[WikiEN-l] Re: WikiEN-l viewing deleted pages

Sat Oct 11 12:31:10 UTC 2003

>I think the best solution would be to allow regular
>logged-in users to view deleted pages. Of course only
>admins should be able to delete and undelete, but I
>don't really see any good reason why the contents of 
>deleted pages should be not viewable by regular
users. >Of course, deleted pages should stay invisible
to >anons, so e.g. spiders don't index deleted stuff.

>Cheers!

>- Nohat (David Friedland)

>P.S.  If there is a very good reason regular users
>aren't allowed to view deleted pages, I'd like to
know >what it is. There may be one; I just can't think
of >any.

I strongly advocated that position of you some months
ago (you may find most of it in the ml archives, and
in
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deletion_management_redesign

At that time, there was no [[pages for undeletion]]
(so no official process for undeletion), and
undeletion was very painful to do, so very few people
took the time to do it.

I supported your view quite vehemently, but Erik
opposed the option for reasons I could not understand
then, though he was claiming the reasons had been
extensively discussed.

Since what you suggest is requesting work from a
developper, and since one of the developper strongly
oppose it, there is very little chance it is ever
done.

Erik explained to me off-line why he considered he was
right, so I do not feel free to report his arguments,
and I think he will be certainly  much more fluent to
explain his position (if he does not think it has been
discussed ad-nauseam :-)).

It should be admitted once and for all that regular
users are quite low in the hierarchy. An alternate
solution (not so good, but better than what it was
before) has been the [[pages for undeletion]] setting
and the great improvment brought to the previously
horrible undeletion process.

But all in all, the only real option left is to ask to
be a sysop (that was why I finally gave up and
accepted being one, after I realised Erik would never
accept this
see-a-deleted-article-even-if-not-sysop-even-though-part-of-the-community

Admitedly, some of Erik arguments were good (yes), but
this was not a community decision, just a good push
over, with good classical arguments used to kill a
discussion, such as "this was already discussed ad
nauseam" or distraction with "we can't let people see
copyvio".

With the latter argument, I will indicate that my
proposition then, was :

what about adding an additional case when proceeding
to a deletion, to check in case the deletion was done
because of a copyvio. In that case, the deleted
article is stamped as *cp* in the database. After say
two months in the db, a marked *cp* deleted article
will be automatically and permanently deleted from the
database.
This would reduce dramatically the above mentionned
risk of letting loggued in user chance to see
something they should not, and reduce the risk of
Wikipedia being "attacked" for having cp stuff in its
database.

Well, though I thought Erik arguments were good, I
also thought this proposition of mine was quite
decent...but...well, I got no feedback, and since I am
no developper, it is out of question it will ever be
done.

So, I can only recommand that you climb a level in the
hierarchy, because unfortunately, as long as a sysop
is not willing to undelete a page to suit your
curiosity...you are out :-)

Incidentally, if you need such an undeletion, you are
welcome to ask me. I sometimes drop by and do so even
if I do not let comments :-)

Because every user should have a right to see a
deleted page to give his opinion on it.

Otherwise, it is just admitting only sysops can give
an enlightened opinion on articles.

And yes, so-called black sheeps have the right to see
deleted articles as much as so-called white sheeps
ihmo. 

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