Wikipedia talk:How to fix cut-and-paste moves

Dealing with the Troublesome Cases

Wikipedia:How to fix cut and paste moves#A troublesome case [My link error now fixed by Jerzy(t) 03:21, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)] endorses merging two pages' histories when one has the history before the cut and past move, and one the history after it. But it throws up its hands at keeping the whole history when a history merge would result in interleaving the edits of the two starting pages. I have done a number of the latter fixes (i assume i'll be able to dig up examples), using an approach that enables users to deduce which file-comparisons show differences that only appear to reflect what changes the newer version introduced, and (more importantly) which comparisons to use to find the changes introduced in any real edit. The method is to save the text of both histories, before doing the merge, and instruct users to find the two adjacent time stamps in one of those saved histories, and to use the "live" merged history to compare those two versions (rather than blindly assuming two adjacent versions, in the live history, were consecutive versions of the same page and thus have the relationship of being the before and after states of an edit).

IMO it is more in the spirit of WP's overall practice to keep the evidence that makes the authorship verifiable, rather than instruct admins to make a potentially subjective judgement about " principle principal authors", and then destroy the evidence.

[Fixed my misspell. --Jerzy(t) 03:21, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)]

Rereading, i see that my claim of "destroy[ing] the evidence with the currently recommended procedure is mistaken. I should have described it as

• (in the case where the editor is more conscientious than the instructions suggest, and puts into the edit summary a reference to the note on the talk page) "discouraging access to the evidence" (by leaving half of it awkward and confusing to find, obscured behind at least one redirect and Move's non-documentation in pages' histories of what their sometimes multiple former names were), and
• (failing that diligence) concealing the evidence, at least from those who don't look at the talk page.

--Jerzy(t) 03:21, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

I've been hesitant to correct the hopelessness of that writer, in case they thought of the same approach, and simply regarded it as too confusing to teach, and preferred hiding the truth over giving complicated reasons for not using this approach. But even if that's the case, IMO on reflection, we deserve not to be lied to about the possibility, and the passage should be reworded, even if we want to do something in the range between forbidding the use of my approach and offering no help to those who think they might be able to master it.
--Jerzy(t) 23:30, 2004 Oct 20 (UTC)

Interesting idea, but I think it'd still be very confusing - what if someone checks history without first checking talk? Martin 00:55, 21 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Since

1. users who don't look at the talk page (and find the pre-merge histories) would also never have seen the list of principal authors (and would have misunderstood some of them as having had no participation), and
2. those who do look at it will see the pre-merge histories and come out with more information,

your concern is when

• an article's editor, who merges & saves pre-merge histories, would otherwise instead (perhaps in response to instructions that get improved next week) have done both the note and the list of principal authors (neither of which, BTW, i've never noticed an example of -- just FWIW, since any individual's sample is small and perhaps relevantly biased), and
• that page's user doesn't think to check the talk page.

It would seem that such an occasion for harm would be easily and adequately remedied by something that IMO falls far short of a SMOP: adding a line of text to the code for presenting page-histories that says

Caution: "(last)" comparisons do not necessarily compare the pre-edit and post-edit states of the same page, for pages where page-histories have been merged. Consult the talk page for information on any revevant merges.

(Less than a SMOP: the testing should be just prudent insurance against clerical screwups, rather against "real" programming errors.)
--Jerzy(t) 03:21, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

Not very far off topic: Even if GFDL is legally airtight in this respect, and whether or not the pre-merge histories on the talk page are endorsed, the moral authority of MediaWiki projects would be significantly improved by adding, in the place discussed,

Various forms of cut-and-paste editing and history merges interfere with the accuracy, thoroughness, and transparency of the page histories' automated record of authorship, as discussed at [appropriate Meta address].

--Jerzy(t) 12:03, 2004 Oct 24 (UTC)

Please help with Talk:Hubbert peak

I deleted the Hubert peak redirect page and then moved Hubbert Peak to Hubbert peak. It said the talk page could not be moved because there was already a talk page with a history. So I looked at this page, where it says:

The admin:

1. Deletes History of Alabama, with comment deleting to merge page histories - back soon. (Now the new article has no text and no history.)
2. Moves Alabama/History to History of Alabama, using the move tool (giving the new title the old history and the old versions).
3. Undeletes the History of Alabama article.
4. Goes to the page history of History of Alabama. (Now it is a self-redirect.)
5. Presses Ctrl + F5 (on Internet Explorer, or whatever action forces a hard refresh with the browser in use).
6. Undeletes the deleted versions of History of Alabama, putting back in place the new versions and history.

