Add a way to see edits/revisions that are likely to be related

[Freso]

Problem

A clear and concise description of what you want to happen

Being able to look at a history (e.g., https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL10223114A/Hans_Christian_Andersen?m=history) and have some way to see (possibly) related edits (e.g., by the same editor/account + within a short timeframe (seconds?)).

Expected behaviour / screenshots (ex: Figma design screenshots for UI feature)

Additional Context

This could be one more tool, along with https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/8709, to figure out the provenance of entities when figuring out whether entities should be merged or split or otherwise dealt with in some way.

Proposal & Constraints

What is the proposed solution / implementation?

Add a link on ?m=history pages for each revision that will show edits/revisions done by the same account within a short timeframe, which can probably be considered in seconds (esp. for bots that might be doing 100s of edits/minute).

Is there a precedent of this approach succeeding elsewhere?

MusicBrainz and BookBrainz have a rich editing history (and search!). This would not come close to this, but it would be one step towards being able to better use the revision history when investigating items.

Which suggestions or requirements should be considered for how feature needs to appear or be implemented?

Access should be only for librarians and higher. Figure out what time interval to look at (possibly make it customisable?).

Leads

Related files

Stakeholders

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[mekarpeles]

This is essentially the same as "squashing" (at least visually) edits or commits and I think we are not planning on doing this for the time being.

[Freso]

This is essentially the same as "squashing" (at least visually) edits or commits

How so?

I’m envisioning a list of edits/revisions, similar to "Recent Activity" on profile pages:

What I’m asking for is essentially already available, if I’m willing to click the “← Older” link enough times. This would just be another way to access this… and to access the relevant part without clicking “← Older” 100s of times.

[Freso]

Here is a use case: https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL2801165A/Philip_Jones – there is one edit associated with this author, which is its creation. Note that it was created on “April 29, 2008”. The oldest known associated Edition, OL10125769M, was created “April 30, 2008” which means that there was possibly (probably?) an Edition predating OL10125769M which has since been moved to another Author (or had its Work merged?).

AFAIK, there is now no way to find out what else was added (or changed) around this Author’s creation.

(I guess I need to tag @mekarpeles for the "needs response" label? Or is that label just not applied to closed issues?)

[cdrini]

Ah ok I think I see the mis-understanding here. @mekarpeles Freso is looking for the ability to effectively view our recent changes UI centered around a specific edit, not for squashing commits. This seems like a reasonable feature; basically an option to recent changes that lets you set where the table starts, maybe /recentchanges?around_id=1343234 . Re-opening so y'all can discuss.

[mekarpeles]

@Freso we have a way to:

1. see recent edits
2. see edits for a specific record (author, work, edition)

Are you requesting a way to jump to recent edits at a specific time instead of a page offset (e.g. choose a day/time on calendar)?