https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30537

--- Comment #1 from fastgoldf...@gmail.com 2011-09-06 17:08:51 UTC ---
I have discovered a workaround for this bug, but the workaround also requires
another workaround for the "Page creation date" portion of this bug:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30610

By manually producing a creation date property that is close to the actual
creation date, it becomes possible to use it in a duplicate checking scheme to
determine whether a discovered duplicate is actually the original. This is
important, because otherwise the duplicate checking scheme will mark the
original as a duplicate too.

Basically, it just checks to see if the creation date is the smallest (in unix
time) of all the duplicates found. If yes, the unique property (serial number,
in this case) is stored as-is. If not, the error "DUPLICATE!" is stored
instead. This method works better than previous methods that relied on caching
to not mark the original entry as a duplicate.

[[Certification number::{{#if: {{#ask: [[Serial number::{{{Serial number|}}}]]
[[Creation date::<{{{Creation date|}}}]] | ?Creation date }} | DUPLICATE! |
{{{Certification number|}}} }}]]

For the above code, $smwStrictComparators = true is set, as described here:

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/Help:Strict_comparators

This workaround is not a solution, since it requires that the duplicate be
entered into the system before it is checked and marked as a duplicate.
Branching forms can solve this problem completely by checking for duplicates of
critical information in the first step, before sending the user on to invest
their effort to fill out the remainder of the form(s). 

However, branching forms (and any other possible technique for dupe checking)
still needs a page creation date property in order to know which page is the
original. I have created a new bug requesting a page creation date property in
SMW core:

https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30784

I marked that bug as a blocker for this bug, since a creation date property is
required to do dupe checking. I did not mark it as a blocker for branching
forms, because that can still be done without it, with the caveat that it will
have the limitation of not being able to do dupe checking.

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