User:Flominator/WikiBlame
This page describes the use and the idea of WikiBlame. Please post your questions here.
WikiBlame is a tool for quickly finding good, questionable or even dangerous (e.g., copyrighted) edits to articles on MediaWiki-based wikis. This could be helpful for asking users about their contributions or in order to fulfill the demands of GFDL when copying excerpts.
Usage
The tool searches the version history of an article in order to find a certain character string. Versions that contain the searched string are marked with OOO, while versions lacking it show XXX. Skipped versions are identified by ???.
If no wikicode ([, ], {, }, *, #, '', ''', ==, ===, ====, <, >, |) is present in the search term, then WikiBlame searches for plain text. To search for interwiki links, for example, use [[es:Articlename instead of es:Articlename, or force searching for wikitext.
Settings
Interface language
The language of the WikiBlame user interface.
- URL parameter:
user_lang=, example of English
Search target
The path leading to the page to search. The from URL button allows the URL to be entered directly, automatically populating the corresponding input fields.
- URL parameters:
- Language (subdomain):
lang=, example of searching the German Wikipedia- Some MediaWiki sites have no subdomain in their URL (for example, https://wikisource.org). To search one of these, enter
blank, verbatim, in the language field (example).
- Some MediaWiki sites have no subdomain in their URL (for example, https://wikisource.org). To search one of these, enter
- Project:
project=, example of searching Wikiquote - Domain (top-level domain):
tld=, example of searching www.pcgamingwiki.com - Page:
article=, example of searching this user page
- Language (subdomain):
Search for
The text whose insertion or deletion to find in the page's revision history. This field is case-insensitive.
- URL parameter:
needle=, example of searching for "needle"
Always skip x versions
In linear searches, WikiBlame skips the given number of versions before searching another version.
- URL parameter:
skipversions=, example of skipping 10 versions
Ignore first x versions
WikiBlame ignores the given number of versions at the beginning of the revision history before it starts searching.
- URL parameter:
ignorefirst=, example of ignoring first 10 versions
Versions to check
The number of versions to check. If the number of versions found equals the number of versions to be checked, there are probably more versions that weren't searched. Checking many versions with linear search will take a lot of time, unless you use a reasonably large skip number. Binary searching is usually very fast as it doesn't check each version individually, so entering a large number (even several thousand) is usually feasible.
- URL parameter:
limit=, example of limiting to 10 versions
Start date
The search works backward from the given start date. Versions before 23:55 UTC of this day are included.
- URL parameters:
Search method
- linear: check every version
- URL parameter:
searchmethod=lin(default), example
- URL parameter:
- binary: compare two distant versions and iteratively narrow in on the result (recommended for searching many versions)
- If binary search finds a version that was just reverted, search again using an earlier start date.
- URL parameter:
searchmethod=int, example
Look for removal of text
Find the version where the search term was removed from the page, rather than where it was inserted (the default). This setting only applies when using the binary search method.
- URL parameter:
binary_search_inverse=on, example
Force searching for wikitext
If activated, this setting treats the entered text as wikitext. This function is useful, for example, to search for the insertion or deletion of an external link.
- URL parameter:
force_wikitags=on, example
Ignore minor changes (experimental)
If activated, versions are skipped, which were saved with the check box "This is a minor edit" enabled.
Implementation
The tool works as follows: it creates a history of versions (example). Its beginning and length are determined by the corresponding input fields. Now the links to the versions themselves are stored within an array. They are downloaded one after another and compared to the searched text.
Integration in English Wikipedia
WikiBlame is linked from the revision history page of every article on the English Wikipedia.