[Foundation-l] Permanent deletion (tangent to the national portrait gallery thing)

[private musings]

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.