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Deletion discussion

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From WP:RfD:

  • UuU → Roentgenium -- This one is a bit controversial as its history apparantly contains the oldest edit on wikipedia, however I don't think it should be left to clutter up the main namespace. I'd be fine with it being moved off to some subpage of a wikipedia-namespace article on the history of wikipedia though. --fvw* 21:33, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • I am the author of the supposedly-historic oldest surviving edit, but I have no emotional attachment to it and don't mind whether it is kept or deleted. It was indeed a CamelCase hack for U. Someone had already set up some categories (taken from Nupedia I think), one of which was 'Countries' and included unlinked entries for the letters A-Z. Someone had created a stub for United_States, so I added it to the index. --Roger Browne
Which proves that the edit wasn't THE first, but just the earliest one that still survives. BillyH 22:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Strong keep Although its not the oldest edit ever, the oldest fossil ever isn't either, but it's still valuable! Assistant N (talk) 18:43, 8 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]


See also Talk:AaA.

what this article should be?

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I, personally, do think it's notable as the first article, and reckon this article should be as here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=UuU&diff=prev&oldid=43728460

Obviously its a misspelling of Uuu as well, so it needs a little line at the top saying "you may be searching for Roentgenium" (as in above revision)

It IS NOT a redirect to U, i think. who, that is searching for U, could possibly accidentally type in UuU? not gonna happen.

I think this should either be above said revision or a redirect to Roentgenium.-- Alfakim --  talk  14:47, 17 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

oldest edit?

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Wait, is this old nostaiga version still being used? Or is it an archive that can't be edited? Thanks. AstroHurricane001(Talk+Contribs+Ubx) 18:17, 3 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It is an archive that can't be edited.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 18:54, 8 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

US stub

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I went to the US article to see when the earliest edit was--just for kicks. Oddly enough, if you go to the earliest edit on the United States article via the history (5 September 2001), the page doesn't recognize that there isn't anything earlier--even though there's no database to choose from.

That is, the options at the top of the page still exist:

(diff) ← Older revision | Current revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

even though it should just provide "Newer edit →" at the top

clicking older revision takes you to an archived version of the page, as edited by Montrealais at 09:32, 17 September 2002. Clicking diff takes you to a diff of those two pages.

I don't know if this is a random bug or what happens when there was prior data loss but either way, it's really odd. You can actually circle through about a year's worth of edits by continuining to click "older revision". Miss Mondegreen | Talk   18:50, 18 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nothing to add except that I agree. Kind of eerie. It's like something out of one of those Star Trek time-loop episodes. I hope a developer comes across this and explains it to us one day. --Allen 01:31, 15 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I also agree... And I think Allen summed it up quite well, by identifying it as "something out of one of those Star Trek time-loop episodes"; I got that same feeling when I looked at the history of USA and identified the bug. Also, maybe this was already said, but... The older edit by Montrealais at 09:32, 17 September 2002 is done in the 2002 whilst the newer edit, the one after that, is auctually done in the 2001... Something impossible! It seems as the article goes back through time! All is very wierd... But, it all most probably consists of a bug or some mess in the history, where some edits got mixed up... ♠Tom@sBat 22:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This is a known problem. A lot of the 2001 edit histories were lost in a software upgrade. Rmhermen 21:42, 14 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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why does the wikitext show a bracketed link to United States? There's no way this is really the first edit ever made, though it may be the earliest still preserved. —Random832 14:40, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Or perhaps the date on the revision is wrong? There are some bizarre problems with the old histories ... like a huge number of edits being dated to the 25th February, 2002 in a specific minute. Graham87 15:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
And Wikipedia:CamelCase shows that the idea of bracketed links hadn't been thought of until the 27th of January. So either the date of the edit is wrong, the brackets were automatically added by some unknown software, or bracketed links were already in previous wiki software and Roger got the idea from there. Graham87 15:52, 18 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
When I originally edited the UuU page to add the link to UnitedStates, I'm absolutely certain that I used camel case. Bracketed links were not available way back then. At some later time there must have been an automated edit which modified the history database - perhaps around the time when unbracketed CamelCase words stopped being automatically linked. Eiffel (talk) 09:36, 17 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The first version of UuU (which is not currently in the revision history) was actually: 

* UnitedKingdom
* UnitedStates
* Uruguay

It was the 33rd edit to Wikipedia and also created by Eiffel. The version with UnitedStates linked was the 27,283rd edit. Kaldari (talk) 01:25, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Kaldari, do you mean that there was an even earlier revision of UuU which didn't survive the database? According to the log put up by Tim Starling (see here), the first revision of UuU contains "United States" bracketed. It was, as you point out, the 33rd edit to Wikipedia. If what you say is true, then that's odd. Also, what do you mean with "The version with UnitedStates linked was the 27,283rd edit."? Please clarify. Heymid (contribs) 20:11, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, Tim Starling's log contains "UnitedStates" in CamelCase. Some sort of software went through the Wikipedia database (perhaps when it was in UseModWiki) and must have changed all instances of United States to United States in all edits. Graham87 23:19, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see. Actually, both the original version ("UnitedStates" without brackets) and the software-modified version ("United States" with brackets) are displayed in the logs, which confused me at first. Thanks for clearing it up, Graham! :) It would be awesome if it was possible to import all edits from the logs, but it may not be possible to retrieve the edit summaries for example. Heymid (contribs) 08:14, 9 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The source of the double brackets should be explained more clearly in the article. Note, that the also appear in the first versions of the article WikiPedia. -- Petri Krohn (talk) 03:06, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
They're not the first versions - they're the earliest surviving versions. As explained at WP:OLDEST, a lot of early revisions were deleted, and although some have been recovered, by no means all of them have. --Redrose64 (talk) 07:43, 15 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

