https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=55160
--- Comment #6 from Kunal Mehta (Legoktm) legoktm.wikipedia@gmail.com --- first of all _getVersionHistory() is an internal method and you shouldn't use it directly. Use getVersionHistory() instead. The the condition is quite right. Try the following statements:
import pywikibot as pwb p = pwb.Page('de', 'user talk:xqt') h = p.getVersionHistory(getAll=True) len(h)
which gives 4250 entries (yet).
Changing the condition will return 500 entries only.