Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion/Archive 2
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How do I report an edit that needs deletion?
If I see an edit that I think needs deletion, what is the best way to report it without attracting attention to the edit before it gets deleted? The answer should be in the body of WP:Revision deletion. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 17:59, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Proposed additional text pointing to oversight and IRC
I would like to add this edit, which tells editors what to do if they find material that should be suppressed. If there are no objections or improvements in the next couple of days I'll add it. I would be bold, but this is a policy, which is not the place to be bold. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 18:18, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- Redaction ≠ oversight. If it doesn't need suppression (oversight level), then it shouldn't be sent to the oversight list once admins get the ability to do redaction, which should be soon. Also, non-admins don't have access to #wikipedia-en-admins. Mr.Z-man 19:34, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- I would welcome a rewritten version in light of what you just said. The blurb should say what email-enabled users should do and what non-email-enabled users should do if different, as well as link to the main oversight article if that would help provide context. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 19:53, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
- Additional text: Put email address oversight-l@lists.wikimedia.org somewhere in the new text, for non-registered users who do not have IRC. See https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/oversight-l for details. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 22:24, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
Category discussion
This page might get a new policy category; the discussion is at WP:VPP#Wikipedia administrative policy. - Dank (push to talk) 01:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
- Suggest having this either under Deletion or Procedural subcats. MLauba (talk) 13:59, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- The deletion subcat is generally considered to be about page deletion. I have no objection to leaving this page uncategorized, adding it back to the procedural subcat, or creating a new subcat that would be about deletion of edits that would include this page, WP:Oversight, etc. - Dank (push to talk) 14:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
- Bumping this down. Although it's early, I've made several of the suggested categorizations at WT:POLICY#Agreed and I haven't been reverted yet. I put this page in the "procedural" category, User:Fl reverted on the grounds that my edit summary mentioned ArbCom and this page isn't connected to ArbCom. But now we're apparently adding WP:Policies and guidelines and WP:Dispute resolution to the procedural cat, because they're about process and not about any of the other policy subcats. This page also doesn't seem to fit with any of the other subcats. Are there any objections to adding the procedural subcat now? This won't of course affect the policy status. - Dank (push to talk) 05:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
- I no longer have any objections to adding this policy to that category. I only originally objected because the original rationale for adding this page appeared to be based on an incorrect understanding of the purpose of this page (that the page was for ArbCom use of revdelete, when it is in fact for sysop use of revdelete). ~fl 08:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
- Bumping this down. Although it's early, I've made several of the suggested categorizations at WT:POLICY#Agreed and I haven't been reverted yet. I put this page in the "procedural" category, User:Fl reverted on the grounds that my edit summary mentioned ArbCom and this page isn't connected to ArbCom. But now we're apparently adding WP:Policies and guidelines and WP:Dispute resolution to the procedural cat, because they're about process and not about any of the other policy subcats. This page also doesn't seem to fit with any of the other subcats. Are there any objections to adding the procedural subcat now? This won't of course affect the policy status. - Dank (push to talk) 05:04, 14 December 2009 (UTC)
- The deletion subcat is generally considered to be about page deletion. I have no objection to leaving this page uncategorized, adding it back to the procedural subcat, or creating a new subcat that would be about deletion of edits that would include this page, WP:Oversight, etc. - Dank (push to talk) 14:25, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
If a user no longer wants their name attached to their contributions...
..would RevDel be an acceptable way to remove their username from the revision history (on a limited basis)? See Wikipedia:ANI#Incivility / application of G7 (perm). –xenotalk 20:24, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
- Absolutely not, unless there is a good privacy reason why it is harmful to the individual to have their name attached to the contributions. "i don't want them any more" is definitely not a good reason. Happy‑melon 10:32, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
- Is that because of copyright issues, technical issues, or stupid Wikipedia policy? -Atmoz (talk) 05:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
- It is because of a not-unreasonable expectation that if there is a good reason for an editor to wish to disown contributions, he or she will be able to explain those reasons more clearly than "I don't want my name on these articles. I don't care if Wikipedia wants to have articles on them. I just want someone else to write them. I don't think that's too much to ask." This is a project to produce a professional encyclopedia, not an internet playground. Those articles are not 'yours' to give away. If you are somehow ashamed or embarrassed by the content you've provided, then take that as a lesson not to work in that way in the future; we will not hide you from your past actions. If you have a genuine concern about the attachment of your name to those edits, please explain it clearly, in public or in private to myself, another member of the Oversight team, to one or more members of the Arbitration Committee, or to a member of the Foundation staff. If there is a genuine issue, we will resolve it. If there is just a childish desire to throw toys out of the pram, we have better things to do than overthrow core Foundation principles of transparency and permanence to accomodate that. Happy‑melon 10:13, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
- Is that because of copyright issues, technical issues, or stupid Wikipedia policy? -Atmoz (talk) 05:10, 12 March 2010 (UTC)
It's also a retarded means to an end. If they're concerned about their username being in the page history, tell them to get a rename. --MZMcBride (talk) 14:48, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
CheckUser and Oversight Elections
The Arbitration Committee has determined that there is a need for additional oversighters and checkusers to improve workload distribution and ensure complete, timely response to requests. Beginning yesterday, experienced editors are invited to apply for either or both of the Oversight or CheckUser permissions. Current holders of either permission are also invited to apply for the other. The last day to request an application is April 10, 2010. For more information, please see the election page.
