Last modified: 2014-11-12 10:33:02 UTC
Some people click "Save page" more often:eg, while copy-editing a Wikipedia article, one may save the page multiple times for every section.(some times without an edit summary) It would be better if all these edits could be combined under one edit with one edit summary in the history. Here's a detailed example of copyediting. 7-remove template GOCEinuse [edit summary:copy edit major] 6-edit section 4 5-edit section 3 4-edit section 2 3-edit section 1 2-editing lead section. 1-Adding template GOCEinuse to notify that the article is being copyedited. Rather than littering the edit history with these seven different edit histories, it would be better if they can all be collapsed under one entry and requesting the user for a single edit summary (In this case copy edit major) Of course the individual edits shouldn't be deleted and a '+' sign should be to the left of the edit entry which can expand and show the remaining entries.(some javascript might be needed) Additionally, the user could be prompted to select(using checkboxes) the consecutive entries(so program "smartness" isn't essential. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some important MUST DOs if this is implemented.- (1) Only CONSECUTIVE ENTRIES by the SAME USER(can't have another user entry in between)can be selected. (2) Probably should include TIME factor-(can be grouped only if consecutive entries are within say 24/36 hrs of each other) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's alteady a very nice script to accomplish this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Alex_Smotrov/histcomb.js -- however, it would be nice to have the functionality natively in MediaWiki. One think that should be kept in mind in implementing this, is that edits should only be combined if they are made in rapid succession (a few minutes apart at most). Otherwise, pages heavily edited by a single editor but across a longer timeframe, will have their edit histories unnecessarily obscured.
For algorithmic strategies for clustering user activity sessions, see: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Activity_session
