Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Clarification of RD3

Actual proposal?
I'd like to see what actual new wording would be proposed as well. For reference here is the current wording:"Purely disruptive material that is of little or no relevance or merit to the project. This includes allegations, grossly inappropriate threats or attacks, browser-crashing or malicious HTML, shock pages, phishing pages, known virus proliferating pages, and links to web pages that disparage or threaten some person or entity and serve no other valid purpose, but not mere spam links." The way I read that it would already not cover it's use in the two cases cited, unless there is some compelling reason not obvious at first that qualify those comments as "grossly inappropriate" rather than what they appear to be, which is just plain old stupid childish vandalism. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:12, 19 January 2011 (UTC)


 * What you say makes sense, but why not say this in the View from Beeblebrox section? - Pointillist (talk) 22:17, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Normally at an RFC that is structured like this you add a view and users choose to endorse it or not. This seemed more like something that would benefit from threaded discussion as is normal on a talk page. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:19, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * What Beeblebrox said. It's easier to conduct discussions here on the talk pages while leaving the RFC page itself free of any other noise. –MuZemike 22:25, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Fair enough. It seems to me that disruptive edit summaries are such a special case that they should probably have their own criterion. Should that be expressed in a discrete "View from..." section? - Pointillist (talk) 22:55, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Question for MuZemike


I'm really trying to understand this, but I just can't see how adding "OPR:Operation Pain Relief" in an edit summary accompanying an edit that did nothing but add those same words to an article on a museum warrants RevDel. To my eye it just looks like random nonsense such as vandals have always added to articles. Is there some broader context that is not immediately obvious? Beeblebrox (talk) 22:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have provided an image of the edits that I have RevDeleted, if that helps everyone understand better what exactly is going on and more precisely what type of vandalism is occurring. –MuZemike 07:33, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Thanks for that, it does indeed shed some light. It appears you were dealing with an aggressive, persistent vandal, apparently across multiple articles. I don't know if RevDel is mandated in such a case but I could certainly see it as a reasonable option and a way to exercise an WP:RBI philosophy. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:17, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Potential license violations when hiding usernames
WP:Copyrights is policy and should be taken seriously. Per WP:Revision deletion, it is possible to violate Wikipedia's licensing requirements when hiding usernames:
 * 1) Hide username and
 * 2) Keep copyrightable edit content, without reverting and redacting it.

None of the examples given meet either of these requirements. Flatscan (talk) 05:19, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Indeed they don't. Actually I'm not sure how they relate to what you are saying at all. No usernames were hidden in these examples, only the edit text and the summaries Unless I am missing your point entirely it seems like the exact opposite of what you are describing. Beeblebrox (talk) 05:27, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My point, which I should have stated, is that the references to licensing by Shirik and MuZemike are not relevant in this context. Flatscan (talk) 05:25, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My comment was that hiding usernames can result in copyright issues. Please show me where I stated that those examples violated copyright. You will find that I never did. In fact, I explicitly said the admins were well within their right to do this. -- Sh i r ik ( Questions or Comments? ) 19:04, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think we agree that admins should be aware of potential problems. My opinion is that actual problems are too rare – from the comments below, username hiding alone is fairly uncommon – to justify discussing them in the main RfC. Flatscan (talk) 05:25, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Usernames are only redacted when they're grossly offensive and that's usually done by Oversight because they can do it better and quicker (correct me if I'm wrong, Beeblebrox, since you're an oversighter) or to hide an exposed IP when someone gets logged out mid-edit. I'm the ninth most prolific user of RevDel and I've only hidden a username once or twice and an exposed IP maybe half a dozen times. I don't think it's something that comes up very often. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   05:46, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * The accidental exposing of one's ip is something that comes up at oversight fairly regularly. In my time as an oversighter I don't recall ever suppressing a username myself but it does come up every once in a while. It would have to be really nasty to warrant suppression. It's not always quicker, even now there are occasions where nobody seems to be monitoring the queue for an hour or two, but it is certainly more thorough. Beeblebrox (talk) 10:23, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Many of the abusive usernames are dealt with globally by stewards, I think. They have a one-click lock+hide+locally-suppress-everywhere button. Hence this incident. T. Canens (talk) 22:36, 20 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Ouch. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:42, 20 January 2011 (UTC)

Question for Jclemens
While I do agree to an extent, there are still situations that come up in which suppressing the username itself may be necessary to protect the encyclopedia. What about attack usernames, such as User:Jimbo Wales the retard, User:ObamaIsMuslim (which I username-blocked earlier), or something like that? I mean, this is what I am more specifically referring to with regards to our content licenses not being suicide pacts. We still need to exercise some common sense as far as what we should be suppressing.