For the Arbitration Committee - KnightLago (talk) 16:54, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
Defect
The documentation is defective because it does not explain how to access the feature, or more specifically, how to get rights to access the feature. I am confused. At the moment there's a blatant diff slandering somebody, and I want to get rid of it. How do I do that? Jehochman Talk 02:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
- I'm pretty sure that this is still oversight only. I read a discussion recently (1-2 months ago, I think) referencing a bugzilla entry that is preventing roll-out to all admins. Flatscan (talk) 04:30, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, revision deletion is still not yet enabled for admins (T23165). For the time being, if you want a revision redacted, contact oversight-l. Happy‑melon 13:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
- So, in other words, here is how get rights to access the feature =) And vote for the above-linked bugzilla. –xenotalk 13:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
- I've added notes to make clear that the feature is not available yet. We should not mark things as policy process when they are not enabled. The page as written was misleading. Jehochman Talk 09:41, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
- Looks like it's available now? The
(del/undel)
option is now showing up on my view diff screen. — Satori Son 14:21, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- Looks like it's available now? The
- I've added notes to make clear that the feature is not available yet. We should not mark things as policy process when they are not enabled. The page as written was misleading. Jehochman Talk 09:41, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
- So, in other words, here is how get rights to access the feature =) And vote for the above-linked bugzilla. –xenotalk 13:47, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
- Yes, revision deletion is still not yet enabled for admins (T23165). For the time being, if you want a revision redacted, contact oversight-l. Happy‑melon 13:45, 9 April 2010 (UTC)
log redaction alternatives
I notice there is some very strong admonishment against using revision delete to remove entries from the block log, but no options are given. At a user's request, I have made a one-minute block of them solely for the purpose of clarifying the reasoning behind a previous entry in their block log. This is essentially the only alternative that has the permanence of being a logged action. Should it be mentioned at Wikipedia:Revision deletion#Log redaction and/or in the big notice at the top of the page? Beeblebrox (talk) 06:47, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
- Redaction of the block log would only be for block reasons that meet other deletion/suppression criteria {e.g., "blocked you, motherf***er!" or one revealing personal information). It would not be used to "erase" erroneously or improperly made blocks - remember that the entry will remain, with only the reason "crossed out". Further explanation of a block either has to be done on the user's talk page or, as you have done, with an extremely brief block with a full notation. Risker (talk) 14:44, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
- Yea, right, I'm not arguing that point at all, just suggesting that alternatives be mentioned on this policy page. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:49, 20 April 2010 (UTC)
Now live for admins
Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Activated_Single-Revision_Deletion (thanks to Xeno for the link). Pedro : Chat 14:26, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
Criterion 1
Why is criterion RD1 only for blatant copyright violations? I would think that revision deletion is appropriate for any copyright violation, and that blatant violations should only be different in that it is easier to recognize them. Ucucha 17:48, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- One would assume for the same reason that same language is used in the speedy deletion criterion for copyvios as well: if it's not blatant, it gets blanked and listed at Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Sometimes what appears to be a copyvio is actually because somebody has copied from here first, and sometimes the content is actually under a license that is compatible with Wikipedia. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:59, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- But in that case, we can get it back. This is different from CSD, I think, in that it is not a "speedy" criterion. We delete blatant copyvios on sight, but delete other copyvios later anyway if they are not blatant but still copyvio. Ucucha 18:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- There's another case too. Imagine a case where a page existed not as a copyright violation, but then later got filled with a copyright violation. We do this to get rid of the copyright violation, but we don't delete the page because there's an OK version to restore to. (In fact, we've been doing this for a while now with selective deletion.) --Shirik (Questions or Comments?) 22:36, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
- But in that case, we can get it back. This is different from CSD, I think, in that it is not a "speedy" criterion. We delete blatant copyvios on sight, but delete other copyvios later anyway if they are not blatant but still copyvio. Ucucha 18:03, 18 May 2010 (UTC)
The point is that only blatant and uncontrovertible cases of copyvio should be handled by unilateral admin action; the default position should be discussion and consensus in the appropriate forum. Any copyvio can be redacted under RD5 once that process is complete. Happy‑melon 22:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Removing revdel from page histories and contribs lists?
- moved discussion over from Wikipedia:Requests for comment/May 2010 skin change. rʨanaɢ (talk) 15:29, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
Is it possible (through a gadget or some such) to remove the checkboxes and "del/undel selected revisions" button that appear in page histories for admins? Deleting individual revisions is not something I for one do on a daily basis (and if I need to do it, I know how to do it the old-fashioned way), and all the boxes feel cluttersome for me. rʨanaɢ (talk) 21:42, 19 May 2010 (UTC)
- I agree. Also, deletion of individual revisions requires a great deal of caution so as not to break the attribution history, so the practice is not something that we should encourage too much (making it this easy to perform has that effect). -- Black Falcon (talk) 05:36, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- This is not directly related to the new skin—the same thing appears in other skins and on wikis that have not rolled out the Usability Initiative's changes. That said, I would not object to moving the RevisionDelete feature a click away, as it is a lot of clutter on high-use pages for a relatively low-use activity. ~ Ningauble (talk) 12:39, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- I'm sure this is possible through CSS or JS. I'll make a note at WP:VPT requesting the script. –xenotalk 15:35, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- Add
.mw-revdelundel-link {display:none}
in your monobook.css, or I suppose vector.css if you have one of those. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:56, 20 May 2010 (UTC)- Cheers zzuzzz, I've copied this to the places where people requested it. Protip: Special:Mypage/skin.css. –xenotalk 18:02, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- Ok, but... it would be nice if it were switchable. I envision a link at the top of page history and user contrib screens that turns it on and off. ~ Ningauble (talk) 18:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- That takes revdel off of diffs and contribs lists, but not off of page histories (which is the main place where it's bothering me). rʨanaɢ (talk) 18:17, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- .mw-history-revisiondelete-button {display:none} will get rid of the inputbox button but not the checkboxes (not sure how to do that). –xenotalk 18:22, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- I think that what I am envisioning would be server-side php modification rather than client-side css/js. I would like a link, next to the other utility links immediately under the page header, for rendering with or without the RevDelete features. ~ Ningauble (talk) 19:01, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- Cheers zzuzzz, I've copied this to the places where people requested it. Protip: Special:Mypage/skin.css. –xenotalk 18:02, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
- ul#pagehistory > li > input[type="checkbox"] {display:none} will hide the checkboxes, but in addition to this and the above, I would also like to actually disable (not just hide) the RevisionDelete button so that prior history page behavior is restored - I.e., selecting two radio buttons and pressing enter will show differences. I've tried .mw-history-revisiondelete-button {display:none; disabled:true;} and several variants, but without success. Any help would be appreciated. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 02:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
- Discovered that I couldn't do that through CSS. Had to use javascript to delete the buttons. (Yea! Diffs work again!) -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 04:34, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
- ul#pagehistory > li > input[type="checkbox"] {display:none} will hide the checkboxes, but in addition to this and the above, I would also like to actually disable (not just hide) the RevisionDelete button so that prior history page behavior is restored - I.e., selecting two radio buttons and pressing enter will show differences. I've tried .mw-history-revisiondelete-button {display:none; disabled:true;} and several variants, but without success. Any help would be appreciated. -- Tom N (tcncv) talk/contrib 02:05, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
- What's worse, there's also a bug when using IE6 browser: version comparison on the History page doesn't work at all! Upon selecting radio buttons to compare two page versions on the History page, clicking Compare selected versions produces only an "Invalid target revision" error message. The only workaround is to logout (thus removing Rev/Del from the History page) to get History version comparison to function normally. JGHowes talk 13:49, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
- I also agree with several of the above users: this "feature" should be removed software-side (rather than through CSS), as deleting individual revisions is something we should not be encouraging too much. —Lowellian (reply) 17:58, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
My problem is this. I go to a page history. I click a radio button here, and a radio button here, and click enter. Before revision deletion was made available via software for admins, clicking enter would send me to the diff page for the revisions I had selected. But now, apparently the enter focus by default is no longer with "compare selected revisions" but instead the focus is with "del/undel selected revisions" and thus hitting enter takes me to an error page "Invalid target revision". Because I might be checking diffs in the middle of the page, it is easier for me to click enter, than to scroll to the top or bottom and click the proper button (not to mention, on a laptop with only a touchpad, I try to avoid mouse movements as much as possible). Simple fix would be to change the default focus to the old button. Is this even possible, or worth doing? I know complaints like this are common when new features roll out. Something is broken based on the way I'm used to doing thing. I'm sure I'll learn to adapt, but figure I'd voice my concern somewhere in hopes someone can do something! -Andrew c [talk] 23:53, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
MediaWiki:Revdelete-text
I invite review of my recent changes to MediaWiki:Revdelete-text. The main changes are:
- Removing all kinds of emphasis from various words and sentences. Various editors seem to think that a particular point is important and needs to stand out from the others. This results in ever increasing use of competing formatting. I've removed it all. None of the points are objectively more important than the others.
