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Help:Page history

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This is an archived version of this page, as edited by 82.132.233.12 (talk) at 05:53, 12 January 2018. It may differ significantly from the current version.

Page deletion

Page deletion (as well as revision deletion) is much more radical than page blanking, or changing the page into a redirect, because in the case of page deletion the page history can no longer be retrieved by regular users. Therefore, if any content has been moved or copied in the past to another page, with a reference in the edit summary to the source page to provide attribution, this attribution is lost when the source page is deleted.

Also, edits made to deleted pages are not shown in the regular contributor's User Contributions pages. However, the revision history is kept and can be retrieved by an administrator, who can also undelete the page (see w:Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages).

Depending on the reason for a page deletion the deletion of the page history may be desirable or not. If not, ways to preserve the page history include:

  • change the page into a redirect; if the name is not desired even for a redirect, and there is a more suitable name for the redirect, it can be renamed without leaving behind a redirect from the original name
  • if there is no suitable name for a redirect, the page can be renamed to an archive page; if the content is not suitable for being a "current version", not even of an archive page, the content can be replaced by a remark explaining the purpose of the archive page.

See also w:wp:Merge and delete.

Composite pages (transclusion)

A section of a page may be an included separate page (via a method known as transclusion), see composite pages. A separate edit history is provided for the section, and this transcluded page must be watched separately. See m:Help:A simple composite example.

Image history

An "image" (in the broad sense of an uploaded file) can be edited, or, more generally, be replaced by a different image, by uploading a new image file with the same name. Again all versions are kept. The image history listing forms part of the image description page, which appears when clicking on the image. The image history consists of this and the old versions themselves.

Not kept are images which have been deleted (not to be confused with images that are no longer used in articles), the only record available is the upload log, deletion log and possibly the "votes for deletion" archive. Neither the latest nor older versions are kept by the system, hence it is not possible to undelete an image.

Linking to a specific version of a page

It is occasionally useful to link to a specific version of an article (a snapshot of it). For example, one might have done a review of a Wikipedia article and want to indicate which particular version was reviewed.

If the version is not the current version, one can use the page history to view the old version of the page. The URL of this old version is suitable for use to permanently reference this version, and can usually be obtained from the browser's location bar.

See also URLs of old versions of pages.

The history of the wikitext should not be confused with the history of the rendered page:

  • If a page contains a time-based variable, its rendered content varies with time; for example, {{CURRENTTIME}} gives the time of viewing the page; if at some stage the tag {{subst:CURRENTTIME}} has been placed, it has been replaced in the wikitext by the time of saving that revision; there is no variable for the time of saving the particular revision.
    • In particular, templates and images will vary if they are referred to with an expression containing a variable depending on time
  • The current versions of templates and images are used - it is not possible to specify a particular revision, unless old versions are given different names. Note that also templates used within these templates may have been revised.
  • The current interwiki links stored in Wikidata are used.

For a true permalink, upload the rendered page as HTML file (if enabled by the system) and link to the URL. The HTML contains the contents of the templates, so the page is not affected by a change or deletion of a template. It further contains URL-references to images; it is not affected by an image revision, but it is by a deletion.

To produce a wikitext version not depending on templates use "subst:", if necessary recursively.

See also Help:Downloading pages.

Special:Export

Special:Export produces an XML-file, without the MediaWiki user interface, with the wikitext of the current and optionally all old versions of one or more specified pages, with date, time, user name, and edit summary. How it is displayed, e.g. with or without XML tags, and with or without applying new lines, depends on the browser. Some browsers show "+" and "-" links to view or hide selected parts. Alternatively the XML-source can be viewed using the "view source" feature of the browser, or after saving the XML file locally, with a program of choice.

The feature also allows searching for a text in all versions of one or more specified pages. See also XML export.

Reverting a page

If your new pages edits aren't to your liking, don't panic; you can 'revert' the page to any previous version.

Archiving

Archiving texts in separate pages is superior to using the page history as archive:

  • "What links here" works for archive pages, but not for old revisions.
  • Texts in archive pages can be found by search engines. For content which is only in a revision history the possibilities are limited. (However, for a popular site like the English Wikipedia there are a few tens of mirror sites; how recent the copies are varies, so searching for some specific old content search engines may find it on some of them.)
  • Archive pages can be organized and titled afterwards in a suitable way, while e.g. edit summaries can not be supplied afterwards. However, an index of old versions of a page, with links to them, could be prepared.

See also

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