[Mediawiki-l] how to delete my wiki page? mistakes orphans etc.

[Sy Ali]

On 12/26/05, Thomas David Burns <tburns at hawaii.edu> wrote:
> I'd like to get rid of some of the pages in my wiki. I've spent about an hour RTFMing around in the docs, can't seem to find the answer.  Or is the philosophy to never delete anything? Even if this is the case, seems like the user guide should have an entry "Deleting Wiki pages: Just don't."
> I guess I could use mysql to delete them directly from the db, but I bet it would be easy to make a ghastly mess.

<rant>

No there is no functionality to:
* actually permanently delete..
* merge revisions made by the same author (even revisions that happen
within seconds of oneanother)
* purge deletion history (all, or before a particular date)
* nuke edits by a particular user (some alpha code exists but isn't done)

So for editors like myself who have many thousands of minor edits
there are many thousands of revisions.  Until recently, mediawiki kept
a complete page for every edit.  This means that I have really
mindboggling bloat on my database, with no safe way to remove it. 
This makes backing up my system extraordinarily tedious.

I investigated a little bit, and apparently going into the database
would indeed be required to purge history.. but such things are not
for me.. I'd rather have a trusted tool to do that sort of stuff for
me.

</rant>


Apologies for the rant, this is another sore spot..