Wikipedia talk:Selective deletion

RevisionDelete

Oversighters now have the ability to delete log entries and page histories using RevisionDelete. And soon this ability will be extended to all admins.

I think it's very important that a discussion be held about when it is and is not appropriate to modify log entries or page histories. For example, I personally don't think hiding "simple" vandalism would ever be appropriate (for example, "Got HAGGER?").

I foresee conflict between admins unless there are at least vague requirements for when it is appropriate to hide things and when it is not. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 20:12, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, I can think of three instances where hiding revisions should be allowed. Libel, links to virus-ridden websites, and page move vandalism, either of the HAGGER variety or "Admin Z lives at 123 West Street" (which often enough is not oversighted). NuclearWarfare _(Talk) 21:05, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

For the time being I think that the best option is to treat Revision deletion as restricted at the same level oversight is. Prodego ^talk 21:45, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't see any need to extend it to administrators. I assume that oversights will retain the "Apply these changes to administrators and lock this interface" option on the interface? --Deskana (talk) 00:01, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think that it's obvious that it should only be used in cases where you would otherwise oversight. I also think that it's obvious that admins should not have access to this tool. John Reaves 00:39, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

No, admins should have access to this tool, but not the whole thing. Selective deletion is stupid, and we don't want that to continue when we have a perfectly good way to do it. Prodego ^talk 01:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Where was the discussion that resulted in consensus to extend this to all admins ? I'm not aware that the problem is large enough to need over a thousand admins being able to do this. I feel most strongly that this should be a very restricted function and can't see a reason to extend it to us admins. Oversight only looks like a good solution. - Peripitus (Talk) 02:04, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I should clarify. It'd be great if admins could use this tool, but I don't think every admin is capable of using it without abusing it. John Reaves 02:26, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

(EC) It would be a useful feature for getting rid of redirect revisions when doing history merges, where Page A is created as a redirect to page B, then the contents of page B are cut and pasted into page A. For an example, see my logs at War in Afghanistan (2001–present). Deleting the three edits would have been much easier, both from my point of view and from the server's point of view. I may be a perfectionist, but I really don't see the point of having overlapping redirect revisions in an article's history. The feature could also be used for getting rid of copyvio revisions, where one editor has dumped a copyvio into an article, but in that case, the deletion summary should be clear about where the copyvio was from. Selective undeletion can be incredibly painful, both for the user and for the server, and its use should be minimised. I can think of absolutely no reason for admins to hide page logs, now that oversighters can do that. Graham87 02:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Admins already are able to do this, just in a less transparent, less server-friendly, and less user-friendly way. Mr.Z-man 06:44, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Indeed. I think selective deletion should simply follow the same policy than full deletion. If you wouldn't delete the whole page because of these revisions, you shouldn't use revdelete. With a small trick: hiding revisions can sometimes be very effective against btards (who tend to vandalize once, then simply use the permalink and save). -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

PS: Anything that can prevent this ugliness is good. -- lucasbfr ^talk 10:28, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think admin revision deletion should be used in the following situations:

1. If an admin sees anything which should be removed by oversight, they should (after alerting oversight) delete the revision to reduce the damage.
2. Personal attacks and harassment, under some circumstances.
3. Edits which would be deleted under CSD G7 or U1, including edits to pre-existing pages.
4. Vandalism or spam being linked to, usually by the vandal/spammer.
5. Copyright violations which were added to a pre-existing article.
6. Edits by banned users.

עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 11:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure about item #6, but the rest looks fine to me. -- lucasbfr ^talk 12:12, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

OK, I'm an admin and maybe this tool might be handy. On the other hand, there's legitimate concern expressed above that not all admins would use it correctly. Admins already have the power (through selective deletion) to stop any immediate damage. After that, only folks with admin privileges can see problematic versions until they're oversighted. I think oversight could probably wait a few hours or days at this point. And if we can't trust admins enough during that waiting period to not abuse their abilities to restore sensitive material, should we then be giving them (including me) oversight privileges?

So I have a question -- do we not have enough people already authorized to handle this sort of thing? If not, do we need 1000+ more (admins) or just another 5 or 10? If we don't need more, then I suggest not extending it to all admins. If we just need a few, then perhaps add it to bureaucrats' privileges or give the power to checkusers; both these groups are much smaller and have been subjected to additional vetting.

If this is extended to all admins, then MZMcBride is right -- we need very specific rules.

1. So that folks like me that may do it once every 6 months are on firm ground and don't use the privilege inappropriately through well-meaning inexperience
2. To ensure abusive admins (yes, we do have some, let's admit it) don't abuse it, leading to more wikidrama.

My bottom line: expand this privilege very conservatively, if at all.--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't get it, it's already there for a long time (just check the deletion log, you'll see that more than half the restores are in fact selective deletion). I don't link to anyone, check it yourself. The aim is to stop killing the servers and risking to screw things up each time we do it. -- lucasbfr ^talk 18:59, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree that we need very, very specific rules about this if all admins will get this tool. Otherwise various admins will start deleting simple instances of vandalism, or revisions that might possibly be, in a way, a BLP violation, etc. --Conti|✉ 19:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia is going to end up looking like a government document, full of "[REDACTED]" and blocked out text if all admins have access to this. John Reaves 18:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

All admins can already do this (as Mr. Z-man said above), and the sky hasn't fallen yet. --Kbdank71 18:52, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, currently it just disappears from the history and can only be seen through Special:Undelete; I'm not even sure if its possible for non-admins to know how many revisions were deleted. This just adds transparency to the process. Mr.Z-man 19:06, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Currently, it is a bit of a hassle to do it, so it's less prone to abuse. If we make it super simple, that's where the problems come in. John Reaves 19:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I wonder how many people are going to use this to cover up their mistakes, things they said and then later regretted (e.g. being a dick in an edit summary). A line between what appropriate use and what is historical revisionism needs to be drawn. John Reaves 22:29, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

There are more than enough admins willing to call people on it if they see this being misused - which is why this must be extended to all admins. --Random832 (contribs) 03:47, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

How much to hide

One of my concerns it that if a user makes an edit like this:

(cur) (prev) 18:37, 2 February 2009 VandalUsername (Talk | contribs) (9,553 bytes) (→RevisionDelete: http://inappropriate.link) (rollback | undo)

With RevisionDelete, you'll be able to hide the revision content, the username, or the edit summary. To me, if anything must be hidden, it should only be the inappropriate edit summary, nothing else.

