On 15 August 2012 21:38, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
One question: you said you won't agree to the "mass-deletion of content", does that mean you are deleting some content, just not a large amount? The arguments you make apply to small amounts of content just add much as they do large amounts.
Listmods don't actually have the power to delete messages - it's something a dev with shell access to the list server has to do. Mailman's archiving is sort of fragile and rubbish as well, so a slip-up can risk breaking all the hundreds of lists in ways that make the devs very unhappy - and making the devs unhappy is a hazardous occupation.
So making the request had better be pretty serious stuff *and* actually effectively address whatever the problem is. If the problem is "I've just outed myself", removing a post from the archive does *bugger-all* to suppress it in any meaningful way whatsoever. It'd be nice if it did, but it *actually doesn't*.
I wouldn't say "never ever" on removal of messages from the archive, but it's on the list of things the listmods and WMF staff really, really aren't keen to do without a stupendously compelling reason.
- d.