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 lists at WikiProject History Merge to find pages to history merge. Sometimes, I can use old copies of Wikipedia to restore the missing history or find pages with lost edits (see my further notes on this and the "Resolved" section. If you find any other page history oddities, feel free to let me know.

Pages whose history has been lost

Page history started to be reliably kept and dated after the conversion to Phase II software in January 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 deleted revisions are cleared from the database, meaning that the deleted history of page A is gone permanently. The deleted revisions 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 mechanism for storing deleted revisions was established 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 find and restore 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 publicly available database dumps:

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.
Fukui Prefecture – the page history may have been lost due to the same bug that affected the other two entries; most significantly, this page move occurred between the time of the first and second surviving edits in the page's history.
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.
Massachusetts – The text of many of its early edits is missing due to a database glitch, as described at T147146.
Human Rights Act 1998 – the history of text that was merged into the article was deleted in May 2004 to make way for a page move.
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.
Darfur – legitimate but short article at this title deleted in September 2003 because it was written by an editor at the IP address 165.228.132.11, which had started vandalising Wikipedia nearly a year after creating the article.
Benedict Arnold – old history deleted in December 2003, because the page had very little content at the time; it may have been vandalised.
Mechanical energy – deleted in October 2002 as "vandalism", but the brief Nostalgia Wikipedia entry on this subject is a legitimate article.
Von Neumann architecture – deleted in February 2004 as nonsense; the article had probably been vandalised.
Karelia (historical province of Finland) (then at "Karelia") – Deleted in May 2004 to make way for a page move
Edward VIII abdication crisis – the title with the first edits, "Abdication crisis", was deleted in January 2003 because the text had been moved by cut and paste to the article's new title, "Abdication crisis of 1936" (per the January 2003 database dump).
Carlos I of Portugal – the old history was probably deleted during this page move in July 2003.
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 in February 2004, probably because it contained very little content. However, see the edit summary for the page's oldest surviving revision.
Gorman, Texas – the history of this page was lost due to page move vandalism in August 2005
Demographics of the United States – was deleted in August 2002, apparently to make way for a page move.
History of Myanmar – deleted in January 2004.
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.
Total depravity – deleted by accident in May 2003.
Hedgehog – the old title of this page, "Hedgeog" was deleted in March 2002.
John Pell – deleted in June 2003 because it only contained the text "I love GG~". However, there is a perfectly adequate article from Rouse History of Mathematics in the May 2003 database dump, so perhaps the page was vandalised.
Papier-mâché – deleted presumably by accident in May 2004 after a deletion discussion for a redirect to that page. The redirect itself wasn't deleted until December 2016.
Pick operating system – some of the history of text at that title that was merged into the article was deleted in February 2004 to make way for a page move. Some early edits survive at the title "Pick Operating System".
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 Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002. Some of its history can be found at the Nostalgia Wikipedia.
Talk:British National Party – deleted in October 2003 to redact some names from the page history.
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.
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
Sheepdog Trials – an article at this title was deleted in August 2002 as a broken redirect. However, the page with this title at the Nostalgia Wikipedia is a perfectly good article.
Blanching – a reasonable article about this subject was deleted in December 2003 because it had been vandalised.
Santalum – an article about this subject was deleted in March 2004 because it contained nonsense; however, there is a reasonable article at this title in the May 2003 database dump.
Posthuman – an article formerly at this title was deleted in September 2003 as "graffiti"; the latest version in the May 2003 database dump was very short.
Jeff Chandler – a page at this title was deleted in February 2004 because it was not in English; however there is a reasonable article containing information on both the actor and the boxer with this name in the May 2003 database dump.
Vile and Ve – the history of text that was merged into the pages now at "Vili" and Vé was deleted in March 2004 per a deletion discussion. I have imported the only available edits from the May 2003 Wikipedia database dump, but they may or may not be enough.
Fifth Estate – the history of a disambiguation page at this title was deleted in April 2004 to make way for a page move.
