[Wikipedia-l] 'old hand' status

[Brion VIBBER]

lcrocker at nupedia.com wrote:
>>Now, if the delete is no longer destructive in that way, i.e. if
>>there's a way to ordinary users to revive a deleted page, then we
>>don't really need sysop status except for "old hand" type of
>>functions.
> 
> Delete is still every bit as destructive and permanent.  The only 
> history of deleted pages will be in periodic database dumps.  (I've 
> only done two since the new server was in place, and I still don't 
> have a cron job for it--I need to get some indication of how you plan 
> to archive them, if you do, before I can do that).

Under phase II, deleted articles were retained in the table of old 
versions, and if necessary could have been restored by a sysop querying 
the database. (There never was a pretty interface set up for this.)

I think the issue came up once, but the article in question had been 
deleted (accidentally) before that feature was in place, so was long 
gone from the database.

-- brion vibber (brion @ pobox.com)