Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Reading/Visually indicate if a page has been edited since loaded

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Visually indicate if a page has been edited since loaded

  • Problem: When viewing a wiki page (article or talk) and the page is edited, people currently reading the page must manually refresh the page or check the page history to see if it has been updated. People may read incorrect information (in the case of vandalism or breaking news) or miss important updates.
  • Who would benefit: This would be particularly useful:
    • For readers who are reading a vandalized page, to be informed that it has been corrected
    • For readers who are reading a topic of breaking news, to be informed that information is rapidly changing
    • For users who are on a talk page, to be informed when a topic is actively being discussed.
  • Proposed solution: For this proposal I suggest a simple visual indicator, similar to how many email or task management websites (e.g. Gmail, Phabricator) display small growl notifications in the bottom corner. "This page has been edited since you opened it. Refresh to see changes."
A long-term solution could be to visually show the edits as they are made, like visual diffs or Google Docs/Etherpad.
  • More comments:
    • I'm not sure if there's already a gadget for this? Even if there is, I think this could benefit logged-out readers.
    • There should be some logic for circumstances of when the indicator should not appear (e.g. if ORES think the edit is probably vandalism, when an edit is marked as minor and is not a revert, etc.)
  • Phabricator tickets: couldn't find any.

Discussion[edit]

Voting[edit]