Help talk:Page history/Archive 1

How to get at an uploaded file's date
I'm working with a company designing its own wiki, and we're facing a sticky point ...

We have many internal company documents, and want to get at a doc's latest update, i.e., when was Image:User dino.jpg last updated? When was the annual report last changed? And that data on interest rates ...

Is there a way to "grab" these data & display them? Or just grab them &mdash; we'll figure out how to display them.

I realize, this may seem from left field, but thought I'd toss it out there. Thanks for any ideas. You may reply here or on my talk page.

dino 22:31, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Deleting part of the history of a page?
I would like to delete part of the page history of a page in my user area. I plan to subsequently move the page into a regular article (preserving the rest of the history of the page). Can anyone help me? The article is User:Ksheka/Staging, and I would like to delete everything before March 18, 2007. Ksheka 13:59, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You should try WP:Requests for Oversight, but be aware that this action will not be performed lightly. You need a very good reason, such as edits containing personal information, or libelous BLP violations.  -- Thin  boy  00  @038, i.e. 23:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Navigation
Couldn't we make navigating page histories easier? It's already problematic that it's very difficult to get any feel for what is happening without inspecting each edit closely, but surely we could make it easier to view page histories in large blocks. If a page has more than 500 edits, all you can see is 'next 500'. You don't know if there are 501 or fifty thousand. Can't we at least have a "This page has had received X edits since it was created on X day". Better still, couldn't there be a small 'menu' like option where one could choose from edit blocks to view, e.g. Show the numbers 1 to 7 so the browser can choose a block of 500 to pick from, rather than having to press 'back' 6 times to get to the first 500 edits? Or at least a 'skip to first edit' function, if this is too difficult. Richard001 (talk) 06:33, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

How to get contributions from academia
I do not know if this is the right place to raise this issue so if anyone wants to take this discussion elsewhere, feel free to do so but leave a note here please. Anyway, the issue I want to raise is the following.

In academia, most people publish what they write in traditional journals, books, etc. To be able to get credit for a paper or any other work one would typically need to put a reference to the work in the list of publication submitted when applying for, say, tenure or grant money. What is missing is an easy and credible way of doing this for contributions to Wikipedia. I would therefore suggest that a special link for this was available, perhaps on the history page. The url could have, for example, the following format



which should produce a standard view of the page Genetics but with were user Jimbo_Wales' contributions highlighted in, say, light yellow. This should work on a per character and not per line basis. Authorship should be preserved for moved text which seems to be possible if this is based on algorithms such as User:Cacycle/diff. I guess handling reverts of old deletions may be tricky (preserving authorship of text which becomes reinserted...).

Such urls would be straightforward to include in a publication list. More importantly, such urls would be fairly straightforward to type in by reviewers involved in assessing a tenure or grant applications. Keep in mind that these reviewers can not be expected to be familiar with the inner workings of Wikipedia. The current page history is at the moment just far too cumbersome to use for these purposes.

I guess some of this perhaps will require changes in the underlying Mediawiki software?

I'm aware of the fact that the complete revision history of a page can be exported so maybe some outside tool already exist to do this? Does anyone know?

A related issue is how quality is assessed. To indicate the quality of the contribution made be the particular author, an extension of the above idea could be to include some statistics on the author-highlighted, old-version view of a page showing which percentage of the highlighted text is still present in the current version. I guess e.g. Good articles and WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0 are also relevant here.

How much contributions to wikipedia should count in academia compared to other works (peer reviewed research papers) is a different question. I believe this question will not be addressed seriously, however, if people are prohibited from including work on wikipedia in their list of publications for these technical reasons. Looking at some of the high quality wikipedia articles, e.g. Cryptography, I certainly think that the contributions of main authors of such articles should and would be given the same academic weight as contributions to tradional encyclopedias.

Jt68 (talk) 15:32, 12 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Continuing this at .--Jt68 (talk) 15:40, 13 July 2008 (UTC)

New screenshot needed
We need a new screenshot illustrating the page history. The image on the page is outdated, last updated in March 2007: just compare the image below with how the same page looks today (January 2009) and see the differences (excepting for a couple of lines that were doctored for the sake of illustration):



These are the statements that are outdated (2007), with my proposed corrections (Jan 2009): 
 * 1. The page name stays the same, but the "history" tab is highlighted.
 * 1. The page name changes to "Revision History of (article name)", and the "history" tab is highlighted.


 * 2. These links take you to the most recent edits (Latest), oldest edits (Earliest) or the next or previous page of edits (Next n / Previous n) . Note that the black text in brackets will become links, when applicable.
 * 2. These links take you to the most recent edits (Latest), oldest edits (Earliest) or to the previous or next page of edits (Newer n / Older n) . Note that the black text in brackets will become links, when applicable.


 * 5. (last) takes you to a diff page showing the changes between that edit and the previous version. The most recent version (the one on the same line as the "last" you clicked on) appears below the changes, so you can see how the page was rendered.
 * 5. (prev) takes you to a diff page showing the changes between that edit and the previous version. The most recent version (the one on the same line as the "prev" link you clicked on) appears below the changes, so you can see how the page was rendered.

