Wikipedia is a great knowledge base, but sometimes you want to check the truthfulness of what you read. One way is to find out who wrote a particular word or phrase.
Programmers already have tools that annotate code and show who wrote or last changed a specific line. They are called “Blame” or “Praise”. So why is there no such tool for the Wikipedia? One reason is that retrieving all versions of a particular page can be a very long process, e.g., the article “United States” is 700 KB large and has tens of thousands of versions!
Nevertheless, I’m making such a tool. It will be a Web site. I expect to launch an alpha soon.
Suggestions for a name are welcome.
July 3, 2011 at 9:39 am
I suggest Wikiwho
July 3, 2011 at 4:35 pm
I noticed that there is a blamer tool in Wikipedia already. On any page you click “View history” -> “Revision history statistics” -> “Article Blamer”.
This tool is far from beeing convinient, but the thing is that if you want people to use your tool, it should be integrated within wikipedia (maybe imporve or replace the existing tool).
July 3, 2011 at 10:52 pm
Whosays
Whosaid
Sayswho
July 3, 2011 at 11:49 pm
Shlomi,
Heh, I last checked a couple of years ago. I’ll still write another blamer and hope it’s more convenient.
Good point about integration.