2009/11/10 Jeff Kubina <jeff.kubina(a)gmail.com>om>:
I am working with some
enwiki-{YYYYMMDD}-stub-meta-history.xml dumps and
wanted to get clarification on how certain fields of the articles can
change:
1. What action will make an article get a new pageId? Is it
only move/rename, a redirect, or a deletion and recreation, or are there
other ways this could happen? Can any of these changes be detected from the
stub-meta-history.xml files?
When a page is moved, it'll change its name but keep its pageid. A
redirect will be created at the old name with a new pageid.
2. Is it possible for just one particular revision of
an article to be
deleted, maybe due to a copyright violation? If so, is just the content of
the revision deleted or would this include all the data associated with it,
so that the revision would not even appear in the stub-meta-history.xml
file?
Yes. In this case, any trace of the revision ever having existed is
gone from the dumps, AFAIK.
3. Are pageIds recycled? If a page is deleted, could
its id number be used
for a completely new page in the future?
No, pageids are never recycled.
Roan Kattouw (Catrope)