Explanations of new features (including external tool links) should also be added (and renumbered):


 * # . Browse history: From year (and earlier):____ From month (and earlier):____.  (explanation...)
 * External tools:
 * # . Revision history statistics. (explanation...)
 * # . Revision history search. (explanation...)
 * # . Page view statistics. (explanation...)

I would have been bold to make these corrections myself, but they would conflict with the current screenshot (perm link), so the screenshot needs to be updated first. --HYC (talk) 10:02, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Missing page history
The beer article is missing all of its page history before December 13 2001. Does anyone know why this is or know who I should ask about it? Is there any way to retrieve the first few edits to the page? Thank you. Jecowa (talk) 04:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)


 * There are two parameters in a edit version: the datestamp for the edit and the revision number for the creation of a record. I believe the page history datestamps are mostly accurate, but the revision numbers for very old versions of articles are not reliable because old articles and page histories may have been imported between different servers or computer systems as they were upgraded several times, and not have been always imported in a strict chronological sequence, resulting in discrepancies between the datestamp order and the revision number order.
 * The earliest version of the "Beer" article in the page history is version #238028, dated 2001-12-13 07:48:00; versions earlier than that were probably lost or deleted. Note that the edit summary of version #238028 was addition of a Kaiser quote, but the rest of the article is still very dependent upon this book, likely its original source.
 * Seemingly, page histories follow the order of datestamps, while "previous version" or "next version" diff links follow the order of the revision number. In the case of the "Beer" article, confusion may arise because version #238028 still links to a "previous version" (to #197646 dated 2002-09-05 13:39:00), and so on, up to the lowest-numbered version #5012 dated 2002-02-04 22:41:54; but if you take notice, the whole block of "previous versions" are all dated later, not earlier, than #238028. And conversely, in the lowest numbered version #5012 (likely the first "Beer" revision to be imported into the database), the link to a "previous version" is grayed, even though there are five versions older in date than 2002-02-04 22:41:54.
 * (Please someone correct or supplement me if I am wrong. There is no much information written about Wikipedia article revision numbers.) --HYC (talk) 00:07, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Page history of deleted pages
Is there any way to view page history of deleted pages? - Raziel teatime  19:05, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

(top)
Some edit summaries are followed by (top). What does this mean? Changes to the first line of the page? Largest contributor to the page? Something else? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:33, 16 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Doesn't it denote the last edit to the page (i.e. "this version is still on top")? I don't think it appears in page histories, though (since with a history it's obvious what's on top).--Kotniski (talk) 10:43, 18 July 2009 (UTC)

Notes On Stephen Bandera
There is an error polish were not governing over the Ukrain in 1927, Soviets were! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.212.135.178 (talk) 02:33, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

97.116.169.65 (talk) 20:45, 3 November 2009 (UTC) looking for old bottles


 * Thank you for your suggestion. When you believe an article needs improvement, please feel free to make those changes. Wikipedia is a wiki, so anyone can edit almost any article by simply following the  link at the top. The Wikipedia community encourages you to be bold in updating pages. Don't worry too much about making honest mistakes—they're likely to be found and corrected quickly. If you're not sure how editing works, check out how to edit a page, or use the sandbox to try out your editing skills.  New contributors are always welcome. You don't even need to log in (although there are many reasons why you might want to). WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:19, 7 November 2009 (UTC)

Time Zone
What timezone is used for tracking changes. My contributions page says that I made this edit on May 18, but it's still May 17. Emperor001 (talk) 00:15, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Did you find out? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.57.156.241 (talk) 18:04, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

It shows as UTC for me. 74.236.139.62 (talk) 20:22, 9 December 2009 (UTC)

Link to page version comparison
Hello all- I hope this is where to make a suggestion for this help page. I think it would be helpful to add, under the section titled Linking to a specific version of a page, a note informing users that the way to make a wikilink to a version comparison is to make an external-style link using the comparison page's url. Hope I'm making sense. I think it would also be good to put this info somewhere in the help area that deals with wikilinks. I eventually found the guidance under Help:Link, but it took me a while and the method for making such a link is only implied there, as opposed to the instructions being specifically stated. I made this same post on the talk page of the master copy of this help page at meta. Thanks. -Eric talk 19:51, 29 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Agreed. I wanted to flag a vandal edit on someone's talk page, so I found this page, yet the section "Linking to a specific version of a page"  doesn't tell me how to link to a specific version of a page in Wikipedia!!  Surely there's a better way than hardcoding an external URL like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Carbon_footprint&oldid=331849271 -- Skierpage (talk) 22:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Tools for browsing article histories
Are there any readily available tools to browse article history(comparing consecutive edits) so that minor edits and those made by bots would be excluded? MarkkuP (talk) 14:49, 22 January 2010 (UTC)

Missing pages in article history
I was browsing the history of the article on Montesquieu and noticed something odd. There are several consecutive edits there which have not content. For example all edits between [this] and [this] one. Some of these blank edits have comments as if there was nothing wrong with the article. Has someone edited these old versions of the article and deleted all the contents? Would be great if anybody could explain. Thanks. MarkkuP (talk) 14:47, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Sounds like you might be looking at dummy or null edits: Help:Dummy_edit. Eric talk 15:41, 22 January 2010 (UTC)-

I'm note sure this is the case. What I didn't notice before was that the time between these two edits which I linked above is over two months. Isn't it very unlikely for an article be blank for such a long time? MarkkuP (talk) 21:34, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

'prev' or 'last'?
I'm not familiar with the history page of Wikipedia articles, but I do not find a 'prev' button in any history page or in the picture provided in the article to illustrate the usage of history pages.

The following is quoted from this help article:


 * To compare a version with its predecessor, click prev.

Should any change be made?

119.40.44.119 (talk) 12:44, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
 * The picture seems to be out of date - it has "last", but history pages themselves now seem to have "prev". (Don't they - are you seeing something different than I am?)--Kotniski (talk) 13:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

Victory
Hi I think this is the ship that left Portsmouth Deven (or could be Plymouth which is my 1st port of information) My Great Great Grandparents left on this ship from England to Australia on 4th November 1857 if my source is correct!! Does anyone have any information on this would love to hear more as I am doing my dad's family tree!! Regards Belinda Miles —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.214.89.131 (talk) 09:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)

Edit history comparison improvement proposal
I'm new to contributing to Wikipedia, however I can see after trying to add few links and sentences that one problem happens. I viewed other "history" pages of different articles and see that comparison of newest and earliest versions are not possible to be done. To my understanding, it must be possible to see not only versions which are in nearly one time, but it might be possible to compare any number of pages versions, edited at any time. It this case it would be indeed possible for users to contribute their articles to wikipedia, and would be a way to avoid "article wars" etc. I think so. Otherwise wikipedia seems to be useless in very some future and some better alternative would be introduced. I may be wrong. But this is my understanding. If anyone thinks that comparison of versions should be improved, I would like them to contact wikipedia designers so at least in this new, now still beta-version, these issues be solved. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vedicsciences (talk • contribs) 02:06, 2 March 2010 (UTC)

Consolidating edit history
I edit pages that are a lot of times in need of many revisions/additions. However, I struggle to do all my revisions in one edit. As a result, I leave the page history full of small edits that when combined are all just the page the way I left it. I think it would be nice and more convenient for people trying to view the history if all of my related edits could be shrunk down into one edit listed. If this can be done, please let me know. If it cannot be done, I think it should be an option and anyone who knows how to suggest it to the people in charge of Wikipedia, I would appreciate if you could do that. --ATPerrin (talk) 03:55, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Why is my link bad? Need help
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Geoff_B&oldid=410647540

trying to put in a link on Himuro manison

What is wrong with the link or do I need to reprhase it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragon82aa (talk • contribs) 21:46, 2 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I have replied at User talk:Dragon82aa -- John of Reading (talk) 22:19, 2 February 2011 (UTC)

Linking to an article's history page
When I try to link to the talk page and history page of an article by cutting and pasting the title from the page and putting double square brackets around it (for example, Talk:Spork and Revision history of Spork), the link to the history page does not work. Should this help page explain how to make such a link? Guy Macon 18:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Yes, that method won't work - you have to copy and paste the URL from the browser address bar (and use single square brackets). I'll put in a note mentioning it.--Kotniski (talk) 08:23, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

bytes
It might bear emphasising that the number of bytes, written in parentheses, is to represent the size of a particular version of the article in total. It does not quantify the differences (nor even the commonality) of previous versions (relative to the current revision). This is contrary to the misleading impression one could get by scanning over the heading that "(xxx) = difference from current version ..". To the contrary, "(cur)" refers not to "(xxx bytes)", in fact it does not refer to "cur" in parentheses either; it refers to the "cur" bra (and similarly "prev" is depicted in parantheses when really it is supposed to reference its ket form). I think it would be less misleading if the header used the correct form: for example if it wrote e.g., leftbracket-cur-verticalbar does blah, and I imagine it is only the trickiness of using vertical bar symbols on wikipedia that has prevented this. (Actually, I think "does" really is preferable to "=" since it is supposed to convey an action that can be initiated rather than convey a mathematical equivalence which again would only be applicable if it were instead referring to the number of bytes rather than the hyperlink.) Meanwhile, the "(xxx bytes)" is an obvious ommission of the labelling of the diagram on this help article. Cesiumfrog (talk) 23:27, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I notice you haven't had any response to your comment. At first, I thought you were having a little laugh at others' expense, but then something tickled my memory, and I eventually realized you have assessed rev hist in terms of Dirac quantum nomenclature: precisely accurate, but typically out-of-reach to the bulk of non-physicist, non-mathematician editors.  Your suggestions may well merit a closer look, but I would suggest presenting them in a more suitable venue: maybe at the Village Pump, or the Help Desk, etc.  Will attempt to copy you, in case you don't 'watch' this page.
 * Ragityman (talk) 12:14, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

External tools: Revision history statistics · Contributors · Revision history search · Number of watchers · Page view statistics
Just wondering if there is an explanation of these tools? I admit to not reading the article, but could not find "external tools" in the toc. Thanks in advance Ottawahitech (talk) 16:18, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