However, my concern is that in an attempt to deny the existence of vandals, some admins will want to hide the username or the entire entry. Can we all agree that doing so would be a Bad Thing? If the username is inappropriate enough to warrant hiding, it should be renamed by a bureaucrat (which takes care of the issue completely). --MZMcBride (talk) 20:14, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Revision content deletion is essentially the same as oversight is now. Edit-summary deletion is obviously useful, as you say. Changing the username leaves a record in the log.

We need a strict understanding that information is not hidden gratuitously and that the default is to keep the information visible, not to delete it, but certainly all three are necessary.

[[Sam Korn]] ^(smoddy) 20:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I'd prefer if people stopped deleting/restoring articles altogether. But that'd mean having approximately the same amount of "privacy" than before. Personally I can live with the username remaining visible when admins use the extension (we usually catch problematic usernames before they even hit save), but is it useful? -- lucasbfr ^talk 20:40, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

There are occasions where a username that is in itself not problematic might be problematic in the context of a particular page. [[Sam Korn]] ^(smoddy) 21:17, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Eh? I can't think of any such examples. I mean, obviously User:IHateJews shouldn't be editing the "Israel" article, but that username shouldn't be in other page histories either.... --MZMcBride (talk) 22:00, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

To give an entirely hypothetical and made-up example, a username that was the real name of a pseudonymous porn star, causing potential real-life damage to that person. Unlikely, but not impossible. I agree that its use should be rare, but not, I think, forbidden. It is a policy-level concern, not a technical one. [[Sam Korn]] ^(smoddy) 22:30, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Keeping information free vs. the civil society

Hardly a day goes by without someone cornering me and giving me a rant about how uncivil Wikipedia has become, I suppose in the hope that I am in a position to do something about it. They tell me of their despair in the way people treat each other, of how they're expected to grow a thicker skin, of how much mutual respect has been lost. Well, frankly, I hope nobody ever has to grow skin thick enough to feel comfortable with an edit summary like "Moved page to I am going to saw off [name of editor]'s head with a pocket knife. Then I will light his corpse afire and feed it to my dogs. After that, I will murder his entire family." Deliberately deciding to keep such information accessible to not only Wikipedians but to any member of the public who happens to click on the history tab is not only uncivil, it is actively abusive. By leaving this available, we're forcing people to read this in order to edit our encyclopedia. Edit summaries like "[name of editor] is raped by Grawp's enormous cock" aren't part of keeping information free.

Use of the Oversight tool has always been very firmly restricted because of the genuine harm done to the database; it links edits to the wrong authors, corrupts the database and it's extremely difficult and time-consuming to correct any errors. Hide Revision is a completely different tool. It restricts viewing privileges for certain information, but the information remains intact in the database and any errors can be undone quickly and easily by others with access. We now have the technical means of removing abuse—of editors, article subjects, non-public persons—without causing negative effects to our database. Further, our ability to remove such abuse does not negate our ability to block anyone who makes abusive statements. Now that we are capable of removing this trash talking, we can halt the damage done by those who deliberately desecrate, believing that their invective will be permanently enshrined; we can ensure that their abuse does not remain there to continue to taunt anyone long after the editor responsible for the abuse has been shown the door. Risker (talk) 05:27, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

I endorse this statement strongly and in its entirety. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with Risker. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 19:06, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Very well said. Truly.

But I want to throw out another hypothetical. User:Z gets upset, edits their user page and the edit summary is "←Replaced content with '{{retired}}'". Later, they regret having made the edit (perhaps because they're running for adminship or they realize stomping off was childish or whatever). Should that be removed? If so, at admin-level or oversight-level? If not, why not?

More broadly, do we extend the 'right to rewrite' to editors who later regret certain edits they made? (What if they call an editor an asshole in an edit summary and later regret it, for example?) --MZMcBride (talk) 19:31, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree there need to be some rules/guidelines, but they don't need to be very extensive (imo). Silly stuff like this example, should not be revisiondeleted. and if someone is applying to rfa, I would imagine an interested admin looking at their history of revisiondeleted actions. Obviously oversight should stay with its current rules, and the oversight fuctionality of this new method should be used as oversight is now. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rocksanddirt (talk • contribs)

Quick question

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I don't know where else to ask, so here I go. Does this feature exist in addition to oversight, or does it replace oversight? And if it is the latter, is there still the option to completely erase a revision (not even leaving a "This revision has been oversighted" message behind)? --Conti|✉ 20:37, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Both extensions are currently enabled for oversighters. If everyone used the new extension and oversight left a visible trace, that would greatly improve transparency and the level of trust users have in it though IMO. -- lucasbfr ^talk 20:42, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Where is the switch to turn off oversight, then? :) --Conti|✉ 20:47, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I for one am still figuring out how this works -- I have no objection at all to Oversight's being turned off, but it might be sensible to let us have a few days to get used to it first with a safety net! [[Sam Korn]] ^(smoddy) 21:15, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

