Wikipedia talk:Requests for history merge

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Best practice for reversing the direction of a merge?

I'm not sure where best to ask, but I've looked in a few places and the thread above about Étienne de Perier is the most relevant discussion I've found.

The article on the dragonfly genus Hypopetalia and it's only species, Hypopetalia pestilens, and were created on the same day in 2007. Hypopetalia was merged into Hypopetalia pestilens in 2011. Hypopetalia pestilens has 38 revisions, 26 of them after the merge; Hypopetalia has 15 revisions, 5 of them after the merge.

Per WP:MONOTYPICFAUNA, when a genus has a single species both genus and species should be covered in a single article with the genus name (typically) as the title.

What is the best practice to reverse the direction of the merge? A standard move would destroy the history of one of the pages, and round-robin would swap the histories in a confusing way. I'm thinking I should just do what is essentially a cut-and-paste move (with some modifications in phrasing) and history merge (or partial history merge) would just result in making it more confusing to understand the histories of each page. Should I cut-and-paste and add {{copied}} to the talk page? Is there a better solution? Plantdrew (talk) 02:17, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

No, I think a round-robin is called for here. Izno (talk) 03:06, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with a swap; as long as the move from Hypopetalia pestilens to Hypopetalia clearly states why the page is being moved, it will explain any complexities in the history. Primefac (talk) 08:00, 13 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Same timestamp splits now possible

As of the next MediaWiki version it will be possible to use Special:MergeHistory (but not selective undeletion) to split two revisions with the same timestamp. Posting here to let any other history mergers know. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 00:38, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Spiffy. Primefac (talk) 15:05, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Backlog

With Anthony Appleyard sadly gone, there seems to be a lack of admins checking Category:Candidates for history merging, with pages tagged since 1 September still unaddressed. Should the threshold be reduced for the backlog template on the category page? --Paul_012 (talk) 07:08, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It's 13 pages, not the worst I've seen. Been a little busy with work recently but I'll shuffle this back into my routine. Primefac (talk) 10:24, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think changing the backlog threshold would help. Unknowing admins stumbling into history merging can tend toward... hard to fix. Izno (talk) 16:36, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I left one for you Primefac. Izno (talk) 17:29, 13 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hah! Thanks. Primefac (talk) 11:54, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

History merges performed using the Mergehistory special page are now logged at both the source and destination, not just the source

The subject line basically says it all. this is due to this RFC and the patch submitted for T118132. Now I don't have to make edits like this one where history merges would otherwise be difficult to trace as, in this case, I history-merged Omaha, Nebraska with Omaha (disambiguation). Graham87 (talk) 10:20, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Try out new history merge page

I've written a new history merge page that can merge history with fewer restrictions, and in particular can move revisions out of or into the middle of pages without painstakingly moving all revisions before that one back and forth. Try it out at https://1d9e9641b5.catalyst.wmcloud.org (set up using wikitech:Catalyst). Pinging some people who may be interested: @Explicit, Graham87, Primefac, Izno, and Wbm1058: * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 15:52, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll try to remember that next time there's a merge, thanks for doing this. Primefac (talk) 20:18, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think @Sennecaster and @HouseBlaster do some history merging every now and then also. Izno (talk) 22:00, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And apparently @Robertsky sneaking in with a chunk in the past year. Izno (talk) 22:02, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Woohoo. The list of pending articles to histmerge should be updated as well. – robertsky (talk) 03:41, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If you mean updating WP:WikiProject History Merge, then that's unrelated to my changes (this doesn't make processing that report that much easier), and also the script to do so was run by a long-gone user and doesn't appear to have been open-source so it may be lost. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 03:54, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This is probably going live in a week or two: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/core/+/1174135/22#message-ebc78bb4a2408cdb6819c37dfa076ad0b60b29b7 * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 21:10, 16 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]