Needs Updating flag (screenshot w/ red & green info)
The screenshot in the article needs to be updated to show the new green and red parenthetical information, which another editor has thankfully mentioned in the text further below it. please remove the flag when done. Thanks. 5Q5 (talk) 16:43, 2 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I've made a new screenshot, but the descriptions of points 3, 4 and 5 need more work. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:57, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The page could do with a separate section explaining the six tools shown in the "External tools" line, but I'm not sure how to re-organise the mixture of tools and advice that currently follow the "Overview". -- John of Reading (talk) 10:37, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Tracking revisions by section or content?
Is it possible using MediaiWiki or an external application connected through the MediaWiki API to track the revision history of a particular section or the appearance of a certain word or phrase in the article. For example, on the "heat pipe" article someone has changed the section on "Origins and research in the United States" and left a comment the talk page as to why he attributes the invention to a different man about 20 years earlier than previously stated (which is correct). However, he has neither properly commented the changes nor signed and dated his talk page entry. I would like to see only changes to the "Origins ..." section and/or date the appearance of the words "Gaugler", "Grover", and "1944" in the article. Are there any good tools for this that would avoid doing manual comparison of each version of the article? Bdentremont (talk) 16:08, 4 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Indented line

I'm also wondering about this...anyone know if it's possible? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fishicus (talk • contribs) 18:51, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 24 April 2013
117.199.204.112 (talk) 10:45, 24 April 2013 (UTC) Sarswati bhavan est by 1925
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Page history. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:16, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

Compare versions bug
Recurrently I find that "Show changes" or "Compare selected versions" fails to identify previous and current versions of code that is almost unchanged. The most irritating examples are whole paragraphs.

For instance see line 180 or so in the latest versions of our biography Peter Dickinson. In the paragraph that begins "A pair of alternative history novels," I inserted the twelve characters '(1864–1892) ' in order to place this historical fiction in time. The algorithm fails to identify the paragraph before and after that simple change.

Occasionally the comparison fails in a similar way upon insertion of a section heading or even a blank line. --P64 (talk) 17:28, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Strangely enough, the added date range does show up in popups. It's not the first time I've seen this discrepancy. If no one knowledgeable replies here, you might post something at WP:VPT. Rivertorch (talk) 18:39, 29 July 2013 (UTC)


 * wikEdDiff often gives a better diff. It does in your example. You can enable wikEdDiff at Special:Preferences. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:27, 29 July 2013 (UTC)

intermediate --> intervening
Hello all- I have an idea for a change to the message that shows when you compare two non-continuous versions of a page. The message that currently displays is: (## intermediate revision(s) by ## user(s) not shown) I think intervening might be preferable to intermediate in this message. Here are the AHD definitions for the two words:
 * intermediate
 * interven(ing)

Just wanted to throw this out there for consideration. Eric talk 15:11, 29 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The current message is the MediaWiki default at MediaWiki:Diff-multi. intervening sounds like being in the way or interfering to me and not just being between. I prefer intermediate, and I think we would need a better reason to change a default displayed in all MediaWiki wikis which haven't customized the message. People who are used to intermediate may wonder whether intervening means there is some problem. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:50, 29 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I see what you mean, and I'm not passionate about this. Still, I'd hate to think a reference work would avoid using a term merely out of fear that some people's vocabulary might be rusty. Though the interfere sense of intervene might be what we encounter more often these days, that isn't the primary definition given in dictionaries. Eric talk 23:10, 29 September 2013 (UTC)

Création du village de bouanze
Bonjour le village de bouanze a été créé par mon arrière grand père fode camara je suis son petit fils de 7 eme génération. Mon grand père à créer dafort et puis bouanze ou il se installe. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.225.83.91 (talk) 11:16, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 28 December 2013
105.232.75.123 (talk) 07:40, 28 December 2013 (UTC) The Page state that the Glen Grey Act had the purpose of submitting Xhosa men into slavery. This is highly inflammatory, in the current South African Context. It might be true, but the first reference of the page is not working, so the truth is impossible to verify.

I would therefor request that you either remove the page or, remove the inflammatory reference to slavery.

Best Regards

schalk
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Page history. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned.
 * I suggest you post at Talk:Glen Grey. It's not normal practice to remove content just because the reference is dead; see WP:LINKROT. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:40, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Using a history page
I suggest the short "Using a history page" - "Overview" section be redrafted. It is not very clear. --P123cat1 (talk) 13:52, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Access via mobile site
I don't see any way to view a page's history on the mobile site, other than directly editing the URL in the browser, a task much rougher on a smartphone than it is on a laptop or desktop machine. Can a link be added to the mobile page display? Short of that, or in addition, some clear explicit mention here of how to get there. --Thnidu (talk) 05:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC) Thnidu (talk) 05:15, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Broken?
In the "External tools" line, "Contributors" is missing and "Revision history statistics" is broken (loading... loading... loading... loading... loading... nothing). Am I missing something? – JBarta (talk) 09:25, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * "Contributors" was removed as a redirect to the "Revision history statistics" tool in [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Histlegend&diff=614809650&oldid=585650851]. "Revision history statistics" is one of the xtools and has been down for two days. See 72104. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:11, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I have added a note that it's down.[//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=MediaWiki:Histlegend&diff=629970098&oldid=627006543] PrimeHunter (talk) 11:22, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clue-in. I updated the help page and its screenshot image to reflect the changes. – JBarta (talk) 12:46, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * And is still broken? For a few days earlier in the month, I could see this feature for some articles, but got an error message for other articles. Now I have not found an article where it works -- no message, just no connection. Where is this status information clearly shown, that this feature is down? I will try following some the hints above. Is it expected to return? --Prairieplant (talk) 05:25, 27 October 2014 (UTC)