No, no, no. You all are horribly confused. :-) This new thing, "RevisionDelete" (which also hides log entries) is not an extension. That's the entire point. mw:Extension:Oversight is the extension; it is (was) a poorly-written temporary hack while this new system was being written. The Oversight extension can't be disabled until (or if) the old data is transferred to the new system. See also: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-l/2009-January/041192.html and subsequent replies. --MZMcBride (talk) 21:58, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think I kinda get it now. :) What I'd still like to know is whether it will still be possible to entirely remove revisions (with no hint that they ever existed in the first place) or not. Will it be possible with the new feature? Or will it be possible because the oversight extension won't be turned off? --Conti|✉ 22:07, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

It's my understanding that the previous implementation (using Extension:Oversight to remove the edits entirely from the page) will stop completely. We will no longer "disappear" edits from the page history, in favor of marking them deleted (either at an oversight-only level or at an admin-only level).

So basically RevisionDelete will replace Extension:Oversight entirely. But this can only happen iff the extension's dependencies are completely removed. Currently there's a separate table full of revisions from the past two and a half years that have been removed from the revisions table. Those would need to be migrated first. The second catch is this. Basically for some unknown reason RevisionDelete is apparently using Extension:Oversight's log. There's a debate (on the mailing list) about whether the log of deleted log entries, etc. should be visible to all users or not (see also: this). --MZMcBride (talk) 22:25, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the answer. That clears a lot of things up (for me at least). --Conti|✉ 22:36, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Just a clarification, Special:RevisionDelete uses the user's regular log if the option to hide the revision from admins is not checked. Since I haven't so far needed to, I have not used Special:RevisionDelete to hide a revision from admins (nearly equivalent to oversighting), but I assume that is what gets logged to the oversight log. But also with the current (I'm assuming temporary) configuration even when the option to hide the revision from admins is not set, admins still cannot see what was hidden, just the fact that it was. - Taxman ^Talk 23:08, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you're right, you're using the 'lesser' of the two suppression levels (the level that, if the feature were made available to admins, whould be given to us). I think it would be advisable to work under the assumption that administrators will at some point be given the ability to view revisions that are "hidden" but not "suppressed". Happy‑melon 00:05, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

A few questions

Who should have access to this? Also, if we do give this to all admins will we let all admins see what was removed? JoshuaZ (talk) 22:19, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

The section directly above, specifically the links to the mailing list, give a bit more insight into these questions. --MZMcBride (talk) 22:27, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

Should admins have this ability?

I can honestly say that when I started this discussion, I was under the assumption that this 'feature' would definitely be enabled. However, after giving more consideration to its use and reading some of the comments here, I'm beginning to think that giving this ability to all admins may be a very bad idea.

Oversight (the extension) has been abused previously. This tool would likely be equally abused, however, if only oversighters had the ability, it would decrease the likelihood of abuse as oversighters are more likely to stick within the bounds of the oversight policy and oversighters are more likely to take an unbiased look at various log entries / edits. That is to say, I don't want admins trying to remove every instance of vandalism or even "extreme" vandalism simply because it's now easier to do.

The type of extreme restraint required for this power seems outside the scope of what (at least some of) our 1,000 active admins can handle. Thoughts? --MZMcBride (talk) 00:55, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

No, administrators shouldn't have this ability. -- Gurch (talk) 00:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll second that. Synergy 00:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 01:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

When you say "this feature" what do you specifically mean? There are about 8 different pieces that are involved. Log hiding, which has three parts, hiding the action and target, hiding the comment, and hiding the user doing the action. There's also revision hiding which has three parts, hiding the text of the revision, hiding the edit summary, and hiding the editor's IP/username. Then for Oversighters both of these can also be hidden so that admins can't see them or reverse them. I think it's most clear that last option should not be given to all admins. I think revision hiding being given to all admins should not be so controversial since if all three options are selected it is equivalent to the current way of deleting revisions except the edit history of the page retains a record of the fact that something has been deleted. That's more transparent than the current method. Also not all three options have to be checked, just the one that is needed. If the IP or username doesn't contain the offensive information, that need not be hidden. Then we retain a record of that user doing something nefarious, but we don't have to publicize what specifically. The other more transparent part of this new system is that these changes of revision visibility can be reversed with less hassle so it is less likely to be abused. If we want the least controversial option, then consider only giving all admins the ability to delete the text of a revision. It's very hard to abuse that. - Taxman ^Talk 01:24, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

No, it's very easy to abuse it to hide evidence of comments that you later regret making. Oversighters have done so before -- Gurch (talk) 01:44, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Unlike the current system of selective deletion or oversight, the revisions are left in the history, but with the deleted parts hidden and there's a public log of non-oversight-level deletions. It would be a lot more obvious if someone deleted their own comment from a discussion (and it would only work if they reverted it before anyone else made an edit to the page). Deletions on watched pages also show up in watchlists. It would certainly be possible to abuse, it, but ... the same is true of all the admin tools. That's why we only give them to admins. If it wasn't possible to abuse it, we could safely give it to everyone. Mr.Z-man 01:58, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

