Any changes made by an ordinary user can be undone. This page provides general guidance about how.
Contents
Talk with the person who made the change
Undoing a change implies an action was completely wrong. That's fine in some cases, but talking it over often leads to a best-of-both solution.
First, check if the page has a "Discussion" sub-page. Look for a Discussion link next to edit in the top-right, or just go to <PageName>/Discussion. If there's a page there, the editor might well have left an explanation.
Next, view the page history by clicking on the Info link at the top-right of the page. The Comment column for the change might say "feel free to revert", "please discuss <here>", or otherwise provide guidance. If not, or if it gives a justification you disagree with, the Editor column should link to the user's homepage. Homepages usually have contact information for the user, or you can just edit their page and append a question.
If you can't contact the editor but think they might want to respond, undo the change then insert #pragma supplementation-page on at the very top of the page. When you save the change, a "Discussion" link should appear in the top-right.
If all else fails, you can contact the wiki team to talk it over.
Undo different types of change
Revert a normal edit
If you want to change some specific text you disagree with, just edit the page in the normal way. If possible, please add a clear and concise comment when you make the change. Or if you need more space, insert #pragma supplementation-page on at the very top of your page, save the change and click on the Discussion link, then put a longer explanation on the discussion page.
If you want to revert the whole page back to an earlier revision, go to the info page and click the view link for the revision you want. Then click the More Actions: button in the top-right and select Revert to this revision. Again, explain why in a comment or on the discussion page.
Undelete a page
When a page is "deleted", it is set to the "deleted" state but its history is still available. Compare ?WikiSandBox/PageThatHasBeenDeleted and ?WikiSandBox/PageThatNeverExisted - the former has the normal list of links (Edit, Info etc.) in the top-right, so you can examine the page history.
To undelete a page, go to its info page and click the view link for the revision before it was deleted. Then click the More Actions: button in the top-right and select Revert to this revision.
Rename a page
Anyone can rename a page, but undoing a rename is more difficult if a redirect was added, and even more difficult if either page was deleted.
To undo a rename a that didn't include a redirect, you just rename the page again. Click More Actions: at the top-right of the page, then click Rename Page.
If there is a redirect, or one of the pages has been deleted, you need to understand a bit about how MoinMoin works.
Instead of a traditional database, MoinMoin stores each page as a directory full of files. When a page is renamed, the underlying directory is renamed and metadata files are updated. When a page is deleted, the metadata files are updated but the directory isn't modified. So in order to rename one page to resemble another, you have to rename the target page first.
Here's the full procedure to rename one page (the "source page") when there's another page with the name you want (the "target page"):
if either page has been deleted, undelete that page
MoinMoin won't let you make the changes below on deleted pages
- rename the target page to something obvious
for example, PageName.old if you intend to delete it, or PageName.tmp if you intend to swap the page names over
- rename the source page
More Actions: > Rename Page
- optionally delete or rename the target page
- consider swapping the page names then turning the target page into a redirect
If you would like to try renaming some test pages first, look at ?WikiSandBox/RenamingTest1, ?WikiSandBox/RenamingTestRenamed2 etc. - rename these pages back and forth to learn the process.