I tried to follow this procedure. It does not appear to have worked. The assumption that normal humans use Internet Explorer didn't help. Like all normal people, I'm using Linux. I used control-shift-R in step 5. How is this process supposed to work? Michael Hardy 00:49, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Just as well it didn't, and that you seem to have omitted the undelete step in the confusion, as this is exactly the kind of situation that the article warns against: the two versions Hubbert peak and Hubbert Peak (Hubert peak turns out to be a typo for Hubbert peak) coexisted, each accumulating revisions, from April 5 to June 22, and (without careful inspection) there is no certainty that the individual edits could havee been deciphered even in theory, as the GDFL anticipates, i you'd succeeded, but virtual certainty that no one would go to the trouble. The 41 currently deleted revisions are recoverable, and the failure of the effort to dump them in will make feasible a workaround-guide for viewing the diffs within the jumble that will result.

Repair involving both articles and talks in progress today; others please forbear. --Jerzy(t) 18:59, 2004 Nov 22 (UTC)

Oh, yeah: Done. --Jerzy(t) 04:09, 2004 Nov 23 (UTC)

Obsolete warning?

This warning:

Warning: this procedure may only be undone by a developer, spending quite silly amounts of time: to undo a merge, every single version has to be manually reassigned to its respective former page. Do not do this if you're not sure what you're doing.

is probably now obsolete, because with selective undelete, an admin can in fact undo a merge (provided you figure out which versions belong in which history). Simply i) delete the page, ii) undelete only the versions which belong to history A, iii) move that article elsewhere, iv) undelete the rest of the versions, which belong to B.

I will delete the words "a developer", leaving the warning correct, but making plain that doing a merge can have painful results. Noel (talk) 13:56, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Un-merging history

To fix a copy move, it is sometimes necessary to move some revisions of a page to a new location, while leaving the others. For example, suppose someone copies Marking out to Marking out (professional wrestling), then writes a different article at Marking out, with many edits. To fix the move, I need to get the original history, before the copy-move, to Marking out (professional wrestling) and leave behind the newer history.

I take it you can separate revisions in the history by the following process

1. Delete the page
2. Undelete the revisions you want to be elsewhere
3. Move the page
4. Undelete the rest of the revisions

But I've never done it, and this page doesn't currently address the issue. So, are the above four steps right? dbenbenn | talk 18:48, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Yes, with the new selective undelete, you can do this kind of thing (see my comments in the section immediately above) - I do this now when I'm doing cut-n-paste move repairs to remove the redirects from the history. This page hasn't been fully updated to reflect that you can now do this kind of thing - it used to take a developer to untangle merged histories. (As I mentioned above, I did fix the text where it used to say that it took a developer to un-merge histories.) Noel (talk) 14:14, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I have now written a new section which explains how to use selective undelete to separate one history into two (and join one onto a second, when an article was cut-and-paste moved). Noel (talk) 19:26, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

template:disambig and template:nocatdab

A while ago, someone moved {{disambig}} to {{nocatdab}}, and he tried to revert the move by cutting and pasting. I'd use the normal method in reverting cut-and-paste moves, but {{disambig}} is used by over 30,000 pages, and I don't want to mess up 30,000 at once. I think that an experienced administrator may be required to fix this problem. --Ixfd64 03:18, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

I think it's going to take a developer to fix this one; deleting the target {{disambig}} seems to time out, probably because it has to update so many links table entries. I have at least separated out the prior history, which I left at Template talk:Disambig/History. Noel (talk) 23:25, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

PS: I just happened to see this here by accident. Requests for history merges go at Wikipedia:Cut and paste move repair holding pen. I'll make the pointer to that more prominent. 23:25, 3 October 2005 (UTC)

I merged it. There was no error any more. —Centrx→talk • 17:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Need help with Talk:David Cross and Talk: David Cross (actor)

After making a mistaken move (from the former to the latter) I need an admin to delete Talk:David Cross (currently a redirect) and move Talk:David Cross (actor) into its namespace. Thanks in advance. --TM 05:52, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

History pages messed up.

CV=Christian views about women FS=Frank Stagg (theologian)

Last night, another editor moved article CV into empty article FS, thus moving the CV history page to FS. Then, editor somehow cut and pasted the CV text back into an article with the same CV name. FS has now been added to and is a complete article. But all of CV's history, prior to last night's move, appears on the FS History pages, along with FS History at the top. CV History now looks like CV was created last night, and is a short list.

