GlobalReplace

MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | Categories

Is is possible or desirable to implement a global search-and-replace feature on UseMod that non-administrators can use?

: Use Mod's Page renaming action goes through all pages to update the page links: so the code to do that is already there. UseMod:Tarquin has pondered adding an admin action to find & replace any old text in all wiki pages.

: I think that feature already exists in 0.92. Perhaps it does not deal gracefully with an already existing target page name, but that that would be easy to fix. -- AlexSchroeder

: Yes -- page renaming exists. A subprocess of that function goes through all page texts replacing "[ [foo] ]" with "[ [bar] ]". What I meant is that that function could be reused as a general search & replace for any old text.

MeatballWiki does not have any administrators. However, if anyone can figure out how to safely enable those features for anyone to use, we could consider adding them to the site.

: maybe one solution would be a new item in the user preferences, a list of abbreviations: "replace every occurrence of foo that I type with bar upon page save"

That could be a lot of fun since we don't have real authenticated user logins. I'll set Cliff's preferences to replace every 'e' with a link to our favourite .cx domain.

: oops. I had my WikiPedia head on ;-)

The problem with GlobalReplace is not the implementation. The problem is one of PeerReview. Currently, every action requires only a similar magnitude of review. If we add global actions, then the amount of commensurate review will be much greater than the effort put into the action. Everything must have a BalancingForce. A global action must allow for quick global review. So, one strategy would be to make global search and replace very painful to do. Another option is to improve the power of review capabilities, say by displaying context in the search results. Somewhere in between disabling the action and empowering the review we will reach a balance, and then it will be safe.

So, simply put, how do we throttle the use of this feature? And how do we improve our review capabilities? -- SunirShah

: vague pondering: most of the PeerReview features so far in wikis work on TacitApproval?. If you don't like it, do something; if you like it, do nothing. Maybe for this we should reverse the principle -- the global replace only goes ahead if people actively agree with it.

Throttling the action

Empowering the review

How about some sort of temporary "replace notice" (or "replace object") is created to represent the replace operation? The replace notice would appear on RecentChanges, allowing PeerReview. The replace notice would also allow someone to undo the entire global replace at one stroke through the replace notice. --anon.

[CategoryWikiTechnology] [CategoryUnimplementedWikiTechnology]

GlobalReplace

Throttling the action

Empowering the review

Discussion