The overriding agreement appears that admin discretion still has strong support in these cases. But it was also generally agreed that most vandalism was out of scope for RevDel.
One point that attained some support was the idea that it might be useful to note that use of RevDel should be balanced against rollback/revert, indeed there seemed little resistance to proposing added guidance for the admins looking to use RD3 so long as it did not become impractical or overly strict.
In addition to considerations directly relating to the question of the RFC there were two points that I think were important, and may require further discussion/development:
In summary the consensus seems to be that the wording of RD3 is not so broad as to currently be causing a widespread problem, but that specific proposals to clarify it, so long as not overly prescriptive, will not be rejected out of hand. -- Errant ( chat!) 15:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Criterion RD3 presently allows for deletion of "purely disruptive material". It is alleged that such a description is vague and leaves too much interpretation open to administrators. It is proposed that this criterion be either clarified or removed to more adequately meet the needs of the criteria for redaction. The purpose of this RFC is to determine whether such clarification is necessary and to evaluate possible changes to the policy to meet those demands. Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 20:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
The criterion RD3 is currently heavily overused. Examples of misuse include such edits as this and this (sorry, non-administrators cannot view these links presently). Such edits certainly qualify as "purely disruptive", but so does any vandalism. Revision deletion has significant GFDL-related consequences as well as going against the concepts of public review and an open encyclopedia. Additionally, revision deletion can sometimes tend to violate WP:DENY. These deletions are not limited to particular administrators; many are making these deletions because of the lack of guidance offered by RD3. Since it is (as far as I know) fairly agreed-upon that not all vandalism should be deleted, I propose that RD3 be clarified to be more strict on what qualifies as "purely disruptive".
I'm willing to consider the possibility that there is a systemic problem of this criterion being overused, but the evidence provided so far is two diffs from within the past few days. That does little to convince that this is a widespread, ongoing problem. Those two uses of RevDel do seem inappropriate and overzealous, but two incidents is hardly a demonstration that there is a pattern. If you want to prove a change is needed a bit more research seems in order.
I think a lot of what we are seeing here is that some non-admin users are upset because they can't see what has been removed and they would like to judge for themselves. Any deletion has the same issue, especially speedy deletions. We trust admins to delete entire pages without discussion if they are purely vandalism, this is no different. Vandalism is by its very definition "purely disruptive." If we trust admins to recognize what is and is not vandalism then there is no problem with it being used this way. Yes, in many cases it could be argued that "a revert would suffice" but that doesn't mean that an admin taking the extra step and just deleting it is an abuse of the tool. Mandating that vandalism be kept in the page history purely in the interest of transparency obviously does not improve the encyclopedia, quite the opposite. The old saw "policies are descriptive not proscriptive" seems apt. If this has emerged as a practical application of RevDel I say let it be used this way, and modify policy if needed to allow for it rather than limit it.
While I have yet to see evidence that this facility is being misused, I propose that we clarify the guideline by saying "Do not use RevDel if a revert will suffice."
(Note: I am basically defending my recent admin actions here) We have vandals right now are using edit summaries to cause disruption on Wikipedia. Slakr provided sufficient examples as to what how they are precisely accomplishing their goals. One can easily revert patently disruptive edits, but without Revision Deletion, we have no way to do this with patently disruptive edit summaries. Defending and protecting Wikipedia and its readers and editors should not be considered "overzeal" and is not inappropriate.
Leaving such edit summaries visible in the edit history discourages users and paints for potential newcomers the wrong picture of Wikipedia, as they would see it as an intimidating place in which trolls and blatant POV-pushers have free reign to do what they please. We cannot be rewarding such persistent vandals by disallowing sysops to rightly take away their disruption and recognition. Moreover, the GFDL and CC-BY-SA are not suicide pacts, and we should not be allowing them to hide behind our content licenses to make edits that are blatantly contrary to Wikipedia's (and the Wikimedia Foundation's) core beliefs and principles. – MuZemike 21:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to remind people that when it comes to edit summaries, a revert won't solve the problem of disruption, so I feel the bar for RD3ing edit summaries needs to be significantly lower than for revision text. For example, I once revdeled a series of twenty edit summaries in a row that took up three rows each as "purely disruptive". After discussion, I reverted the deletion, but I still feel that the effect they have of flooding the contribution history was disruptive enough for RD3.