Amesbury, Massachusetts – the original history of text at that title that was merged into the article was deleted in April 2004 to make way for a page move.
Kingston, Rhode Island – the original text at this article was deleted in April 2004 because the page had been vandalised.
The Pas – the original history was at the title "A page that will never be written unless some jerk writes it", which was used as an example red-link title. In this case the history was deleted in October 2002.
Replicant – the history of text that was merged from the title "Replicant (Blade Runner)" was deleted in February 2004 because the page was an orphaned redirect.
Hindi literature – the old history at "Hindu literature" was deleted in August 2003 after this discussion.
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".
Aioli – the old title of this page, "Ailoi" was deleted in July 2002.
Amedeo Avogadro – if there is earlier history, it was lost in a bug with the Phase II software. See this discussion about it on the technical village pump.
Agricultural science – see this edit summary
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 Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002
Guns N' Roses – there may be significant deleted history at the title "Guns n' Roses" from March 2004.
Johnnie Cochran – there may be some interesting history at that title that was deleted in December 2003.
Carloman of Bavaria – the title containing its earliest history, "Carloman, king of Bavaria", was deleted in August 2002; the deletion reason was: "because I created it and spelled it wrong".
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.
Timeline of historic inventions – Some page history may have been lost due to this page move and this relevant bug. The timestamps of these edits are suspicious, at any rate.
Max Stirner – some history at this title that may be relevant was deleted in October 2002 after this request to make way for a page move.
Bon – the title "BÃ¶n", which had an edit whose text (which may have been by the original author of the "Bon" page) was merged in to the "Bon" page, was deleted in March 2003 as a mis-encoded title
Elagabalus and Boyceville, Wisconsin: there was a bug in June 2004 (bug #858 in the old SourceForge system) that caused page history to be lost whenever a database error was encountered. Relevant edits are probably here at Elagabalus and here at Boyceville, Wisconsin.
Dwarf (Middle-earth) – its original title, "Dwarves (Middle-earth)dwarf", was deleted in July 2002 as a bad title.
Talk:Mind control – deleted in March 2004 without an explanation; I asked the deleting admin about it but they couldn't remember that far back.
Talk:Postmodern philosophy – the old title, "Postmodern philosophy/Postmodern philosophy talk", was permanently deleted because it is in the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002. Even after importing the relevant history from the Nostalgia Wikipedia and the March 2002 database dump, there still appear to be missing edits.
Talk:Michael (archangel) – That talk page was moved to Talk:Saint Michael the Archangel and was then deleted because it was blank; therefore all the history of the talk page before 22:06, 14 September 2003 (UTC) is lost.
Talk:Time travel – 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.
Talk:Perth – early history at the title "Talk:Perth WA" was deleted in December 2002 as a "strange holdover with no discussion not copied to another article"
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.
Talk:Serial polygamy – the talk page history was deleted in January 2004 after a page move (see this edit). I have imported two edits from the May 2003 database dump, but at least one edit is missing per the above link.
Talk:Luigi Dallapiccola – the history of early edits to this talk page at the title "Talk:Luigi Dallapiccola&actionedit" was deleted in December 2002.
Wikipedia:Sandbox and Wikipedia talk:Sandbox – both of these pages have been moved and deleted many times. I have imported some edits from the January and May 2003 database dumps to Wikipedia:Historical archive/Earliest sandbox history, but the earliest edits to the sandbox that were in the Wikipedia database before this importation are from June 2004 and can be found at Wikipedia:Historical archive/Sandbox. As for the talk page, it was deleted in September 2003 as a "waste of space", but I have imported some early edits to Wikipedia talk:Historical archive/Earliest sandbox history.
Wikipedia talk:The Wikipedia Militia – The page where the text came from, Talk:The Wikipedia Militia was permanently deleted according to the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002. I have imported an edit from the March 2002 database, more or less just because it's there. Interestingly, 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, permanently deleted the resulting redirects with all the old vhistory; see the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002. 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. I also imported the only surviving edits from the March 2002 database to the "Wikipedia Day" page and its talk page.
Old deletion subpages – In 2003, there was an experiment to list deletion entries (then at votes for deletion) in subpages by day. Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/August 24 survived from that experiment, but other subpages were deleted in September and November 2003, the latter after this discussion.
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.

