REVISIONS: ONE OF DRUPAL'S ONLY FORGIVING FEATURES
Node revision is one of those features that people don't think about until the its needed, and by then its always too late.
Sometimes bad things happen to good content. Our lovely users, being humans, sometimes mess up content, or sometimes a WYSIWYG editor and inputs formats will muck up formatting, the ways users can accidentally mess up a piece of content is pretty amazing.
I almost always remember to turn them on by default, and I can't tell you how *big of a smile* i can hear over the phone when I tell poor panicky old clients "totally lost your content? click the revisions tab, and revert to a previous version." I like it when drupal makes people smile! Its frankly too rare in my line of work. Today, i made a mistake -- i forgot to turn them on... and honestly my heart sank. I failed.
I searched for this issue, and couldn't find previous bugs amazingly. I would have assumed that someone had argued that they are disabled by default for a good reason, so i've attempted to argue the counterpoint:
CONTERPOINT:
1. On sites with large numbers nodes, and frequent revisions, turning on node revisions would potentially pollute the database with too many node_revision records.
-This *is* a concern on sites with large amounts of content, lots of traffic, and large amounts of content that is constantly getting updated. Sites that must worry about this must be in an extreme minority (i don't have data, i just know that none of us have ever heard of 99.9 percent of drupal sites....)
-The small percentage of sites that must worry about keeping their node revision tables small enough to stay high performance can jolly well click the "disabled" checkbox
2. No one uses node revisions anyway.
- No one uses it, or no one opens the publishing options fieldset?
3. Changing content type defaults isn't that hard.
- Content type defaults are a horrible place that assumes every piece of content should have a comment thread, and no piece of content may need an undo button. Again, who needs an undo button until you wish you had it? Besides the big time sites that need to worry about #1 counter point can bloody hell hire someone that knows that default is there.
If anyone has a good reason why node revisions aren't turned on by default please speak now.
If this is a mere duplicate than please mark so, and accept my humble apology.
Otherwise, I'm posting a patch here. I have no intention of altering previous versions defaults.
Comments
Comment #1
nancydru-1 for this. I do not like revision on most of my content and hate having my database clogged with a bunch of useless crap. And then there is a problem that contribs aren't notified of a reversion, so they can't replace their data. #524726: Add hook_node_revert_revision()
Comment #2
Aerodynamo commentedI love revisions and wish they were default. In fact, if comments are default for things like pages or other content types added, revisions should be default. Someone can just disable them, although along with the "disable revisions" options, there should be a "remove all revision information" so that it retroactively deletes any revisions made previously and keeps only the current information in the node.
The poster above me is only using a situation where there are multiple contributors, like in a wiki setting. What about a website managed by only 1 or 2 people who are editing pages manually? Someone deletes content and saves by accident? Mistakes happen, it is best to be prepared and have it default and turn it off if you dislike it. That way, everyone is happy.
Comment #3
nancydruPersonally, I think the only default should be "Publish". I don't even like "Promote" as a default. Yes. I have made the mistakes you mention, and have kicked myself, but that's the way it is and overall, I am happy with it.
Comment #4
Aerodynamo commentedI have to agree that "Promote" is an awful default option.
Comment #5
avpaderno-1 for the feature.
Revisions should not be on by default, but enabled only when needed; if you don't need them, and you forget to disable them, you will have your database filled of data you don't even need.
Comment #6
Aerodynamo commentedCouldn't there be a way of clicking them off and having it remove the entries from the database? That was what I was proposing--not sure if it is possible, exactly...
I would rather have the database take a slight surge and then turn it off upon realization, or to have it on initially.
Comment #7
nancydruSee #531726: Set publishing options and Revision Deletion module.
Comment #8
MickC commentedShould be Optional. If content is updated to the database directly, versions make the code much more complicated.
My applications are sourcing 100,000's of rows of data externally, and versions add a layer of complexity unnecessarily.
I can understand it is better as default for low volume, manually entered data through the UI, but I hope you can see how it creates grief in my case.
Easier to keep the nid,vid the same.
Comment #9
klonosI believe that the only thing this discussion here will do is cause 'flames' over what is best: to have this setting(s) on or off by default. I don't mean to hijack the issue, so instead of changing its title (and risking everyone's rage), I filed a new issue with my suggestion: #1007636: Provide means to set defaults for new content types' settings + mass edit & overview of existing content type's settings. Please let me know what you think about my proposed solution and thanx in advance ;)
Comment #10
avpaderno