[Wikipedia-l] Our options; your opinion requested

Tue Nov 12 06:17:07 UTC 2002

Matthew Woodcraft wrote in part:

>[1] Deleting pages is a separate issue. If history-preserving delete
>isn't working yet, I think we should do without the ability to delete
>pages until such a time as it is -- it's just too divisive. We can live
>with just blanking them.

It's not working as well as it could, in my opinion.
In particular, you can't view a deleted page without restoring it
(after which you have to delete it again, if you only wanted a look).
We also need a way to restore a deleted page that's been recreated,
by melding the histories together (has anybody needed this yet?).
But it works.

>If/when we have history-preserving delete, then I see no good reason not
>to make it available to all users.

Deleting a page can be much more disruptive than blanking it.
I'd restrict it to logged in users, just like moving pages is,
to discourage casual use by newbies (including new vandals).
But we'll *definitely* want a non-reviving viewing option if this happens,
since there will be more deletions that will need review,
and we don't need to clutter the deletion log
with a bunch of redeletions of resurrected pages.

This still makes it available to all users,
of course, but it makes it harder to get to.
(They call this "Security by obscurity" over on MeatBall ^_^.)

-- Toby

[Wikipedia-l] Our options; *your* opinion requested

[Wikipedia-l] Our options; your opinion requested