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Read this Signpost in full Single-page Unsubscribe EdwardsBot (talk) 09:51, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Histmerges
Hi Yunshui. I do histmerges all the time, typically in the context of SPI (which I see you've recently joined as a clerk trainee, by the way, thanks for the help). The easiest way to do this would be to merge all the sandboxes into one page before moving it to the article. Basically, delete a sandbox, move another sandbox over it, then delete the new one. Move, delete, repeat. Once you have all the sandboxes at one title, restore the revisions you want to keep (perhaps you'll only want to keep the final of sequential revisions from the same user, to keep down on the history clutter, or you want to restore all revisions - up to you). Now restored, you have a chunk of the article history that you want to move to a new page. Delete that page, move the metasandbox over it, and delete it again. Then once again, restore everything you want to keep. Perhaps you want to leave out the edits to the page that caused the whole problem in the first place, and keep only the original article, the sandbox edits, and some final version. Now that I look back on my explanation, it is complicated! Well, until the WMF deploys a revision-move extension to Wikipedia, this is what we're stuck with. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:11, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
That explanation actually sort of... makes sense, amazingly. Thank you so much. Let me check that I've understood you correctly, using an example:
Much of the content of Electromyoneurography is taken from User:Sammyt21/"electroneuromyography" outline, which was copied over in this edit.
To fix it, I would first delete Electromyoneurography (using G6, presumably), and then move User:Sammyt21/"electroneuromyography" outline to the title "Electromyoneurography"
Then I delete the page Electromyoneurography again.
Then I restore the page, and in doing so, have access to all of the revisions from both pages - I select the revisions to keep from this list and restore them.
And that's it? That looks remarkably easy; am I missing something here? Yunshui 雲水 10:19, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Yup, that's it. I didn't realize the three editors were working on a communal draft. That makes this quite easy. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:23, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
↑ That was the easy one... Still thank you very much for the explanation; you've managed to help me understand the process in a single paragraph, whilst reading WP:HISTMERGE just made my brain go all dribbly. Looking at your description, not only does the process now make sense (in that I understand how it works), but it's a lot simpler than I thought too. Thanks a million - I'll start sorting things out. Yunshui 雲水 10:28, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
I'm glad I could help. Good luck. Someguy1221 (talk) 10:32, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Right, before I go ahead and do any more, would you mind just checking the current state of Electromyoneurography? I've performed the procedure above (hopefully correctly) so fingers crossed it should all be sorted - it certainly looks to have worked, but I'd like a second opinion. Yunshui 雲水 10:38, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Oops, it looks like you made a bit of a mess of that one - those were parallel versions, which can't be history merged, because then you end up with diffs like this one which make it look like poor Noahgford deleted half the article while using a misleading edit summary... the thing to do in this situation would have been to leave the sandbox where it was and use the {{copied}} template on the talk page to make it clear what was copied from where. Basically, if there are parallel versions, you have to merge, rather than history merge. Merging does mean that the sandbox can't be deleted any more, but it can always be moved to a talk subpage or something if the user doesn't want it in their userspace. Hope this makes sense, and let me know if you have more questions. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ♪ talk ♪ 14:34, 22 March 2013 (UTC)
Dammit, I knew it seemed too straightforward... Okay, I screwed the pooch on this one; how best to fix it?
I'm keen to avoid using {{copied}} if I can - at some point, the course instructor will need to mark her student's work, and it's going to make her job substantially easier if all of the edits are on the same page. Looking at it, it doesn't seem that there's any alternative for parallel versions - surely someone must have come up with a fix for this by now?
Oh, and would you be kind enough to also check Aicardi–Goutières syndrome as well; I may well have royally cocked that up too. Facepalm3.svg Facepalm of shame. Yunshui 雲水 14:44, 22 M