On 12/10/07, Anthony <wikimail(a)inbox.org> wrote:
If oversight just deleted the text and the summary,
and left
the rest of the information, that'd also accomplish this.
Alternatively we could give the "oversighters" the ability to
retroactively edit the old revisions (and the corresponding edit
summaries) replacing strings of offensive text with "[redacted]", or
"[redacted by [USER]], or a long black streak, or whatever.[2]
This would leave the remainder of the edit history intact, ensuring
that nobody loses attribution[3] for their edits by failing to notice
that section 8 contained Paris Hilton's cell phone number at the time
of their (innocent) edits to section 3.
[1] FSVO "offensive",
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hiding_revisions#Use
[2] With a little extra thought, the devs could create a non-spoofable
placeholder syntax for any redacted text.
[3] I would prefer a definition of "attribution" which exceeds the
GFDL requirements, namely the ability (from here to eternity) to look
at every diff of every article and be able to see which text was
added, modified, or removed by which user, except in situations where
*that particular* text has been "hidden".
-C.W.