- I do not think it is necessary to threaten users with arbitration and desysopping every time they use this tool. So I have toned down the sentence about improper use.
— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:06, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
- I think the first point is fine, but for the 2nd, I think the stronger warning might be useful for the honeymoon period. –xenotalk 13:10, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
- You should see what the full-blown version looks like :D I agree with Xeno: the de-formatting is fine; I think for the avoidance of doubt the fire-and-brimstone warning should stay, or at least not be removed without further discussion. Happy‑melon 14:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
- Okay, happy to keep the fire and brimstone for a "honeymoon period". PS What do you mean by the "full-blown version"? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
- Oversighters are confronted with another wall of dire warnings about the proper use of suppression, as well as warnings to passing stewards doing crosswiki oversight; all of which appear in pleasant shades of bold, underline, and big red end-of-the-world screaming danger font... :D Happy‑melon 17:17, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
- Okay, happy to keep the fire and brimstone for a "honeymoon period". PS What do you mean by the "full-blown version"? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:13, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
- You should see what the full-blown version looks like :D I agree with Xeno: the de-formatting is fine; I think for the avoidance of doubt the fire-and-brimstone warning should stay, or at least not be removed without further discussion. Happy‑melon 14:02, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
Block log entries
My reading of the specific mentions of block logs in this policy, and the warnings on the admins' revdel page, is that redaction should never be used to redact block log entries. My question is whether this includes grossly offensive attack usernames, or whether it should, or whether it could be clarified. -- zzuuzz (talk) 09:12, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
- If a username is abusive, it should be refered to an oversighter, who can reblock the user with hideuser enabled. There is no point in redacting an abusive block log if the same abuse also appears in ListUsers, etc. Happy‑melon 10:13, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
RD#4 - oversightable material
This was causing considerable confusion judging by posts at WP:AN and the like. So I've refactored it as a separate subsection below "Log redaction" which should be easier.
Diff: [1]
FT2 (Talk | email) 22:25, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
- Afterthought - can anyone suggest a good shortcut for this bit and for "log redaction"? FT2 (Talk | email) 22:28, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Rewrite of "hiding usernames" and check for accuracy
I've refactored the note on "hiding usernames" that was hard to understand. I have added one case that I think is omitted, but I'm not a license/attribution expert and would like to double check if it's correct.
The addition is "[revisions] where all changes will be reverted". For example:
- User (A), whose username validly needs redaction, blanks a page and replaces it with some text they wrote. (The text they added is not grossly offensive but does need reverting).
- Admin (B) redacts the username field for the revision under (say) RD#2 or RD#3, and reverts the blanking/overwriting.
(A)'s text still exists in the page history, but has been reverted and none of it appears in the current article. Is this okay, or is it a problem that the text still exists in page history and that the history revision is unattributed? (Even if reverted)
Can someone check this and amend if needed. Thanks. FT2 (Talk | email) 01:08, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
- That's covered by the last item in WP:Copying within Wikipedia#Where attribution is not needed, which you wrote, FT2. :) I think that it would be better for the admin to revert first, then hide both the username and the revision text; but leaving useless text in the history is not a big deal in current practice. Flatscan (talk) 04:17, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Oversight requests moving to OTRS effective today
I am pleased to advise you that, effective immediately, requests for oversight/suppression will be accepted using the OTRS system. Please bear with us as the Oversight team becomes accustomed to this new method of receiving and replying to requests. We will strive to maintain timely service.
If you have found yourself reporting concerns to the oversight mailing list, please take a moment to add the new email address to your list of contacts: oversight-en-wp wikipedia.org
We look forward to continuing to work with the community in protecting the privacy of editors and others.
For the Oversight team,
Risker (talk) 04:26, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
RD#2
I've removed the words "against a person, group or organisation" from RD#2. We were getting a lot of grossly offensive comments that needed removal but caused confusion if revdelete could be applied because of the restriction and it wasn't protecting anything. I've been bold, if anyone want to revert and discuss please do so. FT2 (Talk | email) 08:45, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
"Delete edit comment" → "Delete edit summary"
Can this be changed for clarity? –xenotalk 02:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
- Fine by me if others agree. Not a huge deal, seems clear both ways, but "summary" is the more common term. FT2 (Talk | email) 15:59, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
- Sounds good for me. Happy‑melon 16:01, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
- Done [2] "edit comment" could be confused for a comment on the talk page (which is, of course, the "revision text"). Edit summary is much clearer imo. –xenotalk 16:03, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
Related: MediaWiki talk:Rev-deleted-comment. PleaseStand (talk) 09:47, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
What does "ordinary" incivility mean?
- "and not "ordinary" incivility, personal attacks or conduct accusations"
Could the above statement be defined or made clearer in a footnote at the end of the sentence? Since RevDel was implemented, I've already seen it used quite a few times on pages that I watchlist (mostly articles and article talk pages) and it makes me uneasy that I know that something is being deleted from an article, but I don't know what and for what specific reason except for RD2. So can we at least clarify what this statement means? I'm sure that each admin has very different definitions, and yet non-admins can't bring any of these to ANI if they feel that a deletion was inappropriate since we can't even see any of it. Gary King (talk) 19:56, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
- I have the same question. Also, is the above phrase supposed to mean only attacks against editors, or can it extend to BLP violations (smears, etc.) as well? In other words, what makes a BLP violation "ordinary"? Evil saltine (talk) 04:22, 3 June 2010 (UTC)
- I came here after seeing a number of deletions citing RD2, looking for an answer to this question. I often see and revert edits that I would call "grossly insulting, degrading, or offensive" and was wondering how "ordinary" is defined by those who can delete these edits. Unfortunately, I did not find the answer here. Has anyone seen anything that would illuminate the distinction? — JPMcGrath (talk) 05:51, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
- The problem is that most of the admins using the tool were not involved in writing up this guideline either, so whatever each individual thinks it means is what it means. I personally took it to mean that ordinary vandalism, such as going to some football players article and adding a disparaging remark about how they played last night would be reverted, whereas accusing him of raping babies and dogs and suggesting an angry mob descend on his house tonight would be revdeleted. Where the exact line is going to be highly subjective though. Unfortunately it seems most after-the-fact discussions of how the tool is being used will be limited to admins, since we don't want to republish information if it was properly revdeleted. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:54, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
- I agree that it would be counterproductive to publish examples, saying exactly what was said about whom. But it is still possible to provide some hypothetical examples, without associating them with a person. For example, if someone says a person "likes little boys", would that be ordinary or grossly insulting? What if someone uses the "n-word" against someone? How about saying someone is "a fat, ignorant pig"? How are these judgments affected by whether the target is alive or dead?