 * It came back 19 October, went away about two days ago, and is now back again. It's possible there have been other down periods. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:40, 28 October 2014 (UTC)

User reviews
User reviews differ a lot from what professional critics wrote. I think that should be at least mentioned in the article; no conclusion making ofc. What is the appropriate way to write on that and to refer to pages with ratings, like metacritic and steam? While user scores are not necessary accurate, they reflect the gaming community reaction, provide an alternative point of view and might bring to light some points, that professional critics failed to notice. At the same time user reviews are not considered WP:RS here, so I'm puzzled on the way to mention them. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Atr577 (talk • contribs) 09:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You've found your way to the talk page of one of the help pages. Did you mean to post this on the talk page of an article about a computer game? -- John of Reading (talk) 10:36, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Page history and copyright
I have removed reference to Title 17 United States Code § 108 per m:Wikilegal/Copyright Status of Wikipedia Page Histories. It does not apply to Wikipedia. The section in general is redundant and circular. I'm going to try some general copy-editing while there.

As a note, I haven't been able to figure out yet where this originally came from - shows a substituted template of some kind, but I don't know where yet. For attribution purposes (that text not being public domain), I need to try to find that so it can be attributed. (Irony alert!) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:56, 27 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It was substituted from Template:Ph:Page history, one of many similar pages substituted and deleted at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Meta-based Help: content templates. Restoring these pages and linking them for attribution purposes sounds messy. I think few people care about attribution for a help page but most of it in this case originally came from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Page_history&action=history. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:02, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

The "undo" field in a history line
What is the purpose of the "undo"? How could one undo a revision other than the last? (I dare not click on it, for fear of actually undoing a revision.)

Arie ten Cate (talk) 22:10, 9 January 2008 (UTC)
 * The "undo" link will not undo edits in one click. See Undo for how it works.  If you click on it, you will see a page similar to the page you get when clicking "edit this page," but with the revision removed.  In some cases (e.g. when others have edited the content added by the contribution) it will not work.  -- Thin  boy  00  @035, i.e. 23:50, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

good best —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.162.119.68 (talk) 05:45, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't this be in the article? I came here specifically for information on the undo button, and I found the fact that it was simply absent from the sample picture and the article doesn't even mention it frustrating.Terminal157 (talk) 19:59, 1 March 2009 (UTC)


 * Finally fixed 6 years later. You could have fixed it yourself by adding the info provided above ;) --Espoo (talk) 07:57, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

missing info on revision numbers
When someone uses the undo link, the automatic summary confusingly uses an unexplained, mysterious revision number instead of the time stamp of the reverted edit. This often makes it very hard or impossible to find the reverted edit in the history. This should be changed: --Espoo (talk) 08:09, 19 March 2015 (UTC)
 * the revision numbers should be displayed next to each edit
 * the automatic undo summaries should at least also display the time stamp or only that
 * the automatic summary should include a link showing the difference between the versions


 * This page is for discussing the documentation at Help:Page history. The automatic summary is made by MediaWiki:Undo-summary so I have moved the discussion to MediaWiki talk:Undo-summary and replied there. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)

Revision history statistics
Could someone explain why the Revision history statistics page has changed and how to use the new version? It used to be that I could simply click on the link and be taken to an easy to use page, but now I am taken to a very new page that doesn't actually have any revision statistics. The tab in my browser is titled "X!'s tools". At the top of the page is a row with four options - "X!'s tools", "Log in", "XAgent", and "XEcho". Under that is a second row with even more options, and then under that is a huge list of languages. In the center of the page is a search bar that asks for a page title - it allows you to select which Wiki to search and to check or uncheck a box for following redirects.

I've typed the name of pages that I'm interested in seeing the revision history statistics for into the search bar and then clicked the "Submit" button underneath. But nothing happens. Both before and after I try the search, there's a red bar saying "No revisions found" - this red bar is directly above the search bar.

Everyone else is being taken to this page as well, right? It's not just me? Does anyone know why this change was made and how to use the new page? --Jpcase (talk) 14:53, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm seeing this, too. I believe the tool is currently broken - there's a long thread about it at User talk:Cyberpower678/Archive 25. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:14, 23 June 2015 (UTC)

Can we remove the parentheses around the edit summaries in "Revision history"?
Just wondering if we can remove these parentheses? It gets a bit crowded with the "(undo") parentheses, etc. The edit summaries are already in italics and preceded by two periods, so that should be sufficient to demarcate them? E.g.:

. . (57,180 bytes) (+39) ‎. . (Undid revision 678908429 by 203.173.186.163 (talk) Unexplained removal of reasonable categories.) (undo | thank)

would become:

. . (57,180 bytes) (+39)‎. . Undid revision 678908429 by 203.173.186.163 (talk) Unexplained removal of reasonable categories. (undo | thank)