UuU -> Wikipedia:UuU

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UuU was moved to Wikipedia:UuU for some reason at some point. I have edited the page to reflect this, and it was reverted. The actual oldest edit is at Wikipedia:UuU, not at UuU. Please do not revert again without discussion. ▫ JohnnyMrNinja 16:07, 16 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is clarified in the lead: "This page, Wikipedia:UuU (originally in the main namespace as UuU)[...]". Heymid (contribs) 19:57, 8 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Really the oldest edit?

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This page states that because this edit is on the English Wikipedia, it is thus the oldest edit still preserved on *any* Wikipedia, or *any* Wikimedia project. However, the Nostalgia Wikipedia has many edits which were not in the English Wikipedia's database (though many of them have since been imported); is it possible that there may be one or more older edits somewhere on Nost.WP? Also, when the database check was performed to find the oldest edit on Wikipedia, were deleted revisions also checked? It's my understanding that some deleted revisions survived the clearing of the deleted revisions database table; am I remembering wrongly? 「ダイノガイ千？！」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 06:02, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I've previously checked the Nostalgia Wikipedia database and the first edit there is the UuU page, just like it is in the English Wikipedia. I don't know if the original query checked for deleted revisions, but I am not aware of any deleted revisions that survived after the deletion archive was cleared. Graham87 14:19, 3 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Old Wikipedia backup discovered

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Tim Starling discovery: http://noc.wikimedia.org/~tstarling/wikipedia-logs-2001-08-17.7z emijrp (talk) 23:06, 14 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is fantastic news! UuU appears to be the 33rd-oldest edit in that database backup. Graham87 01:33, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, see above. Graham87 01:36, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

New list of the first pages

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On 15/12/10 04:17, emijrp wrote:
> Hi;
>
> Thanks Tim. Congratulations.
>
> Is Wikipedia:UuU[1] now out-of-date?

Yes, the earliest surviving edit is now "This is the new WikiPedia!",
made to HomePage by office.bomis.com, presumably Jimmy. Larry signed a
comment a short time later from a different IP address, so it wasn't
him. Articles were created in the following order:

* HomePage
* WikiPedia
* PhilosophyAndLogic
* UnitedStates
* PopularMusic
* SportS
* MathematicsAndStatistics
* CountriesOfTheWorld
* AaA
* AfghanistaN
* UuU
* TechnologY
* ComputinG
* ComputerSoftware
* TransporT
* NamingConventions

-- Tim Starling

It looks like Afghanistan was first non-stub article on Wikipedia. Kaldari (talk) 01:20, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a reason why several of the articles had the last letter capitalized? - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ τ ¢ 02:23, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Because links in Wikipedia were made by using CamelCase, where words are CapitalisedLikeThis. When article titles would naturally consist of just one word (like "SportS")", at least one of the letters besides the initial one needed to be capitalised, and usually the last letter was chosen. Graham87 02:34, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The first article created other than the HomePage (now Main Page), then, was Wikipedia. That ought to have been speedy-deleted as obviously non-notable; clearly, a project in operation for less than a day containing no articles other than the home page was not deserving of an article about it. *Dan T.* (talk) 04:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

LOL. Graham87 04:49, 15 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, no: you can't speedy something without a valid reason selected from those in WP:CSD, which hadn't been created... --Redrose64 (talk) 00:47, 17 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Let's see what Jimbo has to say about it. --67.180.161.183(talk)00:08, 18 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Are timestamps associated with the edits? I've downloaded and looked at the backups, but can't really make sense of their format (so, alternately, if someone could just describe how exactly they're formatted...). 「ダイノガイ千？！」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 07:08, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Aah, never mind, they're Unix timestamps. Though an elucidation of the full format of the backup files would still be nice. ;) 「ダイノガイ千？！」? · Talk⇒Dinoguy1000 07:31, 21 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Historical

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As older edits have been found, this page seems redundant now and I think it would be best to mark it as historical (or merge it somewhere). --Eleassar my talk 14:52, 22 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It's still significant since it contains the oldest edit that survived in the current Wikipedia database. I would oppose the historical tag until it becomes possible to import the newly-discovered edits into Wikipedia. Graham87 02:27, 23 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

History

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Should we revert this to the first revision? Yes or No? discuss.--Yours Truly (talk) 19:59, 31 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not. Out of context, the first revision is complete nonsense. Graham87 02:29, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Then where is the first revision going to be displayed? Just itself. Yours Truly (talk) 10:03, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
See image upper right; or the second bullet at Wikipedia:UuU#See also. Alternatively, see here. --Redrose64 (talk) 13:08, 1 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]
an Real English Wikipedia non revision articleYours Truly (talk) 00:33, 2 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Age

