The main advantage I can see, is that it requires a conscious decision to not be transparent, rather than a conscious effort to be transparent. There are many cases where deletion is warranted, but the content is not of the type that including a sample would be harmful. So from the point of view of an early community, I can definitely see why this functionality would be desirable. 

The question becomes how that balance works out by now: do we need reminders to be transparent to non-admins about our actions? In what percentage of cases do we want to be transparent? And how likely is it that the admin forgets the default, and accidentally publishes the summary, when they wouldn't want to? This trade-off may be different from community to community. 

Just a thought, definitely appreciate it when communities think about these settings rather than accepting that it is the way it has always been!

Lodewijk

On Mon, Jan 17, 2022 at 10:35 PM Peter Southwood <peter.southwood@telkomsa.net> wrote:

If the reason for deletion was to suppress undesirable content, why would one want part of it to remain viewable? Cheers, Peter

 

From: Vi to [mailto:vituzzu.wiki@gmail.com]
Sent: 17 January 2022 23:45
To: Wikimedia Mailing List
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Re: "content was" when deleting pages - is it useful?

 

On it.wiki we removed both this and "the only editor was..." which proved to be misleading for newcomers, e.g. "I don't think that being the sole editor is a valid reason for this deletion".

 

Vito

 

Il giorno lun 17 gen 2022 alle ore 15:19 Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni@mail.huji.ac.il> ha scritto:

Hallo!

 

There's an old MediaWiki feature: When an administrator deletes a page, a bit of its content is automatically added to an edit summary. This is later viewable in deletion logs.

 

If you edit in the English, German, or Italian Wikipedia, then you haven't actually seen this feature in years, because administrators in these wikis essentially removed it by locally blanking the system messages that make it work.

 

In many other wikis, however, this feature is still working.

 

Is it actually useful? Or should it perhaps be removed?

 

Here's a Phabricator task about it:

 

If you have an opinion, weigh in there or here.

 

Thanks!


--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
‪“We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace.” – T. Moore

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