What does everyone think? Facts707 (talk) 16:42, 14 September 2015 (UTC)


 * They are added by MediaWiki calling MediaWiki:Parentheses, but that page is also used by other interface messages so it doesn't look like we have a practical way to remove the parentheses here at the English Wikipedia. Parentheses around edit summaries are also used consistently in other cases like watchlists and user contributions where they are more needed. I don't think we should request a MediaWiki change to remove them from page histories. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:39, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 October 2015
Many a families have added values to the glory of this historic town. One of them is "Sharma's" family, whose ancestors Late Mr. Vishnu Dutt Sharma (Indian Freedom Fighter - non co-operation movement) helped the growth of this town. The town has a big bazaar, and in the past nearby villagers used to come at least once to this bazaar on Sunday, which used to be called "Haat". Though nowadays this town has better connectivity by buses to nearby villages and towns, and hence instead of one day's main trading, now the entire week has good trading.

Many of the graduates, engineers, MBAs etc. from this town serve the nation by rendering their services to reputed companies. "Sachin Sharma S/O Mr. Sunder Dutt Sharma" has been main young generation guy in adding values and making it famous even in the current time. He did his masters from IIT New Delhi in 2002 by achieving Golden award. Most of them are educated and have scattered across country flagging its glory and reputation across India and making the people of this town proud.

Recently Nishant Kaushik has become a role model mainly for Medical aspirants across area as he has been selected for King George's Medical University Lucknow for MBBS course through UPCPMT-2012.

Gundappa swami (talk) 04:57, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Page history. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. --Stabila711 (talk) 09:20, 25 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Page history. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. --Stabila711 (talk) 09:20, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 February 2016
94.8.79.235 (talk) 02:34, 25 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Datbubblegumdoe[talk – contribs] 03:28, 25 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 April 2016
Jazztheme (talk) 08:43, 4 April 2016 (UTC) If you want to suggest a change, please request this on the talk page of the relevant article in the form "Please replace XXX with YYY" or "Please add ZZZ between PPP and QQQ". Please also cite reliable sources to back up your request, without which no information should be added to, or changed in, any article. - Arjayay (talk) 09:19, 4 April 2016 (UTC)
 * ❌ as you have not requested a change, but I suspect you are in the wrong place, as this page is only to discuss improvements to Help:Page history.

Question about filtering Revision History
On a page where many of the edits are to a specific section, is there a way to filter out the edits to that section, and only see all the other edits to the page?

For example, looking at the revision history for Canadian passport most of the edits are to the section on Foreign travel statistics. I want to review the edit history of this page without seeing the edits to that section. Is that possible?

Thanks!

Canadianpoliticaljunkie (talk) 00:30, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Deleted images
Aren't deleted images nowadays saved so administrators can undelete them? // habj (talk) 11:00, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
 * They certainly are on commons. I think this sentence is false:
 * "Images which have been deleted from their source are not available (not to be confused with images removed from an article but not from their source), 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 restore a deleted image without uploading it again."
 * so I'm boldly removing it.-- Elvey (t•c) 21:09, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Move history tool
re Help:Page_history does a tool exist when viewing history if you want to exclude non-move edits? Like when there is a very extensive history and you just want to know the edits which were moves and to only display those? Ranze (talk) 10:26, 2 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Good question - would like to know that as well! There has to be some move-history of pages right? --Fixuture (talk) 20:44, 13 January 2017 (UTC)

I don't know why I didn't remember when I asked earlier but I had forgot about Special:Log/move, you can input a page and it will show it that way. I'll add a note of that to the page. Ranze (talk) 03:28, 14 January 2017 (UTC)


 * Yes: please also make this known to others by adding a note. However: it doesn't work! It only shows page moves of exactly the article one entered and not any prior or latter moves. If you enter "Test" and that page was later moved to "Test 1" then "Test 2" and then "Test (disambiguation)" it only shows the move from "Test" to "Test 1" instead of the whole chain. --Fixuture (talk) 13:02, 10 February 2017 (UTC)

Crossed/grayed out versions need explanation
Can someone please explain how crossed out (grayed out) versions work on a history page? Who is authorized to do that? Why? How can a user appeal / change to such "edits"? Here is an example on the history page for Bioindicator. Thanks! Peteruetz (talk) 03:37, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
 * See WP:REVDEL. Rivertorch   FIREWATER  05:26, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 June 2017
SHIJU KATARIA (talk) 09:13, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behenein
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Izno (talk) 12:21, 8 June 2017 (UTC)

Example lacks struck out lines
On Articles_for_deletion/Peace_and_World_Affairs_Center_of_Evanston these lines are struck out and unclickable, however the example lacks such cases, so the user has no way of knowing what is broken. (cur | prev) 11:06, 9 October 2017‎ Jidanni (talk | contribs)‎ m. . (4,320 bytes) (0)‎. . (→‎Disappointment) (cur | prev) 11:06, 9 October 2017‎ Jidanni (talk | contribs)‎ m. . (4,320 bytes) (+1)‎. . (→‎Disappointment) (cur | prev) 11:03, 9 October 2017‎ Jidanni (talk | contribs)‎ m. . (4,319 bytes) (+82)‎. . (→‎Disappointment) (cur | prev) 11:02, 9 October 2017‎ Jidanni (talk | contribs)‎. . (4,237 bytes) (+465)‎. . (→‎Disappointment: new section Jidanni (talk) 08:20, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
 * The help page explains this in the paragraph beginning "In rare cases, all or part of a page history..." -- John of Reading (talk) 08:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

