Help:Deleting a page

From WikiNASIOC

MediaWiki Handbook: Contents, Readers, Editors, Moderators, System admins +/-

A user with delete-rights (typically a sysop) can delete a page. They have a delete link linking to http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=pagename&action=delete

The content of MediaWiki:Confirmdeletetext

You are about to delete a page

or image along with its history from the database. Please confirm that you intend to do this, that you understand the consequences, and that you are doing this in accordance with

Meta:Deletion policy.

and, if applicable,

MediaWiki:Historywarning

Warning: The page you are about to delete has a history:

appears.

This makes the current and old revisions inaccessible for non-sysops. Sysops see on the "non-existent" page the content of MediaWiki:Thisisdeleted

View or restore $1?

linking to http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:Undelete/pagename. This leads to a page with the deletion log and deleted page history, with the texts MediaWiki:Undeletehistory

If you restore the page, all revisions will be restored to the history. If a new page with the same name has been created since the deletion, the restored revisions will appear in the prior history. Also note that restrictions on file revisions are lost upon restoration

and MediaWiki:Undeleteextrahelp

To restore the entire page, leave all checkboxes deselected and click Restore. To perform a selective restoration, check the boxes corresponding to the revisions to be restored, and click Restore. Selecting a box, then shift selecting another will fill all boxes in between in many browsers. Clicking Reset will clear the comment field and all checkboxes.

Combining edits

Multiple, consecutive edits can be combined in the page history by deleting the page and restoring all versions except those resulting from edits to be combined, and restoring the version resulting from the last of the edits to be combined.

Conditions to make this suitable:

all edits to be combined are by the same user
there are not too many edits apart from those to be combined (the reason for this condition is that all versions to be restored have to be marked)
the edit summary of the last edit of those to be combined, if any, is suitable for the combined edit as well

To keep the time of edit fairly accurate (e.g. to keep the order correct with respect to related edits of other pages, by the same or another user) one may add the condition:

all edits to be combined are made within a short time

The condition "there are not too many edits apart from those to be combined" seems to limit the usefulness of the procedure most, since shortening the list of revisions is not very needed if it is not very long.

Alternatively, if import is enabled (currently it is disabled on Wikimedia), that can be used in combination with export; in that case a new edit summary can be put.