On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 1:07 PM, Wil Sinclair wllm@wllm.com wrote:
Thanks, I wasn't aware I could do this. I'm assuming that it would be obvious who was an employee at Wikimedia in the log, too. I posted the following to Wikipediocracy a few minutes ago:
" I may have misread which page the rev was on, or I misunderstood the person who said s/he revdeleted it in thinking that it had been revdeleted in the previous few minutes. This is exactly why I prefer public recorded forums. Now no one can go back to clear up the confusion. For all I know, I might have to apologize for a misunderstanding, and it would really suck if I somehow misrepresented things and didn't have any opportunity to straighten things out.
Of course, it is entirely on me. I knew that the IRC channels weren't logged, and that it was a bannable offense to log them (for those who aren't familiar with IRC, this essentially means that you aren't supposed to save conversations there; in most channels that's A-OK, but on all of the most used wikipedia channels it seems to be disallowed). Next time I have a concern, I will take it to wikimedia-l or one of the other mailing lists. As this example also shows, one can't be sure that the revs on a page within Wikimedia's wikis themselves won't be redacted after-the-fact. I'm not expressing an opinion about whether stuff should be redacted or on what grounds, but I am asserting that it is possible to do so. "
There is a discussion about this issue there, as well. It can be followed at the link I posted earlier. Here's the last page of the discussion that includes the comment above: http://wikipediocracy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=4680&p=96600#p9...
,Wil
Hi Wil,
This is exactly why others have suggested that you slow down, and focus on learning the basics of the Wikimedia projects and movements before jumping into the hottest, most controversial issues. It takes time to develop the understanding necessary to draw conclusions, especially in areas most likely to erupt into drama and heated exchanges.
To wit, I don't believe it can even be determined if someone is logging a channel, and many people (including Wikimedians) log all of their channels. Several Wikimedia-related channels are publicly logged. Other channels prohibit people from publishing logs.
It's also quite common knowledge that revisions can be deleted (by any administrator, where they remain viewable by administrators) or suppressed altogether (by users with Oversight rights). I think if you considered it with a full possession of the facts, you would agree that this is good and necessary.
In any case, thank you Lila for your note! I appreciate that you have made it clear you've seen the threads of the last few weeks and understand the concerns that posters have described.
~Nathan