No, an oversighter hid 2 edits another editor made. Lets not bother with the reasons why—that's another discussion but claims of regret were made by third parties. Also the difference between Oversight and Special:RevisionDelete apparently needs to be pointed out again. Oversight can't be reverted without developer intervention, while Special:RevisionDelete if done by an admin can be reverted either by other admins or just oversighters depending on the config. That and what Mr.Z-man mentioned makes this significantly more resistant to abuse than you are claiming. Don't get me wrong, I think whatever the community wants is fine, but I think people should think about all facets of this before judging it. - Taxman ^Talk 03:02, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Um, no. You're thinking of a specific incident. There have been several others (that are public knowledge). (People hiding comments to make RfA candidates look better, etc. See also: User talk:Thatcher/Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.) The "more featured" version of hiding revisions allows for much easier abuse. Less wait, less load, quick and easy to use, versus the alternative: clumsily delete the entire page and select all the revisions and then unselect the bad edits while trying to make sure previously deleted edits stay deleted. So admins will have a much easier time manipulating the page history and logs. What I want is some sort of guideline or policy that says you can only use it in certain situations, not to hide simple vandalism or the usernames of everyday vandals (or even banned users). Because currently we have administrators going around and deleting vandalism from page histories regardless of whether it violates anyone's privacy. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

There's a few differences here. One is that the Oversight logs did not used to be searchable. To find abuse of them was very difficult. Also we tended to believe the people that got the right were trustworthy so we didn't necessarily pick apart every single use of it. Apparently at some point more people got it than should have. I never did agree with the idea that everyone elected to arbcom should get the right automatically. So the difference being that the logs for this will be much more easily searchable and in the open. That's much harder to abuse when everybody can see what you are doing and are looking for problems. The other side is that you don't have to give this thing whole hog. If you don't trust admins to hide logs, then don't give out that part. Though I fully agree a better policy for when to use this should be developed. But that should happen whether or not this tool is given to admins since there should be rules for when revisions can be deleted whether it is done the hard way or not. The simplest solution is to start out restricting it's use to only that which would fall under the oversight policy. - Taxman ^Talk 16:52, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Note to Taxman...perhaps I am understanding better. Are you saying that if we turn on the rev delete option only, then what we get is a more featured version of what we can do now (by deleting the whole page and selectively undeleting revisions) with it shown in the page history what has been done. If am reading this all correctly then I think this limited version is a good idea for admins..prevents the disruption of del+selective undel of a page with many revisions that is highly trafficed just to remove something that needs to go. - Peripitus (Talk) 03:15, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, but at the moment, the hassle and visibility of deleting and restoring the whole page (and the impossibility, for large pages) puts them off doing things like removing comments they don't like by users they've just labelled as trolls -- Gurch (talk) 03:27, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

The current system means that I (by deleting and undeleting) can hide revisions from the page history. This seems that the revision would be hidden but in the page history....a more visible result - Peripitus (Talk) 04:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

You're not reading what he's writing. If a vandal edits WP:AN/I, "selective restoration" does not work there (it's impossible to delete pages that large). So it's very possible that we have instances where people are hiding "offensive" comments in the page history, especially for a page as contentious as AN/I. "Fuck you, UsernameA!" Should that be hidden? What about, "I'm gonna rape UsernameB!"? On a project this large, these questions will inevitably arise. --MZMcBride (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Yeah basically. If we turn on revision delete and allowed admins to hide the revision text, username, and edit summary (all three parts for article revisions). That would be close to the old way, but the difference from the old way would be that the article's edit history would show something was missing and it would be logged publicly (separately) who hid the edit. If we turned on revision delete for all admins for hiding the text of the revision but nothing else that would actually be more limited than what the current delete and selective restore does because the username and edit summary of the original offending edit would still be shown in the article history. Either way as mentioned I think there are many levels that reduce the likelihood of what Gurch is concerned about and make it easy to discover and reverse if it did occur. - Taxman ^Talk 03:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I see no reason why, in most cases, the name of the offending user should be hidden. In fact, if a user has lots of deleted revisions on his name, and this fact is visible to non-admins, that would make it clear that the user is guilty of such an edit. Currently, if a user changes a page to be an attack on someone (which is not libel, and reveals nothing not known to the general Wikipedian public), admins have a choice between leaving it in the history, and deleting the page (which may have some degree of protection on it) followed by undeleting the good revisions (this may take a while if there had been other deleted revisions) followed by ensuring that its protection status has been restored to its status before this deletion was done. I think the first is wrong, and the second is error prone (and if a relevant revision isn't restored, the article may now be a copyright violation due to the attribution clause of the GFDL) and means that when the author is blocked, only admins have any idea why. If selective deletion is open to admins, then admins can delete the offending revision, with the summary (if it is offensive), while making it clear to non-admins that this edit is bad enough to be deleted. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 06:09, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Additionally, one issue which has occasionally come up is when a user moves a page to an offensive name - such as can be seen at here - admins currently can't hide such log entries. Note that this includes the initial move, and the revert move (and the deletion log, if the user who reverted didn't/couldn't suppress the redirect). עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:21, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Quite. I think it is easy to confuse the issue here: we are not talking about giving 1,500 admins the ability to oversight. Material that is hidden by admins is visible to admins in exactly the same manner as before; the difference is that now it's also transparent to all other users. If someone checks a blocked user's contribs and sees few incriminating edits there, that's suspicious, when in fact it's just because they've been selectively deleted. Selectively-deleted edits are spirited away from non-admin users just as opaquely as oversighted edits are spirited away from non-oversighters. This new feature is intended to bring transparency to this whole process, which I think is a very Good Thing.

