Diff between revisions no longer visible when there is a hidden revision in between

On some posts, the edit history is not as helpful as it used to be because changes aren’t shown. (This might be different for users with extended permissions here on Meta; in that case, logging out or using a test user might help to reproduce the issue.)

Example screenshots taken at Understanding and customizing the About page


I think the problem is caused by hidden revisions. Previously, this didn’t result in the broken state where I cannot get any information about the change. Instead, I saw a diff between two revisions that were not hidden. That wasn’t always ideal because it looked like someone added something that was actually added by someone else whose revision was hidden. But at least it was possible to tell what had changed recently.

I only have a quite old screenshot showing how this used to look:


This is the combined view of my and Hugh’s edit on Moving posts to a new or existing topic. I took it because I was confused that my edit wasn’t visible. It is visible now because JammyDodger fixed that back then.

The information is still public. I could still compare the current version of the post to the prior version I can see in the history, but I need to copy it and use a separate tool for that now. Is it possible to show the diff between unhidden revisions again? Maybe all editors could be shown if the information about who edited the post is not covered by hiding the revision - it’s currently shown, while it wasn’t before.

Especially here on Meta, where hidden tags often trigger an edit to be hidden without staff manually hiding it, I miss being able to easily see what has changed.

A few more examples:

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Yeah, that’s kinda tricky :thinking: Maybe this will be “enough” for now?

I am not sure. When a documentation topic is updated here on Meta, knowing why I cannot see what changed still doesn’t help me to learn about what is new. This affects Wiki, where content is curated by users, so reviewing the changes is quite helpful (e.g. Explanation of dark mode, how to select it, and how to enable switching). But it is also a problem in Documentation. Understanding and customizing the About page is an example of that.

I think often you don’t hide those revisions intentionally, but it just happens. For example, I recently edited Homepage Feature, and I cannot see what I did, but I doubt anyone of you decided to hide my edit right when I did it.

At the same time, I can see revision 11 and the current version to get the diff that was shown to me before the behavior was changed. I still don’t really understand why it’s a problem to show the diff between v11 and v14, as you used to, when I can use another tool to get that.

As I said, I understand why the consolidated diff was a little confusing. But even though it, for example, combined 2 edits, it helped to tell me which parts might have changed. That’s why I miss seeing a diff between the public revisions -any changes from the hidden revision that are still in the public topic are public anyways.

I would appreciate it if we didn’t close the topic. Showing the reason why it’s not shown doesn’t solve the missing ability to get an overview of what has changed.

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