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. In the third case, the article Dundee was moved to "Dundee, Scotland" and then turned into a disambiguation page. All the missing history of the articles Democratic Republic of the Congo and Dundee has been imported from the Nostalgia Wikipedia, but there are some missing edits at the Denmark article.
Andorra la Vella – the old history at this title was deleted in October 2002 during this page move.
Aberdeen – The early history at the title "AberdeenScotland" was deleted in November 2003 because it was a CamelCase page.
Rochester, New York – the first edit was at a title with unusual spacing, "Rochester ,New York", which was deleted in December 2002 as a "Misspelled page".
Persian language – deleted to make way for a page move in March 2003.
Gabriel García Márquez and its talk page – deleted in January and March 2004, respectively, to make way for page moves.
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.
Geography of the United States – The old title was deleted in August 2002. The given reason was "old style subpage, no history (already redirect in February), no links"; the history had just not yet been imported from the UseModWiki database.
Great auk – the old history at "Great Auk" was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move
Visual Basic, SQL, and Rexx (formerly at the title "REXX" – relevant history was deleted to make way for page moves in January 2003.
Vistula – old history at this title was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move
Inuit languages and Talk:Inuit languages – the titles containing the earliest edits to these pages, Inuktitut and Talk:Inuktitut, were deleted in August 2003 to make way for a page move.
Marquis de Sade – early history at this title was deleted in December 2002 to make way for a page move.
Simon–Ehrlich wager – early history at the title "JulianSimon/Wager" was deleted in May 2003 because it was a CamelCase title.
Zebrafish – history at "Zebra Danio" deleted in April 2004 to make way for a page move.
West Papua – history deleted in April 2004, presumably to make way for a page move.
Merlot – early history at the title "MerloT" was deleted in July 2003 because it was an "old, now unnecessary CamelCase redirect".
John Abercrombie – the original title of this page, "John Abercromrie", was deleted in April 2004 per these deletion discussions.
Scotch whisky – early history at "Whisky/Scotch" was deleted in March 2002.
Quake (video game) – the early history at the title "Quake" was deleted in August 2003 to make way for a page move.
Golden Brown and Peaches (The Stranglers song) (then at "Peaches") – both were deleted in April 2002 according to the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002, presumably because they were blank (see the relevant pages on the Nostalgia Wikipedia).
Computer display/CRT – some relevant old edits at the title "Computer Monitor/CRT" were deleted in July 2003 because it was an orphaned subpage.
Atom/Bohr model – the history of text that was merged into what is now "Bohr model" and cut-and-paste moved from the title "Atom/Bhor model" was deleted in August 2002 with the reason "subpage with spelling error in title, redirect only, no history"; the latter title contained no relevant history because it hadn't been imported yet from the UseModWiki database.
Weblog – the history of text that was merged into "Blog" was deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move.
Talk:Star Trek: First Contact – a page with relevant history, "Star Trek 8 Talk", was deleted in April 2002
Talk:Stem cell – the history of some text at the title "Stem cell/Todo" that was copied to the talk page was deleted in October 2002.
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~enwiki (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".
Some old talk pages – Before namespaces were introduced to Wikipedia during the conversion to the Phase II software 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 from UseModWiki 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.
WikiProject Concepts – an early idea for a WikiProject, which I moved to Wikipedia:Historical archive/WikiProject Concepts. Its history was deleted in October 2003 after this deletion discussion.

