Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Editing/Support multiple diff variants

Random proposal ►◄ Editing

Support multiple diff variants

• Problem: We currently have a side by side comparison for diffs, but this often makes it difficult for people to find small changes inside a sentence. For a long time many editors have been using wikEdDiff, navigation popups diff and other JS based inline diffs, to gain more insight into changes.

• Who would benefit: Editors and curators

• Proposed solution: Add a toggle to a diff, to switch from viewing the difference in split (current) mode, to viewing it in unified mode. We can even add a third button for visual diffs, when this becomes more widely available. Take inspiration from github. In the past often performance has been a blocker for alternate diff views. To counter this, only do the inline diff on the client side on demand, instead of the server side.

• More comments:

• Phabricator tickets:

• Proposer: —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 15:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

• Translations: none yet

Discussion

Potentially related Phabricator tickets: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/maniphest/?ids=156439,26617,146781,7072,15462#R --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 21:35, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

• Recent Example: A hacked, split-line edit from 12 Nov 2017, as evidence of hard-to-see changes in enwiki page "en:Territory", see: [1]. -Wikid77 (talk) 17:53, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

  (FWIW I think the visual diff makes that pretty understandable, though. Elitre (WMF) (talk) 11:16, 14 November 2017 (UTC))

  The diff algorithm being unable to recognize that the old and new paragraph are related is a separate issue from how the output of the diff algorithm is formatted. Let's keep those discussions separate. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 09:44, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

A notice: there is a similar proposal in the section Reading, namely Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Reading#Simple_diff Simple diff. --Vachovec1 (talk) 14:47, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Related: T38902, T117279 --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 09:44, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Tgr (talk) 06:39, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support —viciarg⁴¹⁴ 08:16, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support ·addshore· ^{talk to me!} 10:40, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support YFdyh000 (talk) 14:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Husky (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 17:56, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Thomas Obermair 4 (talk) 21:43, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Libcub (talk) 04:55, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support —TheDJ (talk • contribs) 16:51, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ermahgerd9 (talk) 20:24, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support - Evad37 (talk) 23:49, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Dromedar61 (talk) 20:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Terra ❤ ^(talk) 07:00, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 14:25, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Петър Петров (talk) 15:21, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support -- seth (talk) 11:07, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support An Owl Called Josh (talk) 14:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support great idea, not sure what is the best implementation but there is room for improvement Gryllida 00:42, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I love this. Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:10, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Improved diff formating is key for faster follow up of changes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:18, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Vincent Simar (talk) 11:44, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Lofhi (talk) 18:02, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support "...this often makes it difficult for people to find small changes inside a sentence" - coudn't agree more. Orielno (talk) 22:08, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support enL3X1 ¡‹delayed reaction›¡ 04:04, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support What he said - "difficult for people to find small changes inside a sentence". Shock Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:53, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Klaas `Z4␟` V:  22:26, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Ragesoss (talk) 23:50, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support the wub "?!" 00:34, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ahm masum (talk) 08:41, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Might this relate to the reducing-edit-conflicts above? HLHJ (talk) 06:17, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Julia\^talk 10:57, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --jdx ^Re: 19:46, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support RandomDSdevel (talk) 01:35, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Fano (talk) 11:37, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I sometimes find myself copying entire revisions to use with diffutils instead of using the built-in diff viewer... François Robere (talk) 17:43, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ruslik (talk) 13:22, 10 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support NicoScribe (talk) 09:39, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support — Luchesar • T/C 13:42, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support — NickK (talk) 16:44, 11 December 2017 (UTC)