Ahhh, so that is what is going on. Well I vote that those grey lines should have a mouseover saying what is going on, as most users will not finally find that sentence here. Jidanni (talk) 10:17, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 26 February 2018
Category:Recipients of the Australian Sports Medal has omitted an entry for Heather McKay (squash). Justification for an entry is by the Australian Honours Search Facility that shows that Heather McKay was awarded the Australian Sports Medal on 30 August 2000 with an Award ID of 981576. 180.200.150.107 (talk) 13:09, 26 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You were supposed to post to Talk:Heather McKay but I worked it out. I have added Heather McKay to Category:Recipients of the Australian Sports Medal. It was already mentioned at Heather McKay. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:51, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Can some help update the graphic in the Using a history page § …
to comport with the changes to MediaWiki:Histlegend? I don't have access to Inkscape and might not for a while, so any help would be appreciated.) Thx, Humanengr (talk) 22:52, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

What does blue/cyan background mean in page's edit history?
e.g. the history of Intelligent design. I think it's somehow related to the "automatically accepted" text that you sometimes see on 'protected'(? dunno the correct term) articles. Equinox ◑ 21:44, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * It means the page has Pending changes protection. Accepted edits are blue. "automatically accepted" means the user has a user right where edits don't have to be accepted by another user. The required user right depends on the protection level. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:28, 20 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Thanks. It might be good to explain any such colour coding in this help article. Equinox ◑ 23:21, 20 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I concur. In fact, I'm going to add an update template to the article to increase the visibility of the need to do this. CapnZapp (talk) 08:43, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

autoarchive
Reason: large number of old entries. ✅ CapnZapp (talk) 08:50, 28 December 2018 (UTC)

Using a page history screenshot
I was writing help pages for another wiki (not a Wikimedia wiki) and found the screenshot we have of the page history page somewhat inadequate and outdated, so I decided to make one of my own. Here's what I wrote up (it's CC BY-SA 3.0 on that wiki so this is totally fine):




 * 1) The name of the page, accompanied by "Revision history".
 * 2) The date field. You can use this to only show edits made before a specified date. This is useful if there are a lot of edits in the page history.
 * 3) The Tags filter. You can use this to only show edits that have been marked with a specific tag.
 * 4) The newest / oldest links let you quickly jump to the newest edits made to the page or to the oldest edits made to the page. The newer n / older n links take you to the next or previous page of edits. The blue numbers list the number of edits displayed on the page. You can choose to display 20, 50, 100, 250 or 500 edits at once.
 * 5) The cur and prev buttons take you to a diff page, allowing you to see the changes made made between two edits. cur shows the difference between that edit and the most recent edit. prev shows you the difference between that edit and the previous edit. The most recent version of the diff will appear below the changes.
 * 6) The two columns of radio buttons can be used to select any two revisions of a page. For example, let's say you want to compare the version corresponding to number 14 with the version corresponding to number 13 in the image. First, select the radio button to the left of number 14. The right column of buttons will then fill as far as number 14. Then, click on the radio button on the right column next to number 13. Finally, click on  (number 7).
 * 7) The date and time of the edit. The time is UTC by default on ; registered users can change this in their preferences. The date and time link to that version of the page. Click on a date and time to see how the page looked like at that time. If you click on the date and time of an edit, you will get a permanent link to that version of the page.
 * 8) The username or IP address of the user who made the edit. The talk link points to their user talk page, while the contributions page points to their user contributions page.
 * 9) The m indicates that the edit was marked as a minor edit.
 * 10) The size of the edit, measured in bytes.
 * 11) The difference in size between this edit and the previous edit. A green number indicates that the edit added this number of bytes, while a red number indicates that the edit removed this number of bytes. The number will be bolded if the number of bytes added or removed exceeds 500.
 * 12) The edit summary of the edit.
 * 13) The tags attached to the edit, if applicable. Tags are usually automatically added to edits and are used for maintenance or tracking purposes.
 * 14) The logs for the page.

(Footnotes follow)

I used the Mars article for this, screenshot taken on April 9. If you guys would like the original, unedited screenshot (save for cropping) I can upload that to Commons as well. Notably I made mention of Tags in the screenshot and used the newer date selector tool which is replacing the old, archaic dropdown menu one.

