ChangeCounts

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An IndexingScheme, sorting pages highest AuthorWeight to lowest. This tracks popularity by discussion. On the other hand, old pages that were edited a lot will continuously show up even if the discussion has long since died. Also, new pages won't show up at all because they will start off at "1 change."

Moreover, you can get a feel for what the hot topic of the day is from RecentChanges, especially the one we use on MeatballWiki (using the UseModWiki script) because it counts the number of changes made to a page in the timespan of the RecentChanges listing.

I remember being told off for saying, "BASIC is popular" when I meant, "BASIC is common" :-) I think change counts probably indicate something like controversy rather than popularity. Or, how much pain was involved in getting the page to its current state.

I wonder whether it would be more useful to know when reading and writing a page than when indexing them. If a lot of work has gone into it we should perhaps be more careful about editing it. -- DaveHarris

Your point about controversy is very true. I have found that the worst written pages are often edited the most, often because of FlameBait. Also, well written pages aren't edited very often because they are considered "pristine," or "complete." There is also the problem of many chefs spoiling the soup. Pages with high edit counts often fail to achieve synthesis--leading people to add more to achieve synthesis (or discord)--and if they are somehow artificially synthesized, the essence of many points is left wanting. But, then again, large, solid arguments are illuminating. -- SunirShah

Our local RecentChanges currently shows the change count within the time period it covers. This avoids many of the problems mentioned above. Possibly both counts would be useful - total changes and changes in the current period.

Incidently, I use the change count as a hint for when the "diff" may be unreliable (ie based on an edit later than the one I last read).

You can diff against KeptPages now...

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ChangeCounts

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