Jimmy Wales wrote:
>Anthere wrote:
>>But I think it wrong regular users can not from time
>>to time check whether pages were not unproperly
>>deleted (not along community defined rules).
>I'm sympathetic, but we do need a way to delete some things
>*permanently* and *completely*. Examples would include copyright
>infringement, goatse.cx picture, etc.
But we *don't* delete these things permanently and completely!
Most of the time, they appear on pages that aren't deleted,
and then they're still visible in the edit histories.
There is little correlation between your examples
and the material that's inaccessible to nonadmins on deleted pages.
If you think that we need to more aggressively delete copyright infringements
(whereas we now rely on their simply not being archived by robots),
then I can accept that, especially since you're the one with the liability.
But this has nothing to do with deleted *pages*;
it requires a change to the software allowing us to delete *revisions*
from the edit history of a page that itself may very well survive.
I believe that we have only once permanently and completely
deleted material from the database since soft deletion began.
This was a special operation, performed by developers,
to remove a rash of goatse.cx pics from edit histories.
Even this example wasn't about deleted *pages*.
(And it wouldn't need to be repeated if it happened again,
since we no longer display external images.)
>Since almost anyone can be a sysop, and since we're trying to
>eliminate the "prestige" of being a sysop, there does exist a way for
>anyone who is really interested to gain access to the deleted
>material.
Relatively new people can't become admins.
They'll only be able to gain access after several months.
This is not a recipe for openness and accountability.
Generally speaking, I think that Wikipedia is excellent in these matters;
the inability of users to view deleted pages is glaring as an exception.
-- Toby
>Anthere wrote:
>>But I think it wrong regular users can not from time
>>to time check whether pages were not unproperly
>>deleted (not along community defined rules).
>I'm sympathetic, but we do need a way to delete some things
>*permanently* and *completely*. Examples would include copyright
>infringement, goatse.cx picture, etc.
But we *don't* delete these things permanently and completely!
Most of the time, they appear on pages that aren't deleted,
and then they're still visible in the edit histories.
There is little correlation between your examples
and the material that's inaccessible to nonadmins on deleted pages.
If you think that we need to more aggressively delete copyright infringements
(whereas we now rely on their simply not being archived by robots),
then I can accept that, especially since you're the one with the liability.
But this has nothing to do with deleted *pages*;
it requires a change to the software allowing us to delete *revisions*
from the edit history of a page that itself may very well survive.
I believe that we have only once permanently and completely
deleted material from the database since soft deletion began.
This was a special operation, performed by developers,
to remove a rash of goatse.cx pics from edit histories.
Even this example wasn't about deleted *pages*.
(And it wouldn't need to be repeated if it happened again,
since we no longer display external images.)
>Since almost anyone can be a sysop, and since we're trying to
>eliminate the "prestige" of being a sysop, there does exist a way for
>anyone who is really interested to gain access to the deleted
>material.
Relatively new people can't become admins.
They'll only be able to gain access after several months.
This is not a recipe for openness and accountability.
Generally speaking, I think that Wikipedia is excellent in these matters;
the inability of users to view deleted pages is glaring as an exception.
-- Toby