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Hi

I want to find when a specific sentence was added to an OSM Wiki page. It doesn't have a link to WikiBlame as in Wikipedia. Is it possible?

asked 24 Jan '17, 18:45

DaveF's gravatar image

DaveF
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I am not aware of tools for this.

You can do a manual binary search through the history (clicking the diff links and check if your target sentence is present on the page while using a version selection approximately according to the binary search algorithm). This is what I sometimes do.

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answered 24 Jan '17, 19:44

aseerel4c26's gravatar image

aseerel4c26 ♦
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edited 25 Jan '17, 07:47

You could look at the full page history and select the version that is half way between the oldest and newest page to see if the specific sentence you are looking for was added before or after that version. Then repeat the process in the half of the history where the specific sentence appears to have been added. This can be a bit of a laborious process if there are hundreds of edits but with this sort of binary search you should only need to look at a dozen versions of the page even if it was edited a thousand times.

Also, if you click on the "cur" link for a version you can see how the historic version differs from the current version. If you click on the "prev" link for a version you can see what changes were made to create that version. If you click on the radio buttons of two versions and then click "Compare selected revisions" you can see the changes made between two versions of a page. Helpfully, the difference pages allow you to step back and forth to see the differences between earlier and later revisions too. You might also find the edit comments will assist you identifying the version, as you might find when a section was added.

I know this might still seem a rather tedious method but it is faster than stepping though each revision of a page, revision by revision.

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answered 24 Jan '17, 20:25

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Huttite
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@Huttite & @aseerel4c26 Thanks for the replies but divide in two is specifically what I want to avoid. As you point out it's laborious.

As it's already written & in use on the main Wiki site, you'd think it couldn't be that much hassle to install in on OSM's one.

(25 Jan '17, 00:48) DaveF

@DaveF: yes, I fully agree, most such server-side tools are likely available as source code (and are free software) and are easily adjustable. If there is a "blame" tool which would run on the client-side it would possibly just need a replacement of one string in its JavaScript code.

(25 Jan '17, 07:42) aseerel4c26 ♦

It's beyond my knowledge, but I've enquired on OSM-Dev

(25 Jan '17, 13:06) DaveF

@DaveF: you are asking for something to be "'built in'" - what do you mean? Do you mean a tool should available as link from the wiki history page? That is easy and would just need a wiki admin to add a bit to the history page's header. We could add Flominator's tool there (I just would first ask him due to a bit more resource consumption by our users). Meta: I took the liberty to add the link to your comment.

(25 Jan '17, 20:49) aseerel4c26 ♦

I mean I'd like it to be available on OSM Wiki as it is on Wikipedia Note "Revision History Search" about 5 lines down:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Main_Page&action=history

Are there major overheads invovled in that?

Is anyone aware of a specific OSM contributor dealing with OSM wiki who could be contacted?

(25 Jan '17, 22:36) DaveF

See https://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/tagging/2015-May/024339.html : "actually wikiblame apparently works out of the box if you know which parameters to enter".

So, we can use Flominator's WikiBlame (with parameters set for the OpenStreetMap wiki). You just need to enter the "page" and "search for" boxes and press start.

Example: screenshot

It found the correct addition diff for the example search.

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answered 25 Jan '17, 00:59

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edited 25 Jan '17, 07:45

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aseerel4c26 ♦
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question asked: 24 Jan '17, 18:45

question was seen: 2,603 times

last updated: 25 Jan '17, 22:36

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