March 2002 database dump

Scooby-Doo – its old title, "Scooby Doo, Where Are You?" was permanently deleted according to the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002. I imported a missing edit from the March 2002 database dump, but had to estimate its timestamp, because it was listed as 15:51, 25 February 2002 (UTC) due to a database glitch (see below).
Nirvana (band) – Its old title, NirvanaBand, was permanently deleted according to the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002 in June 2002.
West Indies – I'm not entirely sure why this edit was lost; it may have been something to do with the previous edit being a blank edit recorded as being by Unknown, but none of the other similar edits have this problem.
Marseille – the deleted history was at Marseilles, was deleted in August 2002 as a "wrong title spelling". There probably aren't any significant gaps in the available page history now.
Khamis Mushait – was deleted in October 2002 to make way for a page move.
Christopher Tolkien – its early edits at the title <b>Christopher Tolkien</b> (later moved to "BChristopher Tolkien/b") were deleted in July 2002 after this deletion discussion.
Nutmeg and Pilbara Iron – the old titles of these pages containing their earliest history, "Bnutmeg/b" and "Bhamersley/b iron" respectively, were deleted in March 2002 according to the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002.
Cybill Shepherd – the old title of this page, "Cybill Sheperd", was deleted in March 2002 per the request of its author.
Adjoint functors – early history deleted in December 2002. I've restored the article's first eight edits, and the gap in the page history is fairly small.
Pierre and Marie Curie – was the location of articles about Pierre Curie and Marie Curie. The page was permanently deleted from the English Wikipedia database, as it is in the Deletion log/28 February – 19 July 2002.
StarCraft Campaign Editor – The history at the old title, "StarEdit", was deleted in October 2002 to make way for a page move.
How do I do this – deleted after this discussion)
User talk:Scott (usurped)~enwiki (formerly at Scott) – the history of this page was deleted in December 2002 after a deletion request. Some edits by this user were misattributed to the present-day Wikipedian with the username Scott; more details are found in this talk page thread.

