Viewing deleted pages - WikiEN-l

23 Oct 2004

...
  > "allow non-sysops to view deleted
pages". 
...
  You need to thin[k] about legal consequences if you
allow everyone to access
...
  "deleted" copyright violations or illegal
information. 
I presume only logged in users would be allowed to view these articles, not
everyone.  I don't see how the legal consequences of this are any different
from the legal consequences of allowing admins to access the articles, or
allowing everyone to access the copyright violations in the history.

Yes, there should be some type of real deletion, for articles or history
entries which are illegal for us to distribute, but this is a separate
issue.  It should be done regardless of whether access to deleted articles
is limited to admins, to all logged in users, or to admins and me.

...
  > allow certain IP addresses to access deleted
articles. 
...
  That's unfair to IP switchers, including but not
limited to people who access
...
  WP from many computer networks (home/work/etc), people
who change ISP and
 dynamic connections. 
It's already "unfair" for these IP switchers, though.  At least allowing
some people to access these article would make it less unfair.  I suppose
this could be implemented with a username and password in addition, but I'd
prefer to not have to log in, as this is just more overhead for my scripts.

...
  > [if] there's an objection to me personally
having access to deleted articles.

...
  Not allowing access to information to a specific
person just because that
 person's presence is perhaps undesired is undemocratic. 
If I were singled out, perhaps, but I was using myself as an example.  If
Wikipedia allowed me, personally, to access deleted articles (in addition to
admins), they certainly wouldn't be in any more legal trouble than if they
only allowed admins.

...
  I thought there was some due process that disallowed
sysops from deleting
 legitimate content via "speedy deletions". 
There is considerable disagreement over whether or not small stubs may be
speedily deleted under this process.  This is in addition to the fact that
there are a number of admins who regularly break the speedy deletion policy.

...
   I would say that downloading the dumps just to get
some vfd articles consumes
...
  too much bandwidth that other people would use for
reading and learning. 
Well that's not the only reason I get the dumps, but yes, it's not the most
efficient method.

...
  I think MediaWiki keeps all deleted articles in the
archive database table but
...
  it is readable only by sysops. Perhaps you could ask
for sysop privileges and
...
  use them only for reading the deleted articles 
I've actually already tried this.  My request was overwhelmingly
disapproved.