Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Admins and stewards/Bring Special:Undelete to feature parity with live page histories

Random proposal ►◄ Admins and stewards

Bring Special:Undelete to feature parity with live page histories

Problem: Special:Undelete/PAGENAME and the corresponding API are clunky and cumbersome to use because of their limited functionality. To make it easier for admins on any project to deal with deleted content and achieve equivalent functionality to live page histories, the following should be implemented:
- Paging for Special:Undelete, so that long lists of deleted revisions don't take ages to load. And again, except for deleted title search.
- Add deleted title search to the API.
- Add date cutoffs, size diffs. Add the sizediffs to the API as well.
- I want to be able to compare non-adjacent deleted edits on the same page.
- I want to compare deleted content to live revisions under the same title, or live/deleted revisions for a different title. This is especially useful to check whether a page has been substantially reposted. I could do this via Special:Diff or the API... but deleted revision links should use "rev_id" not "page/timestamp". Not being able to easily discover the revid is a damn nuisance.
- Likewise, the undelete API should take a revid parameter that is a list of the revision IDs to be undeleted.
- Deletion log entries should be interspersed with the deleted revisions so I can easily see when a page was recreated. Edit summaries are an unreliable indicator of this.
- API alldeletedrevisions should be vectorized over adruser like API usercontribs is vectorized over ucuser.
Proposer: MER-C (talk) 01:09, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Translations: none yet

Discussion[edit]

A tool [1]: Query deleted page history on zhwiki--Shizhao (talk) 02:37, 8 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
This would be so useful. TonyBallioni (talk) 23:29, 14 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Agreed, the current Undelete page is so frustrating to use. Premeditated Chaos (talk) 23:31, 14 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Yes, we definitely need this. I work a lot in this area, and the current limitations make it very time-consuming. This is one of the features that should have been available many years ago. DGG (talk) 01:15, 20 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
From the Community Tech team: This is a good proposal, as long as folks are aware that we'd probably take an iterative approach to this -- taking one piece at a time, and not necessarily doing all of the requested steps on this proposal. -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 17:25, 20 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
I think the deletion mechanism should be more similar to revdelete than current deletion, though it would need a non-trivial amount of software rewriting. --Vituzzu (talk) 14:41, 23 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Voting[edit]

Support as proposer. MER-C (talk) 01:41, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Jenks24 (talk) 06:51, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 12:46, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Sadads (talk) 13:33, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support — Arkanosis ^✉ 13:50, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Jianhui67^{talk★contribs} 14:07, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support yes please. Easily the thing that would have the most practical impact of any of these suggestions, even if it isn't the sexiest. TonyBallioni (talk) 17:19, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 17:50, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support – Ajraddatz (talk) 20:31, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Gripweed (talk) 21:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Thomas Obermair 4 (talk) 21:36, 28 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Carnildo (talk) 01:25, 29 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Shizhao (talk) 02:48, 29 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Shanmugamp7 ^(talk) 06:52, 29 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Patar knight^chat/_{contributions} 20:42, 29 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Seb26 (talk) 21:45, 29 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support MGChecker (talk) 22:03, 29 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support — putnik 01:26, 30 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support – DMacks (talk) 04:19, 30 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Nihlus 04:51, 30 November 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Premeditated Chaos (talk) 13:16, 1 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:13, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support ~Cybularny ^Speak? 12:08, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support —MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:25, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 15:45, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support I would also like to view a version (i.e. parsed content, not wikicode) without two page loads, with a separate link or by using live preview if the user has selected it in their settings. Tacsipacsi (talk) 17:17, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 21:07, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Very definitely, yes, this would be a great help. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 21:42, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support --Philippe (talk) 21:47, 2 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Yes, please Vanamonde93 (talk) 06:21, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Disruption that involves viewing deleted articles is a huge pain to investigate. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 07:37, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Long overdue! Waldir (talk) 10:14, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Mz7 (talk) 10:20, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Will be quite helpful to sysops:) Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 16:24, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support B20180 (talk) 19:55, 3 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 02:30, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support OlEnglish ^(Talk) 06:21, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Ronhjones (talk) 18:17, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Yeza (talk) 23:08, 4 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support -Bryanrutherford0 (talk) 17:31, 5 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Lofhi (talk) 17:56, 5 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support JAn Dudík (talk) 08:09, 7 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support OJJ (talk) 17:46, 7 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Ahm masum (talk) 21:11, 7 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support My first priority is being able to compare two different versions of a deleted page — NickK (talk) 20:34, 8 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Ruslik (talk) 13:00, 10 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support Perrak (talk) 20:45, 10 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]
Support — Luchesar • T/C 13:09, 11 December 2017 (UTC)Reply[reply]