leiger wrote on 13 Jan 2010 01:23
The edit diff would be shown as a block of text of at most 3 lines; if longer then it would be collapsed. This lets the user immediately see what changed and ask for more information if needed.
That is what the "Short description of changes: " box is for. Some people don't seem to use it though.
I've been using it for a while and it makes things 500% easier when trying to view the source code of a previous revision (e.g. forgetting how I did something a few months ago, but as it's been removed from the current version of the page I need to view the source code of a previous version and I use the 'short description of changes' to figure out which revision I need)
Will this minimalised history view replace the current one? Or is it intended to be added to a page using a module?
My usual rule is that if people don't use a feature properly, the feature is wrongly designed.
In this case, asking people to explain what they did, when the application can figure it out and show it automatically, is bad design.
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The application can show the changes that were made automatically, but not in an effective way. Simply seeing what code was changed does not give a clear indication of what the reason for changing that code was.
Consider an application written in C++. If I was to write a small program it would result in a few hundred lines of code, or more. Without comments, this code could be confusing even to the most experienced programmer because of the vast size of it.
Wiki page history works the same way. Just seeing what changes were made is not enough, when the author is able to write a much more useful description themselves.
Suggestions:
~ Leiger - Wikidot Community Admin - Volunteer
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Makes sense.
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