Wikipedia talk:Viewing deleted content

QUESTION:How can I get access to view deleted content? I have no interest in undeleting content, but want to run analysis on this content.
details: I am interested in doing wiki analysis on a side project I am working on, but when articles are deleted only Admins have the right to view deleted material. I'm not interested in making edits or undeleting content but looking at specific patterns in the deleted content itself. Any help? Sic Semper Tyrannis82 (talk) 20:30, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * This talk page is not widely watched and thus this is probably not the best place to place your query. That said, I do not think that you would be granted 'view-deleted' access on this basis alone (I could be wrong). Depending on how much data you need; you might consider looking at content that is pending deletion (and then eventually deleted). You could refer to Researching Wikipedia; Academic studies of Wikipedia and meta:Research:Index for more. – xeno talk 20:49, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Searching for a Page
Where is Sid Sriram page? Abishekrohan (talk) 06:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Policy suggestion
Only pages deleted due to legal issues, spam, vandalism, nonsense, etc. should be hidden. Pages which are deleted because an administrator didn't feel they were good enough, the content was not important enough, etc. should be viewable, at least by registered editors. How can there be any accountability if things just disappear? How can a discussion on the deletion continue on the talk pages of deleted articles if they are invisible? How can they be improved if they are gone? How can contributors access their hard work or share it or move it? What if the public is searching for obscure information that Wikipedia has rejected as trivial? Currently, information provided by editors who try to fill these gaps just goes into the trash and is vaporized. Seems like a waste.Ghostofnemo (talk) 08:22, 2 April 2016 (UTC)


 * I'd limit it to pages hidden due to legal/harm issues, otherwise concur. BorkBorkGoesTheCode (talk) 00:51, 27 December 2016 (UTC)
 * Yeah - the explanation given only explains why legally problematic articles are unviewable, and considering that legality is almost never the reason why articles are deleted, it seems dishonest to suggest this is a reason why deleted content can never be viewed again. If nothing else, viewing deleted articles would help inform editors of the sort of content that doesn't belong on wikipedia. 84.9.207.76 (talk) 16:59, 8 July 2017 (UTC)


 * Agree with all the above. Case in point, the page dealing with Clearstream, the world's largest bank-for-banks, and a long controversial history of corruption, as has its parent company, Deutsche Bourse. Yet single biggest source for deletions is from an IP provided by ... Deutsche Bourse. If Wikipedia allows such glaring conflicts-of-interest among editors, it has suffered 'corporate capture' and has failed it's primary duty towards encyclopediac knowledge. Avaiki (talk) 05:01, 4 June 2018 (UTC)