January 2003 database dump

Union Flag – history formerly at the title "Union Jack" was deleted due to this page move in August 2003.
CNN – early history of that article was deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move
Tehran – the edit history of text that was merged into the article was deleted to make way for a page move in March 2003.
New York City – History before June 2002, which was at the title "City of New York", was deleted in this page move.
Glasgow – deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move from "Glasgow, Scotland".
Calais – early history at that title was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move]
Waikiki – early history at this title was deleted to make way for a page move in October 2003
Genoa – was deleted in February 2003 to make way for a page move. Most of its old history was imported to the modern Genoa article, but some was imported to the Genoa (disambiguation) article, where there are still gaps in the history.
Basel – the first edits to this page at the title "Basle" were deleted in February 2003 to make way for a page move.
Incheon – the first edit at this title was deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move.
Banjul – early edits at this title were deleted in December 2003 to make way for a page move.
Zagreb – the initial edits at this title were deleted in |September 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 was summarised at this edit to the talk page
Gujarat – the history of text that was merged into the article was deleted in February 2004 to make way for a page move
Alcalá de Henares – early edits to this article were at the title "Alcal&aacute de Henares", which was deleted in April 2004 as a "[r]edirect page with broken HTML entity in the title"
Tübingen – the history of text that was merged into the article was deleted in June 2003 to make way for a page move. I have moved the old history to Talk:Tübingen/Old history.
St Ives, Cornwall – the history of text that was merged into the article was deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move. I've imported the missing edit to the title of the current article.
Somerset (disambiguation) – early history of a disambiguation page at the title "Somerset", which was turned into a redirect in August 2002, was deleted in July 2003 to make way for a page move. Notably, the old disambiguation page contained some text that was merged into the article about the English county in 2002.
London Borough of Croydon – Edits at this page title were deleted in February 2004 to make way for a page move; I have restored them to Talk:London Borough of Croydon/Old history. Some of the previously missing edits were incorporated into the current article.
Camden Town – the very first content edit at this title was deleted in June 2003 to make way for a page move.
Ottawa (disambiguation) – the history of the first attempt to create this disambiguation page at the title "Ottawa" was deleted in July 2003 to make way for a page move.
Killer whale – the history at the old title of this article, "Killer Whale", was deleted to make way for a page move in May 2003.
Moas – The page history at this title was deleted in January 2004 because it was an "incorrect redirect". See this discussion.
Senate of the Roman Republic – history at "Roman Senate" was deleted in November 2003 to make way for a page move.
Unidentified flying object (and its talk page) – both deleted on 4 June 2004 (UTC) to make way for a page move. The history for the talk page is now at Talk:Unidentified flying object/Archive 3.
Smells Like Teen Spirit – the title with the early history of this page, "NirvanaBand/Smells Like Teen Spirit", was deleted in June 2002 and must have been undeleted again, because it was re-deleted in January 2003 as an "unneeded CamelCase page".
Tuoba – the old history at that title was deleted in March 2003 to make way for a page move.
Evenks – deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move.
Nitroglycerin– the history containing some text that was merged into the article was deleted to make way for a page move in January 2003. I've imported it to Talk:Nitroglycerin/Old history.
Channel Tunnel – the history of some text that was merged into the article was deleted in May 2003 to make way for a page move. I have imported the edits to Channel tunnel.
List of religions – the history of a list that was being constructed at that title was deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move; that list was later copied to the talk page of a similar, established article.
Saint Veronica – early history at that title was deleted in March 2003 to make way for a page move.
Dragon (magazine) – early edits at the title "Dragon Magazine" were deleted in November 2003 to make way for a page move.
Fabaceae – the initial edits at that title were deleted due to a page move in August 2003.
Carrying capacity – the history containing the first edit to this article was deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move after this discussion.
Port Arthur massacre (Australia) – the deleted history was 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.
Nazi Germany/People – the history of text that was merged into the "Nazi Germany" article was deleted in December 2003 because it was an orphaned page.
Bong – relevant history at this title was deleted to make way for a page move in February 2003.
Mucus – the history of text at this title that was merged into "Mucous membrane" was deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move.
Honoré de Balzac – the history of some text that was merged into the article was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move. I have imported it to Talk:Honoré de Balzac/Old history.
René Descartes – deleted to make way for a page move in April 2003.
Ahmed Yassin – early history at this title was deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move.
Robert McNamara – deleted in January 2004 to make way for a page move.
Junichiro Koizumi – the history of text that was merged into "Junichirō Koizumi was deleted in April 2004 to make way for a page move.
Season of the Inundation – the page was accidentally created at the title "Wikipedia:Season of inundation", which was deleted in September 2003.
Pentatonic scale – the history of text that was merged into the article from the title "(pentatonic)" was deleted in November 2003, probably because it was a very obscure redirect. I have imported the edits there and then moved them to Pentatonic collection to preserve them.
