Should we make edit history available to contributors? Should we have custom revision messages?

[dchiller]

In some emails, @JoyfulGen, @annamorphism, and I have discussed letting the revision history for objects come out of its hiding in the Admin panel for more general viewing (or even use). We've also discussed making revision messages editable (so an editor could say something like "Changed X because Y") when they make edits.

[JoyfulGen]

In terms of making the revision history more visible, what would you think of having a little button that appears if a chant has been edited that says "View Edit History"? And then if you clicked on it there'd be a little dropdown menu or something that would indicate what changes were made and why. The button could be visible only to editors, but I could also see how it would be useful for general users too; if they came across an unusual syllabification, the Edit History could explain it. Or would you rather the button be a bit more out of the way?

[annamorphism]

I like that--it could be a little bit like viewing the history of a wikipedia page...

[JoyfulGen]

I've come across a discrepancy in MS73 that I think would make a good case study for this:

Folio 131v starts with this chant https://cantusdatabase.org/chant/681429 which includes the word "habentem." However, on the actual folio the scribe seems to have forgotten the little squiggle on the second 'e', making the word "habente." Behold:

This is a Cool Thing that I would want to record on CantusDB. However, I feel that if I just remove the 'm' from the Source Spelling, then either the change will go unnoticed, or people will think "Yikes, some noodle made a typo, how embarrassing." Which is why I would want to leave a little comment saying "the scribe forgot the squiggle on the second e."

(@annamorphism please let me know if this is just a case of me not understanding gothic script and actually the word is "habentem" and I'm the noodle. But even so, my case study still stands!)

[annamorphism]

@JoyfulGen you are not a noodle; it is indeed habente. but i don't think the scribe is a noodle either! it seems like habente/habentes/habentem all happen in different sources.
"Indexing notes" are usually where I comment on variant spellings like this, but it's clunkier than a commit message sort of things would be.