User:Graham87/Page history observations

Here is a collection of observations I've made about page history oddities. I find out if there are page histories to merge by checking deleted contributions of early editors, and checking articles on place name lists like List of urban areas by population or national place name lists. I also use the new histmerge list to find pages to history merge. Sometimes, I can use old copies of Wikipedia to restore the missing history (see below. Feel free to add any page history oddities to this user page.

Pages whose history has been lost

Page history started to be reliably kept and dated after the conversion to a MySQL database in early 2002 (see Wikipedia:Usemod article histories for caveats). Therefore, all history from that time onwards should theoretically be accessible. However, some page history has disappeared entirely due to moves and deletions. The following situation is typical:

• Page A is moved to Page B by cut and paste, either before the page move function became available to non-sysops, after which it was used more often and it was more reliable, or by a user who was not aware of or could not use the page move function.
• Page B is moved back to page A with the move function, thus deleting page A's old history.
• The deletion archives are cleared, meaning that the deleted history of page A is gone permanently. The deletion archives were last cleared on 8 June 2004 in a database crash, and were previously cleared on 3 December 2003, when the Wikipedia database was transferred to a new server. (The deletion archives were first created on 10 August 2002.)

Any page history deleted before 8 June 2004 is no longer in the current Wikipedia database. Some very early revisions appear in Nostalgia Wikipedia, a copy of the Wikipedia database from 20 December 2001, and some old database dumps are available, which can be used to restore some missing edits; for more information about how I copy those edits to the current Wikipedia database, see User:Graham87/Import. The following articles have missing history which seemingly cannot be restored by sysops:

Unresolved

These cases cannot be sufficiently resolved by any of the database dumps that are available to me:

• Mafia (now at the title Sicilian Mafia) – the first edit in the history indicates that there were earlier edits, but they are not in the English Wikipedia database. They may have been wiped out due to a bug similar to the one that affected the [[]] article List of ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy (see below). Alternatively, they may have been deleted in April 2004, by Timwi, to try to fix corruption in the link table If the latter explanation is correct, early edits to the Mafia page would have been left behind when it was moved to the title "Italian mafia", probably due to a server glitch; the page move happened some time before this talk page message.
• List of ships of the Royal Netherlands Navy – old edits may have been deleted by a software bug. See this talk page thread.
• Ångström – the history before November 2002 at the title "Angstrom" was deleted to make way for a page move in November 2002.
• Ali – The title of the page containing its old history, "Ali Ben Abu Talib", was deleted in March 2004 because it was an "empty redir", probably meaning that it was orphaned.
• Scooby-Doo – its old title, "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" was permanently deleted according to the old deletion log.
• Indian cuisine – The history of some text that was merged into the article was deleted in November 2003 to make way for a page move.
• Nirvana (band) and Smells Like Teen Spirit – their old titles, NirvanaBand and NirvanaBand/Smells Like Teen Spirit, were permanently deleted according to the old deletion log in June 2002. Some of the history of these articles is available at the Nostalgia Wikipedia; see the old history of NirvanaBand and NirvanaBand/Smells Like Teen Spirit.
• Marseille – the deleted history maybe at Marseilles, could have been deleted in September 2002 or even earlier
• Benedict Arnold – old history deleted in December 2003, because the page had very little content at the time; it may have been vandalised.
• İzmir, Domo (NHK), and IMI Desert Eagle – in all three of these cases, a copyvio was introduced, the whole article was deleted, then the pre-copyvio text was replaced without the page history. In the case of "İzmir", this occurred in April 2004; in the other two cases, this occurred in May 2004. Selective undeletion was introduced in December 2004).
• Henry Molaison – While it was at the title HM (patient), it was speedily deleted, probably because it contained very little content. However, see the edit summary for the page's oldest surviving revision.
• Demographics of the United States – was deleted in August 2002, apparently to make way for a page move.
• History of Myanmar – has been moved multiple times
• Politics of the Netherlands – part of its history was at the title "Politics in the Netherlands", which was deleted in August 2002. See this edit.
• Orgy – This page was moved from the title "Orgy (sex)" to "Orgy" in August 2003; however, the title "Orgy (sex)" was deleted in February 2004 as an orphaned redirect. The page history of "Talk:Orgy (sex)" has survived, and I have history merged it with Talk:Orgy. See my edit to the talk page.
• Hedgehog – the old title of this page, "Hedgeog" was deleted in March 2002.
• Talk:Attack on Pearl Harbor – the location of the page history before July 2002, World War II/Pearl Harbor Talk, has been permanently deleted according to the old deletion log. Some of its history can be found at the Nostalgia Wikipedia.
• Politics of Poland – deleted in September 2002 to make way for a page move
• Writ of Certiorari – deleted in September 2002 because it only contained the text "You will eat poop". However, there is a perfectly good article about this subject at the Nostalgia Wikipedia, so perhaps the page had been vandalised.
• Some old talk pages – Before namespaces were introduced to Wikipedia during the conversion to a MySQL database in late January 2002, talk pages were at the title "Pagename/Talk". However some talk pages were mistakenly placed at the title "Pagename/talk"; these pages were swallowed up during the conversion to the new software in January 2002. I have imported all the relevant content and edits to these lost talk pages from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, but it only goes up to 20 December 2001. Therefore talk pages with the suffix "/talk" created between 20 December 2001 and 25 January 2002 are permanently lost. An example of such a page that may have contained significant discussion is "MMORG/talk", per this edit; see this move log about the title of the talk page.
• Some old subpages – During the UseModWiki era of Wikipedia, subpages were used extensively. The part of the subpage's title after the "/" usually began with an upper-case letter, like "Subpage/Test". However, if it began with a lower-case letter, like "Subpage/test, its UseModWiki edits were not imported during the mass-import of these old edits in September 2002. I've imported some of these missing edits from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, but there are still pages with lost edits, such as at User:Arcade (formerly at the title "Wikipedians/arcade"), User:Ddroar/articles, User:Gareth Owen/inprogress, Religious affiliations of Presidents of the United States (formerly at the title "President of the United States of America/religious affiliations"),User:Taw/contributions, and Wikipedia:Find or fix a stub, formerly at the title "Wikipedia utilities/find or fix a stub".
• Many old user and user talk pages – When Wikipedia used the UseModWiki software, there were no namespaces, so all the user pages were in what we now call the main namespace. Much user page history has been irretrievably lost because many user pages were moved by cut and paste from the main to the user namespaces, and the main namespace history was deleted before the most recent purge of the deletion archive. This phenomenon predominantly affects user pages of people whose usernames were at the start of the alphabet. Examples include AxelBoldt, Ed Poor, and Eloquence.
• Nutmeg, Pilbara Iron, and Christopher Tolkien – the old titles of the first two pages containing their earliest history, "Bnutmeg/b" and "Bhamersley/b iron" respectively, were deleted in March 2002 according to the Old deletion log. In a similar case, the history of the Christopher Tolkien article, formerly at the title "BChristopher Tolkien/b", was deleted in July 2002 after this deletion discussion
• Adjoint functors – early history deleted in December 2002
• Early infanticidal childrearing – the edits at the old title of this page, "Neolithic childrearing", and its talk page, were deleted in June 2002 due to this deletion discussion
• Battle of the Bulge – some content revisions that were previously at that title were deleted in December 2002
• Bookmarklet – the old history at the title "bookmarklets" was deleted in September 2002; the reason given in the deletion log is "new page created in error: deleted by request of Milly".
• Violence against Israelis in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict 2001 and Violence in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict 2002 – the locations of some of the history for those two pages, "Terrorism against Israel/2001" and "Terrorism against Israel/2002" respectively, were permanently deleted because they are in the old deletion log
• Pierre and Marie Curie – was the location of articles about Pierre Curie and Marie Curie. The page has been permanently deleted from the English Wikipedia database, as it is in the old deletion log. Some old history is available at the Nostalgia Wikipedia.
• Guns N' Roses – there may be significant deleted history at the title "Guns n' Roses" from March 2004.
• StarCraft Campaign Editor – The history at the old title, "StarEdit", was Deleted in October 2002 to make way for a page move.
• Paul Erdős, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and Vlad the Impaler (then at the title "Vlad III Dracula") – All three pages were deleted before June 2004 because they were copyright violations, and their old history is lost. For the first two pages, see this revision of Wikipedia:Copyright problems and for the "Vlad III Dracula" page, see this revision of the page.
• Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? – there may be a bit of older history at the title Where in the World/Time is Carmen Sandiego?, per this edit. The page history at that title was deleted in August 2003.
• Talk:Postmodern philosophy – the old title, "Postmodern philosophy/Postmodern philosophy talk", was permanently deleted because it is in the old deletion log. Even after importing the relevant history from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, there still appear to be missing edits.
• Talk:Michael (archangel) – That talk page was moved to Talk:Saint Michael the Archangel then must have been deleted shortly afterwards, but there is no relevant entry in any of the deletion logs; therefore all the history of the talk page before 22:06, 14 September 2003 (UTC) is lost.
• Talk:Time travel/Archive 3 – the old title, "Talk:Time Travel", was deleted in August 2002 because it was a broken redirect. I imported the surviving edits from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, but there are still gaps in the history. Note that the history of Talk:Time travel/Archive 3 used to be at the title Talk:Time travel before the talk page was archived.
• Talk:Classical mechanics – The UseModWiki edits to this page were not imported due to this page move. After importing the older edits from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, there is still a gap in the history.
• Wikipedia:Sandbox – has been moved and deleted many times. The earliest available edits to the page in the Wikipedia namespace are from June 2004 and can be found at Wikipedia:Historical archive/Sandbox.
• Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Militia – The page where the text came from, Talk:The Wikipedia Militia was permanently deleted according to the old deletion log. Curiously however, there is no relevant page history in the Nostalgia Wikipedia.
• Wikipedia:Wikipedia Day and Wikipedia:Magnus Manske Day (with their respective talk pages) – when they were moved from the main namespace to the Wikipedia namespace (except for the Magnus Manske Day talk page which was simply deleted), Magnus Manske, the subject of the latter page who wrote the Phase II software which later morphed into MediaWiki, permanently deleted the resulting redirects with all the old vhistory; see the old deletion log. An interesting result of these actions is that the Wikipedia Day page gives a creation date of 15 January 2002], but there is no way to verify this date. Revisions after December 2001 survived the conversion from UseModWiki to MediaWiki reasonably well, so there should have been *some* evidence of the pages from January 2002. However, one edit survived from Magnus Manske Day, and I have now history merged it to Wikipedia:Magnus Manske Day.
• Wikipedia:Who, Why? – the very first edits were at at least one of the titles "Wikipiedia (Who, Why)" or "Wikipiedia: (Who, Why)". Both of these pages were deleted in May 2003.
• The Simpsons/Wendel – probably gone permanently
• How do I do this (probably not that important, see Wikipedia FAQ on Nostalgia.wikipedia.org and this edit to Wikipedia:Wikipedia utilities/Page titles to be deleted)

