User:Tisane/Allow viewing of deleted articles

The rule prohibiting viewing of deleted articles by non-administrators harms the integrity of the deletion review process. It forces non-admins to rely on possibly outdated Google caches. For that reason, I refuse to endorse any deletions at WP:DRV unless/until I get admin rights, because I feel that I'm not getting the whole picture.

People say that if we allowed people to view deleted articles, it would defeat the whole point of deleting them (the point of deleting them being to limit Wikipedia's content to that which passes muster with our policy and guidelines). Well, in that case, why do we keep a viewable history of all kinds of content that has to be excluded under guidelines? E.g., someone can insert a spammy section into a major article, and it will be rolled back, but the content remains in the history, with a permalink associated with it that allows anyone to link to that version from an external website if they want. Personal attacks against other users get the same treatment; we may revert them, but they remain in the history.

One might rebut that point by saying, When people view old versions of Wikipedia pages, a warning notifies them that it is out-of-date content, so it's not really damaging the integrity of the project. Well, in that case, why don't we allow viewing of deleted pages too (with the exception of copyvios and other illegal stuff), accompanied by a warning that the deleted content being viewed is for archive purposes only and is not part of the latest version of Wikipedia?

But, if it's too much to ask that everyone be allowed to view deleted articles, a compromise is also possible. We could limit it to logged-in users, who are a small percentage of the overall Wikipedia readership. We already allow viewing of those pages by one set of users - i.e., administrators. Why not expand it to a larger group? It's a difference of degree, not of kind.