I've added a rev_deleted field to the revision table in CVS HEAD. If running a wiki on 1.5 CVS currently, run update.php or manually source maintenance/archives/patch-rev_deleted.sql to update the table.
This will be part of changes to the deletion system, not yet fully implemented:
* Deleted revisions will remain listed in the contributions history (though greyed out and in strike-through), making it easier to track serial offenders.
* Deleted revisions will be listed in the regular page history (again, grayed out and in strike-through). In cases where individual revisions have been struck from a page for eg copyright reasons this will make it easier to see where portions were removed.
* The actual text won't have to be shuffled into an archive table; simply updating a 1-byte field in the revision records ought to be faster, and this will allow deletion again on pages which have been block-compressed. (Block compression combines multiple revisions' text into a single compressed record; since this interacts poorly with the current deletion/undeletion system, deletion is currently disabled for any page which has been block-compressed.) Deleted text could be pruned at leisure by a batch or background process if necessary.
* For admins, the diff and view source tools will remain available on deleted pages, which the current Special:Undelete viewer doesn't provide. This can aid in analysis of a vandalism spree.
The deletion/undeletion system has not yet been updated to actually use this field, nor has limitation of viewing of such revisions to admins been implemented. (Remember the purpose of _deletion_ is to make materials inaccessible to the public, especially if for legal reasons, so non-admins will still not be able to look at the actual deleted revision text.)
Once finished there will probably be a slight change to the page table as well, to mark pages which have no non-deleted revisions.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:44:05 -0800, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
- Deleted revisions will remain listed in the contributions history
(though greyed out and in strike-through), making it easier to track serial offenders.
- Deleted revisions will be listed in the regular page history (again,
grayed out and in strike-through). In cases where individual revisions have been struck from a page for eg copyright reasons this will make it easier to see where portions were removed.
I think this will be a bit confusing. I suggest only showing them if *any* of these conditions are true: * The user has set deleted revisions to appear in their preferences (i.e. they are very much into anti-vandalism and editing) * The user is a sysop (since they ought to be looking at that sort of thing often, and it's functional to them as they can read the deleted revision) * The user or anonymous user has written one of the deleted revisions
The third query might be expensive. Something like
SELECT 1 FROM `revision` WHERE `rev_page` = {int} AND `rev_deleted` = 1 AND `rev_user` = {string} LIMIT 1
(taking the number of rows)
So, um, depending on how this is indexed, it migh not be worth it, in which case show everybody these revisions.
Will a deleted page simply have every revision marked with rev_deleted? Will you add page_deleted to speed things up (such as checking whether an article exists)? Is there still an archive tablem, solving that problem somewhat?
Tomer Chachamu wrote:
On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 04:44:05 -0800, Brion Vibber brion@pobox.com wrote:
- Deleted revisions will remain listed in the contributions history
(though greyed out and in strike-through), making it easier to track serial offenders.
- Deleted revisions will be listed in the regular page history (again,
grayed out and in strike-through). In cases where individual revisions have been struck from a page for eg copyright reasons this will make it easier to see where portions were removed.
I think this will be a bit confusing.
It's fairly common for eg forum and BBS systems to display a placeholder marker for deleted comments.
Do you think it will be more confusing than not even being able to see _that_ there were edits made which have been removed? Mysterious invisible gaps in the page history will, in my opinion, cause more confusion (as they currently do from time to time). Trying to make it a user option or conditionally hiding them from the list is an unnecessary complication which would make it harder for people to work together, help each other, and understand what other contributors are saying when talking about the edit history of a page or the contributions of a user.
Here's a couple quick screenshots off my dev copy. These are views when not logged in, so the revisions are grayed out and not accessible (would appear same if logged in as a non-sysop):
http://leuksman.com/misc/history-deleted.png http://leuksman.com/misc/contribs-deleted.png
The exact styling is subject to change if it sucks too much. :)
Will a deleted page simply have every revision marked with rev_deleted? Will you add page_deleted to speed things up (such as checking whether an article exists)?
Still working on that; something like that probably. A page record needs to be present or else the revisions will lose their identity, which would tend to make things even more confusing.
-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)
Having a public deletion trail in page histories and contribution lists will be a big help in evaluating vandalism.
But I would like to see the summaries for deleted revisions either removed from the public listing (& public database?) or replaced by the deletion reason, as the summaries can contain the same type of content as the deleted text, just less of it.
-- Zigger
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org