Luís Figo – the title that contained the first two edits to this page, "Luis Figo, a very disloyal player", was deleted in February 2003 because the page name was opinionated ("POV") and the article was empty.
James Traficant – the early history at this title was deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move.
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 – the first edit at the title "Weapons of Mass Destruction" was deleted in April 2003 to make way for a page move
Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby – early history deleted in October 2003 to make way for a page move.
Lingua franca – deleted in May 2003 to make way for a page move.
Kwantung Army – early edits to this page at the title "Guandong Army" were deleted in December 2003 to make way for a page move.
Treaty of Nanking – early history at this title was deleted in December 2003 to make way for a page move.
Manchukuo – deleted in June 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].
Emperor Kōnin – the page was moved to the title "Konin (mikado)", which was deleted in April 2003 as a "broken redirect".
Simple API for XML – its original title, Simple API for XML, was deleted, but it's not in the deletion log; it must have happened some time between 22 January and 17 May 2003 (UTC).
"April 20, 2002" – the history of text that was merged into what is now "Plattsburgh (city), New York" (after a history merge on that page) was deleted in July 2003 because of the above-mentioned merge.
Holiday Inn (film) – relevant early history at "Holiday Inn" was deleted in August 2003 because by then the page was a copyright violation.
Induhvidual – the early history at this title was deleted in May 2003 to make way for a page move.
VIM/Feature list and NetHack/Amulet of Yendor – the text at these titles was merged into their base pages, but the two subpages were deleted in January 2003 as "unneeded subpage[s]". Ditto for Video game/Strategy, which was merged into Strategy game and deleted in April 2003.
Protoss – Some old history at this title was deleted to make way for a page move in March 2004.
2.PAK, ABSET, ABSYS, KRYPTON, and SNOBOL – the old history at these titles was deleted to make way for page moves in January 2003. I've imported all the missing history of these pages to their relevant titles, except SNOBOL. In that case, the missing history involved some text that was merged in in September 2002, so I've restored its missing history to Talk:SNOBOL/Old history.
Lothlórien – some old history at the title "Lothlorien" was deleted. It's not in the deletion logs, but it probably has something to do with this page move.
Talk:Florence – the first edits to this talk page were deleted in April 2003 to allow the talk page's title to match that of the main page.
Talk:Frankfurt – the early talk page, which was at the title "Talk:Frankfurt am Main", was deleted in February 2003 as an empty talk page, during the process of moving the article from "Frankfurt am Main" to "Frankfurt"; I have imported the relevant edits to Talk:Frankfurt. I have also restored some old history of an early disambiguation page that was at the title "Frankfurt" to Talk:Frankfurt/Old history.
Talk:Lisp (programming language) – the earliest title of this talk page, "LISP/Talk", was [deleted in January 2003 to make way for a page move.
Talk:Alfonso V of Aragon – deleted in March 2004 to make way for a page move.
Talk:Ada, Talk:Ansible (whose history belonged at User:Ansible), Talk:Carolingian dynasty (then at "Talk:Carolingian"), Talk:Casablanca, Talk:Cosmic background radiation, Talk:Dakinis (then at "Talk:Dakini"), Talk:Diet of Nuremberg, Talk:Druid (then at "Talk:Druidism"), Talk:Farming, User talk:Gareth Owen (then at "Talk:Gareth Owen"), Talk:John Nash, Talk:List of football clubs in the Netherlands (then at ""Talk:List of Dutch Football League teams"), and User talk:Wmorgan (then at "Talk:Wmorgan") – were all deleted because they were blank pages. The first two and last three were deleted in February 2004: the first two and third-last (the latter of which also contained nonsense) earlier in the month than the other two; in all the others, this occurred in May 2004.
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 was 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 deleted revisions. This phenomenon predominantly affects user pages of people whose usernames were at the start of the alphabet. Examples include AxelBoldt, Ed Poor, and Eloquence. I have restored all user page history deleted in April and May 2004 that had not already been imported from the Nostalgia Wikipedia ; most of the user pages deleted at that time began with the letters A to E. Most of the unrecoverable user page history is listed at Wikipedia:Usemod article histories. Notable examples are User:Bryan Derksen, User:LC~enwiki, User:Lee Daniel Crocker, User:Magnus Manske, and User:Rmhermen. An interesting example of user page history that was deleted through an unusual method is User:Jason Richey, which was deleted in May 2004 after this discussion.. Another example is User:Invictus~enwiki (then at "User:Invictus), which was deleted in October 2003, also after a discussion. Yet another example is User:RoseParks/sandbox which used to be at the title "R P Sandbox" and was deleted also in October 2003 after this discussion. One more example can now be found at User:Jmccann~enwiki/old; it was deleted after this discussion because it had been blanked. A fifth example involves User talk:Scott (usurped)~enwiki and is discussed in the March 2002 database dump section.
Wikipedia:How the Current events page works – the history of this page before it was moved to the Wikipedia namespace, at the title "Current events article development", was deleted in November 2003 during a reorganisation of the page.
Wikipedia:Conflicts between users/archive1 (then at Wikipedia:Annoying users) – The very early history of this page was moved to the title "Wikipedia:Warned users" and later deleted per the author's request in February 2003.
Wikipedia:Arguments – An essay that was featured on the "Annoying users" page from December 2002 (when it was written) until May 2003, it was deleted as a "rant" in February 2004, but I have imported its edits from the May 2003 database dump (both the January and May 2003 database dumps contained the same edits). I've moved the page to User:Ed Poor/Arguments.