That said, I fully agree with MZMcBride that we do need some very clear rules on what admins can and can't hide, which parts of the log should be hidden in which circumstances, and other details. Happy‑melon 08:56, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

In a previous section I came with a solid proposal for the rules; I suggest we work from there. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Well we still can separate that. I'm not sure the community would be comfortable giving admins the ability to hide the logs of their or other admins' actions. I recently did one where to conceal the target of a page move which contained oversightable personal information, the admin doing the action had to be hidden (the user doing the action and the target are on one option in the interface). Perhaps that ability should stay with a more limited group, but it's up to the community to decide. - Taxman ^Talk 11:48, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

I dislike the idea, but I dislike the alternative even more. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 12:12, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Questions on my mind

1. After years of Bad log summaries staying in the various logs (and in database dumps, database query outputs, etc.), does it make any sense to later try to remove the information from our site? And is that rewriting or distorting history? (For example, "John Doe born X X, XXXX was a teenager and committed suicide.")
2. Does deleting content from page histories simply encourage the Streisand effect? Should we care? Should we wait until the vandals go away and then hide one or two edit summaries or do it immediately and wait for ten edit summaries to suddenly appear in the page history? (For reference, this has happened on several occasions.)
3. Should only uninvolved oversighters (and later perhaps admins) hide content from pages where there would be a clear conflict of interest (a pet topic or a User_talk: page)? Does conflict of interest have any bearing? Should it?
4. When content is merely offensive, but does not libel anyone or violate copyright, should it be removed? (For example, links to shock sites (which are not clickable by are certainly copy-pasteable).)

--MZMcBride (talk) 06:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

1. Removing a log entry probably attracts attention to it. The older log entries will probably go unnoticed now if no attention is drawn to it; removing it may cause people who look for information removed by comparing new database dumps/mirrors/offline copies with newer ones.
2. While a vandal is actively adding offensive information, it's probably not a good idea to remove it quite yet. I think we should wait until he/she had been done for 10-15 minutes.
3. Yes, COI does have bearing. However, it should be judged by the content, not by the location. If someone replaces the content of my user page with "Admin X is a pedophile", then I have no conflict of interests, while Admin X does.
4. Yes.

עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:13, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

One point regarding עוד מישהו's #3, if someone drops an edit summary of "Admin X rapes babies", I do not think it is a COI for Admin X to be the one to delete that. That kind of overt defamation/vandalism needs to be removed, and it should be allowed to be removed by the victim as well. Now, if the edit summary read "Admin X is abusing his admin rights be deleting Article Y" that would be a grayer area, and I think Admin X should demur, and contact someone else with the HideRevisions bit. Just my 2 cents. -- Avi (talk) 16:20, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

IMO, a summary of "Admin X rapes babies", does not have to be removed. It is obviously false, and causes no harm to anyone. A summary of "Admin X lives at 123 Main Street, Somewhere, Kansas" should be, as that can cause harm. Prodego ^talk 17:46, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Maybe you think it's obviously false, but what about less hard-core editors? What about newbies? If we want to be taken at all seriously as a mature, responsible project, then we have to attract mature, responsible editors. Mature, responsible people tend to not want to be associated with projects where "Admin X rapes babies" is not only a distressingly common edit summary, but would be required to remain. Many of our editors participate using their real names. Such an edit summary has the potential to cause real life harm to them - withdrawn job prospects, financial implications, police investigations. That doesn't even take into account the distress caused to the person named.

I have not yet heard a good reason why abusive edit summaries and log entries (many of which are deliberately being planted because of the perception we *can't* or *won't* remove them) should remain publicly visible. We wouldn't require the same information to remain in an article, on a user page, or anywhere else. Risker (talk) 19:01, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

How about, "I am going to rape your children and mutilate their dead bodies" - I've had that on my talk page a number of times now, or "I know where you live, [RL name redacted], you bitch. Let's just say you'd better watch out for your children". Should these be allowed stay? If so, why? In the early days of revision visibility, I've hid the edit summary on one or two of these on my own talk page. The history remains unaltered but the offensive text is gone. It's something I'd do for anyone else and indeed, have done. However, this annoyed certain people. Was I wrong to have done that? Was I right? It happened again yesterday only this time, I left them and reported it to Oversight. User:Dominic came along and did exactly what I was able to do anyway - Alison ^❤ 19:47, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I see no problem of any nature if an oversighter uses oversight or the revision-deletion feature to remove a blatantly offensive edit or edit summary, whether on his or her page or elsewhere. As noted in Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/MONGO, administrators are entitled combat harassment of Wikipedia participants, including themselves. If there is any basis for believing that an edit or edit summary might be legitimate, then an uninvolved administrator should be sought out, but the type of deletions being discussed here do not remotely fall within that category. Insisting that edit summaries containing vile threats against an editor's family must remain in the permanent page history reflects a skewed valuation of our editors' well-being against purely theoretical considerations and compounds the violation of dignity that has already occurred. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

