[WikiEN-l] Administrator coup / mass deletions

[Abd ul-Rahman Lomax]

Okay, I'm slightly inconvenienced, or relieved, due to being 
currently blocked, so I'll make this suggestion here. Pass it on if 
you dare be accused of "proxying for a blocked editor." Caveat emptor.

See WP:PWD. This is a general solution for unreferenced articles, not 
just BLP, but it would be extremely useful, and even helpful in this 
case, and shouldn't raise deletionist hackles as much as keeping the 
articles, and it shouldn't offend the inclusionists nearly as much as 
deletions, which damage the process by which new and referenced 
articles evolve. Indeed, this could stimulate the process.

Don't delete the articles. PWD suggests not deleting *any* articles 
that aren't positively identified as being illegal, but never mind 
that for now, just think about BLP, where policy does suggest 
removing such articles from the visible encyclopedia.

Replace the article text with a notice that an article on the topic 
existed but was blanked because of policy on Biographies of Living 
Persons and it was unreferenced. Place a cat tag on the article that 
allows quick finding of all such articles.

Additional information in the new article text would vary with the 
exact details of what was done and why.

Anyone who wants to see the old article can retrieve it from history, 
particularly if a link is provided.

If it is desired to salt these articles, to require a request to an 
admin to unprotect, then the blanked version is protected. If 
registered editors are to be allowed to delete, it's semiprotected. 
Both protections require admin attention to undo, of course.

This edit will trigger watchlists, if there is anyone watching the 
article. It will allow the article to be easily restored whenever 
someone pays sufficient attention to reference it. If there is 
semi-salting, it would allow any registered editor to undo it, which 
would decrease burden on administrators.

More sophisticated, if protection is used: a note is place on a Talk 
page for the article, and the addition of a certain category to the 
Talk page can bring the situation to the attention of a BLP 
wikiproject or a bot. How about "Articles referenced for review to 
unsalt." Make it quick, make it easy. All depends on how much effort 
the project wants to require to undo it.

Any illegal text should not just be blanked, it should be removed 
from history through revision deletion, so that's a separate process 
(and there should be a flag or category for that). What's described 
here is to be done by bot, and is legally equivalent for most 
purposes. Illegal text exists in many BLPs, and is routinely simply 
taken out, not revision-deleted. As an RCPer, I certainly didn't 
request revision deletion for all the crap I saw! In fact, for none. 
So it remains available in history routinely.