[Wikipedia-l] meta namespace?

[Jimmy Wales]

Magnus Manske wrote:
> - Should we introduce some users with a "trusted" status? So some "old
> hands" could do some maintnance, like permanently deleting obsolete pages,
> without access to the really crucial functions like direct database access.

One idea I had seems very doable and very useful.

One of the main reasons we want to delete some pages is so that
underlined links go back to being questionmark links, tempting the
reader to write something.  (And also making the link show up on most
requested, and so on.)

For that purpose, the side-effect of deletion, which is to delete the
history as well, is just that: a side-effect.  We don't really need it.

Since any user can delete all the text anyway, it would not hurt for
them to be able to delete the page, too.... that is, IF they don't
also automatically delete the history.

There can be reasons to delete the history, of course!  Sometimes the
history will just be so very wrong that we must delete it.  Maybe it
will be a copyright violation, or maybe it will be just really
mean-spirited or something.

But in most cases where we want to delete pages, they're just silly,
and there's not much harm done in leaving the history.

--Jimbo