@all. This is a lot harder to see if you have oversight, because it is much less of a deal to you. But being able to see that a user has vandalized, etc, is important. So oversight, as per the policy, should only be used in very specific cases. @Alison, in the first case I would say yes, that isn't hurting anything. They said it either way, deleting it won't change that. The latter case has private info (a name) so I would say delete away. @Risker, we won't be. By that argument we might as well disable editing and only let experts edit. @NYB, blatantly offensive stuff really shouldn't be deleted. There isn't really a reason to, unless it can cause some harm. Vile threats against people's families are bad (and certainly not allowed), but what does hiding them accomplish? They did happen, and a record of what happened is what history pages are. Prodego ^talk 21:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Perhaps you are reading us incorrectly, Prodego; indeed, all three of us have access to oversight, and there isn't a day that goes by that at least two of us aren't being asked to remove comments like that and worse. It's a great way to demoralize contributors, to make them see edit summaries threatening to kill their children every time they look at their talk page history; hiding this information means that the attacker only gets to fire one volley, rather than being able to continue the abuse in perpetuity long after the offending account has been banned. It's the equivalent of finding a burning cross in the front yard every morning, to have that vileness constantly in view to anyone. I'm afraid, as well, that you've missed a key point. The primary reason for the extremely limited use of the oversight tool is the damage that it causes to the database, and the great difficulty in correcting erroneous use. Revision hiding causes no damage whatsoever, and requires only a few keystrokes to correct errors. I cannot think of any other project or contributory website regardless of focus that would allow such attacks to remain plainly visible when they had the technical means to hide it from the viewing public. Risker (talk) 21:20, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I very strongly disagree with that Risker. The concept whole of a wiki is based on openness. In the real world, you can't be completely open, which is why we have things like deletion, protection, etc. This removes content that non-editors should see. Oversight is for content no one should see. Hiding an edit summary does not make something not happen. Regardless of if you delete it or not it is still there. But unless there is information that is legally troublesome, or reveals private info there is no reason a trusted editor, (for which we currently only have the admin group to represent) shouldn't be able to see it. Prodego ^talk 21:36, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Huh? Why do people need to see this stuff? Openness is good and all that, but you seem to be arguing for openness for the sake of openness. You said it we should have this openness for blatantly offensive banned-vandal edits summaries but you haven't said why other than because we should have openness. The whole concept of a wiki is collaboration, these edit summaries add nothing to collaboration and can have significant negative impacts on it by deterring people from contributing. Forcing openness for the sake of having openness is just as bad as any meaningless, arbitrary rule. Mr.Z-man 22:15, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes; you just beat me in an edit conflict here, and said everything I was going to. The last sentence of Risker's comment above is the most important. — Hex (❝?!❞) 22:22, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Openness is the very sense of what a wiki is. Historical revisionism should be avoided, what happened happened. If someone posts "I am going to kill you" every day, what will removing the edit summary accomplish? They still said it. Even if you remove the history of something, it doesn't make it go away, so you can't argue that deleting something from public view (which is detrimental, if you have ever had to deal with, for example, an unblock request where you have no idea what the user was blocked for) is somehow no longer offensive. It is just part of the process of being on a wiki. We can't stop vandalism, and if we just 'push it under the rug' all that does is prevents us from dealing with it. The last thing I want to see is blah blah hidden all over the place, to the point where I have no idea what is going on. There are valid reasons to remove edit summaries and logs. But if we remove anything that doesn't belong on Wikipedia, we basically remove everything. Prodego ^talk 22:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Please, give a real reason. Stop "openness is good, protect the openness" and give a real reason, as in something practical with tangible benefits. You have not explained the benefits of leaving these revisions in the page history. You just repeatedly say "deletion is bad, openness is good" but don't say why. The unblock request reason is just stupid. If all of a user's edits consist of deleted edits to user talk pages and the user gets blocked by AntiAbuseBot or a checkuser, do we really think, "hey maybe there's a chance this is just some new user who go blocked by mistake"? No, there's probably a 99.999% chance its just a troll. There's a huge difference between "anything that doesn't belong on Wikipedia" (though deleting it is exactly what we do when it comes to articles) and obscene threats of rape directed toward specific people. Mr.Z-man 22:55, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Delete it, but don't oversight it. There is no reason admins shouldn't be able to see it. Prodego ^talk 23:17, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I could be mistaken, but I believe that there is currently a technical issue on this. To delete a revision the "old-fashioned way" (i.e., before the recent change in functionality), an administrator has to delete the entire page, then select which revisions he or she wants to restore, and then restore them. This is time-consuming (which is part of the havoc that vandals might be seeking to cause), prevents the whole page for being edited for up to several minutes (ditto), and cannot be done for server reasons if the number of edits in the history of the page exceeds 5,000. It would be intolerable if (e.g.) every Grawp edit had to be handled in this manner. The newer version of selective deletion currently enabled for oversighters (but theoretically extendible to all admins if the community wanted to), as I understand it, similarly to the oversight function, allows the one-click deletion of a particular revision without imposing all of this burden on the deleting admin and everyone else. (N.B.: I yield on technical issues to anyone having superior understanding.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:34, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

"You can't argue that deleting something from public view [makes it] somehow no longer offensive." - er, yes I can? — Hex (❝?!❞) 23:50, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Why not remove?

In response to the criticism Prodego's comments have been receiving, I should express that I agree with them, for the most part. Openness is a key component to what we do. That includes documenting what happened when, by whom, and any comments and content that were added. And this also includes ensuring that page histories and logs are accurate and not easily manipulated.

If you don't think it's a big deal to be able to alter these things, consider for a moment who has had access to the ability over the past eight years. Initially only a group of about ten people (sysadmins) could make changes. Then oversight was implemented (in 2006). Instead of giving it to all admins (and making it a sort of one-way door), it was only given to a very small, select group of people (oversighters).

All of this leads me to believe that quite a few people in the past have viewed the ability to tamper with logs and page histories as a big deal.

Jimmy was once asked why we don't simply remove all obvious vandalism from the page history (as in delete forever). It's certainly possible to do, but the same arguments for why we shouldn't apply here. --MZMcBride (talk) 00:19, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Except we aren't deleting it forever. That implies its totally removed from the database like sysadmins deleting logs, or at least un-restorable like the old oversight system essentially was. If anything, this is less deleted than normal deletion as it still shows up in the page history and only the parts that need to be hidden are (or should be). A somewhat-frequent request from BLP subjects on OTRS, if they aren't asking us to delete their article entirely, is to remove the problematic revisions from the history. With the current system, we can't do that in most cases as there's intervening good edits between the libel/vandalism and the removal. Our choice then is to either revert the good edits as well and delete everything since before the libel or leave the libel in the page history. If we had a system where we could hide the content, but retain the author information, we could be much more accommodating for such requests. The case could also be made for using this on copyvios as well. Oversight was intended to deal with serious things that the huge admin group shouldn't be able/need to see, like non-public personal information; but that was years ago, there's certainly a demand for a single-revision deletion system that deletes at the admin-level. Mr.Z-man 01:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Sure, admins may soon get the technical ability to remove edits from page histories easily. And sure it may be easy to identify when it's been done. But I worry about page histories and logs suddenly looking like this. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

