Display edit history for comments and entries

[tim]

Title:
Display edit history for comments and entries

Area:
entries

Summary:
Provide links that display the content of each edit to a comment or entry

Description:
Inspired by <a href="http://dw-suggestions.dreamwidth.org/122639.html">a suggestion</a> from <user name="cesy">, I'd like to be able to see a MediaWiki-style edit history for each comment or entry that has been edited. An unobtrusive link could point to a list of changes organized by date, with a link for each change that would show the differences between the previous and next version of the comment or entry. Users could provide optional edit summaries as well.

For those who haven't used a wiki, see the history for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Comparison_of_sites_using_the_LiveJournal_codebase&action=history">a sample Wikipedia article</a> for an example of what I mean.

The downside is that some users might not want to make edit histories visible for their posts, but the feature could be opt-out.

Poll #1302 Display edit history for comments and entries

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 34

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
4 (11.8%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
3 (8.8%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
24 (70.6%)

(I have no opinion)
1 (2.9%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (5.9%)

Comments

[cesy]

I'd make edit histories opt-in, as they are currently not visible unless you subscribe to notifications for comments, and not visible at all for entries.

[white_aster]

I'm having trouble seeing this being useful enough to justify the work/cost involved. To be honest most of my entries are only edited if they have a mistake in them. I don't particularly need access to three copies of an entry that shows what those mistakes were. Same with comments. In what situation would anyone really need access to the old text of something that was edited, unless it was a mistake (and in that case, do we really need to idiot-proof that much?) Why keep a log of what is going to be overwhelmingly a bunch of typos and mis-pastes? Journals aren't wikis...they're not meant for (and don't even allow) the type of collaborative changing that requires the editviewing capacity to crosscheck each other. Or am I missing something? What problem is this solving?

Also, this sounds like it would be extremely data-intensive for DW to keep track of. It basically asks DW to keep backups of everything that is ever posted, which seems a large undertaking....

[lassarina]

Like cesy and white_aster, I think this would be horribly data-intensive for a very small return. For entries, at least, people typically append a note to the end of the entry indicating what changes have been made; yes, it's a manual process, but not a terribly time-consuming one.

[cheyinka]

Opt-in, absolutely. Well, for comments, it's not so important, since I don't feel all that strongly about comment editing, but my journal's not a wiki where knowing who changed what when is important. Besides, a lot of the edits I make to journal entries, at least, are things like "change crossposting settings", "change security level or access group", "change mood", "change tags" - the first two no one but me should know, and the second two really aren't important information. If somebody doesn't trust me not to make major, meaning-changing edits to my entries, that person should not read my journal.
[Edit: or, in this case, changing the icon used.]

[melannen]

I would be okay with this for entries, as an opt-in option, because I know it's fairly common for people to use entries as, essentially, easily editable online documents (I've written long stories over periods of months in one private-locked entry, and people do to-do lists and all sorts of things where having an edit history can be very, very helpful to the writer herself.) Though if people want a document with full edit history & version control, it's not that hard to sign up with googledocs or another service that specializes in it, or set up a wiki; I don't see it as a primary useful function for DW.

But it would have to be opt-in, and it would have to be lockable on a per-entry basis; I do *not* want it used as some sort of automatic policing method in other peoples' personal journals.

And it does seem like serious overkill for comments; if you care enough about something to want version control, you should probably be putting it somewhere other than a comment. (Not to mention that comment editing is pretty limited anyway; you can't edit a comment once it's got a reply, so there's not going to be any sort of complicated hornswoggle going on in comment edits.)