While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I should note here that I have deleted the odious article [[Finding child pornography on the Internet]] even though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think it was obviously not going to survive, and deleting it as fast as possible seemed a good idea...
On Thu, 9 Oct 2003, Allan Crossman wrote:
While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I should note here that I have deleted the odious article [[Finding child pornography on the Internet]] even though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think it was obviously not going to survive, and deleting it as fast as possible seemed a good idea...
A deletion that I support, fwiw.
-Morven
Allan Crossman wrote:
While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I should note here that I have deleted the odious article [[Finding child pornography on the Internet]] even though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think it was obviously not going to survive, and deleting it as fast as possible seemed a good idea...
Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't see the content, I can't really say whether or not it deserved being deleted. All I can do is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to have been deleted, but I guess I'll never know for sure...
- Nohat
--- David Friedland david@nohat.net wrote:
Allan Crossman wrote:
While I doubt this is controversial, I suppose I
should note here that I have
deleted the odious article [[Finding child
pornography on the Internet]] even
though it wasn't on VfD for 7 days, etc. I think
it was obviously not going to
survive, and deleting it as fast as possible
seemed a good idea...
Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't see the content, I can't really say whether or not it deserved being deleted. All I can do is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to have been deleted, but I guess I'll never know for sure...
- Nohat
I can see delted content with the new deletion system; I wonder why you can't. All you do is click on the thing that says something like "See 3 edits before deletion", then you can click on any version and look at it (unless it's perminantly deleted). Maybe the deletion system is broken temporarily. LDan
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LittleDan wrote:
Nohat (David Friedland) wrote:
Well, seeing as it's now been deleted and I can't see the content, I can't really say whether or not it deserved being deleted. All I can do is guess based on title. Sounds like it ought to have been deleted, but I guess I'll never know for sure...
I can see delted content with the new deletion system; I wonder why you can't. All you do is click on the thing that says something like "See 3 edits before deletion", then you can click on any version and look at it (unless it's perminantly deleted). Maybe the deletion system is broken temporarily.
Or maybe Nohat, like the vast majority of en.Wikipedians, is not an administrator on [[en:]] and can't do any of this.
To be sure, Nohat's comment does seem a bit facetious, since he can ask to see the page on [[Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion]]. And I believe that it was in fact undeleted so that people could see it.
Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here. It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were) to report the deletion to the mailing list, since they were unsure as to whether it would be regarded (at least by those most concerned with fairness in deletions) as justified by en.Wikipedia policy. But, having brought it to the list's attention, some list readers -- such as Nohat -- now find themselves unable to look at the situation being discussed.
The solution? I don't see a clear one, outside of software changes. (And which software changes is not entirely obvious either!) The deleter might have mentioned it on the list /before/ deleting, but then why not just put it on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]? Yet the whole point was to test the policy on deletion to see if all agreed that there was good reason that it ought to be deleted immediately /without/ being listed.
The bottleneck, it seems to me, is that there are dedicated Wikipedians, such as Nohat, that read the mailing lists and participate in policy but nevertheless are not administrators (for any of various reasons). And we decided some time ago not to force users to become admins. ^_^
-- Toby
Toby Bartels wrote:
Or maybe Nohat, like the vast majority of en.Wikipedians, is not an administrator on [[en:]] and can't do any of this.
To be sure, Nohat's comment does seem a bit facetious, since he can ask to see the page on [[Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion]]. And I believe that it was in fact undeleted so that people could see it.
Yes, I admit I was being (ever-so-slightly) facetious when I wrote the message. I was mildly annoyed when I heard that the page had been deleted because the insatiably curious part of me me wanted to see what was so horrible as to warrant summary deletion. And being level-headed and straightforward when posting to the list requires so much effort and extra words that I though I would let my barbed wit show through. I hope I didn't offend anyone, I was just making my point, tersely.
Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here. It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were) to report the deletion to the mailing list, since they were unsure as to whether it would be regarded (at least by those most concerned with fairness in deletions) as justified by en.Wikipedia policy. But, having brought it to the list's attention, some list readers -- such as Nohat -- now find themselves unable to look at the situation being discussed.
