That's correct, and on some projects, that would violate the terms of the licenses they used, e.g. Wikipedia's use of the GFDL means it needs to preserve full and accurate page histories in order to be able to list the contributors.
Rob Church
On 13/10/05, Sy Ali sy1234@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/12/05, Rick DeNatale rick.denatale@gmail.com wrote:
On 10/12/05, Rob Church robchur@gmail.com wrote:
Why would that be the case? Users are merely a row in a table in a database, as far as the software is concerned, and databases are designed to handle data...
However, it's a relational database, and what's important is maintaining the relationships between the various tables. The user_id (which is the key to the user table is used extensively in other tables. Removing users will destroy the integrity of the database.
An analogy would be that ram chips just hold data, and computers are designed to handle data, so you should be able to rip out arbitrary ram chips...
Aah, now I understand.. so really one would have to remove all sorts of entries in the history as well we removing associated users.. or would have to take all references to various users to be deleted and re-reference them to a placeholder user so that the various pages in history (incorrectly) point to _somebody_. _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list MediaWiki-l@Wikimedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l