WikiQueer:Viewing and restoring deleted pages


 * For uncontroversial cases, please use WikiQueer:Requests for undeletion. For other cases, see Deletion review

Only administrators, checkusers, and oversighters can view the content of deleted pages. This is considered necessary because deleted pages may contain copyright violations, personal information, libel, and so forth, and making such material publicly available could be problematic. Administrators can also restore deleted pages if necessary; oversighters and checkusers who are not administrators cannot do this.

Viewing a list of recent page deletions

 * Chronological: Special:Log/delete shows the 50 most recent deletions by default; it can be searched by username, by pagename, or by both at once.

Viewing a user's deleted edits
Administrators, checkusers, and oversighters can view a user's deleted edits at Special:DeletedContributions.

Viewing and restoring deleted pages
The procedure at WikiQueer:Undeletion policy should be followed before undeleting a page, unless the initial deletion is considered 'out-of-process', in which case immediate undeletion may occur. Undeletions associated with page moves/merges may occur immediately without the need to list the page on Deletion Review.

There are at least three ways for users with the appropriate permissions to access a deleted page and its page history (the list and the old versions themselves):
 * To directly access the deleted revisions of a page, type "Special:Undelete/ " in the search box, where " " is the name of the desired page.
 * Going to Special:Undelete without specifying a target brings up a search box, which can be used much like Special:Prefixindex.
 * If a page has been deleted, then administrators who click on the resulting red link get a link to "View or restore x deleted edits?" above the notice that the page does not exist. Oversighters and checkusers who are not administrators get a message that says "View x deleted edits?", since they cannot restore deleted edits. This does not apply if a new page with the same name has been created after the deletion; in this case, the link will appear on the page's history.
 * This produces:
 * If the page has recently been deleted: the deletion report (who deleted it, when and why). All deletions and restorations will also appear.
 * If the page has not been restored yet: the deleted page history.

To undelete all revisions, simply press the Restore button. To undelete selected revisions, select the checkbox that appears next to each revision that you want to restore, then press the Restore button. To undelete a swath of contiguous revisions, click the checkbox for the top-most revision you wish to undelete, then hold the Shift key when clicking the checkbox for the bottom-most revision; thus, all checkboxes between the two revisions will be selected. If a new page with the same name has been created since the deletion, the restored revisions will appear in the prior history, and the current revision of the live page will not be automatically replaced.

The resulting page history does not show the deletion and restoration themselves. If a new page with the same name had been created, this shows up as if the last deleted version was modified to the first version of the new page.

Special:Log/delete is a full record of when, why, and by whom each page was deleted. It also records undeletions and the number of restored revisions.

Undeleting images and other media
In the case of uploaded media, a similar procedure applies as that above. The Page history section shows the different versions of the text attached to the image, while the File history section contains the versions of the image itself.

You can restore particular versions of both histories by selecting them with the checkboxes; if no checkbox is selected, all versions will be restored.

Multiple deletions
If after a deletion a page with the same name is created and that is also deleted, then the revision histories are combined, and all deletions or restorations are shown on the undeletion page. It is still possible to select individual revisions to restore.

Deletion archive
When a page is deleted, it is moved to a deletion archive, which may be cleared at any time, although never has been on WikiQueer.