In some circumstances, administrators need to merge page histories in order to ensure that all edits to an article are reflected in a page's history.
For example, every non-minor article edit is credited to the archivist who contributed it in the page history. However, if two articles contain the same or similar information that consensus requires be combined into one article, the only way for contributors to both articles to have their edits recorded in the new page's history is to merge the pages' histories.
Another example would be a "cut and paste" move, where Archivist B moves Archivist A's addition from Article X to Article Z using cut-and-paste. The page history of Article Z will not reflect that Archivist A made any contributions.
Procedure[]
Warning: this procedure may sometimes 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 the correct source page. Do not do this if you're not sure what you're doing.
Suppose we wish to merge the edit history from Old title into New title:
- Copy the text of New title into Old title, merging the text appropriately if required. (This is to ensure the combined text will be on "top" after the articles are merged, as the move itself will be the most recent revision)
- Move Old title to New title, using the move tool. When it asks to delete the destination page, confirm.
- Restore the revision history of the New title article. This can be done by using the "view/restore" link in the deletion log.
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