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User:Keichwa/Everything Is In the Edit History

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To: Wikimedia developers <wikitech-l@wikimedia.org>
Subject: Everything Is In the Edit History (Re: French wikipedians requesting ...)
Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2005 07:57:34 +0100
In-Reply-To: <20050218170430.GZ768@wikia.com> (Jimmy Wales's message of "Fri, 18 Feb 2005 09:04:30 -0800")
Message-ID: <shbr9gyvfl.fsf@tux.gnu.franken.de>
References: <20050218170430.GZ768@wikia.com>
From: Karl Eichwalder <ke@gnu.franken.de>

"Jimmy (Jimbo) Wales" <jwales@wikia.com> writes: 

> It's the wiki way.  Having the ability to edit what other people write
> gives rise to a culture of co-operation rather than confrontation.

That's how things ought to work for article text. "Signed" posts on talk pages are different. At least, if you edit someone's post on a talk page, make sure to remove the signature (this --~~~~ marker resp. its expansion). 

> We don't have a strong culture of refactoring, but it is traditional
> in a wiki to refactor discussions, which means, for someone to come
> through and take a large discussion and neutrally summarize what it
> was all about.  Everything is in the edit history, and of course
> people can refactor the refactoring.

Yes, in general it works this way. Unfortunately, that's not the truth if people "rename" or "join" articles; this basically often means to delete an article and its edit history. Recently I tracked down such a case on the German WP: 

   1/ In January 2003 [[de:Konrad Witz]] was created - by me,
      accidentally.

   2/ During the next two years some 10 edits took place without
      enhancing it remarkable.

   3/ In February 2005 an IP user created a badly written article
      (babelfish?) with the name [[de:Conrad Witz]]; it is longer and
      offers more "facts".

   4/ Some days later a WP admin moved away the old "Konrad Witz"
      article with the intend to rename [[de:Conrad Witz]] to
      [[de:Konrad Witz]].
      ATM, "Konrad Witz" sit in the "trash" area waiting deletion.

   5/ Some copied a sentence from the old article and basically written
      in 2003  to the new one - without a proper checkin message; now
      it looks as if this sentence was written in 2005.

Looking at the current edit history of [[de:Konrad Witz]] you will believe, info on "Konrad Witz" was missing in the German WP up til February 2005. Similar "accidents" happen all the time and as time goes by, edit histories lie more and more. 

-- 
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