[Wikipedia-l] Two kinds of deletion

Mon Oct 25 22:43:57 UTC 2004

(Prompted by the ongoing discussion on wikien about who can see deleted content)

I think it makes sense to distinguish between deletion of the
"copyvio/takedown notice/vandalism" form, from deletion because a
topic is deemed 'unencyclopedic' or 'non-notable'.  Let us call these,
for the sake of argument, "hard deletion" and "soft deletion".

I also think it makes sense for every logged-in user (hence not
spiders or searchbots) to be able to see soft-deleted content, even a
list of soft-deleted articles.  Admins can still be the only ones who
can delete articles (soft or hard), and the only ones who can undelete
articles.  Other users can copy-and-paste deleted text into a new
article, just as they could repaste deleted text from their PCs into a
new article with the old name.  But in general they won't, since
deletion is a clear community decision, and repeatedly recreating
deleted articles is easily-recognizable vandalism.

-- 
+sj+