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.
Athenian democracy – the old history was deleted in April 2004 to make way for a page move.
National Health Service (England) (previously at the title "National Health Service") – was deleted in December 2003 to make way for a page move. I imported the first seven edits to the article and the remaining edits to Talk:National Health Service (England)/Old history. The content of these remaining edits was moved to what is now Talk:Publicly funded health care, and the only difference between the latest imported version and the copied text is a link fix.
Americentrism – the history of some text that was merged into "Ethnocentrism" was deleted in February 2004 by its author. At least one redirect is missing from the imported edits, because when the page was deleted, it was a redirect to American exceptionalism.
Object – deleted in February 2004 due to this bug. There are still some gaps in the history.
Falkirk (council area) (then at "Falkirk") – deleted in January 2004 to make way for a page move.
List of governors of Halland County – relevant edits at the title "County Administrative Board of Halland", which were later moved to "Halland County Administrative Board", were deleted in March 2004 by the author of the original page.
Tiruchirappalli – the history of text at the title "Tiruchirapalli" that was merged into the article was deleted in December 2003 to make way for a page move. I have restored the history to Talk:Tiruchirappalli/Old history.
Funabashi, Chiba and its talk page – was moved by the author from "Funabashi" to "FUnaba" and then "Funaba" (see a discussion about the title, starting with the text "Taku, are you up for a WikiProject called Japanese prefectures"). The mistitled pages were deleted in February 2004 because they had been tagged with a speedy deletion template.
Ashikaga shogunate and Kamakura shogunate – the history of text that was merged in to these articles was deleted in October 2003 to make way for page moves. I have imported the relevant page history to Talk:Ashikaga shogunate/Old history and Talk:Kamakura shogunate/Old history, respectively.
Emperor Jomei, Emperor Kenzō, Emperor Shōkō, Empress Meishō, and Emperor Juntoku – the old history at "Emperor Jomei of Japan", "Emperor Kenzo of Japan", "Emperor Shoko of Japan", "Emperor Meisho of Japan", and "Emperor Juntoku of Japan", respectively, was deleted due to page moves in September 2003 after a request that went uncommented.
Emperor En'yū – deleted in December 2003 as a duplicate article.
Former Qin – in December 2003, the title "Former Qin Empire" was moved to "Fomer Qin"; shortly afterwards, that title was deleted as a typo. I've restored the relevant history from the May 2003 database dump, but there may be missing intervening edits.
Canada goose – history at "Canada Goose" deleted in May 2003 to make way for a redirect; there are small gaps in the surviving page history.
Diagonalizable matrix – the history of text that was merged into the article was deleted in May 2004 to make way for a page move.
Polygonal number – this page was originally created at the title "Jacquerie27", the username of its author, probably by mistake. That page was deleted in January 2004 as a "test blanked by author".
Canadian monarchy – the history of text merged from this title was deleted in September 2003 to make way for a page move.
Talk:Vittorio Emanuele, Prince of Naples – the history of a talk page message at the title "Talk:VIctor Emmanuel of Savoy" (which was later blanked by its author) was deleted in February 2004; the given deletion reason was: "no content, no history".
Talk:Family Federation for World Peace and Unification – early history deleted in April 2004 to make way for a page move.
When the Pawn... – the initial version of this article, which was moved by cut and paste to "When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts", was made at a truncated version of the full album title to fit in MediaWiki's 255-character limit: "When the Pawn Hits the Conflicts He Thinks Like a King; What He Knows Throws the Blows When He Goes to the Fight, and He'll Win the Whole Thing 'Fore He Enters the Ring - There's No Body To Batter When the Mind Is Your Might, So You Go Solo, You Hold Your". This title was deleted in September 2003.
Dirt (Alice in Chains album) – the history of text that was merged in from "Dirt (album)" was deleted in May 2003 to make way for a page move. I've imported into Dirt (album) because that title is a redirect now.
British Guiana 1c magenta – the history was probably lost due to this page move. Considering the gap in available edits, the difference between the last imported edit and the earliest edit from 2004 is remarkably small.
Divine Right of Kings – the history of text at this title that was merged into the main article about this subject was deleted in August 2003 to make way for a page move.
WDC 65816/65802 – the title containing the old history, "MOS Technologies 65816", was deleted in March 2004 per a request at redirects for deletion. There's not much difference between the latest imported version and the earliest surviving edit to that article.
Talk:Disapproval voting – the article was deleted in July 2003 but restored a month later, without its talk page. If there is a gap in the available history after my page import, it would be less than three months.
Bill O'Reilly – the early history at this disambiguation page was deleted in September 2003 because the page was felt to be unnecessary.
Talk:Force (physics) – deleted in May 2004 because it was a blank page.
Talk:Making a webpage – deleted in September 2003 but not undeleted with the article.
User talk:Wfroede/Indian states in local languages – the early history of this page at "Talk:Indian states in local languages" was deleted in December 2003 per a request on IRC after a cut-and-paste move.