The only essential advantages of revision delete is the ability to delete a particular edit from the contents of a very highly-edited article, and to hide user names, or edit summaries, while keeping the contents of the edit. . When any of these three is necessary, there's no alternative for an ordinary admin, so it's a very good thing that we have it. An advantage that is not essential, but certainly convenient, is to delete a particular version quicker than by delete and restore. I really do not see the point otherwise of using it for ordinary vandalism, because a delete and partial restore does as well and hides it from exactly the same people and no more. It's not as if this gives an added measure of hiding, and the exact same people can do either route Its use just because the vandalism is bad is not a sufficient reason. DGG ( talk ) 22:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Although there may well be a problem with RD3 the bigger problem here is the lack of "accountability" (used very losely) when it comes to RevDel. For normal (page) deletions there are well defined procedures for appealing a deletion and this helps clarify the deletion process. Guidelines are never going to fully describe all situations and so something like DRV helps clarify the community consensus. Additionally as deletion of a page is a big and obvious step it is more likely to be appealed in the first place because someone notices it. On the other hand RevDel has no formal review procedures at all and appeals are less likely to be forthcoming as RevDels are not obvious (especially as the deletion log makes no reference to what revision the RevDel applies) and the editor in question is likely to be blocked anyway. This lack of review means it's impossible for non-admins to know whether we have a problem with RD3 as only admins can review the deletions (and even that seems to be occurring rarely at best). It's an established wikipedia idea that admins are not special and that community consensus means the whole community, not just admins, should have had the chance to comment which currently non-admins have no way of doing so. The community can never successfully never draw the line on when RevDel is acceptable using simple guidelines as they are open to interpretation - we need specific examples on which to comment. Ideas have been raised about having an examples page (see here) but nothing has come of it. Until we establish a way of accurately gauging community consensus, using actual deletions, RevDel is always going to be applied inconsistently and there is going to be no guarantee that it is being used as the community desires. As such changing the wording of RD3 will fix nothing as it does not solve the wider problem.
Don't we have better things to do than trying to figure out whether something concededly disruptive is "hyper-disruptive" and worthy of revdel or "run-of-the-mill disruptive" and not revdel-able?
Invoking RD3 under the guise of WP:DENY is a misuse of revision deletion. WP:CFRD states that "Users should consider whether simply reverting or ignoring would be sufficient in the circumstances". Increasingly, RD3 is being invoked where a simple revert would more than suffice. In articles where RD3 is used per WP:DENY...it fails to deter vandalism as the history of Lad, A Dog shows.
The excessive use of revision deletion detracts from the transparency of articles to non-admins and does little to hamper recognition. RD3 should not be used where reverting suffices. Smallman12q ( talk) 23:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Based on the licensing/copyright discussions on the talk page, I propose the following clarification:
Why don't we allow the admins to use good judgment in applying RD3 RevDel rather than making a massive collection of regulations to determine the exact "purely disruptive" edits in which an admin can use RevDel? I violated the CSD policy on one new howto article I found by blanking it and tagging it with a generic speedy tag. Howto articles, according to policy, go to AfD rather than CSD. However, the article was instructions on hacking Xbox Live accounts. A sysop should be able to RevDel such material without violating policy if, for example, it was posted to the talk page of some user.
The overriding agreement appears that admin discretion still has strong support in these cases. But it was also generally agreed that most vandalism was out of scope for RevDel.
One point that attained some support was the idea that it might be useful to note that use of RevDel should be balanced against rollback/revert, indeed there seemed little resistance to proposing added guidance for the admins looking to use RD3 so long as it did not become impractical or overly strict.
In addition to considerations directly relating to the question of the RFC there were two points that I think were important, and may require further discussion/development:
In summary the consensus seems to be that the wording of RD3 is not so broad as to currently be causing a widespread problem, but that specific proposals to clarify it, so long as not overly prescriptive, will not be rejected out of hand. -- Errant ( chat!) 15:22, 4 March 2011 (UTC)
Criterion RD3 presently allows for deletion of "purely disruptive material". It is alleged that such a description is vague and leaves too much interpretation open to administrators. It is proposed that this criterion be either clarified or removed to more adequately meet the needs of the criteria for redaction. The purpose of this RFC is to determine whether such clarification is necessary and to evaluate possible changes to the policy to meet those demands. Shirik ( Questions or Comments?) 20:29, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
The criterion RD3 is currently heavily overused. Examples of misuse include such edits as this and this (sorry, non-administrators cannot view these links presently). Such edits certainly qualify as "purely disruptive", but so does any vandalism. Revision deletion has significant GFDL-related consequences as well as going against the concepts of public review and an open encyclopedia. Additionally, revision deletion can sometimes tend to violate WP:DENY. These deletions are not limited to particular administrators; many are making these deletions because of the lack of guidance offered by RD3. Since it is (as far as I know) fairly agreed-upon that not all vandalism should be deleted, I propose that RD3 be clarified to be more strict on what qualifies as "purely disruptive".
I'm willing to consider the possibility that there is a systemic problem of this criterion being overused, but the evidence provided so far is two diffs from within the past few days. That does little to convince that this is a widespread, ongoing problem. Those two uses of RevDel do seem inappropriate and overzealous, but two incidents is hardly a demonstration that there is a pattern. If you want to prove a change is needed a bit more research seems in order.
I think a lot of what we are seeing here is that some non-admin users are upset because they can't see what has been removed and they would like to judge for themselves. Any deletion has the same issue, especially speedy deletions. We trust admins to delete entire pages without discussion if they are purely vandalism, this is no different. Vandalism is by its very definition "purely disruptive." If we trust admins to recognize what is and is not vandalism then there is no problem with it being used this way. Yes, in many cases it could be argued that "a revert would suffice" but that doesn't mean that an admin taking the extra step and just deleting it is an abuse of the tool. Mandating that vandalism be kept in the page history purely in the interest of transparency obviously does not improve the encyclopedia, quite the opposite. The old saw "policies are descriptive not proscriptive" seems apt. If this has emerged as a practical application of RevDel I say let it be used this way, and modify policy if needed to allow for it rather than limit it.
