Talk:Who Wrote That?

I love this tool and use it extensively. However, since the last few days I keep getting an error message and it's not working: "Error: Refresh or try again later.". I've already uninstalled the browser extension from Chrome and reinstalled it. What else could be the problem? ~~~~

Today it works again. Maybe by restarted my laptop I was able to clear something. ~~~~

It was the WikiWho backend service that was down, but yes, it should be functioning properly now.

Currently, WP:WWT is a shortcut at en-wiki which is a redirect to the Writing WikiProject. There is currently a discussion open to repurpose this shortcut to this tool; your feedback would be appreciated at w:Wikipedia talk:WWT. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 20:08, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The shortcut w:WP:WWT has now been retargeted as a soft 404.

It used to highlight all text by a certain user. It is no longer doing this for me. Just says who wrote the specific text I click on. Wondering if others are having the same issue?

@Doc James: , you might want to add yourself as a watcher on task T320364.

Incompatibility with Vector 2022 and indicators should now be resolved as of version 0.21.0

This is very useful, but in my experience buggy on Vector 2022. It works consistently well with the original Vector 2010. Is this the common experience for other editors? If so, could the extension switch the page theme prior to highlighting? Regards, ~~~~

What do you mean by “buggy”? I don’t usually use Vector 2022, but now I gave it a try, and found nothing unexpected or different to the Vector 2010 experience. P.S. Vector 2010 and Vector 2022 are called skins, not themes.

Hello Tacsipacsi, I posted a reply at "User:Rjjiii/Who Wrote That: reply" on en-wiki. The abusefilter here blocks me from posting any kind of link. Hope that helps, ~~~~

I'm on Firefox and Windows 10. If I run "Who Wrote That", I get:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change?useskin=vector-2022
  • No yellow mouseover highlighting.
  • Popups mostly work as expected.
  • If I click text in some subsections (like "Oceans"), the whole paragraph's text fades to grey and no popup appears.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change?useskin=vector
  • Yellow mouseover highlighting appears for the article's text.
  • Popups mostly work as expected.
  • The Oceans subsection has the same issue as above.
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change?useskin=monobook
  • Same as vector 2010 above.

I don't know if this will help narrow the bugs down but I used the add-on on the "Piri Reis map" article while working with a Good Article reviewer. Highlighting worked prior to the Good Article template: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piri_Reis_map&oldid=1170703711 But will not work on the Vector-2022 skin after the Good Article template is applied: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Piri_Reis_map&direction=next&oldid=1170703711

I tried to run the pre-GA version of "Effects of climate change" but saw no change. If I go all the way back before it had either a GA "+" or a protected lock icon: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Effects_of_climate_change&oldid=35858009 then the highlighting works.

I tested "David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims" which has the blue extended lock icon. The last version before protection ( https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims&oldid=1166141665 ) will display highlighting correctly. The first version with the lock icon can't do highlighting: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims&direction=next&oldid=1166298023

Also, whenever highlighting breaks, it usually makes the text small, but this doesn't always seem to happen and isn't a big deal. Hope that helps, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ(talk) 15:56, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Indeed it seems to get confused by indicators (GA pluses, protection locks etc. are indicators). Which makes sense, as the indicators were moved from next to the article title to below the article title – a change that may well confuse incorrectly written code.

I realise the greater difficulty in adding extensions to Safari because of Apple's policy requirements, but it's disappointing that it's not available there. I know most editors use Chrome, but I find Safari immensely superior for use with extensive WP editing in respect to handling multiple windows and recovery from crashes.

I was glad to see the hope that you might make this available as an extension, and I urge you to do so, and in general try to implement add-ons within wikimedia, not as part of external programs. No matter what browser someone might use, it's helpful to keep all the WP-specific special features in one place. DGG (talk) 22:37, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, and thanks for the feedback! We understand that Chrome and Firefox browsers aren't used by all editors, and we're interested in seeing how we can expand accessibility of the tool. For this reason, we're currently conducting an investigation to determine how/if we can make the tool a gadget/extension for Wikipedia users (rather than a browser extension). If time and resources permit, we hope to expand accessibility. Thank you!

