[WikiEN-l] Display reason for article deletion to anons? (was: anons and new articles)

Mon Aug 9 09:40:19 UTC 2004

This is an excellent idea IMO. A friend of mine had one of his articles 
deleted and he didn't know what for. He just thought it was a technical 
problem and never came back.

Christiaan

On 8 Aug 2004, at 2:15 pm, Timwi wrote:

> One idea I was toying with in my mind recently is this. When sysops 
> delete an article, the article goes back to saying "Wikipedia does not 
> have an article with this title yet." Maybe we should actually let 
> everyone (including anonymous users) know that there used to be an 
> article, and (this is the important part) show the reason for its 
> deletion.
>
> If a newbie goes back to see what happened to their article, and they 
> see it gone, they are more likely to just put it back in (it looks to 
> them more like a glitch in the system or an accident than a deliberate 
> deleting). If it actually said "This article was deleted for the 
> following reason: vandalism", they are more likely to ackowledge that 
> putting their article back in is going to have the same effect again.