As I said in an above section, this tool only offers more fine-grained ways to things admins(except on pages with >5000 edits)/oversights have been able to do for a long time. This just makes it more transparent (especially for oversight) and allows us to do it without totally screwing up the page history or killing the servers (which are some of the reasons we can't/don't do it now). As far as ease goes, I think its one less click for oversights in some cases, and there's already user scripts to simulate the system for admins. Mr.Z-man 01:50, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I think you're missing my point. Technical ability doesn't mean that we should do it. Nobody wants page histories to suddenly look like that image, even though it no longer damages the servers or is no longer a pain in the ass to do. While admins may soon have the technical ability to remove all instances of vandalism from page histories, doing so would be a bad thing. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Page histories are never going to look like the example you gave. That's just extreme and this isn't an either/or scenario. I'm definitely against admin removal of arbitrary vandalism - much of it is pointless nonsense - however, egregious vandalism; RL names, threats of violence to editors, named people, or their families, intimidation, etc - I'm fine with all that being redacted. Right now, oversighters get to set whether admins can see/alter hidden revisions and so far, I've rarely disabled that bit. Once MediaWiki is fixed, admins will have access to most of the hidden revisions so much of this will at least be moot. From what I've seen so far (and indeed, what you've doubtlessly seen too :) ), there's not a whole lot of encyclopedia building going on in there. Personally, I'm failing to see the rationale for keeping them there for any reason and I'm sure not buying the 'integrity' nor 'openness' rationales. What I will agree on, however, is that those doing revision-visibility work should strive to redact as little as possible; just enough to get the job done and no more while leaving information accessible to admins wherever possible - Alison ^❤ 05:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

(unindent) Looking through the deletion logs, there are quite a few (probably about a dozen) mentions of real-life people connected with suicide. For example, "(a7, g10 - content was: '{{db-attack}}John Doe was born in City, State on Month Day Year. to Mother and Father Surname. He has attempted suicide X times and failed e...')" from a deletion log entry in 2006. Should that be removed two years later?

As for redaction in page histories, here's an example. It begins to look silly.... --MZMcBride (talk) 06:22, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

To the first point; yes, I'd remove them. Policy doesn't get watered down over time. As to the second, looking at the edit history like this and it look a whole lot less silly. Given the content of the edits, I'd rather they looked like they do that leave random defamation against a real person. That trumps 'silly' any day, no? - Alison ^❤ 06:46, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

While I usually avoid slippery slope arguments like the plague that they are, this seems like a perfect use of them. Quite simply, it's hard to say where to draw the line. "I'm gonna rape and mutilate your dead children." That's one thing. "Admin X's anus is stretched by Grawp's massive cock" is an entirely different matter. Both are offensive, but it gets tricky to know which should be removed. Would you say both should be removed? If so, what about a third example like, "Editor Z is a giant arsehole" (and we get this kind of thing occasionally from non-vandals)? Guidelines surrounding this seem very needed. --MZMcBride (talk) 08:05, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

The 'content was:' issue is no longer a problem but some log entries by admins have been problematic from time to time w.r.t. privacy/blp (for example, a 'humorous' deletion rationale for a blp) and how to handle them is tricky. As for egregious attack in edit summaries, I think it'll be more or less at the admin's discretion. Cenarium (talk) 23:55, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

There is definitely a need to hide certain edits from public view even though they don't meet WP:OS. If it's not implemented for admins, they'll continue to selectively delete revisions anyway, which is a real mess. More than once, the Main Page has got redlinks for those reasons, and recently the TFA has been deleted (a copy had been temporarily linked, but it was still a real mess). It'll encourage such revision deletions, but it the same time it'll be more transparent than the actual way this is done and more open to review and reversal. A guideline should be created of course (at Wikipedia:Revision deletion maybe, and leaving Wikipedia:Selective deletion as a how-to/historical page). I think the system is already quite transparent, as all readers can see the trace of the deleted version and all admins can access the deleted content, but a specific log should be used (entries would be completely lost in the deletion log), and it should say if it's oversighted or simply hidden/deleted. Cenarium (talk) 23:38, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree. I haven't seen a convincing argument here to not enable this feature for admins at all, only arguments (some of them very sensible) that its use must be controlled. The admin community are not lawless vigilantes, they wouldn't have passed RfA if they were. If we create a guideline or policy (either separately or an extension of WP:DPOL) then they will follow it. If they do not follow it, they will be sanctioned. It's as simple as that. These 'oversights' can be undone as easily as they can be done, just like everything else here, but with the same connotations: to fight over it would be wheel-warring. I think as long as there is understanding of the importance and sensitivity of this issue, and some firm and accepted policy on its use, we would be shooting ourselves in the foot not to use it. Happy‑melon 08:56, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed a rather disturbing trend in discussions of new features like this and FlaggedRevs, where there seems to be an opinion that users, even established users like admins, are incapable of having new features like this because they'll just abuse it like there's no tomorrow unless the software itself can prevent the abuse, despite what policies or guidelines we create for the feature. Mr.Z-man 18:14, 28 February 2009 (UTC)

And today, when a known sockpuppeteer had created some accounts with accusations against users, and attempted outing against one of our CheckUser/Oversight users, and it took 3 hours (and a second e-mail after 2 1/2 hours) before this information was hidden. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:18, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

So it appears that the software is ready to be turned on, thus we just have to generate a consensus for its implementation. A WP:CENT notice should be enough to draw attention here. Before that, maybe we could create a draft of guideline, and consider creating a bug for a special log. Cenarium (talk) 17:47, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I have opened T19806. Cenarium (talk) 17:52, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Brainstorm - what do we want to stop?