Now since you are a physicist, maybe you know some kind of magic that will move back to CV those entries under FS History that belong to CV, leaving at the top of each History list the entries that really belong under that article. Clear as mud? I'll appreciate your help very much. Afaprof01 17:29, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

Proposed redesign of Template:Db-histmerge

See Template talk:Db-histmerge#Proposed redesign. —Ilmari Karonen (talk) 01:44, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Merging histories of duplicate articles

I've just merged the two articles Oaxtepec, Mexico, and Oaxtepec, which were both about the same town. Is it appropriate to request that the history of the one left as a redirect be merged into the history of the other: out of respect for contributors' efforts, GFDL compliance, whatever? The now-redirect -- Oaxtepec, Mexico, the one placed at the wrong location per WP:NC -- actually has a longer history with more contributors. Advice? Aille (talk) 22:59, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

• At present, {{R from merge}} seems to be considered adequate (and i installed it). But in the situation you may have intended to describe -- the wrong title having the more recognition-worthy (not just the more numerous) contributions, harm reduction without the downsides of a history merge consists of the following:
  1. Move Correct title to Correct title (old contribs)
  2. Move Title with more worthy contributions (over history-less Rdr) to Correct title
  3. Accomplish content merge at Correct title, summarizing

     Content merge from Correct title (old contribs), where contribs made at Correct title prior to today remain reflected in the edit history

  4. Replace content of Correct title (old contribs) with

     #REDIRECT [[Correct title]] {{R from merge}}

summarizing

Content merge to back to Correct title of contribs (made under that title) reflected in this page's edit history

(In your case, Title with more worthy contributions was a title that should continue as a redirect, even if it had existed so briefly that the likelihood of links having been created on other sites was insignificant.)
The history remains split, between Correct title and Correct title (old contribs), but the set collectively more worthy of recognition are with the article, and the rest are easy for a careful ed-hist reader to locate, thanks to your edit summaries.
--Jerzy•t 05:50, 29 August 2009 (UTC)

Illustration for 'more complex case'

I did my first resolution of a complex cut-and-paste move and found that I really needed to illustrate the process for myself. I mapped it out with the two articles that were involved, then cleaned up the diagram and re-labeled it according to the articles cited in the section Wikipedia talk:How to fix cut-and-paste moves#A more complex case. I have included the image here as a thumbnail and would be interested in knowing whether you agree it would be useful to include in the text itself (as a thumbnail, of course). This was composed in PowerPoint 2003; I could upload the original file if anyone would like to make revisions or recompose from this starting point. (P.S. my own specific case was Boucher and Boucher Manufacturing Company) --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:14, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, it's been more than an year, and no illustrations. I've added a different kind of representation in the page. Jay (talk) 21:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Late comment, and maybe I'm not the right person to comment on this, since I know how the process works, but I have to say the picture doesn't do much for me. Maybe it's because you'd have to keep at least three windows open to look at the instructions, look at the picture (since it doesn't do much at thumbnail size), and do stuff to articles at the same time. In my opinion the simplest thing to do would be to just say "deleted revisions in history won't get moved" since most of the the rest of the steps follow from that, but I'm not sure if everyone else sees it the same way. - Bobet 22:22, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Question about the 'warning' that was on the page

I removed a warning about having to click on every revision to undelete them (in this edit), since it's not actually true (just click on the first revision, then shift-click the last). However, since it seems like such an obvious thing that has stuck around for so long, is there some issue I'm not aware of? Does that not work with other browsers besides Firefox? - Bobet 22:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

question

Would I be accurate in saying that this is project that is best suited to admins? I'd be interested in helping out here a bit from time to time, but as I understand the project page, it appears that most of the abilities that are required would only be available to administrators. How accurate am I in that assumption? — Ched :  ?  16:46, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

David Campbell (British Army officer)

Some time ago I created User:David Underdown/David Campbell (British Army officer), intending ultimately to move it into mainspace. As there was one key source I couldn't get hold of, my work stalled. In the meantime, User:Dormskirk independently created David Campbell (British Army officer), and as I'd forgotten to watch the redlink, I didn't notice for some time. We're now considering the best way to merge the pages while preserving as much history as possible, and wondered if anyone watching this page could give some advice on the best way forward? David Underdown (talk) 14:15, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Graham87 (talk · contribs) is very experienced doing histmerges. I'd try asking at his talk page. -- œ^™ 09:23, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I am happy with the way things are at that page, with the merge tag on the talk page. Graham87 11:26, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Which history merge method should be used?

