Community health initiative/Interactive Timeline/How to use

Use the Interaction Timeline

The Interaction Timeline can be found at https://tools.wmflabs.org/interaction-timeline/

How it works

Screenshot of the Interaction Timeline

If you provide two usernames and a wiki, the Interaction Timeline will display a chronologic list of edits made by the two specified users on pages where both users have edited.

For example, if User:Apples edits on Washington, Texas, and Kansas and User:Bananas edits California, Texas, and Kansas the tool would only show their edits on Texas and Kansas.

The start and end date options allow you to narrow what information is displayed on the Timeline, but the calculation for 'pages where both users have edited' is always 'all time.'

For example, if User:Apples edits the Beyonce article on January 1 and User:Bananas edits the same article on February 1, March 1, and April 1 and the Timeline is queried to only show edits from March 1 to April 30, it will only display Banana's edits to Beyonce on March 1 and April 1 and no edits from Apples.

The edits are displayed on a vertical timeline, with the edits made by one user on the left and the edits made by the other on the right. Clicking on the edit card opens a diff in the Timeline for quick review. The diff can be opened in a new tab by middle click. All dates and times on the Timeline are displayed in UTC.

When activity shifts from one user to the other, the Timeline calculates and displays the amount of time between interactions in small red text. We believe this is helpful in understanding if two users are rapidly editing over each other, potentially stalking each other or edit warring.

Known limitations

• The Timeline works best when using a narrow date range.
• The Timeline does not display participation on Structured Discussions threads.
• The Timeline is not optimized for RTL display support.

Examples to test

1. User:Test-apples and User:Test-bananas on test.wikipedia.org
   • Link to timeline: https://tools.wmflabs.org/interaction-timeline/?wiki=testwiki&user=Test-apples&user=Test-bananas
   • Scenario: Wikihounding. Bananas makes a bad edit, and Apples then follows them around to other pages they've edited.
2. User:Test-carrots and User:Test-durian on test.wikipedia.org
   • Link to query: https://tools.wmflabs.org/interaction-timeline/?wiki=testwiki&user=Test-carrots&user=Test-durian
   • Scenario: "He said, she said" dispute, likely boomerang. Durian criticises Carrots until Carrots snaps back. Durian then cleans up their trail and reports Carrots to ANI.
3. User:Derby pie and User:Sweets lover
   • Link to query User:Derby pie and User:Sweets lover on test wiki
   • Scenario: Edit warring across articles and reporting each other on ANI with accusations of wikihounding and a ban discussion.
4. Tinker toys and Baby rattle
   • Link to query User:Tinker toys and Baby rattle
   • Scenario: Cross article edit warring and user talk page with user warning template.