Talk:Community Wishlist/W35

Thanks!

Thanks @Closed Limelike Curves for this wish. Do you anticipate this feature to live in the Source Editor, Visual Editor, or both?

To confirm, it sounds like you're looking for a better way to manage edit conflicts. What about the Help:Edit conflict is cumbersome for you? JWheeler-WMF (talk) 15:48, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

@JWheeler-WMF I don't think that's what they mean at all. There's an "undo" button in revision history unrelated to what editor one has; irrespective of the default editor, the user will be brought to the same screen.

The edit-conflict part was only brought up to have the paragraph-based edit conflict interface as an example of a possible interface. Aaron Liu (talk) 16:27, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

^Yes, that's it. I think the edit conflict interface is really good! I'd like to have a way to use it even if I don't have an edit conflict—just two different versions of the same article that have been published at different times. This way I can "partially revert" changes by picking which version I like on a paragraph-by-paragraph basis. Reusing the same interface should save a lot of work/development time. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 17:39, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

@JWheeler-WMF I just edited my request to hopefully be a bit clearer. Basically, I want diff pages to have an option for cherry-picking paragraphs or sections between multiple versions of an article, so I can get a better "mixed" version that has content from both. This gives me an alternative to reverting wholesale if I think only some changes by another user were problematic. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:17, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

How about this script

I've just found this request on enwiki. As "Edit conflict" works on a paragraph basis, maybe the (logic of the) script en:User:Nardog/DiffUndo is what you're looking for? pon_or (talk) 14:54, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

The description of the script sounds similar to what I'm looking for, though not quite; like you said, I want to take two previously-published versions and choose paragraphs from each, side-by-side. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 00:05, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

That's what it basically is, though you have to press undo and then show changes first. Aaron Liu (talk) 02:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

You don't have to click "Show changes", the diff is already shown when you click undo. Nardog (talk) 06:14, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

OK, I think I understand a bit better now. So, if I want to partially restore an older version, I need to:

1. Turn on the 2010 Wikitext editor under "Settings",
2. Go to the original version of the article,
3. Click "edit",
4. Click "Show changes",
5. Double-click any changes you don't want to undo.

I think this works! Thanks for writing such a great script @Nardog, I'll be sure to use it :)

Comments on where I think this could be improved:

1. Compared to being able to edit diffs directly by clicking a "cherry-pick" button, having to go through the series of steps I described above feels a bit clunky.
2. Double-clicking feels pretty weird since it's also used to highlight text.
3. Every time I delete a paragraph, the script sends me back to the top of the page for some reason, so I lose track of where I am.
4. Doesn't work visually—I have trouble reading everything with all the clutter (e.g. references).

If I could have my dream interface, it would be to start with something like w:User:BrandonXLF/CompareRevisions, but align all the paragraphs and sections side-by-side, so I can compare them. Then, for each pair of paragraphs, I could push a single button to indicate whether I want the version on the left or the right. When I'm done, I push an "I'm done" button at the bottom of the page, and everything gets put together into a new combined article. Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 18:25, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Any source editor that isn't the 2017 one would do well. Aaron Liu (talk) 19:02, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

It now uses buttons instead of double-clicking, not only because of what you point out (I too found myself double-clicking when I didn't mean to undo) but to make it work on touchscreens. The scrolling issue seemed to only occur when syntax highlighting is on, but I've added a workaround anyway. Nardog (talk) 04:58, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Is this for checkboxes next to each paragraph?

Is this requesting that next to every paragraph or element of a diff there are checkboxes which one can leave checked if they are to be undone? Similar to how it's at git merge conflicts? Prototyperspective (talk) 13:57, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes, exactly that! —Closed Limelike Curves (talk) 04:03, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Response to the wish

@Closed Limelike Curves Thank you for submitting your wish! We are working with internal stakeholders to figure out next steps, such as feasibility and prioritization. We’ll keep you posted about it. Sannita (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Examples

Thanks for filing this wish @Closed Limelike Curves - I think I understand how this would be helpful, and it could help softening the negative feeling of having your own edit reverted. My team is going to start looking at diffs soon in the context of our dashboard project so I'm interested in thinking about this wish and whether it could fit in to that work. One thing that would help me with this is any examples you have of edits where this feature would have been helpful (or where you've used the user script mentioned above). Could you share a few examples you've found? Sam Walton (WMF Moderator Tools) (talk) 07:17, 17 June 2026 (UTC)