.
I also proposed a 'merge' function to balance this capability. But that is a secondary issue at this point.
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On 3/16/06, Adrian Buehlmann adrian@cadifra.com wrote:
"Brion Vibber" wrote:
Obviously duplicating tens of thousands of revisions of page history on Wikipedia would be incredibly wasteful and expensive.
Indeed. But a mechanism to link/share history data (branching) would do it.
Exactly. I'm sure that Brion understands that the concept of data references. Admittedly, it does make life harder, but there should be a way to do it.
On 3/16/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/16/06, Adrian Buehlmann adrian@cadifra.com wrote:
"Brion Vibber" wrote:
Obviously duplicating tens of thousands of revisions of page history on Wikipedia would be incredibly wasteful and expensive.
Indeed. But a mechanism to link/share history data (branching) would do it.
Exactly. I'm sure that Brion understands that the concept of data references. Admittedly, it does make life harder, but there should be a way to do it.
A really dumb thing that would get some of the way there would just add an element in the history with the comment "Split from [[Original article]] revision [[permanent link]]". Then people could navigate back to that and the chain would be unbroken. Much simpler than the database having to be smart.
On 3/16/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
A really dumb thing that would get some of the way there would just add an element in the history with the comment "Split from [[Original article]] revision [[permanent link]]". Then people could navigate back to that and the chain would be unbroken. Much simpler than the database having to be smart.
Dunno about you, but I do that anyway. In fact I did this this week, splitting [[German grammar]] into [[German nouns]] etc. For the first edit summary of the new article, I add "split from [[German grammar]]". A link to the version of the parent article before the split would be nice, but can be determined by hand simply by comparing dates.
Steve
On 3/16/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/16/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
A really dumb thing that would get some of the way there would just add an element in the history with the comment "Split from [[Original article]] revision [[permanent link]]". Then people could navigate back to that and the chain would be unbroken. Much simpler than the database having to be smart.
Dunno about you, but I do that anyway. In fact I did this this week, splitting [[German grammar]] into [[German nouns]] etc. For the first edit summary of the new article, I add "split from [[German grammar]]". A link to the version of the parent article before the split would be nice, but can be determined by hand simply by comparing dates.
Right. But obviously making it hardcoded/automagic would mean that such a summary would be genuinely meaningful in a gneral sense and make it much more likely to be used; it would also make it easier for further functionality to be built on -- such as something that lets you split off a section, leaving only a summary of the contents.
I'm currently working on a tool to fix the referencing on a page, but I'll put such features on my list...
On 3/16/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/16/06, Steve Bennett stevage@gmail.com wrote:
On 3/16/06, The Cunctator cunctator@gmail.com wrote:
A really dumb thing that would get some of the way there would just add an element in the history with the comment "Split from [[Original article]] revision [[permanent link]]". Then people could navigate back to that and the chain would be unbroken. Much simpler than the database having to be smart.
Dunno about you, but I do that anyway. In fact I did this this week, splitting [[German grammar]] into [[German nouns]] etc. For the first edit summary of the new article, I add "split from [[German grammar]]". A link to the version of the parent article before the split would be nice, but can be determined by hand simply by comparing dates.
Right. But obviously making it hardcoded/automagic would mean that such a summary would be genuinely meaningful in a gneral sense and make it much more likely to be used; it would also make it easier for further functionality to be built on -- such as something that lets you split off a section, leaving only a summary of the contents.
This would be neat. A 'proper' way to split out a section, or to merge pages, or to extensively quote/excerpt one article in another, that does the 'right thing' wrt edit history as best that can be done atm. I don't know that the issue of copying and pasting content from one article to another within a wiki has ever been fully addressed.
I'm currently working on a tool to fix the referencing on a page, but I'll put such features on my list...
What do you mean by 'fix referencing' ?
SJ
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