Quickstart: common events
New to Refract? These are the 5 event types you'll see most often, what they mean, and how to query them. After 5 minutes, move on to the full event taxonomy.
The 5 most common events
sentence_first_seen / sentence_removed
Content lifecycle. A sentence appeared or disappeared.
refract analyze "Earth" --depth brief
SELECT timestamp, section, after
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE event_type = 'sentence_first_seen'
ORDER BY timestamp;
citation_added / citation_removed / citation_replaced
Source changes. Added, removed, or swapped. citation_replaced means the claim
text stayed but the supporting source changed — the strongest revisionism signal.
SELECT timestamp, event_type, before, after
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE event_type LIKE 'citation_%'
ORDER BY timestamp;
revert_detected
An edit was undone. Refract checks edit comments against revert patterns. Multiple reverts on the same section signal edit-warring.
SELECT timestamp, section
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE event_type = 'revert_detected'
ORDER BY timestamp;
template_added / template_removed
Policy templates. NPOV, citation needed, dispute — these are editorial signals
that someone flagged the content as problematic.
SELECT timestamp, event_type, after
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE event_type LIKE 'template_%'
ORDER BY timestamp;
section_reorganized
Section structure changed — sections were added, removed, or reordered. Often accompanies major content rewrites.
SELECT timestamp, section
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE event_type = 'section_reorganized'
ORDER BY timestamp;
Your first 3 queries
refract analyze "Bitcoin" --depth detailed -c > bitcoin.jsonl
duckdb -c "
SELECT event_type, count(*) as n
FROM 'bitcoin.jsonl'
GROUP BY event_type
ORDER BY n DESC;
"
duckdb -c "
SELECT section, count(*) as n
FROM 'bitcoin.jsonl'
WHERE event_type LIKE 'citation_%'
GROUP BY section
ORDER BY n DESC
LIMIT 5;
"
duckdb -c "
SELECT timestamp, after
FROM 'bitcoin.jsonl'
WHERE event_type = 'sentence_first_seen'
ORDER BY timestamp
LIMIT 10;
"
Next
- Full event taxonomy — all 26 event types
- Analytics with DuckDB — pre-built SQL views
- Wikipedia history tutorial — first full walkthrough