- It seems to me that if this feature is to be useful, the whole community needs to be involved in identifying revisions that should be deleted. That is how Wikipedia works, from reverting vandalism to blocking vandals to deleting articles that do not belong here. In most of these other cases, people can see what actions are being taken and get a sense for when the actions are appropriate. But with this feature, people cannot see what is being done, so that makes it even more important that the standards are published. I realize that the feature is new, so it might take some time to work out the standards and to document them. My point is that it is more important in this case, so it really needs to be done.
- — JPMcGrath (talk) 22:17, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
- Not exactly. speedy deletion decisions are often made by a single admin, and only other admins can see what they have deleted. The difference is that the criteria for making such deletions were established over time and reflect experience based consensus. I think this will probably end up like that, with users identifying things that need to be revdeleted and admins checking on them and making a decision, but trying to clearly and unambiguously define what is ordinary vandalism and what is not is not going to be easy. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
- I did not mean to suggest that others can see what is being done in all cases, which is why I said "in most of these other cases". Obviously there are many areas where that is the case, and I think those areas comprise the bulk of the work. Until there are some guidelines, I am sure that a lot of stuff will be reported that shouldn't, and even more that should be will go unreported. (sigh) — JPMcGrath (talk) 02:21, 23 June 2010 (UTC)
- I agree that "ordinary" incivility is ill-defined; however, I think at this point, it gives the deleting administrator wiggle room to justify a revision deletion based on judgment and perception. Over time, the talk page archive may serve as a road map for how some issues where dealt with in the past. Then again, to avoid the very BLP/slur issues that are problematic, there will also have to be some reading between the lines. (See below, where I pick a fictional race and individual to illustrate the issue I'm dealing with in an article on a real group.)
The issue that sent me scouring the talk page is blanket accusations against a group. If the edit in question had been to say that Mister Spock rapes babies and dogs, it would have been easy to redact, because it targets a specific individual. However, the edit was to the article on Vulcans and just tacked "are a bunch of baby-rapers and…" into the introduction; so my decision is, is that a serious slur against Vulcans that warrants redaction, or is that ordinary vandalism? I think it's ordinary vandalism, but if another administrator deleted the revision for gross incivility and was challenged on it, I would support the deletion as a good-faith use of revision deletion. —C.Fred (talk) 13:04, 28 July 2010 (UTC)
"Flag revision for oversight review"
Wouldn't it be nicely convenient if there was some kind of a tickbox that would flag the revision for oversight review? –xenotalk 18:47, 4 June 2010 (UTC)
- Indeed. NW (Talk) 17:37, 5 June 2010 (UTC)
- Agree that is a great idea. Do some 'cratting, use those fancy new powers to make this happen. I dunno, rename the developers accounts till they comply or something. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:59, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
- Ummm. Precisely how would this work, without making it obvious to the other 1800+ admins and all those folks who love to follow the deletion log and RSS feeds, that there's an edit that needs oversighting? And how would you propose to draw the attention of oversighters to the edit, without forwarding a link to the mailing list? Strikes me this would be more likely to highlight the problematic edit with a big neon arrow rather than to reduce its visibility, but maybe I am missing something here. Risker (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
- My thoughts were that the checkbox would not make any obvious public (or even admin-viewable) log except to appear in a special page reserved to oversighters. If it's preferred to be forwarded thru to the OTRS, presumably some automagic email could be sent. –xenotalk 23:15, 8 June 2010 (UTC)
- Hmmm. Do we have the capability to create such a page, i.e., one viewable only by those with a specific permission? I suspect not, but even if we could, I'm not persuaded it is something we would want to encourage on our project; the wiki itself should be as transparent as possible, and suppression only used for the edits that meet the criteria. In fact, I'm quite disturbed and concerned about what I see as serious overuse of revision deletion. I did a spot check the other night and estimate that at least 25% are outside of scope.
Getting back on topic though, it's best practice to reduce the number of places that suppressible edits are reported, so that they are acted upon in a timely and consistent manner. If there is some method by which the diffs for the revdeleted revisions could be emailed directly to User:Oversight (or to the oversight email address, skipping the user itself), that would keep all the requests in one place. I have no idea whether or not that is possible or practical, but keeping all requests coming in to the same point would be essential. Risker (talk) 15:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- 1) Of course. Special:UnwatchedPages, for example. 2) Submitting revisions for oversight is already necessarily non-transparent and should remain so. 3) Any alleged admin misuse of revision deletion seems to be a red herring to providing a swift and efficient way to flag an appropriately-deleted revision for oversighter review. 4) If forwarding it thru to the OTRS handler is a desired requisite (as opposed to providing a special: page), I can indicate the same in the bugzilla. –xenotalk 15:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Oh good grief, I had forgotten about Special:UnwatchedPages, which realistically should probably be deactivated as it's essentially useless with the number of pages we have. It's been useless since long before I was an admin. Having a page like that would be a bad idea for oversighters, things would be very easily forgotten. Moving oversight requests to OTRS has considerably improved the tracking of requests, so it's useful to build on successes. So yes, if admins are incapable of taking the extra time to send and email with the diff(s) and a helpful explanation of why exactly the edit should be suppressed, and absolutely must have a fancy tickbox on the page, it should go to the OTRS handler. Speaking as someone who's on the receiving end of the messages, I find an email with a sentence or two giving context to be very helpful in making decisions for anything other than the blatantly obvious.