The solution? I don't see a clear one, outside of software changes. (And which software changes is not entirely obvious either!) The deleter might have mentioned it on the list /before/ deleting, but then why not just put it on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]? Yet the whole point was to test the policy on deletion to see if all agreed that there was good reason that it ought to be deleted immediately /without/ being listed.
The bottleneck, it seems to me, is that there are dedicated Wikipedians, such as Nohat, that read the mailing lists and participate in policy but nevertheless are not administrators (for any of various reasons). And we decided some time ago not to force users to become admins. ^_^
I think the best solution would be to allow regular logged-in users to view deleted pages. Of course only admins should be able to delete and undelete, but I don't really see any good reason why the contents of deleted pages should be not viewable by regular users. Of course, deleted pages should stay invisible to anons, so e.g. spiders don't index deleted stuff.
Cheers!
- Nohat (David Friedland)
P.S. If there is a very good reason regular users aren't allowed to view deleted pages, I'd like to know what it is. There may be one; I just can't think of any.
P.P.S. Feel free to nominate me for adminship if you believe my contributions to Wikipedia and the lists warrant it. It's not in my character to be so temerarious as to nominate myself. :-)
I used the verb "warrant" twice in this message. For stylistic purposes, imagine that one of those times I actually used "merit".
David Friedland wrote:
Toby Bartels wrote:
Or maybe Nohat, like the vast majority of en.Wikipedians, is not an administrator on [[en:]] and can't do any of this.
To be sure, Nohat's comment does seem a bit facetious, since he can ask to see the page on [[Wikipedia:Votes for undeletion]]. And I believe that it was in fact undeleted so that people could see it.
Yes, I admit I was being (ever-so-slightly) facetious when I wrote the message. I was mildly annoyed when I heard that the page had been deleted because the insatiably curious part of me me wanted to see what was so horrible as to warrant summary deletion. And being level-headed and straightforward when posting to the list requires so much effort and extra words that I though I would let my barbed wit show through. I hope I didn't offend anyone, I was just making my point, tersely.
Nevertheless, I think that there's an important point here. It was good of the deleter (I forget now who they were) to report the deletion to the mailing list, since they were unsure as to whether it would be regarded (at least by those most concerned with fairness in deletions) as justified by en.Wikipedia policy. But, having brought it to the list's attention, some list readers -- such as Nohat -- now find themselves unable to look at the situation being discussed.
The solution? I don't see a clear one, outside of software changes. (And which software changes is not entirely obvious either!) The deleter might have mentioned it on the list /before/ deleting, but then why not just put it on [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion]]? Yet the whole point was to test the policy on deletion to see if all agreed that there was good reason that it ought to be deleted immediately /without/ being listed.
The bottleneck, it seems to me, is that there are dedicated Wikipedians, such as Nohat, that read the mailing lists and participate in policy but nevertheless are not administrators (for any of various reasons). And we decided some time ago not to force users to become admins. ^_^
I think the best solution would be to allow regular logged-in users to view deleted pages. Of course only admins should be able to delete and undelete, but I don't really see any good reason why the contents of deleted pages should be not viewable by regular users. Of course, deleted pages should stay invisible to anons, so e.g. spiders don't index deleted stuff.
Cheers!
- Nohat (David Friedland)
P.S. If there is a very good reason regular users aren't allowed to view deleted pages, I'd like to know what it is. There may be one; I just can't think of any.
P.P.S. Feel free to nominate me for adminship if you believe my contributions to Wikipedia and the lists warrant it. It's not in my character to be so temerarious as to nominate myself. :-)
P.S. If there is a very good reason regular users aren't allowed to view deleted pages, I'd like to know what it is. There may be one; I just can't think of any.
Two primary reasons: Copyvios and people using it as advertising or trolling or anything else where they just want people to see it. Some would say it weakens deletion, means there's less point to doing so; others would say that it makes deletion seem less dire, because it'll still be visisble until it's cleaned out... leading to increased deletion with the theory 'if they think it's important, they'll undelete it.', etc. This is the gist of what I recall of previous debates about this issue... maybe someone else can explain it clearer.
-- Jake