Last modified: 2005-07-17 13:40:11 UTC
This was first requested by Jens Ropers on the wikitech mailinglist, see supplied URL. The newest revision of an article should have a unique ID for exactly that revision to be linkable. This is very useful because: * Linking to wiki articles is "safer" because the linker know exactly which revision of the article he is linking to, he / she does not have to fear that the newest revision reads something like "Justin Hartlake sucks dick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!". This would also make it much easier/safer to cite from Wikipedia. * Linking to the latest diff is possible, which can be used in discussions where you'd like to explain why a the diff was done. Such a diff link could also replace/join the "(hist)" link on "User contributions" pages, making those much more useful. If used on the Watchlist you would also come to the correct diff if an article has been changed in the time between loading the watchlist and loading the diff. I don't know how it can be implemented but: * The first "(last)" diff link and all the "(cur)" links on the "History" page should link to a diff page that is the same no matter how many revisions are done after loading the "History" page. * A "particular revision" link should be added to the article (and discussion) page somewhere. I suggest this text "This is the link to this particular revision of this page" or it could have its own small box under "other languages", or it could be placed somewhere on the history page. * When an older revision than the current is accessed without going through the history page, a more explanatory header than the current "(Revision as of 05:47, 20 Aug 2004)" (example) should probably appear. Something like "This is the revision as of hh:mm, dd Mmm yyyy. It has since been [[link to history|revised]], the newest revision is available [[ordinary wikilink|here]]. '''You''' can also [[edit]] it."
While I have only requested that the newest revision has its own *ID* (like the oldid), another feature that has been requested and perhaps could be implemented at the same time is *revision numbering*. It would indeed be ideal if one could refer to article revision numbers e.g. the current revision (17:50, 13 Aug 2004) of [[BugZilla]] is 14. Simple revision numbering could be a "easy"(?) partial solution to this "bug".
Per-article revision numbers would require a schema change (and thus long downtime on Wikipedia). It's also not clear to me how such numbers should behave across eg deletion/undeletion.
I don't think per-article revision numbering would make much odds, but pre-assigning an oldid for the latest revision would certainly make some features a lot more useful: currently you can't refer to a diff, or a dated version, until the page has been changed again. You can of course find a trivial change to make, or vandalise and revert yourself, but this is a rather cumbersome and hackish workaround. This would also gel nicely with a solution to bug 268 (short-hand links to a particular revision) since it could be made very clear how to link to a particular revision.
The triple (cur_id, timestamp, hash(text)) should provide a unique number. Encoded in base 36 (0-9,1-z) this is about 15 characters, using crc32 as hash. In the unlikely case that this is not unique, the alternatives should be listed. The reader might easily notice that "Justin Hartlake sucks dick!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" is not the revision that was referred to: "There are two revisions matching your article key: * 2004, May 05, 21:34 maveric (reverted vandalism) * 2004, May 05, 21:34 134.76.173.105 (Hahahahahah!!!!)"
(In reply to comment #4) Looks like an ok solution to me, and it is _very very unlikely_ that the unique number is not unique, right? What is the right revision might not always be as obvious as in the stated example.
(In reply to comment #4) But if a database redesign will implement a more well-designed solution, it would not be wise to first make one kind of unique link, and then replace it with another, rendering the old defunct.
SCHEMA_WORK branch implements this, should be merged into 1.4 if things are going well.
*** Bug 1052 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Workarounds in MediaWiki 1.4 (Not sure if I'm too late to find & say this, e.g. because the bug has already been fixed): Permanent link to currently latest version (clv): http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Images&direction=next&oldid=<oldid of version just prior to clv> Permanent link to diff between the version just prior to clv and clv: http://test.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template_talk:Images&diff=next&oldid=<oldid of version just prior to clv> Permanent link to diff between some other version and clv: <no workarounds>
I think the method with "next" should be used for the links on history pages. Although it is kind of workaround, I think it would be more useful than the current behaviour. (What I mean is something like this, although this is just a patch:) --- ..\orig\PageHistory.php 2004-11-25 14:41:34.000000000 +0100 +++ PageHistory.php 2005-02-25 10:40:57.234808500 +0100 @@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ if ( $oid && $this->lastline ) { $ret = preg_replace( "/!OLDID!([0-9]+)!/", $this->mSkin->makeKnownLinkObj( - $this->mTitle, $message['last'], "diff=\\1&oldid={$oid}",'' ,'' ,' tabindex="'.$counter.'"' ), $this->lastline ); + $this->mTitle, $message['last'], "&diff=next&oldid={$oid}",'' ,'' ,' tabindex="'.$counter.'"' ), $this->lastline ); } else { $ret = ''; }
Would be useful if this version ID number could be stored in a variable too -- {{VERSIONNUMBER}} or the like -- a la the other variables at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Help:Variable. This would make it easy to construct templates for citation of the current version (see bug 800), and other references helpful to readers as well as editors.
Closing as FIXED. Revision ID for all revisions already implemented in 1.5 in HEAD. Making it available as a variable might be useful; please file a separate bug for it.
*** Bug 165 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