I mentioned the misuse of revision deletion, acknowledging it to be off-topic, because I believe that its current use is pretty well perfectly illustrating the concerns expressed by senior developers, who declined to activate it for admins a year ago; all in all, I think it was a poorly considered and executed commit. We must remember that, from the perspective of 99.99998% of people who look at a page history, it is impossible to differentiate from a suppressed edit, and I am hearing concerns from non-admins wondering what was so bad about page XX that needed to be oversighted. I think a lot of harm is being done and we really need to scale back the use of revdeletion. Risker (talk) 16:20, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- That may be so, but should probably be discussed separately. So, to summarize: if a checkbox were made available it should come along with a short dropdown/text-entry box for a reason to be provided for the upgrade from revision deletion to Oversight, and then silently submit an email to the OTRS queue. Does that alleviate all your concerns as to the specific proposal (overuse of rev-del notwithstanding)? –xenotalk 16:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Well, it can be done that way, Xeno. To be honest, I don't see a great deal of urgency to it; there are only about 500 edits a month suppressed, and only about half of them come in through the mailing list. (The rest come from private communication directly with an oversighter, or from oversighters reviewing other contribs by problem editors or on problem pages.) And more than half of the requests received by email are from non-admins (mainly RC patrollers). So...we're talking about using developer time to add a feature that might be used about 100 times a month, and mainly by the half-dozen or so admins who periodically report oversightable edits. Perhaps MZMcBride has a point below, that a user-developed script might be the way to go, since it could probably be written and activated by those who wish to use it in a fraction of the time it would take for a developer to be available. Of course, it's easy for me to say that, since I am completely illiterate when it comes to writing code. :-) Risker (talk) 16:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- No, you're probably right - that a script is going to provide joy much faster - and I actually didn't think to suggest such a thing could be scripted either (also because I'm fairly newbish when it comes to this kind of thing). I may file the bugzilla: all the same, but for now I'll find a script-writer =) Thank you for your input. –xenotalk 16:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Well, it can be done that way, Xeno. To be honest, I don't see a great deal of urgency to it; there are only about 500 edits a month suppressed, and only about half of them come in through the mailing list. (The rest come from private communication directly with an oversighter, or from oversighters reviewing other contribs by problem editors or on problem pages.) And more than half of the requests received by email are from non-admins (mainly RC patrollers). So...we're talking about using developer time to add a feature that might be used about 100 times a month, and mainly by the half-dozen or so admins who periodically report oversightable edits. Perhaps MZMcBride has a point below, that a user-developed script might be the way to go, since it could probably be written and activated by those who wish to use it in a fraction of the time it would take for a developer to be available. Of course, it's easy for me to say that, since I am completely illiterate when it comes to writing code. :-) Risker (talk) 16:42, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- That may be so, but should probably be discussed separately. So, to summarize: if a checkbox were made available it should come along with a short dropdown/text-entry box for a reason to be provided for the upgrade from revision deletion to Oversight, and then silently submit an email to the OTRS queue. Does that alleviate all your concerns as to the specific proposal (overuse of rev-del notwithstanding)? –xenotalk 16:26, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Oh good grief, I had forgotten about Special:UnwatchedPages, which realistically should probably be deactivated as it's essentially useless with the number of pages we have. It's been useless since long before I was an admin. Having a page like that would be a bad idea for oversighters, things would be very easily forgotten. Moving oversight requests to OTRS has considerably improved the tracking of requests, so it's useful to build on successes. So yes, if admins are incapable of taking the extra time to send and email with the diff(s) and a helpful explanation of why exactly the edit should be suppressed, and absolutely must have a fancy tickbox on the page, it should go to the OTRS handler. Speaking as someone who's on the receiving end of the messages, I find an email with a sentence or two giving context to be very helpful in making decisions for anything other than the blatantly obvious.
- 1) Of course. Special:UnwatchedPages, for example. 2) Submitting revisions for oversight is already necessarily non-transparent and should remain so. 3) Any alleged admin misuse of revision deletion seems to be a red herring to providing a swift and efficient way to flag an appropriately-deleted revision for oversighter review. 4) If forwarding it thru to the OTRS handler is a desired requisite (as opposed to providing a special: page), I can indicate the same in the bugzilla. –xenotalk 15:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Hmmm. Do we have the capability to create such a page, i.e., one viewable only by those with a specific permission? I suspect not, but even if we could, I'm not persuaded it is something we would want to encourage on our project; the wiki itself should be as transparent as possible, and suppression only used for the edits that meet the criteria. In fact, I'm quite disturbed and concerned about what I see as serious overuse of revision deletion. I did a spot check the other night and estimate that at least 25% are outside of scope.
Just use some JavaScript to send an e-mail to the Oversight list. Should be trivial with Special:EmailUser/Oversight + API module. You add an extra tab (or button or whatever) that lets people send a generic message containing the revision ID. I'm actually surprised something like this hasn't been written already. I suppose IRC is like e-mail, only more annoying.
Also, I agree fully with Risker's comment regarding the need to scale back the use of revision deletion. Though I have no hope of seeing that actually happen. --MZMcBride (talk) 16:31, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Right - javascript - great idea. –xenotalk 16:46, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
odd question about a rather old edit summary
Ok this is kind of out there so bear with me. My first RFA tanked for basically one reason, this edit summary: [3]. The reason was that this is a shared ip talk page, and another completely innocent user could one day see this edit summary and feel unwelcome/bitten because of it. At the time there was no way short of oversight to remove an edit summary. Now it could simply be revdeleted, but I didn't want to do it myself even though it's likely nobody would notice because it might appear I was trying to cover my tracks. Given that nearly all of the 35 oppose voters cited this, and it even came up several more times at my second RFA, it seems there is already a consensus that it is a Bad Thing™ and it would be better if it were gone so that future users of this ip won't feel slighted by it. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:56, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
- IP no longer appears to be in use; 'suspected tag' was
nevernot marked confirmed; I've simply deleted the talk page (all 1 edit) per G6. –xenotalk 23:19, 8 June 2010 (UTC)- Works for me. Not that it matters anymore but it was actually confirmed to be the user that was suspected. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Looks like they've long moved on, anyhow. –xenotalk 04:41, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Works for me. Not that it matters anymore but it was actually confirmed to be the user that was suspected. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:38, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Question about an edit
Should this edit be deleted under RD2? Mjroots (talk) 10:15, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- No. It's reverted. That is sufficient. I am, in fact, becoming quite concerned about the excessive use of revision deletion, and this would be an example of inappropriate use. Risker (talk) 15:37, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks, I wasn't sure which is why I asked before a revdel. Mjroots (talk) 20:28, 9 June 2010 (UTC)
Only one at a time?
I have an instance where a BLP article with a tranquil history, only a few edits, has been the subject of an edit war between a user and an IP posting, altering and reposting unpleasant personal information. Both have been blocked and the article restored to its previous state, but there are 17 edits which in my judgement need to be hidden. Pre-REVDEL I would have deleted the article and restored without today's edits; setting out to use REVDEL, I was brought up short by "please do not delete more than one revision at a time." Is it really necessary to do this as 17 separate operations, and if so would it still be acceptable to use the much simpler delete-and-partial restore method? That, incidentally seems to me to have the further advantage of not giving any other vandals or friends/enemies of the subject the idea that this has been a target page by showing a lot of deleted revisions in the history. JohnCD (talk) 21:08, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
- After thinking about this overnight, I have fixed it by the old (delete and partial restore) method. I don't think the disadvantages listed here are serious in this case, and hiding the fact that there has been a sudden spurt of vandalism seems to me a positive advantage. Any comments welcome. JohnCD (talk) 09:00, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
- I assume you're talking about Rana Chowdhary (now that the information has been deleted, it's safe to name the page). and I think that there is still the problem that only admins can see that these accounts/IPs have made these edits. I think thst, in theory, RevisionDeletion is better. However, if you need to do each edit separately, then it would make sense for you to decide that it isn't worth your time, and just to delete/restore it by the old method (especially since there are no previously deleted edits). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:26, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
Revision deletion and history clearing in a history merge
If page A was copy&pasteed into page B, and subsequently was replaced by a redirect, with no other relevant history,then I would (before RevisionDeletion was available):
- Delete page A, in order to prevent the redirect (and possible irrelevant edits, such as vandalism, subsequent fixing of double redirects.
