Help:Page History

All of the editable pages on Starfield Wiki have an associated page history, which consists of the old versions of the wikitext, as well as a record of the date and time (in UTC) of every edit, the username or IP address of the user who made it, and their edit summary. This may also be referred to as the revision history or edit history. To access the page history, click the "history" tab at the top of the page.

Using a history page
On a history page:
 * All past changes to the page in question are listed in reverse-chronological order.
 * To view a specific version, click a date.
 * To compare an old version with the current version, click cur.
 * To compare a version with its predecessor, click prev.
 * To compare two specific versions, tick the left-column radio button of the older version and the right-column radio button of the newer version, and then click the "Compare selected versions" button.
 * Minor edits are denoted as m (bot edits–b–are not distinguishable within the page history).

It is possible to restore an old version of a page by following the link to that version, clicking "edit" and then saving. This should be done with caution, as it means that all changes made to the page since the time of that version will be lost.

Moved and deleted pages
When a page is moved (renamed), the entire edit history of the article, before and after the move, is shown. The old title becomes a redirect and loses its edit history.

If instead of a move, the entire content was cut and pasted into a new substitute article, the page history gets spread across two articles. The histories can be merged in this case.

When two pages are merged, typically one becomes a redirect. In this case the revision history of the redirect is kept.

When a page is deleted, its revision history remains in the database and can be retrieved by an administrator, who can also undelete the page (see StarfieldWiki:Deletion Policy).

Archiving
Archiving talk page text in separate pages is superior to using the page history as sole archive:
 * What links here works for archive pages, but not for old revisions.
 * Texts in archive pages can be found by search engines. For content which is only in a revision history the possibilities are limited.
 * Archive pages can be organized and titled afterwards in a suitable way, while e.g. edit summaries cannot be supplied afterward. However, an index of old versions of a page, with links to them, could be prepared.