UESPWiki:Archive/CP Recovering Lost Information

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Recovering Lost Information

As reported by Daveh, about 30 hours' worth of edits made to UESPWiki have been lost from the database. Directly recovering that lost data is unlikely. However, there are some possible indirect ways to recover some of the information -- which may be particularly important in the case of any substantial modifications:

• Any images or files that were uploaded are still intact; the only problem is that the wiki no longer knows they exist. To recover any image/file, please provide me with the name of the file that was uploaded.
• I have the most recent HTML version of most wiki pages. Since it's HTML, a bit of editing will be necessary to recreate the corresponding wikitext. If you're aware of pages with major edits that can't otherwise be restored, let me know the pagename. I can then email you the HTML; I'll leave it to you to recreate the wikitext. I'll keep these HTML pages around for a few weeks at least. However, there may be a few missing pages in my HTML copies; the sooner such missing files are identified, the better the chances are that we can come up with another way to find a copy of the information.

--Nephele^Talk 23:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Any chance at recovering the tl/tlp/tlx templates I created last night, or should I re-import them? --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 01:37, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but the best I can probably do for templates is to pull up the documentation.... --Nephele^Talk 02:10, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm not too sure why (perhaps you were too eager to pull up the templates, and therefore their cached copies were erased before I thought to save the cache?) but I don't have the HTML for any of the Tl templates, nor for any of their /Doc pages. So this is a case where I seem to be completely useless :( --Nephele^Talk 04:13, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, well, I'll re-create them tomorrow night probably, then. Is the standard to use /Doc pages for the docs? As you've probably noticed, I don't do templates normally. In the ones I did last night, I just put noinclude tags around the docs, but I can transclude a /Doc page just as easily. --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 04:43, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, /Doc is used for the documentation on many of the templates. Usually either using <pre> tags or using boxes. It just depends on personal preference. –Elliot ^talk 04:45, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I'll do that when I re-create the templates then. At least this time, I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing. :) --Robin Hood (Talk • E-mail • Contribs) 04:50, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I've discovered another source of missing info, namely cached copies of the diff pages used to view the edits. From that source, I can extract 273 of the 380 lost edits. The edits that are missing are: many edits made by patrollers (yes, rpeh you got your wish: most of your redone edits were not wasted!); and, new pages that were created (although I probably have the HTML of the new pages, if I can just figure out that the page was created).

I'm therefore going through the edits and trying to restore many of them. One limitation is that I have no idea who made the original edit (other than my faulty memory and guesswork), so attributions are frequently missing. I'm only re-adding the net result of any edits made, not the individual edits. Also, I'm skipping edits that I don't believe to be worth the trouble (nonsense/vandalism of course; unhelpful talk page comments; edits made to Roleplaying, Mod Ideas, and comparable pages). My apologies to any editors whose edits are being skipped: you're free to re-add the content yourself, but the restoration process is time-consuming. --Nephele^Talk 06:23, 5 August 2009 (UTC)