Last modified: 2014-10-08 20:46:19 UTC

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Bug 851 - when viewing an old version of a page, use old version of templates
when viewing an old version of a page, use old version of templates
Status: REOPENED
Product: MediaWiki
Classification: Unclassified
History/Diffs (Other open bugs)
1.3.x
All All
: Lowest enhancement with 2 votes (vote)
: ---
Assigned To: Nobody - You can work on this!
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?...
:
: 14062 15180 35066 (view as bug list)
Depends on: 49143
Blocks: 71838
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2004-11-10 01:39 UTC by lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט
Modified: 2014-10-08 20:46 UTC (History)
11 users (show)

See Also:
Web browser: ---
Mobile Platform: ---
Assignee Huggle Beta Tester: ---


Attachments

Description lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט 2004-11-10 01:39:00 UTC
Dear friends,

I just want to drop a note both about showing an "old revision" 
in "history" and "comparing" two revisions.

In both cases the comparision is limited to the top level object. 
If templates are / where included neither "history" 
nor "comparision" will handle this or provide some additional 
links on the valid revision for that particular timestamp /those 
particular timestamps.

Regards Reinhardt
Comment 1 Rowan Collins [IMSoP] 2004-12-03 03:44:38 UTC
1) Please use a summary that *describes* (indeed, "summarises") the bug/enhancement.
2) I'm knocking this down to P:Lowest, S:Enhancement, because although it would
be nice to view old revisions as they were at the time - perhaps this could
include the appropriate *image* versions as well - it wouldn't be very easy to
code. Not impossible: the database could be searched for a revision of each
template that was as close as possible to the revision of the "target" page
being viewed; this might be rather server-intensive, however; I'm not sure how
easy the DB schema makes it to retrieve a revision by date in this way.
I'm not so sure that having [any version of] templates show up in diffs is a
good idea though: the diff is of the source code, and the contents of templates
don't show up in templates, so having them show up in diffs would be a bit odd.

[I won't be at all surprised if someone decides to close this "WONTFIX" to cut
clutter, but I'll leave it for now.]
Comment 2 Brion Vibber 2004-12-03 04:31:48 UTC
It would in fact be impossible with the current schema, as pages which 
have been renamed or deleted could not be traced in a sensible way.
Comment 3 lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט 2005-06-05 13:22:08 UTC
Hallo!

Because of the new variable REVISIONID in CSV I would like to add some comments
here.

The more general case showing "an exact copy of an old version" of a page could
not be achieved because of:

a) browsers change revisions
b) MediaWiki gets upgraded and changes configuration
c) Images might change
d) in category the membership could change

I noticed this especially if a category is now / was selfincluded in an old
version the "history" would show actual membership (defined by actual software).

I can live with this because this is was happens in the real world: everything
changes.

Maybe a MediaWiki message could briefly point this out, eventualy providing a
link to further explanations.

Best regards Reinhardt [[user:gangleri]]
Comment 4 lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט 2005-06-05 15:14:26 UTC
beside templates and items mentioned in comment 3 "changes" may relate to
different Monobook.css or Monobook.js (global or user related) settings
Comment 5 lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט 2005-06-14 14:00:11 UTC
addtion to comment 3
> "an exact copy of an old version"

f) the colors of wiki links *always* refer to the *actual* existence (blue) /
nonexistence (red) of objects (and their implementation see
http://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1394#c5 )
Comment 6 Brion Vibber 2005-06-14 18:44:27 UTC
Not implementable.
Comment 7 lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט 2005-06-15 04:14:39 UTC
Thanks Brion. I agree. It is just a documentation issue. Regards Reinhardt
Comment 8 lɛʁi לערי ריינהארט 2006-01-19 23:53:47 UTC
This bug is CLOSED. Nevertheless please read comments at

Bug 4677: Provide a magic word __NOCITE__ ; disable the "cite" links at redirects
Comment 9 Brion Vibber 2008-05-09 19:40:06 UTC
*** Bug 14062 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 10 Alexandre Emsenhuber [IAlex] 2008-08-16 12:52:43 UTC
*** Bug 15180 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Purodha Blissenbach 2011-05-19 13:02:51 UTC
see also bug 29050 Slip in more version information into rendered pages.
Comment 12 Alexandre Emsenhuber [IAlex] 2012-03-18 13:19:04 UTC
*** Bug 35066 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 13 Helder 2012-03-18 13:20:47 UTC
From Bug 35066:
----
Suppose on June 2004, a user read the article "President of the United States",
and wanted to cite the information available on the graphical timeline which is
shown there.
The recommended way to do so, is to use a "permanent" link, like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=President_of_the_United_States&oldid=4317639#Graphical_Timeline

It is not rare that the content of some tables, timelines, and so on are
defined inside of templates.
And this is exactly the case in the above example.
As you can verify, the timeline was added on this change:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=President_of_the_United_States&diff=prev&oldid=4317639
which included the content of the first version of the timeline (dated from 27
June 2004):
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Timeline_US_Presidents_2&oldid=4303810&diff=prev

Now, here is the problem: for someone which reads in 2012 the content of the
work which cited that old version of the article, the "permanent link" will
show a page from 2004 saying that Barack Obama would be president on 2009!
In other words, old version of the pages transcludes the newer version of the
templates, which makes the 2004 version of the article to contain the 2012
version of the timeline, not the one from 2004!

This behavior is bad not only for citations, but also for people trying to
navigate through old discussions.
E.g.: if someone is trying to understand why the formatting of some template
was changed, or how it evolved to its current form, it is possible he/she will
find a discussion in which at some point one editor transcluded the template
(when e.g. it had a red text somewhere), and the talk may be completely out of
context (because the current version has no red text at all).

(A similar and more difficult problem happens with magic words. E.g.:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:About&diff=prev&oldid=292419185
shows the revision as of 11:32, 26 May 2009, but it has information which is
from 8 March 2012, such as the number of articles, and the software version.
But I don't think this one would be feasible, since the value of these things
depend a lot more on the state of the wiki database at a given time.)
----
Comment 14 Helder 2012-07-25 19:10:57 UTC
For the record, there is an implementation of this for the Memento extension:
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Memento?oldid=545206#Templates
Comment 15 Gabriel Wicke 2013-08-28 19:37:49 UTC
The flagged revision extension also records versions of all dependencies.

We plan to store fully expanded HTML which will also snapshot all dependencies. See bug 49143.
Comment 16 Nemo 2014-09-26 06:39:24 UTC
(In reply to Gabriel Wicke from comment #15)
> The flagged revision extension also records versions of all dependencies.
> 
> We plan to store fully expanded HTML which will also snapshot all
> dependencies. See bug 49143.

Would that also allow the Collection extension to fetch pages (included in a save book) as they were at a specific revision? If yes, someone please file a bug dependent from this; the feature was asked in 2009 already, http://web.archive.org/web/20110522081348/http://code.pediapress.com/wiki/ticket/685

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