[WikiEN-l] vanishing talk pages

[Stephen Bain]

On Dec 22, 2007 9:15 AM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 21/12/2007, Matthew Brown <morven at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I am also increasingly concerned that cases where someone is strongly
> > insisting on a 'right to vanish' that it's actually 'right to return
> > under another identity' being exercised, and the purpose for the
> > deletions is to remove as much as possible the institutional memory
> > and tell-tale signs of that person's previous interactions and
> > behavior.
>
> This is the case I hear most of. When someone insists loudly on
> deleting all trace of them here and they've had a controversial
> editing history, the usual reason is to come back and do the same
> thing again under a new account name.

That, then, would suggest that admins responding to requests for
userspace deletion should be conscious of the circumstances of the
user's leaving, before deciding whether to delete the page, rather
than abolishing deletion of userpages altogether.

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com