[WikiEN-l] More Seigenthaler fallout

Tue Dec 13 16:32:23 UTC 2005

On 12/13/05, Jimmy Wales <jwales at wikia.com> wrote:
> Matt Brown wrote:
> > My belief is that in general we should not remove things from page
> > history so easily.
>
> My belief is that in general we should be aggressive about removing
> vandalism from the page history.  If there was an automated way to go
> through on a regular basis and remove reverted versions from the
> history, I would strongly support that we do so.
>
> The only sensible counter-argument I know of in this area is a concern
> for future historians or contemporary researchers who would like to
> study the phenomenon of vandalism.  For this, it seems more than enough
> to make such revisions available in some limited-access way.  There's
> just no reason to keep this junk cluttering up the publicly-viewable
> article history.
>
> --Jimbo

I agree with the sentiment, but I haven't heard a proposal which would
make it practical.  By practical I mean, among other things, that it
wouldn't be abused and that it would be easy to dispel accusations of
abuse.  I believe that if this were made easy it would inevitably lead
to admins deleting some cases of criticism of Wikipedia, for instance.
 Limiting the use to high profile cases, when an agent of the
foundation steps in, is much safer.

Anthony