GFDL corpus watch

A GFDL corpus watch that crosses all wikis will require some new wiki code but is indispensible to this project as soon as we move off a Combined Wiki.

New software, perhaps a fork of GetWiki, could become the major monitoring and tracking interface to the GFDL text corpus as a whole. It is one of the proposed MediaWiki modifications, but is probably more a GetWiki feature since that project is more focused on multiple wikis.

In theory, any service based on this software could track changes to any other wiki, even if they didn't use a standard wiki URI, as long as they did not try to actively obscure their URIs or require logins (as orkut does). It seems likely that a typical RecentChanges log could look something like this:

(diff) (hist) . . en:Wikipedia:trolls; 21:35 . . en:Wikipedia:SunirShah (Talk) (trolls are bad! very bad! and so is fire! fire bad!)

(diff) (hist) . . en:Consudev:trolls; 21:27 . . 24.45.99.191 (Talk) (trolls are really sick of being slandered on Wikipedia, and don't blame us 24 nesting range trolls for what 142 range trolls do - besides everyone is always lying about them)

(diff) (hist) . . N en:Wikipedia:User:RealProteus; 21:25 . . en:Wikipedia:RealProteus (Talk) (Hey! My account was hacked! But I think it's someone trying to frame the 142 trolls, not one of them really, they are good folks)

(diff) (hist) . . M en:Wikipedia:User_talk:Proteus; 21:25 . . en:Wikipedia:Proteus (Talk) (please do not modify my talk page to say things I did not say, you sysops, and by the way I'm not the Proteus from Wikinfo, I am a troll from the 142 nesting range, nyah nyah)

(diff) (hist) . . fr:Meta-Wikipedia:trolls; 21:25 . . fr:Meta-Wikipedia:JimboWales (Talk) ("I am the GodKing! I rule that "Trolls are bad" in all languages, even/especially those that I don't understand. Also that all administrative decisions in all languages must be discussed in English from now on! I must understand! I will understand! I am the GodKing! YEEaarraaggh!)

(diff) (hist) . .N fr:Wikipedia:trolls; 21:25 . . fr:Wikipedia:Anthere (Talk) ("trolls" c'est en francais aussi, pardon L'Academie!)

(diff) (hist) . .N en:Wikipedia:User_talk:Proteus; 21:23 . . en:Wikipedia:RickK (Talk) (is this a threat? Are you threatening me? You are threatening me!)

(diff) (hist) . .N en:Wikinfo:Standard_wiki_URI; 21:20 . . 142.177.0.1 (Talk) (unnecessary hindrance to users publishing URIs of wiki pages)

(diff) (hist) . . en:Wikinfo:User_talk:Proteus; 21:14 . . 142.177.92.162 (Talk) (standard wiki URIs)

(diff) (hist) . . en:Metaweb:Wikitext_standard; 21:12 . . en:Metaweb:DannyHillis (new massively parallel hardware I just designed to process the wikitext standard and turn it all into a massive semantic web, I was bored at lunch; tomorrow I will probably solve the Halting Problem)

Such a log, theoretically, would include all changes to the GFDL text corpus at large public wikis and others one specifically chose. If one wanted to see only changes in English, that's a GetWiki user preference. If one wanted to see only changes to certain large public wikis, ignore others, that too is a user preference setting. If one wanted to assign some fictional common identity to various user accounts or IP numbers, that too is a user preference. This might be very effective in tracking activity. Whether to edit the page that changed, or a parallel page, or a local or peer to peer shared one, is ideally also a user preference long-term.

This is really nothing but a merge of the GetWiki Special:RecentChanges and MediaWiki Special:RecentChanges and potentially other wiki code used for GFDL text corpus management, such as MoinMoin and UseMod code.