Jonathan Walther wrote:
What is the desired behavior? If someone creates an article that was previously deleted, should the articles previous history get restored?
Currently, the previous history is only restored if it is restored from the deleted pages archive via Special:Undelete. If a new page was since created with the title, the old revisions are simply integrated into the existing history (generally at the end -- but if the new page was renamed from an older title, it's possible that the histories could intermix when presented sorted by date).
Here's a diagram of what exists in what tables over the lifetime of such an event:
Page creation: rev A -> cur
Later edit: rev B -> cur rev A -> old
Deletion rev B -> archive (hidden) rev A -> archive (hidden)
New creation with same title: rev C -> cur rev B -- archive (hidden) rev A -- archive (hidden)
Later edit: rev D -> cur rev C -> old rev B -- archive (hidden) rev A -- archive (hidden)
Restoration of deleted revisions: rev D -- cur rev C -- old rev B -> old rev A -> old
Since deletions are usually done to suppress vandalism or unusuable text due to copyright infringement, there would be little use in automatically restoring such revisions.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)