While I have yet to see evidence that this facility is being misused, I propose that we clarify the guideline by saying "Do not use RevDel if a revert will suffice."
(Note: I am basically defending my recent admin actions here) We have vandals right now are using edit summaries to cause disruption on Wikipedia. Slakr provided sufficient examples as to what how they are precisely accomplishing their goals. One can easily revert patently disruptive edits, but without Revision Deletion, we have no way to do this with patently disruptive edit summaries. Defending and protecting Wikipedia and its readers and editors should not be considered "overzeal" and is not inappropriate.
Leaving such edit summaries visible in the edit history discourages users and paints for potential newcomers the wrong picture of Wikipedia, as they would see it as an intimidating place in which trolls and blatant POV-pushers have free reign to do what they please. We cannot be rewarding such persistent vandals by disallowing sysops to rightly take away their disruption and recognition. Moreover, the GFDL and CC-BY-SA are not suicide pacts, and we should not be allowing them to hide behind our content licenses to make edits that are blatantly contrary to Wikipedia's (and the Wikimedia Foundation's) core beliefs and principles. – MuZemike 21:36, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
I'd like to remind people that when it comes to edit summaries, a revert won't solve the problem of disruption, so I feel the bar for RD3ing edit summaries needs to be significantly lower than for revision text. For example, I once revdeled a series of twenty edit summaries in a row that took up three rows each as "purely disruptive". After discussion, I reverted the deletion, but I still feel that the effect they have of flooding the contribution history was disruptive enough for RD3.
The only essential advantages of revision delete is the ability to delete a particular edit from the contents of a very highly-edited article, and to hide user names, or edit summaries, while keeping the contents of the edit. . When any of these three is necessary, there's no alternative for an ordinary admin, so it's a very good thing that we have it. An advantage that is not essential, but certainly convenient, is to delete a particular version quicker than by delete and restore. I really do not see the point otherwise of using it for ordinary vandalism, because a delete and partial restore does as well and hides it from exactly the same people and no more. It's not as if this gives an added measure of hiding, and the exact same people can do either route Its use just because the vandalism is bad is not a sufficient reason. DGG ( talk ) 22:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)
Although there may well be a problem with RD3 the bigger problem here is the lack of "accountability" (used very losely) when it comes to RevDel. For normal (page) deletions there are well defined procedures for appealing a deletion and this helps clarify the deletion process. Guidelines are never going to fully describe all situations and so something like DRV helps clarify the community consensus. Additionally as deletion of a page is a big and obvious step it is more likely to be appealed in the first place because someone notices it. On the other hand RevDel has no formal review procedures at all and appeals are less likely to be forthcoming as RevDels are not obvious (especially as the deletion log makes no reference to what revision the RevDel applies) and the editor in question is likely to be blocked anyway. This lack of review means it's impossible for non-admins to know whether we have a problem with RD3 as only admins can review the deletions (and even that seems to be occurring rarely at best). It's an established wikipedia idea that admins are not special and that community consensus means the whole community, not just admins, should have had the chance to comment which currently non-admins have no way of doing so. The community can never successfully never draw the line on when RevDel is acceptable using simple guidelines as they are open to interpretation - we need specific examples on which to comment. Ideas have been raised about having an examples page (see here) but nothing has come of it. Until we establish a way of accurately gauging community consensus, using actual deletions, RevDel is always going to be applied inconsistently and there is going to be no guarantee that it is being used as the community desires. As such changing the wording of RD3 will fix nothing as it does not solve the wider problem.
Don't we have better things to do than trying to figure out whether something concededly disruptive is "hyper-disruptive" and worthy of revdel or "run-of-the-mill disruptive" and not revdel-able?
Invoking RD3 under the guise of WP:DENY is a misuse of revision deletion. WP:CFRD states that "Users should consider whether simply reverting or ignoring would be sufficient in the circumstances". Increasingly, RD3 is being invoked where a simple revert would more than suffice. In articles where RD3 is used per WP:DENY...it fails to deter vandalism as the history of Lad, A Dog shows.
The excessive use of revision deletion detracts from the transparency of articles to non-admins and does little to hamper recognition. RD3 should not be used where reverting suffices. Smallman12q ( talk) 23:48, 22 January 2011 (UTC)
Based on the licensing/copyright discussions on the talk page, I propose the following clarification:
Why don't we allow the admins to use good judgment in applying RD3 RevDel rather than making a massive collection of regulations to determine the exact "purely disruptive" edits in which an admin can use RevDel? I violated the CSD policy on one new howto article I found by blanking it and tagging it with a generic speedy tag. Howto articles, according to policy, go to AfD rather than CSD. However, the article was instructions on hacking Xbox Live accounts. A sysop should be able to RevDel such material without violating policy if, for example, it was posted to the talk page of some user.