Talk:Community Tech/Who Wrote That tool

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1

I can immediately think of two things to improve this tool

1. Allow the revision of the text that you are hovering over to be a different colour to all other text by the same author. (The tool shows the diff of only the hovered text, and this is different for each yellow text by that author that you click. I propose that the text associated with the diff be a different colour.)

2. Prevent the selection from being abandoned when you use the middle mouse button to scroll down the page in Chrome. (Click some text to bring up the popup, then click or hold the middle-mouse button to scroll. The selection disappears. This shouldn't happen. Such scrolling doesn't have any different effects (that I know of) to regular scrolling in regular Chrome usage.)

Thank you. SUM1 (talk) 09:51, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

@SUM1: There is one important difference between the behavior of the regular scroll and the middle-button scroll (so-called autoscroll) on Windows (there is no autoscroll in Chrome for Linux and Mac at all): when you press the middle button over a link, it doesn’t start scrolling, as the middle button is not only the autoscroll button, but also the button to open links in new tabs. This shows that the two don’t behave exactly the same even without any JavaScript; however, it doesn’t mean that closing the popup with middle click cannot be prevented. I don’t know which way is it more intuitive, though. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 18:30, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi: That's strange, Chrome updated and it suddenly doesn't want to hold on to any selection at all when I scroll with the middle-mouse button. I could swear it did before. It still does in Firefox. Still does in word processors too. SUM1 (talk) 18:51, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@SUM1: I’m afraid I can’t help you: I use neither Chrome nor Windows on a daily basis. I suggest you to find another support forum for your problem. Or use Firefox, like me! ;) —Tacsipacsi (talk) 19:06, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi: I made the preparations to file a Chromium bug report, as I've roughly located the version where the behaviour changed. I abandoned Firefox around 2012; it doesn't have the resources to manage the hundreds of tabs I usually have open. But this is still probably a different issue, since this tool's highlighting is not text selection and thus shouldn't necessarily behave like it. So I believe it still can and should be fixed. SUM1 (talk) 20:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@SUM1: Thank you for the feedback & detailed suggestions! Right now, you can access the revision-specific information by clicking on the timestamp (which links to the diff). However, I understand that it would be even easier to see the revision information highlighted in some way on the article page as well. In the future, if we have time and resources to improve the tool, we'll definitely consider your suggestions. Thank you! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 21:11, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@IFried (WMF): Do you have any opinion about point 2? For me the current way seems more natural, but it looks like not for everybody; it would be good to hear a clear statement from the team. —Tacsipacsi (talk) 21:19, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi: Thanks for bringing up this question! I've forwarded the idea in point #2 to the UX designer (to see what opinion he may have). I'll consult with him and provide updates on our discussion afterward. Thanks! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@Tacsipacsi: @IFried (WMF): I'm investigating this right now. It may seem more intuitive because it's been the default Chrome way for roughly half a year now, but it's not the default way in other browsers like Firefox or word processors. But the issue is slightly even more nuanced than that, because middle-clicking outside of a text paragraph has always deselected, but this happens on the mouse click, not on release. Since this Chromium version, which I'll identify, it deselects even within the paragraph, on mouse release. I'll detail all of this in a Chromium comment or bug report. There is a similar issue in VisualEditor which seems to be unrelated. I got distracted and didn't finish locating the exact Chromium version of the change, but I will now. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 10:37, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

I've identified the Chromium version. It was Chrome Chrome 79.0.3909.0 (64-bit), base position 695389, from 11 September 2019 (bug report). Here's a video of the issue in action with both Chrome versions, Firefox and the Who Wrote That? extension/addon: https://www.dropbox.com/s/7jw8y5vnuwu7dbb/Who%20Wrote%20That%20Middle-Mouse%20Selection%20Bug.mp4?dl=0. This proves the Who Wrote That? behaviour is independent of selection and can still be fixed. · • SUM1 • · (talk) 18:54, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Non-articles?

First and most obviously, this is super-amazing. Thank you for making it available. This is incredibly useful. Could it be made to work with pages not in article space? For example, I'm looking at en:WP:G5 and want to know when the last bullet point was added. WWT would be the perfect tool for that. RoySmith (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@RoySmith: "Super-amazing" is maybe the best thing that a team can hear (thank you!). We're so happy that people are liking and using the tool. As for the including the tool outside the article space, we have included this question in our current investigation into the potential expansion of the tool. Overall, this request may be beyond the capacity of WhoColor API maintainers or the Community Tech team, but it's a great idea that is definitely on our radar. Thanks! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 22:49, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Availability in other languages

Hi, What is needed for it to be available in other languages? Is it only translation? Seems to work really nicely, and it will allow individual authors to better present their work to the outside world. Good job? GoEThe (talk) 12:32, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

@GoEThe: Thanks for reaching out, and we're happy to hear that you enjoy using the tool! We conducted an an investigation to see if it is possible to expand accessibility of Who Wrote That? (both in terms of making it a gadget/extension and extending support to other languages/wikis). We found that there may be some challenges in expanding the tool to other languages (mostly due to lack of resources, at this point). For now, the Community Tech team needs to focus on other projects in our backlog, but we hope to see if we can expand WWT accessibility in the future. Thank you! --IFried (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Hello,

I came to ask you the same question. Thanks for having developed such a tool which seems excellent for finding old problems (vandalism, copyvio...) in articles.

I just regret that it is not available on wp-fr. I am on a case of multiple copyvio of a contributor over more than 4 years hidden betwenn more than 3000 contributions... Such a tool would have been perfect.

Best regards,

Hesan (talk) 14:55, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

New feature request: rev number

Very nice. Please add revision number, as follows:

BEFORE:

• ExampleUser (talk | contribs) added this on [[Special:Diff/123456789|21 June 2018 5:28 AM]].

AFTER:

• ExampleUser (talk | contribs) added this on [[Special:Diff/123456789|21 June 2018 5:28 AM]] (rev [[Special:Permalink/123456789|123456789]]).

Justification: the point of this request, is to expose the rev number in the clear in the pop-up. Anyone using this tool is very likely already experienced and probably hand-rolls their own permalinks and Diffs. Please help make this tool even more efficient for us, by not making us extract the rev number from the timestamp, and just display it. Adding the permalink is a nice-to-have, to see what context was like at that time; but for me at least, what's important here is a copy-pasteable rev number in the clear. Thanks; nice tool.

P.S. The idea was inspired by script w:User:BrandonXLF/ShowRevisionID.js, which I heartily recommend. Mathglot (talk) 21:49, 22 November 2020 (UTC)