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 export "Pluto" --from 71593043 --to 71601937 --format ndjson > events.jsonl

That range is 43 revisions from the day Pluto was reclassified. The queries on this page read the file with DuckDB. Event fields are camelCase (eventType, fromRevisionId).

SELECT timestamp, section, after
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE eventType = '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, eventType, before, after
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE eventType 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 eventType = '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, eventType, after
FROM 'events.jsonl'
WHERE eventType 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 eventType = 'section_reorganized'
ORDER BY timestamp;

Your first 3 queries

refract analyze "Pluto" --from 71593043 --to 71601937 --depth detailed --json > pluto.jsonl

duckdb -c "
SELECT eventType, count(*) as n
FROM 'pluto.jsonl'
GROUP BY eventType
ORDER BY n DESC;
"

duckdb -c "
SELECT section, count(*) as n
FROM 'pluto.jsonl'
WHERE eventType LIKE 'citation_%'
GROUP BY section
ORDER BY n DESC
LIMIT 5;
"

duckdb -c "
SELECT timestamp, after
FROM 'pluto.jsonl'
WHERE eventType = '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