[WikiEN-l] [Fwd: Re: Deletion of large pages]

[Philip Sandifer]

On Feb 4, 2008, at 12:31 AM, Tim Starling wrote:

> NavouWiki wrote:
>> Garbage.
>>
>>
>> Desysop east for improving the encyclopedia by technically  
>> precluding the
>> deletion of the main page?  The proposal is garbage.
>>
>
> Desysop East718 for out-of-process deletion of the main page and
> destruction of the page history.

East718's actions seem to me a well-intentioned if somewhat hasty  
response to an accidental main page deletion that happened because of  
a misunderstood joke in #wikipedia-en-admins. (One user inadvertently  
led another user to believe that deleting the main page was now  
impossible, and suggested he try it to see. User #1 thought User #2  
knew he was joking, User #2 did not know that #1 was joking, and non- 
hilarity ensued.)

It was a dumb and overreacting solution, but it was well-intentioned  
and largely harmless (as I don't think the page history of the main  
page is all that interesting.) And it does help protect against the  
really bad admin vandalism where important pages are history merged  
(as opposed to an important page and a trivial user subpage) - a  
security hole that has been existent for years and remains an easy way  
for somebody to do substantially irritating damage to the project.  
Still probably unwise, but not insta-desysop material.

-Phil