Jimmy Wales wrote:
Matt Brown wrote:
My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page history so easily.
My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing vandalism from the page history. If there was an automated way to go through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the history, I would strongly support that we do so.
The only sensible counter-argument I know of in this area is a concern for future historians or contemporary researchers who would like to study the phenomenon of vandalism. For this, it seems more than enough to make such revisions available in some limited-access way. There's just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable article history.
My concern about these deletions is somewhat different. It is about being seen as selective about our history. Idiots say idiotic things, after which remains the fact that they said them. Being willing to delete the record when the complainer is sufficiently notable gives the wrong impression that we are willing to do their bidding. I wouldn't be surprised if we already had libelous material on less notable individuals; the target just doesn't know about it. If he did he might still not be in a position to act on it.
I do agree, however, that limited access is acceptable, and that in ordinary circumstances this material is of no value to the general public.
Ec