Mailing List Archive

Permanent deletion (tangent to the national portrait gallery thing)
Hi all,

As a tangent to the national portrait gallery thing, I though I'd raise
something which I've chatted about previously (possibly here, but certainly
with various community members) which seems unresolved.

My understanding of the status quo is that when a commons administrator
deletes an image, that image remains available to all other commons
administrators. In the context of the NPG's request, I thought it was
interesting to confirm that even if Derrick deleted all his uploaded images,
they do, in fact, remain available to him, and all other 'community' members
with the sysop. flag - I'm unsure as to the implications / consequences of
this in terms of the NPG action, who presumably would be pretty frustrated
if Derrick deleted all the images, and another, perhaps more pseudonymous,
administrator, were to restore them all (likely with the support of 'the
community' at this point).

I chatted with User:Lar about this a bit here;
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Lar#permanent_deletion

and gave the example which concerns me more there - which is illegal and
potentially illegal images of children on foundation projects. Commons
administrators will be able to see an image here;

http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Brip.jpg&action=edit&redlink=1

which I considered to be borderline at best, and maybe an illegal image. I
consider the fact that I can write 'Commons administrators will be able to
see an image here' to be the heart of the problem! I hope the foundation
might consider a software tweak of some sort to allow for permanent deletion
- along with this tweak I feel sure the foundation staff could propose a
sensible set of criteria which would have broad support.

cheers,

Peter,
PM.
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Re: Permanent deletion (tangent to the national portrait gallery thing) [ In reply to ]
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 5:45 PM, private musings<thepmaccount@gmail.com> wrote:
[snip]
> I
> consider the fact that I can write 'Commons administrators will be able to
> see an image here' to be the heart of the problem! I hope the foundation
> might consider a software tweak of some sort to allow for permanent deletion
[snip]

Permanent actions are antithetical to the notion of liberal access. We
can be reasonably liberal with our trust because there is so little
that can't be undone.

Images with significant legal issues are rare enough that they can be
easily handled as exceptions without changing the software at all.
The foundation is perfectly capable of fully deleting images and has
done so in the past.

I don't see that any change is required.

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Re: Permanent deletion (tangent to the national portrait gallery thing) [ In reply to ]
It's heartening to hear that the foundation has zapped images in the past -
presumably because they were potentially illegal?

I'm also heartened by the fact that this isn't actually a huge problem at
the moment, so can be managed on a case by case basis - is there a good way
of letting someone appropriate know about an image which is rather close to
the line? (the follow on from this, of course, is to ask whether or not
there's any established policy or practice in this area, and whether or not
it 'works' enough of the time?)

I'd be happier still if the image I linked to in my previous post was
permanently deleted, which by my judgment would be the best outcome.

cheers,

Peter,
PM.

On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 7:51 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 5:45 PM, private musings<thepmaccount@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> [snip]
> > I
> > consider the fact that I can write 'Commons administrators will be able
> to
> > see an image here' to be the heart of the problem! I hope the foundation
> > might consider a software tweak of some sort to allow for permanent
> deletion
> [snip]
>
> Permanent actions are antithetical to the notion of liberal access. We
> can be reasonably liberal with our trust because there is so little
> that can't be undone.
>
> Images with significant legal issues are rare enough that they can be
> easily handled as exceptions without changing the software at all.
> The foundation is perfectly capable of fully deleting images and has
> done so in the past.
>
> I don't see that any change is required.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
>
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Re: Permanent deletion (tangent to the national portrait gallery thing) [ In reply to ]
2009/7/11 private musings <thepmaccount@gmail.com>:
> It's heartening to hear that the foundation has zapped images in the past -
> presumably because they were potentially illegal?
>
> I'm also heartened by the fact that this isn't actually a huge problem at
> the moment, so can be managed on a case by case basis - is there a good way
> of letting someone appropriate know about an image which is rather close to
> the line? (the follow on from this, of course, is to ask whether or not
> there's any established policy or practice in this area, and whether or not
> it 'works' enough of the time?)
>
> I'd be happier still if the image I linked to in my previous post was
> permanently deleted, which by my judgment would be the best outcome.
>
> cheers,
>
> Peter,
> PM.

The image is probably legal in the context of the commons deleted
image database.

--
geni

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Re: Permanent deletion (tangent to the national portrait gallery thing) [ In reply to ]
private musings wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> As a tangent to the national portrait gallery thing, I though I'd raise
> something which I've chatted about previously (possibly here, but certainly
> with various community members) which seems unresolved.
>
> My understanding of the status quo is that when a commons administrator
> deletes an image, that image remains available to all other commons
> administrators. In the context of the NPG's request, I thought it was
> interesting to confirm that even if Derrick deleted all his uploaded images,
> they do, in fact, remain available to him, and all other 'community' members
> with the sysop. flag - I'm unsure as to the implications / consequences of
> this in terms of the NPG action, who presumably would be pretty frustrated
> if Derrick deleted all the images, and another, perhaps more pseudonymous,
> administrator, were to restore them all (likely with the support of 'the
> community' at this point).

Confirmed. Other commons administrators are able to see and restore
deleted images.

> I chatted with User:Lar about this a bit here;
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Lar#permanent_deletion
>
> and gave the example which concerns me more there - which is illegal and
> potentially illegal images of children on foundation projects. Commons
> administrators will be able to see an image here;
>
> http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Brip.jpg&action=edit&redlink=1
>
> which I considered to be borderline at best, and maybe an illegal image.

Viewing deleted images is really useful for administrator work. Being
able to review other admins action is much more important than those
"illegal images". I don't care about them. Were an adming account be
compromised image permadeleting would be much much worse than him
looking through deleted images to sell as porn to embarrass WMF.


> I consider the fact that I can write 'Commons administrators will be able to
> see an image here' to be the heart of the problem! I hope the foundation
> might consider a software tweak of some sort to allow for permanent deletion
> - along with this tweak I feel sure the foundation staff could propose a
> sensible set of criteria which would have broad support.

Images can be oversighted to hide them from the sight of administrators.


Images deleted before June 2006 were completely gone.
<http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Village_pump/Archive/32#ZOMG_IMAGE_UNDELETION_WORKS>

Except some software failures, all later deleted images exist in WMF
with varying access permissions.


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