Sometimes Information is important. It can make a difference not to contact a sysop in
order to know what was it about, speeding up content creation.
Personally, I believe that if you don't want to disclose information too much there, a
good compromise is to make more users access the deleted versions. Patrollers, but even
some type of auto-patrolled users should be able to do that. I mean if there is a decent
user who you can trust reading the content and putting a deletion template, than making
them read it should not be a problem. Think about copyviol: adapting a deleted text or
recovering sources is much faster if you can access it directly. Also, the whole history
of a deleted page should be by default visible, not hidden (maybe some specific summary if
necessary).
Transparency means that completely hiding is the exception, not the standard, as much as
possible. So if it were up to me I would reorganize in a way that local communities can
rearrange the users who can access such versions with wider audience, or that a hint of
what was there should be generally given if not libelous.
Also, over-hiding deleted information might lead to sloppy quality of deletions. It
happened to me at least twice to hear sysop personally complaining that a certain deletion
was excessive but the social strong peer-pressure make them uncomfortable to raise the
issue. More transparency would clearly reduce these social mechanisms, increasing trust.
It's in any case dysfunctional to treat all deletion cases the same way, that's
why local communities should assume a clear public responsibility for adopting the most
drastic strategy. It should be a deliberate and widely discussed choice, never a feature
kept with no clear responsibility. In one way or in another.
A.M.
Il martedì 18 gennaio 2022, 09:23:03 CET, effe iets anders
<effeietsanders(a)gmail.com> ha scritto:
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(a)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(a)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:
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T299351
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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