User talk:Flatscan/RfC draft: RD1 guidance

Specific cases

 * 1) Using RD1 on interleaved, non-WP:C-violating contributions Flatscan (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * WMF attorney feedback received, Flatscan (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * 1) G12 versus stubbing/rewriting, RD1 Flatscan (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Discussion
Coming here having seen your post at Moonriddengirl's talk page. I can understand why you've kept it so simple but I do think it could do with a bit on what currently happens and why. I know there's a section on what the guidance is but things are obviously curently happening ouside that guidance. There is also very little background for example on the legal issues and why RD1 exsists in the first place. At the moment I think the RfC would get very little input from those not involved with copyright as I don't think the issue is explained enough for them for them to understand it and feel able to comment. Dpmuk (talk) 17:04, 15 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your input. I will review RD1's history. A See also section might do for an absolute minimum of background. I'm waffling on including subsections for specific scenarios: there are a few cases that I have in mind, but I would like to avoid scrutinizing individual admins. Flatscan (talk) 05:37, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The second point you make is a difficult one. As RevDels can't be seen by non-admins I think there's a general oversight problem of them full stop but I've had that discussion before and got no where.  That said admin actions are meant to be open for review so I don't think there should be a concern about posting their actions.  However trying to do it in such a way that the RfC doesn't get sidetracked into individual admin actions would be difficult.  Further complicating the matter of course is that you can hardly post the copyright text in any examples.  Previous discussions have suggested coming up with examples using PD text but if that would mean then having to ask different admins what they'd do in the example situations.  As I can't review the logs I can't really get a view for what may be a sensible way of explaining current practice, but I'm happy to give a non-admin glance over any attempt that is made. Dpmuk (talk) 21:36, 16 December 2011 (UTC)
 * My concerns are mostly with what I consider to be questionable declines of G12/RD1 requests. I'm simply ignorant of inappropriate revision deletion. I started a list of cases above. Flatscan (talk) 06:09, 23 December 2011 (UTC)
 * Firstly I want to point out that my concern about lack of oversight of RevDel is more due to non-admins not really having a clear idea of what's actually happening. The guidelines leave a lot up to admin discretion, which is a good thing as guidelines can't cover every situation, but the extra opaqueness of RevDels (where most users probably don't even notice them) means that non-admins can't really get a feel for what's going on and whether they're happy with that.  I'm happy with policy / guidelines (even unwritten ones) being made by what's happening on the ground, I'm not happy with admins (rather than experienced users) making policy / guidelines by what admins do on the ground without any review of non-admins.  As it happens my concern here is probably less about RD1 as I think it's quite reasonable (but nor practical) to RevDel every copyright infringing revision, although the interleaved case is much more interesting.  Just wanted to point that out in case you got the wrong end of what I said, which with hindsight, is quite possible.
 * On the subject of questionable declines, firstly I'm not even sure how you could go about finding such cases. Second I think RevDel is newer enough that there is nothing wrong with a questionable decline.  When a new feature like this is introduced I'd much rather people erred on the side of the status quo and, in this instance, not delete something that should have been rather than people deleting something that should not have been.  Of course that view may not be held by others.  As for questionable declines I do a lot of copyvio work and G12 tag a lot of articles and have yet to have a "questionable" decline but then again maybe my view of G12 is just very inline with most admins.
 * With respect to the second case above, my take on it is if there is copyright free text in the history (presumably only a stub as otherwise we wouldn't be in this case) then RD1 should be used. RD1ing everything before the current version makes no sense in my opinion.  If there is a lot of history after the copyright insertion then deleting with selective restoration may make more sense so we don't end up with a very heavily redacted log which is no use to anyone.  In short I'm not certain this needs an RfC.
 * The interleaved case is the one I think there needs to have a proper discussion about and I'm not sure what the answer is. Knowing the history of an article can be useful for many reasons and although we may be OK from a legal point of view with just RevDeling them I'm less sure that's the most useful approach.  It's a shame that RevDel only leaves deletion comments in the deletion log which are very hard to link up with the actual deletions in the edit log (which I think is worst design feature of the way RevDel has been implemented) as, as far as I'm aware, there isn't even a way to leave a comment along the lines of "see talk page for explanation" in the edit log.  If there was I'd suggest the way to go about the interleaved case is for the deleting admin to leave a comment on the talk page (or a sub page if necessary) explaining who made the major edits still left in the article during the RevDels but as that's not very obvious I'm sititng on the fence for now.  Realised half way through writing that that a lot of what I wrote should a actually be in the RfC rather than a meta-discussion about what the RfC should include.  That said I think my own uncertainty nicely shows why this one should be included in any RfC.
 * Sorry for the rambly nature of that. Dpmuk (talk) 00:35, 24 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I apologize for leaving you hanging. After reading about your recent G12 decline/untag, I had a thought about the ultimate goal of this RfC: filling out a unified flowchart or checklist for the CP process. The RfC question is basic because I think that we need to determine where RD1 is accepted before inserting it into the instructions. Flatscan (talk) 05:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)