An alternative to this could be to give bureaucrats more latitude in renaming disruptive usernames out of the way, but renaming kind of does the same thing as suppressing in a way. Moreover, with the 10 or so active bureaucrats versus the 800 or so active sysops, it's certainly easier and more convenient to do the former. –MuZemike 17:01, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My opinion about the "copyright issues" on vandalism is that it is about as defensible as a computer virus author suing an antivirus company which disassembled and reverse-engineered his virus for copyright infringement. Vandalism is technically illegal since it is website defacement. (I do not support suing 12-year-olds, FYI.) Reaper Eternal (talk) 17:09, 25 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I would like to see an example of an edit that 1) contains copyrightable expression and 2) must not be reverted and redacted. The removal of a BLP violation – a revert would restore the violation – may qualify, but I'm not sure that a removal of text constitutes copyrightable expression. Flatscan (talk) 05:26, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Response to Timotheus Canens
Actually, I consider this to be a pretty serious matter, and I think I was clear why I feel that way. If the community feels that there really is no reason not to use it in just run-of-the-mill vandalism cases, then we need to make that clear. Really, I feel that CFRD was written a long time ago and, when revision deletion came out, nobody really discussed how appropriate it was from an administrator perspective. If the community feels that it is exactly as clear as it should be, then so be it. But we need to find exactly where the consensus lies. That is what this RFC is all about. -- Sh i r ik ( Questions or Comments? ) 19:11, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Question
Why are every one of Access Denied's socks getting RevDel'd? What is he posting that needs revision deletion? (There is a RevDel of one of his socks on this page.) He probably should just be rollbacked and ignored. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:06, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I believe what is becoming increasingly clear here is that RevDel is being used as a mechanism of WP:DENY and/or WP:RBI. If a vandal only account finds that not only are they reverted but they can't even see their vandalism in the edit history it may discourage them from coming back. Do you really care what such a prolific and disruptive sockpuppeteer had to say about this issue? Personally I don't. WP:LTA head cases do what they do because they want attention, lets not give it to them. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:28, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have no interest in what he is posting. I was only wondering why his edits needed revision deletion. If it is being used as a method of RBI, then I am fine with that. Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:47, 21 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Well his edit to this page was oversighted. That should tell you all you need to know. HJ Mitchell  &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   04:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Move for closure
I can't see where this RfC is headed. With the greatest respect to Shirik, it seems to have been started based on a few edits where circumstances that couldn't have been known to those who were there at the time justified the sue of RevDel. The rest of this is largely arguing with stawmen about how RevDel is evil because it somehow makes admins less accountable than regular deletion and people complaining about a perceived problem without understanding the context. Admins need to be trusted to exercise their discretion to remove material that is harmful to the project. I've yet to see any evidence of anything helpful being RevDel'd. I am the eighth most prolific user of RevDel (466 uses) and I have never removed anything that could possibly have had any value whatsoever and the vast majority of those uses have been to remove material that is really quite disgusting under RD2 and RD3. HJ Mitchell &#124;  Penny for your thoughts?   04:24, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Closing it before we find out where it's headed seems rather to defeat the purpose of an RFC. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Being cynical - "I have never removed anything that could possibly have had any value whatsoever" well, you would say that wouldn't you. More seriously, without anyone checking your deletions how can you be confident in that?  If, in part, your "strawman" comment was aimed at my view then I think you're misunderstanding my view.  I agree we need to trust admins to implement policy and consensus but at the moment we're at the stage were we still need to develop the consensus fully.  As I explain community consensus is never going to be nicely summed up in a few short guidelines and even if it is without seeing what's actually happening how does the community know we worded them correctly.  I trust admins to implement community consensus but the point here is that it shouldn't just be admins having input to this consensus.  I accept this is a slightly different issue to the RfC but the issues it raised means I can't comment on this RfC.  Yes these particular examples have been accepted but how do we know there aren't other problematic ones - I'm saying this not because I don't trust admins to exercise their discretion but because admins need to know what community consensus is before they can exercise discretion and at the moment I don't think they can fully know that consensus. Dpmuk (talk) 19:28, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * There is a strong consensus that vandalism is bad and we don't want it. Therefore any edit that removes vandalism does have consensus support. We don't review every single speedy deletion either, and this process is actually more transparent. I don't see any pressing reason not to let the RFC run a bit longer, but as I said earlier there has been no evidence presented that this is a widespread, ongoing problem that merits a change in policy. We can't actually define something like this. I don't mean we shouldn't I mean the endlessly variable types of vandalism make it impractical, bordering on impossible, to even try. The fact that most RevDels are not reviewed is more or less a straw man as it implies if we were reviewing them then we would see the problem. The fact is that most uses of RevDel are the removal of vandalism and nonsense, same as most uses of speedy deletion, and do not need to be reviewed because they are not controversial. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:21, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * But there is the occasional review of speedy and my impression is that has helped inform people as to what community consensus is, including helping clarify the guidelines. Dpmuk (talk) 21:33, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I guess my question is this: if actual helpful, non-vandal edits are being RevDeleted, where are the angry users who are the victims of it? If someone feels their article was wrongly deleted they show up either at the deleting admins talk page or ANI. If you or I found our contribs being "disappeared" we would do the same. Vandals, on the other hand, know they were vandalizing and only complain about reverted or having their attack page deleted if they have decided to move on from vandalizing to straight up trolling. So, if "good" contribs were being revdeled on a regular basis, I think we would be hearing more from the victims of such mistreatment. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * My counter argument would be that if they're new users we either a) scare them off or b) they just accept it. Obviously a) is a very bad outcome.  I'd also say that, as things stand, the guidelines don't give admins carte blanche to RevDel any vandalism so admins may not be getting it right but as the user's are blocked they can't complain.  I'm starting to think the easiest answer may be just to allow RevDel for any obvious vandalism. Dpmuk (talk) 22:36, 23 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Responding to the original post: Admins are unaccountable for most practical intents and purposes, unless they're extremely stupid, and no, I don't see why we need to trust admins with this at all. They're elected to enforce the community's rules, not to make up new rules as they go along (which is what's happening with this feature). I do see our admin corps as a body of people who generally try to act in the right way, but the fact is that they include substantial numbers of children and some self-confessed drug users. I'm afraid that the more time I spend on Wikipedia, the more I come to realise that admins need support, supervision, mentoring and monitoring, and they don't have any of those things. Until there is a structure for providing them, the poor man's alternative is to hedge around the use of the tools with restrictions designed to ensure that wherever possible, there's transparency.— S Marshall  T/C 00:34, 26 January 2011 (UTC)