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. Ipo3's edits particularly affected the Klingon article.

In another science fiction franchise, the Palpatine article also had missing edits. Its history was moved to "Palpatine, Dantius", a name for the character cpoined by SuperShadow, who ran a Star Wars website, and then the page was moved by cut-and-paste back to Palpatine. The "Palpatine, Dantius" page was redirected to the SuperShadow article then moved to Dantius Palpatine; the redirect was deleted after a deletion discussion for the SuperShadow article, taking all the early history of the Palpatine page with it.

If the deleted revisions 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 using the Phase II software.

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.^{[note 1]}

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 revision links that show the consequences of the server clocks being reset. See T4219 for other examples.

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. Another set of out-of-order edits is this edit to Template:Edit.

Another situation in which there can be incorrect timestamps is a result of early versions of MediaWiki. When pages were moved over redirects, the edit history of the newly created redirect would show the date and time when the overwritten redirect was created. There are more details in the section of the page move guidance about moving over a redirect, along with an example at Talk:PETA.

Many edits, especially those by Conversion script, are incorrectly reported as having occurred on 25 February 2002 (UTC) due to an early database glitch that was once called the "great oops".

Incorrect timestamps can also affect the reported creation times of accounts at places like the list of all users, because this information wasn't oficially recorded in the database until the introduction of the user creation log in September 2005.

Talk pages created before articles

Sometimes, the first visible edit to a talk page can have an earlier timestamp than that of the corresponding article. This can happen for several reasons, including copyright violations (where early article history is deleted) and unusual page moves. With my encouragement, my friend Codeofdusk wrote an extended essay about this topic, which can be found at User:Codeofdusk/ee.

Fun page history facts

The page Louisville, Kentucky was originally at the title Talk radio/Louisville
There are other page history oddities described at the pagesUser:0 and User:Unknown user.

Notes

^ Out-of-order revision IDs are associated with some historical bugs. Until May 2017, the inconsistent ID numbers could cause problems when checking diffs, as diff navigation was based on the revision ID of edits rather than their timestamps (see T4930). 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 was at this edit to Talk:Netherlands, which now displays correctly as of the MediaWiki 1.18 update.

[1] Out-of-order revision IDs are associated with some historical bugs. Until May 2017, the inconsistent ID numbers could cause problems when checking diffs, as diff navigation was based on the revision ID of edits rather than their timestamps (see T4930). 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 was at this edit to Talk:Netherlands, which now displays correctly as of the MediaWiki 1.18 update.

[note 1]