How to display a "historic" image file in a mediawiki article

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1

in mediawiki you embed images in articles using the following notation:

this notation always(!) displays the latest and greatest file on the article.

every file (including images) keep their file history, in which it is possible to see what has changed over time.

question:
I would like to display a certain version of a file in an article and am not able to figure out how this is done.

does somebody know an elegant way to do this?

udo

Posted 2013-08-16T13:40:27.033

Reputation: 7 661

Answers

2

Not using mediawiki, but here is some info that might be helpful.

Help:URL says:

To link to a particular version of a page: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Train&oldid=1374279. Note that the version ID is unique across all pages, so the title parameter here has no effect, and can in fact be omitted.

This only seems useful if the page contains just the one image.

Manual:Hooks mentions the GetMetadataVersion extension described as :

Allows to modify the image metadata version currently in use

To know if one of the above is useful will require more knowledge about mediawiki than I have.

harrymc

Posted 2013-08-16T13:40:27.033

Reputation: 306 093

thanks. I was looking for embedding a historic version of a file in an article. this to show how an image/diagram looked like at a certain point in time... – udo – 2013-09-04T06:22:36.650

1Why don't you extract the old image and use it as new, rather than addressing the old version in mediawiki? – harrymc – 2013-09-04T07:47:13.713

because every image keeps its history and can be accessed individually. there must be a smart way to embed it. maybe through the "options" attribute. so far I was not able to figure it out. – udo – 2013-09-04T12:20:48.750

I haven't seen anything documented in "options". You could have a look at the mediawiki sources to see if an undocumented option exists (such as oldid). You could even try using oldid, who knows. – harrymc – 2013-09-04T13:58:04.677

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I can't find a source for this yet, but I believe this is not supported in MediaWiki for practical reasons: If someone vandalizes an image, the image can be protected. If you could display an older (vandalized) version of the image by editing the page it was displayed on, it would nullify the protection of the image.

K.A.Monica

Posted 2013-08-16T13:40:27.033

Reputation: 5 887

note: in case an image is vandalized they fix the vandalized version (to "undo" the mess), upload the fix and then delete the vandalized version from history trail... – udo – 2013-09-07T07:42:31.783