[Foundation-l] Fwd: Delete of Article History and GFDL

[Anthony]

On Mon, Sep 15, 2008 at 5:18 PM, Petr Kadlec <petr.kadlec at gmail.com> wrote:

> > By the way, an example of a time when an edit *should* be
> > oversighted/deleted without being reverted first:
> >
> > User A creates a BLP.
> > User B adds confidential information about the subject of the biography.
> > Users C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J make positive contributions to the BLP.
> >
> > Then the confidential information is discovered.  To delete the
> confidential
> > information you have to delete the revisions created by users B, C, D, E,
> F,
> > G, H, I, and J.  You could do this by reverting to the version by User A,
> > but why in the world *should* you be forced to do that?
>
> And which solution do you consider to be better?


Neither is particularly good, but without making any improvements to
Mediawiki I'd say the best solution is to remove the confidential
information with an edit summary mentioning C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and J and
then oversight the edits.  Reverting all the way back to the original
version would be silly.


> If you just remove
> the wrong part of the article and then oversight/delete the revisions
> B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, the history would look like _you_ added all
> the positive contributions (added by users B–J).


Well, that's how it'll look to someone who doesn't read the edit summary,
anyway.


> Which is, among other
> problems, a copyright violation.
>

I don't see how this *causes* a copyright violation.  If you're going with
the letter of the GFDL, then it's already a copyright violation.  If you're
going with the spirit of the GFDL, you're only required to mention the
authors and years - there's no requirement to include the full text of the
previous revisions.

That said, http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bitfields_for_rev_deleted is a much
better solution.
<http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Bitfields_for_rev_deleted>