Wikipedia:Administrators' guide/Viewing deleted pages
Admins may wish to see deleted pages for various reasons, including while participating at DRV, explaining why a page was deleted, or investigating a potential sockpuppet. Some admins also provide copies of deleted pages to non-admins while completing similar tasks.
Below is a step-by-step guide on how to view a deleted page without restoring it. Follow the instructions and view the deleted page as the guide says to practice.
View a deleted page
- Open the page you wish to see. For practice, you can use Ryan Postlethwaite.
- Below the article title, you will see "View or undelete one deleted edit?", "View or undelete 15 deleted edits?", or something similar depending on how many revisions exist. All editors can see this page, but they cannot see the page history or "view or undelete" link. If you are using Visual Editor, switch to Source Editor.
- Click the blue linked words "one deleted edit". That will bring you to a screen that shows the various now-deleted revisions. Only admins can see this page. If you don't click "undelete" under the Deletion log on this page, the deletion will remain in effect.
- Scroll down the page to where it says "Page history".
- Click the blue linked date and time of one of the Page history revisions. This will show you that particular deleted revision in a source edit window. If you would rather see it in normal view, choose "show preview".
View a deleted image
- Open up the page you wish to see. For practice, you can use File:London-james.jpg.
- At the top of the File:London-james.jpg image page, you will see the heading "View or undelete one deleted edit?", "View or undelete 4 deleted edits?", or something similar depending on how many revisions exist. All editors can see this page, but non-admins will not see the "view or undelete" link. If you are using Visual Editor, switch to Source Editor.
- Click the blue linked words "4 deleted edits". That will bring you to a screen which shows the various now-deleted revisions. This is a page that only admins can see. Unless you click "undelete" under the Deletion log on this page, the deletion will remain in effect.
- Scroll down the page to where it says "File history".
- Click on the blue linked date and time for one of the File history revisions. This will open that particular deleted image.
- For practice, here are a few more images:
View an editor's deleted contributions
- Open the page you wish to see. For practice, you can use this banned user.
- Click the "User contributions" link on the left side of the page under Tools. This should bring up the User contributions page for Archtransit.
- Beneath the title "User contributions for Archtransit", you'll see Results of Archtransit, which provides a string of actions, starting with "talk" and "change block". Select the blue "deleted user contributions" link. That should bring up the editor's deleted contributions.
Oversight
The MediaWiki software also allows edits to be permanently hidden beyond even the grasp of most administrators. This is typically done when an edit is judged to have likely exposed the Wikimedia Foundation to legal jeopardy. Such well-hidden edits are referred to as having been "oversighted"; see Wikipedia:Hiding revisions for further details.