To develop a guideline for admin use of this feature, we first need to consider what situations the feature can be used, and abused. What practices do we need to proscribe? What behaviours are unacceptable? Once we have a better grasp of what we're trying to avoid, we can think how best to frame a guideline to cover those situations. So let's have a brainstorm: what should this guideline cover? Happy‑melon 19:14, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

I believe that the following situations should be a basic guide:

1. Severe personal attacks, including baseless accusations of illegal/immoral activity by a user/person (such as "Admin X is a pedophile")
2. A user should be allowed to request his/her own edits to be hidden, provided that it won't affect the transparency of a potential subsequent block, and isn't the basis for later edits on the page (such as when it was reverted before the next edit)
3. A revision in one's own namespace (excluding warnings or legitimate attempts to communicate with the user)
4. A copyvio added to an existing page
5. A revision of spam or vandalism which is discovered to be linked to from off-site

Additionally, if an admin sees something which should be oversighted, (s)he should admin-hide it while waiting for it to be removed further, in order to prevent damage from non-admins seeing it in the meantime (I had a case where this took 3 hours, a couple days ago).

Cases not to use it - merely a slightly offensive revision, or simple vandalism (such as "GOT HAGGER" type), shouldn't be hidden. Additionally, personal attacks against an admin shouldn't be hidden by that admin per WP:COI. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 07:02, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Should we be allowing a U1-style deletion of userspace edits? This is essentially oversight we're talking about here. I don't personally think that it should be available unless the edits meet the 'normal' conditions, whatever they might be. Happy‑melon 08:55, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

We're talking here about something which is visible to admins, and its presence is visible to other users. I think this makes it more like deletion than like oversight. If we limit the U1 type to the content, I think there's more transparency than deleting the entire page. Note that I believe the exceptions I stated cover the reasons for not deleting the user talk page. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 09:03, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

I think that the full oversight capacity (hiding from everyone) should only be used similar to the current oversight capacity. The revision blanking functionality (where the 'revision deleted' messages show up in the logs/history, could be used a bit more generously (i.e., personal attacks in edit summaries, edit summary links to malicious content, copyvio's of existing pages and similar). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 21:23, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

My list above was intended for hoding from non-admins; I think that full hiding has severe transparency issues, and should only be used for major problems as it is now. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 08:40, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

And so the prophecy is fulfilled

A block summary that an admin regrets. Or a block summary that gets labeled as a personal attack or worse. An oversighter decided to suppress the block log comment. But the question becomes: where do we draw the line? --MZMcBride (talk) 03:58, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Somewhere conservative. Deleting an aspect of a revision or a log action should only happen when it needs to be removed, not when it would just be kinda nice. Transparency is the key to much that we do on Wikipedia. In particular, it should be forbidden to hide your own edits except in very closely defined circumstances (e.g. if a CheckUser accidentally copies and pastes someone's IP address). This is a potentially dangerous tool and should be used cautiously and wisely. [[Sam Korn]] ^(smoddy) 08:42, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:RevisionDelete policy pre-draft

It's getting there, and I think it's time for a few more opinions (although it's not ready for a full blown community consultation just yet). ~fl 09:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Community input requested: Proposed policy on the administrative use of RevisionDelete

Message cross-posted to several relevant venues. Please only reply on the revision deletion talk page.

Several months ago, I drafted a policy for the use of the revision deletion function for administrators on the English Wikipedia. After consultation with a small group of users, I made modifications and changes (with the help of FT2) to better address the suggestions of these people. I have waited a while for the policy to become more stable before consulting the wider community, because it is in my belief that there is nothing worse than discussing a policy draft that still does not have the consensus of its drafters. The policy in its current state is quite similar to the Criteria for Speedy Deletion policy, in that it defines very specific circumstances in which the revision deletion functionality can be used. The policy is defined so strictly to help allay some of the fears of potential misuse of the functionality, with deviation from the set criteria resulting in whatever sanctions are decided upon by the community. I would invite all users to read the statement and FAQs that I have written at Wikipedia talk:Revision deletion#Community consultation regarding the functionality and then discuss on the talk page the merits of ratifying this policy, and subsequently enabling the feature for administrators on this project. Thanks for listening and happy editing! ~fl 05:45, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

How to move revisions?

For WP:Selective deletion#Method B: Step 4. Move the restored revisions to a new title ..., how do we move the restored revisions? I did not find a "Move" button or option to move selected revisions. Jay (talk) 08:55, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

Pinging Ilmari Karonen who wrote it. Jay (talk) 07:20, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Jay, you would use the normal page move tool for that. Remember that the previous two steps were 2. Delete the page and 3. Restore only the revisions you want deleted. After those steps, all revisions except the ones you want to move away will be (temporarily) deleted, so moving the page moves exactly the revisions you want gone. (Anyway, those instructions are only of historical interest now. These days you would normally use either WP:REVDEL or WP:HISTMERGE.) –Ilmari Karonen (talk) 12:36, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

@Ilmari Karonen: ok so that is what was confusing. I have now changed Move the restored revisions to Move the page. I think the steps are still relevant. How can we use WP:REVDEL or WP:HISTMERGE to move selected revisions to a new page? Jay 💬 15:09, 22 May 2023 (UTC)