Resolved

These cases have been either mostly or entirely fixed using old copies of the Wikipedia database. Unless otherwise specified, they have been completely resolved.

Nostalgia Wikipedia

• Denmark, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Dundee – their history from the UseModWiki era was lost. In the first two cases, this occurred due to some mistaken page moves. It seems that all the missing history of the articles Democratic Republic of the Congo and Dundee is available at the Nostalgia Wikipedia, but there are some missing edits at the denmark article (see User:Graham87/Old countries text for the diffs]]). The same issue may have occurred at Dundee.
• Andorra la Vella – the old history at this title was deleted in October 2002 during this page move.
• History of the United States – The old title of this page, "History of United States", was deleted in August 2002 after it was moved to its current title using the page move function. Due to this deletion, the history of that page from the UseModWiki era was not imported in September 2002. I have imported the surviving history from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, but there is clearly a gap in the history.

January 2003 database dump

• Union Flag – history formerly at the title "Union Jack" was deleted due to this page move in August 2003.
• New York City – History before June 2002, which was at the title "City of New York", was deleted in this page move (also see this edit).
• Glasgow – appears to have been moved between Glasgow and Glasgow, Scotland several times)
• Calais – early history at that title was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move
• Canberra – was moved from Canberra, Australia to Canberra in April 2003; the old history was summarised in this edit to the talk page
• Queensland – was deleted in April 2003; the old history was summarised in this edit to the talk page
• Geelong, Victoria – history was at Geelong, was deleted in April 2003, and the old history is summarised at this edit to the talk page
• Port Arthur massacre (Australia) – the deleted history is at Port Arthur Massacre, was deleted in September 2003
• Dunblane school massacre – The history of text at "Dunblane Massacre" that was merged into the article was deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move.
• Bong – relevant history at this title was deleted to make way for a page move in February 2003.
• KRYPTON – the old history was deleted by a page move in January 2003.
• General semantics – the history before July 2002 at the title "General Semantics" was deleted in June 2003 due to a page move
• Hexapoda – see this edit
• Weapon of mass destruction – old edit at the title "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move
• Meiji Restoration – the page title with the old history, "Japan/Meiji", was deleted in March 2003 because it was an orphaned redirect.
• Protoss – Some old history at the title was deleted to make way for a page move in March 2004.
• 2.PAK, ABSET and ABSYS – the old history at these titles was deleted by pagemoves in January 2003.]
• Talk:Cosmic background radiation – Was deleted in May 2004 because it was a blank page. Some text is preserved at Cosmic Background Radiation/Talk on the Nostalgia Wikipedia; there may have been more text at the talk page before it was deleted in 2004.