This is a bit of a big change so I kinda don't want to just implement it without consensus of some kind. Namely, this is the first time I've done something like this, so I want to know if what I did needs improvement of some kind. — k6ka  🍁 ( Talk ·  Contributions ) 16:43, 11 April 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 May 2019
188.172.111.189 (talk) 17:14, 4 May 2019 (UTC)
 * ❌. No reason given CapnZapp (talk) 17:18, 4 May 2019 (UTC)

Strike-through
What do the strike-through lines in history mean? See this article history for an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Remote_sensing&offset=&limit=500&action=history

They cannot be compared, viewed, and didn't show up in a blame search either. —¿philoserf? (talk) 11:47, 17 March 2020 (UTC)


 * I found the answer in a reply here: Teahouse


 * Perhaps something about this use case should be added to the article. —¿philoserf? (talk) 11:52, 17 March 2020 (UTC)
 * It's already there, though not prominent. It's the paragraph beginning In rare cases, all or part of a page history entry may be shown in grey, struck out by a horizontal line -- John of Reading (talk) 12:33, 17 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Ah. Missed it. Thank you. —¿philoserf? (talk) 16:23, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

How can I see Donald Trump's picture from when he was elected president?
It seems like there should be some tool where I can see the edits from November 2016.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  21:18, 13 August 2019 (UTC)
 * From the revision history page, if you expand the "Filter revisions" section you can enter in a date. See the page as of December 1. &mdash; MusikAnimal  talk  17:23, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Hmmm ... that's not the one. Maybe it was after he became president.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  17:51, 14 August 2019 (UTC)
 * Okay, I know HOW to find it now. Maybe there was another version of the photo.— Vchimpanzee  •  talk  •  contributions  •  17:53, 14 August 2019 (UTC)

Oks Phodzo tshishivhiri (talk) 13:47, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

WP:COPYREQ
requesting permission to use my copyright Michaelmercer954 (talk) 19:38, 23 August 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 October 2020
103.91.250.112 (talk) 09:52, 21 October 2020 (UTC) all the given citations are misinterpreted. moreover new researchs at various universities and genetic profiling articles are ignored.
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Page history. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. – Thjarkur (talk) 10:06, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Making it easier to keep up with frequently edited pages
When the same editor makes many consecutive edits (particularly small tweaks) to the same article, is there a view that could collapse these into one edit? Also is there a way to filter out "vandalism - revert vandalism" pairs? With articles that have a high frequency of edits, it can be hard to separate noise from signal and get a sense of what is really going on. --Jameboy (talk) 13:42, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible that displayed edit times change?
I consulted a number of edit histories for pages on the Dutch, German and French Wikipedias, and wrote down some specific edits with their timestamps. Apparently, when I consult the same pages again today, these logged times seem to have shifted by an hour. E.g. an edit that I noted down as happening at '07:00' last summer, would be registered as '06:00' Today. Can anyone explain why this could be the case? I assume it has something to do with timezones/offsets? Willaerttom (talk) 16:00, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 January 2021
I mistakenly included a link twice when I submitted a revision to Leslie West. Also, one of the revisions has a spacing mistake. Is it possible to delete one of the selected revisions? 161.77.224.143 (talk) 19:46, 2 January 2021 (UTC) 161.77.224.143 (talk) 19:46, 2 January 2021 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: Revisions are only ever deleted if they meet the criteria at WP:REVDEL, as long as you corrected any issues in a later edit there should be no problem. Please move any further edit related questions to Talk:Leslie West or Teahouse. Thanks, Terasail &#91;✉&#93; 20:09, 2 January 2021 (UTC)

Removing old history for former sandbox article
This is something I only just noticed, but a sandbox page I had approved as the Happy (manga character) article years ago still retains its old history, which includes drafts of completely unrelated articles. Is it possible to have that old history removed? Specifically all versions prior to this one. User:SubZeroSilver (talk) 13:27, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * You can mark the article for admin attention with the History split template, asking for the old history to be moved to a subpage of your user page. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much, I'll do that. But how do I get in touch with an admin? User:SubZeroSilver (talk) 22:30, 4 November 2021 (UTC)
 * The History split template adds a category to the page, and a few of the volunteer admins look in that category for the pending requests. -- John of Reading (talk) 07:21, 5 November 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 19 January 2022
Change Gins S Kennedy to Gina S Kennedy Gins S Kennedy (talk) 20:30, 19 January 2022 (UTC)
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Help:Page history. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 September 2022
Please delete all the other images and leave only the Betika Logo with the yellow background. Aliceinwonderlandm (talk) 08:33, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * , could you clarify what you had in mind? This is the talk page of Help:Page history, and there are no Betika logos here that I can see. Uanfala (talk) 08:35, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
 * Our article Betika only displays the logo you want.
 * Symbol move vote.svg Are you by any chance referring to a photo or text shown to the right of a Google search? Google's Knowledge Graph uses a wide variety of sources. There may be a text paragraph ending with "Wikipedia" to indicate that particular text was copied from Wikipedia. An image and other text before or after the Wikipedia excerpt may be from sources completely unrelated to Wikipedia. We have no control over how Google presents our information, but Google's Knowledge Graph has a "Feedback" link where anyone can mark a field as wrong. The same feedback facility is also provided on Bing and some other search engines. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:54, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Revisions showing tomorrow's date
I notice that some edits are showing that they were made on tomorrows date. For example, I made an edit on April 8th, but the revission says is was made on April 9th. Why is this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trimetwes fan1003 (talk • contribs) 03:21, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Helping advice
I think after you get to the end of a page it should be a button to go back to the top like on other sites Notonmyphone (talk) 19:37, 16 September 2023 (UTC)