Help:Page history

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 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.

https://tools.wmflabs.org/xtools-articleinfo/index.php - tool to do for a given page the following:
- sort the page history by editor
- count the number of edits for each editor
The installed program works for most Wikimedia sites; for adaptation to use on other MediaWiki sites the program can also be downloaded.
Template:page history [ talk edit history links ] - applies recursive conversion of wikitext