-----Original Message-----
From: wikitech-l-bounces(a)lists.wikimedia.org
[mailto:wikitech-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of
wiki(a)marcusbuck.org
Sent: 06 February 2007 15:43
To: Wikimedia developers
Subject: Re: [Wikitech-l] conversion to Phase III (no,you
didn't accidentally enter the 2003 archives)
Brion Vibber wrote:
> wiki(a)marcusbuck.org wrote:
>> I have investigated the history of the Low Saxon (nds)
Wikipedia a bit.
It
was
>> updated to Phase III software in January 2004.
Apparently lots of edits
got
>> lost in this process (even the main page vanished).
>
> It should not have caused any lost edits at all, and as
far as I know
there
weren't any. You'll have to be more specific?
Note also that the UseModWiki software itself deleted older
edits, so
you'll not see many older edits on some older
pages because
the old wiki
software destroyed them long before the
conversion.
- -- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com / brion @
wikimedia.org)
Okay, when history wasn't preserved at the old wiki, then
it's no wonder I am
unable to find so many old versions. So this means that all
pages only have one
version before conversion, no matter how often they were
edited in this time,
and this one version shows the _last_ edit and there is no
hint whether they
were created already earlier, right?
Well, I thought this was an effect of conversion,
particularly because of old
edit comments like the one at
<http://nds.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Spraken_vun_de_Wel
t&diff=prev&oldid=418>:
"(mol een Anfang, de ole Artikel weer doodblewen bi den Transfer)". It
translates to: "just a start, the old article vanished due
conversion".
The oldest version of our Main Page is from January 2 2004. I
thought it was
re-created shortly after conversion, but now I guess the
January 2 version is
the last edit on the old wiki and conversion took place only
after January 2.
Two questions that remain: Are there any dumps left from
pre-conversion times?
And: How did a 'no history' wiki work? You had to recreate a
article after a
vandal page-blank? What about GNU-FDL? And this up until 2004
for Low Saxon
wiki?
And I need a third question too: Looking at
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia%27s_oldest_a
rticles> you can
see, that the articles "WolfgangMozart" and "ThomasEdison" do
have more than
one version before conversion to Phase II. So, did UseModWiki
only delete some
of the older edits? When so, which were the criteria?