Editing Incubator escapee wiki:History merging (section)

==When to request a histmerge==
[[File:Copy paste page move example.png|thumb|An example of an inappropriate cut/paste pagemove]]
A history merge is required for attribution purposes, as attribution is lost during a cut/paste page move where there are multiple editors at the old page. In the image shown, it appears as if the user Thegreatrebellion had created the entirety of the added text at {{noredirect|Syed Saddiq}}, when the reality is that there were contributions from over 200 editors at the previous page name of [[Syed Saddiq Syed Abdul Rahman]].

While this is not an exhaustive list, any pages meeting the below criteria may be eligible for a histmerge:
*There are several editors in the page history at the original location
*The editor who blanked and/or redirected the page used an edit summary such as "move to <new page name>"
*The new page was originally a redirect and was overwritten by the "new" article

===When ''not'' to request a histmerge===
New editors are often unaware of the ability to move pages (or are unable because of new-account restrictions), and will thus copy/paste a draft they have been working on into the article space. Similarly, a [[WP:NPR|New Page Reviewer]] may move a new article to the Draft space and the original editor will simply recreate it in the Article space. In both of these situations, if the original editor is the only one that has contributed content to the pages, a history merge is not necessary because there are no attribution issues (only one editor has written all of the content).

If trivial edits are made by other editors, such as maintenance tags or categorisation, and these edits are ''not'' transferred over by the primary content author, a history merge is not needed.