User:Ainali/ArticleEvolutionPlayer

This is an idea for a tool to view how an article develops over time.

Minimum idea:
Gadget or script to browse through different versions of an article (automates hitting the "newer" link).
 * 1) A user presses play on the tab
 * 2) Go to the first version of the article
 * 3) When it has loaded, go to next, wait a little while and repeat
 * 4) Need to be able to pause

Possible additional features:

 * Make it as an gadget which gives a play tab on the articles
 * collapse the entire "diff section"
 * seeing authors' names
 * Perhaps preload the coming versions in the background?
 * slider, like Etherpad
 * Perhaps have it a a stand alone program which includes a screen capture function and can export to .ogv.
 * Colorcoding of rollbacks and reverts so they can easily be spotted.
 * The time could be handled in several ways and it would be nice if the user could select which one to use. Radiobutton for eqaul time or proportional. Input field for total length of show, default to 15 seconds (or perhaps even 1 second per made edit on the article).

Purposes:

 * curiosity
 * looking up an edit war
 * finding deleted content
 * it is very educational and would be great to use at workshops or presentations to show how Wikipedia actually works. The vandalism would usually only flash by while the nice version would last longer.