From: Matthew Woodcraft
Toby Bartels wrote:
>Another problem is our reliance on ''page'' deletion as a way of
>deleting ''specific revisions'' that infringe copyright. Since this
is
only effective
when the infringement is a page creation, it's not a
permanently workable method. That software may change too.
It isn't really a workable method at all. If there's something we're
not
allowed to distribute, we're not allowed to
distribute it to anyone.
Deleted pages are still available to sysops, and I think also in the
backup dumps.
Actually, the law ends up being forgiving for internet hosts who have
copies of copyrighted material as long as it's clear that they're not
intending to publish; for example, even though deleted pages are
available to sysops and in the backup dumps, as they're well hidden
they're not a threat to the legitimate publisher/copyright owner.
Obviously, we need to make a good faith effort to respect copyright, but
we don't need to suffer from copyright paranoia. This is not to say that
the current system of dealing with copyrighted, unlicensed material on
Wikipedia isn't broken. But I don't believe that the only legally sound
solutions require total guaranteed erasure of any copyrighted text.
Think of Google and its cached copies of websites.
>Ideally, all of these features would be available
to everybody.
>Deletion was made an admin-only process because undeletion was
>impossible (check old talk history on deletion policies). Now it
might
be expanded.
Yes, I think it's high time for this. Then discussion about an article
can go on its talk page, and we can get rid of the flamewar-magnet
'Votes for Deletion'.
You can add my rah rah here. With the stub-marking feature, deletion of
entry histories just to get back the ? (or red) link is unnecessary.