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lol when the first edit was made Bill Clinton was still president. (I Dan tha Man I (talk) 13:48, 17 August 2015 (UTC))[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 17 July 2019

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  • UnitedKingdom
 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 and provide a reliable source if appropriate. Highway 89 (talk) 21:06, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Highway 89 He's trying to revert to the original edit from way back on January 16, 2001, which will not do as its significance doesn't make sense without context and is thus not encyclopedic. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:26, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Yep, they're trying to do this, which is something that was done by a surprisingly large number of IPs before the indef semi prot was imposed on 29 June 2014. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:19, 17 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Oldest surviving edit since late May/early June 2001

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Looking through Starling's rclog it appears that this has been Wikipedia's oldest surviving edit since probably late May or early June 2001.

Looking through UseMod's documentation site and related resources (Meatball, etc.) it is not clear when exactly old revisions are deleted other than a general idea that history is unreliable. For these intents and purposes I assumed that an edit would be deleted about two weeks after the second edit after it was posted. For example, given page X with edits 1, 2, and 3, edit 1 would be deleted ~2 weeks after edit 3 was posted.

With this assumption I evaluated the previous edits in the log for prospective "loss" dates, as follows:

  • HomePage: First edit gone by end of January (~January 29, to be "exact"), last pre-UuU edit gone by end of January (~January 31)
  • WikiPedia: First edit gone by end of January (~January 30), last pre-UuU edit gone by end of January (~January 31)
  • PhilosophyAndLogic: First edit gone by end of January/early February (~February 1), last pre-UuU edit gone by early March (~March 8)
  • UnitedStates: First edit gone by end of January (~January 31), last pre-UuU edit gone by early February (~February 7)
  • PopularMusic: First edit gone by end of January (~January 31), last pre-UuU edit gone by end of January/early February (~February 1)
  • SportS: First edit gone by end of January (~January 31), last pre-UuU edit gone by end of January (~January 31)
  • MathematicsAndStatistics: First (and only pre-UuU) edit gone by end of January (~January 31)
  • CountriesOfTheWorld: First edit gone by end of January (~January 30), last pre-UuU edit gone by end of January/early February (~February 2)
  • AaA: First edit gone by end of January (~January 30), last pre-UuU edit gone by late-May/early-June (~June 3, see below)
  • AfghanistaN: First edit gone by early February (~February 7), last pre-UuU edit gone by April (~April 13)

(The creation dates of all these pages may be found at WP:First 100 pages.)

By this analysis all of the January 15 edits (of which there were 8, all by office.bomis.com) were gone by early March, and excluding PhilosophyAndLogic the end of January.

I admittedly did make a big assumption that the history preservation was specific to each page, and that a site-wide algorithm to the effect of "purge all revisions older than X days old that are not current or immediately-previous" was not in effect. That might affect a lot of what I previously said, but I don't feel that it affects the main point that this has been the earliest-preserved edit since late May or early June.

That's because the page which had the last pre-UuU edit was the similar page AaA, which had an edit about an hour previous listing countries starting with "A". This was much less edited than the other ten, and received only two pre-Phase II edits post-UuU: [2] on February 6 by Jimbo and [3] on May 20 by LA2 (erroneously attributed to Conversion script in February 2002 as described here). That latter edit was on May 20, and pushed the last pre-UuU edit out of the database (and into the Starling archvies) presumably shortly thereafter. Were it not for Jimbo discouraging people from AaA, it would have had an identical history to UuU and thus claimed the spot of earliest survivor.

TL;DR: Were it not for this edit, we'd probably be having Wikipedia:AaA.

– John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 06:37, 24 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

The Feb 2001 dump included the previous revision of "AaA" on January 16 before JimboWales wiped it:
AfghanistaN
AlbaniA
AlgeriA
AmericanSamoa
AndorrA
AngolA
AnguillA
AntarcticA
AntiguaAndBarbuda
ArcticOcean
ArgentinA
ArmeniA
ArubA
AshmoreAndCartierIslands
AtlanticOcean
AustraliA
AustriA
AzerbaijaN

 🐱💬 06:35, 26 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 14 November 2021

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  • UnitedKingdom
 Not done: this is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:UuU. Please make your request at the talk page for the article concerned. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 02:39, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • More specifically, the edit is not done because Wikipedia:UuU is a page about the history of Wikipedia, and represents one of the oldest surviving edits ever made to the project. The purpose of the page is to reflect the content of that early edit, and it is not to reflect the edit as it would exist using 2021 standards. I hope this additional explanation is more helpful to you. Risker (talk) 03:19, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • This isn't even the earliest surviving edit anymore, I don't know how people get here. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:26, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Why is it titled that?

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Why isn't it called "List of countries that start with" U""? Seems like an odd choice. Ziggyzaggy300 (talk) 00:58, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is explained in the background section. Graham87 02:04, 28 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
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