I am also, as @DGG, wondering why this tool is available only to chrome & X (sorry I forget which browser was mentioned on the documentation page and cannot easily switch from this discussion forum to the original page), as well as wondering why this information requires three differenet modes of communication: information page in wiki-text, this flow-like forum, and fabricator which you have sent us to look at?

Welp, I'm glad that someone has the same question as I do (I use Safari on Mac, so I'd want a Gadget). It looks like the Phabricator investigation ended with issues on the cross-site request thing. Not unexpected, guess I will try Firefox.

This is a great tool for investigating articles, but one downside is that when it is active, some normal features in articles are not available e.g. being able to click on and open references. Would it be possible to add an on/off toggle so that the references can be clicked on but without completely disabling the tool and then having to rerun it again afterwards? Smartse (talk) 18:01, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Why was this developed as browser extension rather than a MediaWiki extension (or gadget)? I could only find mentions about the fact that you chose to do this in the documentation and discussions, not why. I would love to know the reasoning behind this, what things made it unsuitable to make it a MediaWiki extension?

WWT uses the WhoColor API, which is a third party tool. If we wanted to develop a gadget/extension with a third party tool, we would need to undergo a likely lengthy and challenging approval process. In addition, we may not have even received general approval. For this reason, we decided to build a browser extension as a first step. We would then be able to deliver a tool in a timely manner. Following its release, we could then consider the possibility of extending WWT into an extension or gadget. The team is now investigating such possibilities, and we hope that we can expand WWT accessibility in the future. TL;DR: We used a third party tool.

How is the current state in 2021? Because using that as an extension for my own private wiki would be incredible! Any ways to use that?

@IFried (WMF), could you please give us an update on this, or refer us to someone who can? This would be much more useful as a gadget than as a browser extension.

@IFried (WMF) Agreed; it would be very nice. Here's a Village Pump discussion relevant to this tool being turned into a widget: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Faciliate_access_to_article_history

Hi all, I'm very impressed by this browser extension, which is very useful for drilling down on who the primary contributors are on a given page. One thing that would be useful, however, which I can't see here, is a simple list of all the major contributors by their percentage of contributed text on the current page, in descending order. I assume that info is already being calculated only that you have to click individual passages to access it, one by one, at the moment. Cheers.

there are other tools that provide what you're seeking--in case you have not yet found them--here's a list:

Who Wrote That? works just fine for me on Data drilling and many other pages:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_drilling

XTools' Authorship section: seems to be just what you are requesting

https://xtools.wmflabs.org/authorship/en.wikipedia.org/Data%20drilling

Sigma had a variety of author relevant tools:

Article revision statistics shows the top 50 contributors

WikiHistory is also illuminating

Page Information also provides useful info along with links to external tools.

However, you might be asking yourself looks like these tools are reporting different editor counts and right now I do not have an answer.

--CmdrDan (talk) 21:22, 20 August 2022 (UTC)

@CmdrDan oh, nice, looks like XTools does exactly the thing I was after. Thanks for the response!

(Although having drilled down, I see it's by character count, presumably of Wikitext, which is better than nothing but not entirely what I had in mind; prose count is the more useful metric)

I have installed the browser extension "Who Wrote That", but it seems to only work on the English Wikipedia. What needs to be done to activate it on other languages like e.g. w:nl:?

See Who Wrote That?#Current Limitations of the Tool.

Thanks for your link and information.

• According to T173746, each language needs to be developed separately. What is needed to do it for Dutch?
• German should already be available, but it does not work for me? Should I enforce it for my own account?
• (for English I did not anything specifically and it worked automatically -- I got an additional link in the side menu "Who Wrote That?")

• According to T173746, each language needs to be developed separately. What is needed to do it for Dutch?

Sorry, I don’t know this extension/WikiWho in that depth. Let’s hope someone else with more knowledge will show up.

• German should already be available, but it does not work for me? Should I enforce it for my own account?

It works for me under Firefox 91 ESR, without any configuration (as far as I remember). Do you get any JavaScript error messages?

Duplicate of Topic:Wtcvz7ftzm1u7zkw

Please enable this tool in other Wikipedias such as Persian Wikipedia