This follows some discussion in a recent thread Timwi started about adminship. Deletion policies -- specifically the visibility of and accountability for deletion of articles and images -- are extremely slanted towards admins, and towards hiding their actions. This is clearly not an intended effect; but it likely results from the fact the the people discussing and implementing admin interfaces are all logged in as administrators while testing them.
Even as an administrator, whe I go to a deleted page, or try to track down a deleted image, it is hard to identify who deleted a given page, and what reason was given -- the list of deleted revisions is not coordinated with the deletion log. For images it is worse:
I don't know of a way to see the file history for a deleted image, and not just for its page. [[Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion]] doesn't use subpages; has no effective archive; and its history is too busy to allow effective browsing back more than a few weeks. Recent comments from IFD: "(Thanks for notifying the creator; I forgot that.)"
Here's an image which was supposedly "in commons", and clearly marked PD by its uploader, but was orphaned. It doesn't seem to be in commons after all. And the uploader wasn't notified... although he hasn't edited in the past week, so probably wouldn't have seen the message in time to respond, anyway. It's a shame to see work erased in this fashion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Jane_austen.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Images_and_media_for_del...
I hope that we can a) fix image-deletion policy, so that we are NOT deleting useful content, and on a more fundamental level, b) make image deletion temporary*, not permanent, with a special "permanently delete" option that is used far more rarely.
--Sj
* It would be fine if there were a slow, off-wiki way to extract an old deleted image revision; say an on-wiki way for anyone to see a list of all revisions of a deleted image, and a separate fileserver where anyone? admins? could go to request a specific deleted revision. Then there could be a page for deleted-image requests...
SJ wrote:
Even as an administrator, whe I go to a deleted page, or try to track down a deleted image, it is hard to identify who deleted a given page, and what reason was given -- the list of deleted revisions is not coordinated with the deletion log.
I've asked this before and I can't remember what the answer was. Why don't we just show this right on the page? At least up to 48 hours after the deletion? "This page was deleted by <user> on <date> at <time> for the following reason..."
Remember that all this information is available in the deletion log, so "this places too much blame on the deletor" isn't an argument.
Timwi
Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
SJ wrote:
Even as an administrator, whe I go to a deleted page, or try to track down a deleted image, it is hard to identify who deleted a given page, and what reason was given -- the list of deleted revisions is not coordinated with the deletion log.
I've asked this before and I can't remember what the answer was. Why don't we just show this right on the page? At least up to 48 hours after the deletion? "This page was deleted by <user> on <date> at <time> for the following reason..."
We could add some text to [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] that links to the deletion log and WP:VFD. Could we also make it filter for the page name, or is that not available? If that is possible, then we could also link to the specific (possibly non-existent) VfD page.
Bovlb
On 7/15/05, Bovlb wiki@meninx.com wrote:
Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
SJ wrote:
Even as an administrator, whe I go to a deleted page, or try to track down a deleted image, it is hard to identify who deleted a given page, and what reason was given -- the list of deleted revisions is not coordinated with the deletion log.
I've asked this before and I can't remember what the answer was. Why don't we just show this right on the page? At least up to 48 hours after the deletion? "This page was deleted by <user> on <date> at <time> for the following reason..."
We could add some text to [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] that links to the deletion log and WP:VFD. Could we also make it filter for the page name, or is that not available? If that is possible, then we could also link to the specific (possibly non-existent) VfD page.
Bovlb
Yes, those variables are available... along with many, many more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Variables
SJ
SJ <2.718281828@...> writes:
On 7/15/05, Bovlb <wiki@...> wrote:
We could add some text to [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] that links to the deletion log and WP:VFD. Could we also make it filter for the page name, or is that not available? If that is possible, then we could also link to the specific (possibly non-existent) VfD page.
Yes, those variables are available... along with many, many more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:How_to_edit_a_page#Variables
Yes, I knew about those, but ... Aha! From looking at the source of [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]], I see that $1 is set to the "Go" string. I'll add my suggestion to the talk page.
Bovlb
Bovlb wrote:
We could add some text to [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] that links to the deletion log and WP:VFD.
But we can't, without changes to the software, display different text depending on whether there actually *was* a page that had been deleted recently. It's quite unprofessional to go, "This page *MAY* have been deleted... go check in the Deletion Log to see if that's the case!" Like, as if it was impossible to have the software check for you.
Timwi
On 7/28/05, Timwi timwi@gmx.net wrote:
Bovlb wrote:
We could add some text to [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] that links to the
deletion
log and WP:VFD.
But we can't, without changes to the software, display different text depending on whether there actually *was* a page that had been deleted recently. It's quite unprofessional to go, "This page *MAY* have been deleted... go check in the Deletion Log to see if that's the case!" Like, as if it was impossible to have the software check for you.
Timwi
Even as a sysop you need to go to the history link it seems.
Pakaran
Timwi <timwi@...> writes:
Bovlb wrote:
We could add some text to [[MediaWiki:Nogomatch]] that links to the deletion log and WP:VFD.
But we can't, without changes to the software, display different text depending on whether there actually *was* a page that had been deleted recently. It's quite unprofessional to go, "This page *MAY* have been deleted... go check in the Deletion Log to see if that's the case!" Like, as if it was impossible to have the software check for you.
I agree that it's suboptimal not to be able to present a different message if the page used to exist, but is my suggested wording really that bad?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Nogomatch
BoVLB