ChangesInMonth -vs- ChangesInWeek
ChangesInMonth replaces ChangesInWeek because of low activity on this Wiki, and because of maintenance participation failure.
The reason that ChangesInWeek "looked" as though it was being neglected and not kept up-to-date, was totally because of the actions of the SharkBot (and (supposedly) the actions of the SharkBot was because of the actions of the GrammarVandal). The SharkBot actions, and the author of the SharkBot script, made it impossible for anyone to update pages as needed. The owner of that script continually allowed the script to revert all proper changes made. Even if an individual, like myself, did get approval to update those pages it would only be temporary, because soon the bot was once again undoing everything. In other words, it became nearly impossible and useless to attempt to keep ChangesInWeek up-to-date. Let's all hope the bot and the vandal leave these new pages alone.
After some years of the ChangesInMonth structure, the old ChangesInWeek pages have been deleted. I wonder sometimes as I do the edits week by week whether anyone is actually looking at the back pages. I have thought about trying to find out if they are read, but do not know a mechanism to do so. -- JohnFletcher
I can tell you that in the past these were used extensively by certain WikiZens, but that was before the big shake-up, and before we had the dictator and now the script. So many people have left Wiki, I now have no idea. My advice is to keep up with the records so that they are there when needed, and hopefully if/when the heavy-hand is completely lifted from Wiki, maybe, just maybe, Wiki will regain some of those that gave it life. "Sit on a puppy’s head and you protect it, sit too long and you snuff out its life..." That has happened to Wiki...
{So... You don't think it's really because when ExtremeProgramming went mainstream, the encyclopaedists went to WikiPedia, the bloggers went wherever bloggers go, the commentators went to Twitter, the socialites went to Facebook, and that left nowt but me and thee and a handful of others?}
I am here and I have been contributing and gnoming on issues relating to computing and participating in discussion, as well as contributing to keeping the show on the road. I do see quite a lot of interest in FunctionalProgramming, for example. -- JohnFletcher
{Indeed. The reason WardsWiki isn't a booming festival of participation (which wouldn't necessarily be a GoodThing) is that everything it is or does is technically done better by something else. Obviously, I embrace this wiki's significant pioneer status, but things have moved on and we now need to recognise that we're the museum keepers here (and that is a GoodThing) and we're waaay back from the cutting edge of Web development or collaboration.}
I agree we are not at the cutting edge on collaboration. I know what I want for that, it is a fully semantic web enabled tool where I can easily find links between things and also import and export information. I have not found it yet. What this can still be is a reservoir of knowledge about good practice in a number of areas. There is a wealth of knowledge here about programming in a lot of different languages in different styles, together with comparisons. Some of what is here is out of date, but some does not go out of date and provides a record which may help some people understand what is current as well. -- JohnFletcher
How funny: ChangesInMonth was originally ChangesInJanuary? through ChangesInDecember?. We switched to ChangesInWeek?<number> because we exceeded the maximum page size some months. I killed the ChangesInWeek? pages because they were dead.
I don't think we ever intended to keep more than two months of history visible. There's a longer and more detailed history available to administrators -- to fight vandals.
Personally, I would delete all the '<Month><TwoYearDigits?>' pages. They seem mostly dead, and hardly useful. -- JeffGrigg
The question I was asking was how useful it is to keep the back pages. Is it possible to look at usage for wiki pages? -- JohnFletcher
There's a fairly good history of changes. There's never been a history of reading activity. -- JeffGrigg
What used to happen was that the changes were kept for a year and then the pages reused. One way would be to keep at least a complete back year. We need also to take into account the views of DonaldNoyes. -- JohnFletcher
Been here for many, many, years, and agree that one year is good compromise. As for reading of history pages, seems silly, as it is only needed for those that don't come by often, or emergencies (mass-mess, or mass-deletions). One could add a small image page-counter service, there are plenty available for free. Of course, some pages completely change from original content and meaning over time, though... maybe more then one year is good...
For the meantime I will go on with what I am doing, building up the pages and noting anything particular in ChangesInMonth. For anyone else who wants to know what I do, I have both RecentChanges and the month page open for editing and copy and paste to get down to about 7 days in RecentChanges. I save RecentChanges first after cutting, so that the change to the month page shows up in RecentChanges. It works out about twice a week. Every few months I make a few of the empty month pages. -- JohnFletcher
Something odd has happened today, 30th July 2013. Someone has edited the RecentChanges and moved some days to ChangesInJulyThirteen. In doing so they missed a day (25th July) and have done something odd to 27th/28th. Rather than revert I have picked up the 25th. Usually no-one else does anything to these except myself. -- JohnFletcher.
My SharkBot monitoring tools assign a high probability to the possibility that it was GrammarVandal. -- DaveVoorhis
Reverting the edit is difficult for RecentChanges as it is changing all the time. I didn't recognise the origin of the edits (hz2.yolau.net).