May 2003 database dump

• Kenya – The old history was deleted in February 2004 to make way for a page move. I have restored the history from before the temp page was created – see this edit. There may have been significant edits afterwards, but there are none in the May 2003 database dump.
• James VI and I – The old history at "James I of England" was deleted in July 2003 to make way for a page move]. I have restored most of it from the May 2003 database dump; the only gaps involve a few minor edits.

Some close calls

I have restored some page history that was deleted due to page moves. Most of these operations were trivial, like this one at Accra. However, the following are interesting cases and show the problems with cut and paste moves. See my logs dealing with:

• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, particularly this edit, which shows the cut-and-paste move in July 2006 from "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (book)"; the latter page was subsequently moved to "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (novel)"). Also see the page move at Talk:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (novel) and the deletion logs at Talk:Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
• Tesla (unit)
• Quechua

Also see the contributions of Ipo3, a page move vandal, and the logs of Angela Merkel (disambiguation) and Small Business Administration (disambiguation), to see what can go wrong with page move vandalism. I had to fix the histories three years after the page move vandalism.

If the deletion archives had been cleared out or there was a bad database crash, the page histories mentioned above may have become permanently inaccessible.

Revision ID numbers

When a revision is added to the database, it is assigned an ID number, which is one more than that of the previous revision. Thus, in general, a low revision ID number will indicate an early edit while a higher revision number will indicate a more recent edit. Revision ID numbers can be a reasonable way to estimate the date of a revision, with some caveats.

Edits made when Wikipedia used UseModWiki were imported to the current Wikipedia database on 20 September 2002; therefore they have revision ID's over 200,000. The edit with a revision ID of 1 is not Wikipedia's earliest edit, but it is the first edit to be added into the MySQL database.

Before Wikipedia was upgraded to MediaWiki 1.5 in late June 2005, if a revision was deleted and then undeleted, it would get a new ID number as if it was a brand new revision. For example, this edit to the article "Wikipedia" has an ID number of 13,435,822, even though the edit was made in December 2001, because the article was deleted and restored before June 2005. For comparison, the revision with the previous ID number of 13,435,821 was made in May 2005. The inconsistent ID numbers can cause problems when checking diffs, as diff navigation is based on the revision ID of edits rather than their timestamps (see bug 2930). Before the MediaWiki 1.18 update, the software also calculated the number of intermediate revisions between diffs by using revision ID's rather than timestamps; that result was incorrect when the order of the revision ID's did not correspond to the dates of the edits. An example of this phenomenon is at this edit to Talk:Netherlands, which now displays correctly as of the MediaWiki 1.18 update.

Page transfers via Special:Import or manually on the server also result in "out-of-order" revision IDs. Revision IDs do not increase monotonically with time, and you should never rely on this. --brion (talk) 16:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC) [1]

Strange times reported in diffs

Here are some diffs that show the consequences of the server clocks being reset. See bug 2219 for other examples. As of the MediaWiki 1.18 update, the number of intermediate revisions shown above the diffs is incorrect, because that value is calculated by date, not by revision ID. However, this is probably the best behaviour, as there are many more edits with out-of-order revision ID's than with wildly incorrect timestamps.

• Black Hawk County, Iowa
• History of knitting
• LASEK
• Late West Saxon
• Online poker
• Talk:Mainland China/Archive 1
• Talk:Motorway
• User talk:205.182.87.1
• User talk:Kim Bruning
• User talk:Mike Halterman
• Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Human Atrocities
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Assassination of Richard Nixon
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Westcountry Brythonic
• Wikipedia:Image recreation requests
• Wikipedia:Image sluthing (edit #1) and Wikipedia:Image sluething (edit #2)

The unusual times in This diff at "User:CryptoDerk/CDVF" probably occurred because one of the servers was set to the wrong time zone. The out-of-order edit makes the relevant page history seem rather confusing.

Fun page history facts

• The page Louisville, Kentucky was originally at the title Talk radio/Louisville