- Restore the relevant versions of page A.
- Move page A to page B, over existing page. (this would automaticly delete page B)
- Delete what's now page B, in order to hide the latest version (an old version with a new timestamp, due to the move)
- Restore all versions of page B, other than the latest.
Now that we have RevisionDeltion, I was thinking that steps 1 (and 2, as a result) and 4 can be replaced with RevisionDeletion, as I did on Badiyah. Is that a good idea? עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:41, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
- No, because it leaves traces of the junk revisions in the history and makes diffs harder to view. I've just moved the two edits at Badiyah back to the deletion archive where they belong. The forthcoming RevisionMove feature is designed to be used for history merges. Graham87 05:53, 4 October 2010 (UTC)
Proposed addition to the new admin school
See discussion at Wikipedia talk:New admin school#Revision deletion. PleaseStand (talk) 03:15, 29 June 2010 (UTC)
Request for deletions of certain revisions in Kampung Boy
- Wikipedia:Content noticeboard#Is it possible to delete hoax content from articles? — not much help here
Long story short, an IP convinced an admin to create hoax content for a notable subject, which remained unnoticed for two years. Several edits in the years, true to the subject, have been entered, thus this article cannot be deleted. The IP has been adding further false information over the years and reverted any removal of his lies (examination of his contributions show mostly insertion of false information—vandalism). Unfortunately, good faith editors have been helping his efforts by correcting his typos, linking articles in the false information, and copyedits. The false information is fairly large (for the article's current size) and I would prefer to build upon an article in which the vandal cannot easily copy and paste back his acts harmful to the project's purpose.
So I would like to request deletion of the following revisions that included the false information (from the earliest to the latest).
- 12:46, 28 March 2008
- 12:46, 28 March 2008
- 12:47, 28 March 2008
- 12:55, 28 March 2008
- 00:11, 8 November 2008
- 00:12, 8 November 2008
- 00:29, 8 November 2008
- 00:39, 8 November 2008
- 00:42, 8 November 2008
- 18:51, 14 November 2008
- 21:39, 4 January 2009
- 16:52, 1 March 2009
- 18:57, 11 December 2009
- 18:59, 11 December 2009
- 18:59, 11 December 2009
- 19:03, 11 December 2009
- 19:03, 11 December 2009
- 19:05, 11 December 2009
- 02:48, 13 December 2009
- 02:50, 13 December 2009
- 00:52, 13 July 2010
I believe this can qualify as CRFD#5 under the Deletion policy of vandalism (patent nonsense), and information that cannot be attributed to reliable sources because it is a hoax and has no reliable sources at all. Jappalang (talk) 21:20, 17 July 2010 (UTC)
- I didn't look at them all, but I don't see any pressing need to revdelete the diffs I looked at. We aren't going to revdelete every single bad edit that gets made, it's only for the very worst kinds of vandalism. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- What sort of "very worst kinds of vandalism" then would qualify for CRFD#5? Copyright violations, libel, gross attacks, security threats, private information, and such have already been covered under 1 to 4. Is persistent deliberate introduction of a large chunk of false information not harmful to the project that it would qualify for #5? If the project decides to gives credit to a vandal for doing such, then so be it; CRFD#5 should be deleted as well in that case (unless further clarified). Jappalang (talk) 08:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- I was the AFC creator of the article. I'd like to add my voice on this. If we delete the revision history it will become more difficult for users to demonstrate continued vandalism by this ip address in the future (should there be any). --Torchwood Who? (talk) 23:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- I revdeleted the information in such a way that the edit summaries and IP addresses of everyone who edited the page before Jappalang are still visible, but the page itself is not. NW (Talk) 23:41, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- I was the AFC creator of the article. I'd like to add my voice on this. If we delete the revision history it will become more difficult for users to demonstrate continued vandalism by this ip address in the future (should there be any). --Torchwood Who? (talk) 23:21, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
- Awesome. I didn't realize that was a technical option. cool. --Torchwoodwho (talk) 00:28, 19 July 2010 (UTC)
- What sort of "very worst kinds of vandalism" then would qualify for CRFD#5? Copyright violations, libel, gross attacks, security threats, private information, and such have already been covered under 1 to 4. Is persistent deliberate introduction of a large chunk of false information not harmful to the project that it would qualify for #5? If the project decides to gives credit to a vandal for doing such, then so be it; CRFD#5 should be deleted as well in that case (unless further clarified). Jappalang (talk) 08:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)
Update on limitations required / clarification of policy
To this day, Revision deletion still displays the instruction that we should only delete one entry at a time.
- What is the status of the technical matters behind this today?
- In particular, how is redaction one revision at a time different / perceived less risky than doing large numbers in one chunk?
- Assuming that the "one entry at a time" still has clear reasons to remain, the policy that deprecates selective undeletion needs to be rescinded. In particular for copyvio cleanup, we often find ourselves with several dozen and sometimes several hundred revisions to remove from view. Doing so one at a time is quite obviously out of the question.
I'll note as well that deleting revision text while leaving contributor names in place is, in practice, the absolute best way to combine the needs of copyright cleanup with the needs to attribute any content that can be salvaged to the contributors (a requirement present in both the GFDL and CC-BY-SA licenses). While I'm sympathetic to the notion that caution was warranted when the feature was turned on due to the novelty factor, it certainly bears re-examining whether that specific caution is still worth upholding today. Thanks, MLauba (Talk) 12:43, 27 July 2010 (UTC)
What do you think? Revdel on easter egg
I came across this, and was thinking of suppressing the revision (it was some sort of treasure hunt clue placed in the article's history with the intention of immediate reverting), I guess deletion would be based under R3, but wanted to know what others thought. Clearly this is an abuse of Wikipedia, and we shouldn't encourage such edits, but then again it really isn't harmful. So, what do you think? To suppress or not to suppress...-Andrew c [talk] 15:15, 3 August 2010 (UTC)
- I din't think this needs to be hidden, unless it's being viewed a lot as a result of some other sight linking to it. Note that it refers to some person named Emma (and there are probably several Emmas who are pregnant) with no last name; and chances are that the relevant Emma has already seen it - by now, it's over a month old. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:59, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Request for selective deletion by non-admin
Another user asked me if there was a place that non-admins could go to report revisions that might need to be selectively deleted. I couldn't find anything on the Project page, and this suggestion to e-mail Oversight seems like shooting at a mosquito with a bazooka. Is there a Content Noticeboard related to selective deletion? If there is, it should be mentioned on the Project page. ... discospinster talk 03:22, 7 August 2010 (UTC)
- You can ask on IRC for an admin to do the delete for you or on the talk page of an admin that does revdelete requests. The advantage of IRC is that you more quickly get the attention of an admin and if necessary PM them to avoid drawing the attention of other users. MorganKevinJ(talk) 02:12, 15 December 2010 (UTC)
A suggestion
Why not make it to where one could view the revision if they wanted to by confirming that they wish to do so. I've noticed many sites use a similar feature. 216.188.240.112 (talk) 06:29, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
- This would defeat the entire purpose of revision deletion. The feature is designed to make content less visible, by restricting who can see it; your suggestion would make it stand out, attracting other people to it, making it more visible. Note that admions, who are allowed to see these edits, do have such a link like you are suggesting. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 20:54, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
Status and a question
What is the status of RevDelete? Is it OK to use now, or are there still concerns about breaking logs? Is it still better to delete just one thing at a time?
