On 22/06/06, Mark Wagner <carnildo(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 6/22/06, Andrew Gray <shimgray(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
I sound like I'm attacking a strawman here,
but I honestly
don't think I've seen a good reason why people think this tool is
dangerous. Please, someone, give me a scenario where this could be
used badly, where the ability to expunge deleted revisions is somehow
harmful in a way that a public log would prevent...
Person A vandalizes a biographical article, replacing believable
claims to notability with unbelievable ones. Person B, not realizing
that the article was vandalized, lists it for deletion. Person C
reverts the vandalism. Person A's edit is vanished.
At this point, to anyone looking through the article history, it
appears that person B is attacking the subject of the article, trying
to get that article deleted.
Does anyone do history deletions this way? I don't. You don't delete
the revision where the material was *added*, you delete *the revisions
containing the material* (which can be a real bastard if it wasn't
caught for ages)
This way does leave minor attribution problems, but nothing a note or
three can't cure, and it's certainly better than the alternative.
Incidentally, because of the odd way we show deleted revisions, the
same problem would apply for non-admins (or admins who don't look very
hard) even without bringing in oversight...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk