On Dec 4, 2004, at 5:59 AM, Frank v Waveren wrote:
Those of you on enwiki may have noticed my recent
attempts to
democraticise page deletion. I feel the current deletion system on
unwiki is not ideal.
Please see existing discussion on this topic:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ShaneKing/vfd_proposal
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deletion_management_redesign
This seems like an obvious way of implementing things,
however when
mediawiki was designed it wasn't done like that, which leads me to
ask: Are there technical reasons why it wasn't? Deleted pages are
already kept in the database, so it wouldn't cost more space.
The chief reason to be deleting something (as opposed to redirecting it
to a more appropriate article or replacing it with a better one) is
that it includes copyrighted material that we don't have permission to
distribute. This necessitates not being able to have _just anybody_
come along and view or undelete it.
A system that keeps deleted pages invisible but also makes it easy to
delete and undelete is a little trickier to do than a simple
administrative action, and no one's got round to it yet.
-- brion vibber (brion @
pobox.com)