Also, particularly if it now works fully as intended, does (or should) WP:DENYing recognition to prolific ban-evading sockers qualify for WP:RD3 ("Purely disruptive material")? Specifically, user:Grundle2600 is creating throwaway socks, waiting a few days, then inserting preferred content (which he knows will be swiftly reverted) into a semi-protected article but gets to leave a complaining edit summary which remains in the history. This can't be a unique situation. Rd232 talk 08:37, 24 August 2010 (UTC)
Guarantees against potential abuse
How do I as an ordinary WP user - no admin privileges - know that this procedure isn't being abused by an admin on a political correctness crusade? I've often wondered what could possibly be so excruciatingly offensive that it would permanently mutilate my delicate psyche to even know that it ever existed? Which naughty word was deleted, was it fuck, shit or nigger that triggered this extreme cencorship? Oh woe is me! I'm going straight to hell for typing that! OK cut the sarcasm and lets get serious here. As an ordinary WP user I believe I am at least entitled to a cast iron guarantee that absolutely every such deletion is reviewed by more than one admin before it is done. This is an abrogation of WP:NOTCENSORED and as such each and every instance of its use must be fully and specifically motivated - IMHO the "boilerplate" edit summary is not acceptable, it must be specific to each instance. Roger (talk) 07:04, 18 October 2010 (UTC)
- Looks to me like this particular cabal answers to nobody. Roger (talk) 17:05, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- Revision deletions are checked from time to time. That's all I can say - every admin can browse the logs and deleted content. There are several hundred admins active at any one time, and curiosity will get the better of some of them. Members of Arbcom also have a particular interest in checking the deletions and raising issues, but most admins (en masse) are also up to the task. There are also (non-admin) recent changes patrollers who get to see the revisions before they're deleted, and they're rarely shy of screaming admin abuse. From what I've seen (and practised), it is mostly subjects of biographies (or other living subjects) being called paedophiles and/or descriptions of how well they suck large cocks, rape people, get raped, take large cocks hard in the gaping arse, or enjoy penetrating animals. You won't get a cast iron guarantee that every revision is reviewed; you won't get descriptive summaries of what admins have deleted (that would in most cases defeat the point). However if you want any checked all you need to do is ask an admin whose judgment you trust. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- At least we've identified a new cabal, The RevDelCensor Cabal... In all seriousness, RevDel can be reviewed the same as any other deletion. In all cases you should still be able to see that something was removed, as zzuuzz has stated any other admin can check to be sure it was appropriate. But no, there is not and will not be a "cast-iron guarantee" that every single use of revdel is reviewed. That is the entire point of having administrators, they are supposed to be trusted users who are capable of deciding when it is and is not appropriate to use a particular tool. We don't review every single speedy deletion either, and those deletions remove entire articles. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- Thanks zzuuzz and Beeblebrox for adressing my concerns. Roger (talk) 06:39, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
- Do we need a category of category:Admins willing to check Revision Deletion for the times some one want to question it? One of those category:eguor admins may be ideologically willing, if they have the time. And of course you can always ask the deleter for a fuller explanation. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:43, 23 October 2010 (UTC)
- At least we've identified a new cabal, The RevDelCensor Cabal... In all seriousness, RevDel can be reviewed the same as any other deletion. In all cases you should still be able to see that something was removed, as zzuuzz has stated any other admin can check to be sure it was appropriate. But no, there is not and will not be a "cast-iron guarantee" that every single use of revdel is reviewed. That is the entire point of having administrators, they are supposed to be trusted users who are capable of deciding when it is and is not appropriate to use a particular tool. We don't review every single speedy deletion either, and those deletions remove entire articles. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:09, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- Revision deletions are checked from time to time. That's all I can say - every admin can browse the logs and deleted content. There are several hundred admins active at any one time, and curiosity will get the better of some of them. Members of Arbcom also have a particular interest in checking the deletions and raising issues, but most admins (en masse) are also up to the task. There are also (non-admin) recent changes patrollers who get to see the revisions before they're deleted, and they're rarely shy of screaming admin abuse. From what I've seen (and practised), it is mostly subjects of biographies (or other living subjects) being called paedophiles and/or descriptions of how well they suck large cocks, rape people, get raped, take large cocks hard in the gaping arse, or enjoy penetrating animals. You won't get a cast iron guarantee that every revision is reviewed; you won't get descriptive summaries of what admins have deleted (that would in most cases defeat the point). However if you want any checked all you need to do is ask an admin whose judgment you trust. -- zzuuzz (talk) 17:35, 22 October 2010 (UTC)
- Great idea! I'd be game. (Backing up to the original question: I see I'm one of the top implementers, and I do it for copyright concerns, not to protect people's delicate sensibilities. :D) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:54, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Note: I added a paragraph to the lead, mentioning Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to handle RevisionDelete requests in relation to users wanting to approach someone to check a RevDel use. Rd232 talk 12:22, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Questions
- MediaWiki:Revdelete-text still says not to revdel more than one revision at a time. However, I believe the bugs that made this necessary no longer exist. Is that true?
- Is there a way to separate the revdel log from the normal deletion log? They are normally used for distinct purposes, and reviewing them separately seems more useful.
Ucucha 21:23, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
- About the second question, there is no way to do this. A request had been made to make this possible at bugzilla:17806, but the developers decided not to implement it. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 05:42, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
- I frequently do more than one, with so far not a hitch. (Knocking wood vigorously.) --Moonriddengirl (talk) 13:51, 2 November 2010 (UTC)
Author request?
I have seen several things disappear under the guise of "RD5: Other valid deletion under Deletion Policy: author request".
