Recently, r22642 has added the list of deletion log entries below
noarticletext.
It was bug 7691, and while i understand the reasons for adding it, it
injects ugliness into the wiki's 404.
Deletion logs are not politically correct, there are lots of "content
was: <offensive text>", which are perfectly valid deletion reasons. But
not appropiate for showing to the casual browser.
When someone searchs about Foo, we may be giving
<s>insults</s>misleading information about it, as (while saying it was
deleted) we put "vandal #325 opinion about Foo"
It wouldn't surprise me that some blogger/journalist discovers that
"Wikipedia says X" on a log entry. We already had problems with
viewdeleted history.
If the user doesn't specify an ''editor interest'', page browsing
shouldn't give information about wiki document managing.
The log below newarticle text should be enough (though will show when
arriving via red links... :s)
If we still want to alert the user of deleted pages, i'd either make it
a new message: "Warning: A page with this name was deleted [N times]"
with the corresponding link to Special:log, or add it as a parameter to
noarticletext for parserfunctioning it.
Opinions?