Tim 'avatar' Bartel wrote:
Perhaps I have missed something, but...
action=purge is for purging the server-side (mediawiki) cache and has nothing to do with the client-side (browser cache / ctrl-reload)
...or am I totally confused?
action=purge updates the page_touched timestamp which both invalidates the server-side cache and suppresses "301 Not Modified" responses, thereby invalidating client-side caches. Editing the page will do this also, that's why it's normally not necessary to do it manually. I suspect the original poster is using a MediaWiki extension which modifies the output without requiring an edit, and without declaring pages to be uncacheable.
-- Tim Starling