As far as I am aware, there is no policy allowing contributors to request deletion of arbitrary revisions of theirs for any reason, which this seems to amount to. There is an "author request" in the speedy deletion policy, but it comes with the condition that:
- the only substantial content to the page and to the associated talk page was added by its author
Presumably this is not the case, otherwise why use revision deletion at all, when the whole page could just be deleted. Are such "author request" revision deletions allowable? Obviously, I have no way of knowing what was actually deleted, but I can only assume if it was personal information or something else that better fit the other criteria, the deleting administrator would have used one of those instead of "other valid deletion". Gurch (talk) 18:51, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- I would say no. We should only use RevDel when we have a legal (i.e., copyright violations) or moral (i.e., gross BLP violations) obligation to remove something from the record, not merely to hide someone's mistakes. If you can give me specific examples, I can check them and perhaps restore them after discussion with the admin concerned. Ucucha 20:15, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Most recent would be these upload log redactions. I noticed that the instructions to administrators specify:
- Log redaction (outside of the very limited scope of criterion RD2 for the move and deletion logs) is intended solely for grossly improper content, and not permitted for ordinary matters; the community needs to be able to review users' block logs and other logs, whether or not proper.
- and while I have no issue with removal of personal information or blatantly offensive material from the upload log, removing it merely because the uploader asked for it seems odd. (I'm assuming that if there was a more specific reason, such as the presence of personal information, the administrator would have said so rather than having to fall back of "other valid deletion" as a reason).
- While I have no reason to suspect that these particular actions should not have been carried out, I want to ensure that laziness in specifying a reason for suppression is not encouraged. It's the only thing non-administrators have to go on if there's any problem with the action, and unlike say blocking, where the exact details of the action are clear, and page deletion, where you can usually get a copy of the deleted article on request, suppression is naturally somewhat surrounded by secrecy, which makes potential abuse more difficult to trace. I have raised the issue with the administrator responsible. Gurch (talk) 20:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Those particular redactions seem appropriate to me (though I'd prefer not to go into details, other than saying that there was indeed a "more specific reason"). Ucucha 20:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- While I have no reason to suspect that these particular actions should not have been carried out, I want to ensure that laziness in specifying a reason for suppression is not encouraged. It's the only thing non-administrators have to go on if there's any problem with the action, and unlike say blocking, where the exact details of the action are clear, and page deletion, where you can usually get a copy of the deleted article on request, suppression is naturally somewhat surrounded by secrecy, which makes potential abuse more difficult to trace. I have raised the issue with the administrator responsible. Gurch (talk) 20:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Hm. So are you saying that an evasive reason like "RD5: User request" is appropriate if the nature of the content means something more helpful isn't possible? While I'm not necessarily opposed to being vague when personal information is involved, this seems a bit odd. Gurch (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- RD4 would have been appropriate—I agree I may have been too vague. Ucucha 23:28, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Hm. So are you saying that an evasive reason like "RD5: User request" is appropriate if the nature of the content means something more helpful isn't possible? While I'm not necessarily opposed to being vague when personal information is involved, this seems a bit odd. Gurch (talk) 22:37, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- I thought so, except there's that bit in the policy about never actually using RD4 as the summary when RD4 applies.
- If RevisionDelete is used, avoid obvious suggestive terms in the reason (eg don't use "RD4", "oversight", "private material", "hiding IP of logged out user" etc).
- Is that bit of policy what's being invoked here? If so obviously I have no problem with people following policy, but I would like to register my opinion that that section of policy is a bit strange.
- I'm assuming the purpose is so if an admin account is compromised the log doesn't advertise to them where to find personal info. Or something. Strikes me as rather paranoid though. Gurch (talk) 23:46, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- The logs are public and the content is distributed.. John Vandenberg (chat) 05:11, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- Yeah but since the private info has already been redacted (except to admins), in order to take advantage of the information in the log, one might think you would to have either be an admin. However, since it often takes an admin several minutes (or hours) to redact all the affected material, and the redacted part often strongly indicates other, unredacted parts, a persistent attacker could catch the redaction in progress (it might be better if an automated tool could do a bunch of prepared redactions all at once). The admin might also miss some material, in which case logs could be clues to remaining material. Dcoetzee 07:34, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- Such an automated tool would be much more likely to exist if the API supported revision deletion, something I asked for here. Gurch (talk) 14:52, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- There is no need to be an admin[4]. John Vandenberg (chat) 15:30, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- If you follow that link you'll see that in fact that is not an option. And even if the dumps were working, only if by coincidence a full history dump copied the revision right when it was made but not hidden yet, which is usually not very long. And there is no dump of log entries.
- The author request which was raised in this thread is related to items which are in many dumps. A decent percentage of suppression requests are about old problems which we cant entirely fix due to the presence of dumps - all we can do is limit the visibility. John Vandenberg (chat) 21:55, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
- True, but if it's something from 2006 you're never going to find it in the dump. Don't forget, non-admins can't see *which* log item you hid, only "hid an item in the upload log". Even if the suppression comment was "omg come look at this revision it has the Pope's mobile number", it wouldn't let anyone find it any faster. Gurch (talk) 23:47, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
Redacting upload comment?
I've noticed that even when you redact the edit summary from an upload in the upload log, the original edit summary is still visible in the "Comment" column of the file history. Is there any way to deal with this other than uploading a new version and deleting the old one? I'm asking for a privacy case I'm dealing with. Thanks. Dcoetzee 21:50, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- There doesn't seem to be a way. I think we should file a bug report. Ucucha 22:29, 13 November 2010 (UTC)
- Aha, I've discovered it works as expected as long as the version you're redacting the upload comment for is not the most recent version. Still a bug but the workaround is acceptable. Dcoetzee 00:03, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- The upload comment *is* just the revision text (or the first part thereof). Redacting the upload comment when there is only one version would be like trying to redact the revision text when there's only one revision. Gurch (talk) 00:41, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- The upload comment of the initial upload happens to be a prefix of the revision text of the first revision of the image description page, but these are stored separately in the database (moreover, even after I'd redacted the associated revision text the upload summary was still visible). Dcoetzee 01:15, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
- A late reply, but I think old-school oversighting would do it. Of course it would have to be something really bad to warrant that. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:17, 22 December 2010 (UTC)
- The upload comment of the initial upload happens to be a prefix of the revision text of the first revision of the image description page, but these are stored separately in the database (moreover, even after I'd redacted the associated revision text the upload summary was still visible). Dcoetzee 01:15, 14 November 2010 (UTC)
Quick question
Would 419 scams fall under RD3? I'm just wondering, because I've seen them a couple of times on the RefDesk and I wasn't sure if I should contact an admin (the revisions did get RevDeled, but there was some question over the validity). The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 05:17, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
RD candidate?
Request to remove this edit summary but keep edit.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 23:17, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
- Not a candidate. Standard-issue unpleasantness isn't revdeletable. Rd232 talk 23:40, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you for answering & the hatnote.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 23:50, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
- Thank you for answering & the hatnote.
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