I have been using this history merge method for over two and a half years. The main advantages of that method over the original method are that it doesn't introduce junk redirect edits, it doesn't require the histmerging admin to revert any old edits, it improves transparency, since the history merge tart is in the move log, and the changes in the history take effect immediately. The main disadvantage is that it clutters the watchlist with extra page move entries. I originally mentioned that method on this page in August 2008, but I didn't want to be too bold at the time and re-shape the page. However I think the method that I use is superior to the original method, which was designed before the advent of selective deletion. Graham87 08:02, 7 August 2010 (UTC)

Duplicate talk page

I'd like to have the history of Talk:Automotive Products Trade Agreement merged into Talk:Auto Pact. (The page was moved but the talk page wasn't.) The former is from Feb. 2008 to May 2009. The latter is all before that, save for someone having moved it to an archive and then moved it back. I'm not sure how best to deal with this. Is there a way to request a histmerge or is it better to just move the older one to an archive and have the newer one moved to the main talk page? --Sable232 (talk) 21:07, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

The two pages shouldn't be history merged in this case because they both have different content. Your second proposal is the only sensible option in this case, and I've just done the necessary page moves for it. Graham87 01:27, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. --Sable232 (talk) 03:48, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

User to article namespace

If I create a page in user name space before taking it to article namespace, should I move the user namespace page or copy and paste it. I couldn't find anything here elaborating on this, so I wanted to ask first. –Dream out loud (talk) 03:09, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

You should move it. Only copy and paste it if the main namespace page already exists. Graham87 14:13, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

A "troublesome" case

An article was created and edited for awhile at one name - say "A", then an author did a c&p move - to "B" - but did not make the old article redirect to the new one. A few edits were subsequently and independently made to "A" and "B" before someone realized there were two copies of the same article and made A redirect to B. So this is a "troublesome case" and I just moved A to "talk:foo/OldVersion" and B to "foo". see Talk:Teteh_Bangura/OldVersion. But, it seems like it would be ideal if I selectively merged the pre-B edits of A to B? then left the rest of A's edits, deleted, at Talk:Teteh_Bangura/OldVersion? thanks, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 07:55, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that would be the best course of action. But leave A's edits undeleted, and put an explanation on the talk page of "A" explaining that it contains old edits relating to Teteh Bangura - that page seems to contain significant edits. And write a short note on Talk:Teteh Bangura with a link to Talk:Teteh Bangura/OldVersion. Graham87 14:00, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

So leave just the edits of A that took place after the c&p move at A undeleted there and merge the rest to B? Sounds good. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 14:20, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Yep, exactly. Graham87 15:24, 14 February 2011 (UTC)

Alternative strategy

I've seen this done, I'd like to get people's thoughts:

Say we're merging history from A to B:

1. Delete B
2. move A to B, leaving redirect
3. Delete B again
4. Restore everything from B except the move

Now, there is no undone move edit with the redirect, ie the droppings cleaned up by step 3 of "An easy case". The downside is that those droppings serve as a sort of indicator of what happened, if you know what to look for. ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 14:47, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

• See #Which history merge method should be used? above. That's basically the history merge method that I've used for the last few years. Graham87 02:28, 16 February 2011 (UTC)
• I move A to B with the move comment "histmerge", and I leave the move edit showing in the end result as a clue that a histmerge has been done. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:30, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

My last year edits

Last year I worked on some web browser articles and I made a mistake on two: Agora (web browser) and Argo (web browser). I thought that Argo war later renamed to Agora and so I cut 'n past the content/moved the pages. The revisions before 369200884 (the move) at Agora should be at Argo. Can somebody correct that? I will give help for more understanding if needed. mabdul 18:34, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Fixed, but I've made this edit the first one at the "Agora (browser)" article, so all revisions where the title is "Argo" are in the Argo revision history, and all revisions where the title is "Agora" are in the "Agora" revision history. Thanks for letting us know. Graham87 04:49, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Alteration to section "Parallel versions"?

• Add this text?:

  Also, if page A is to be history-merged into page B, before the process, make sure that page B is not sitting over a deleted parallel history, as then, deleting B will shuffle the history of B and that deleted history together. The deleted history should be first be got out from under B by some process such as this: Move B to some other name, say B_zxcvbnm (not making a redirect). Undelete B. Move B to some other name, say B/old version . If necessary, re-delete B/old version . Move B_zxcvbnm back to B (not making a redirect).

  Similar applies to a page which must be deleted and then partly undeleted for a history-split.

  • Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:25, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
  • Sounds good. Done. Graham87 14:18, 20 February 2011 (UTC)