Talk:Oversight

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Comment This policy is undergoing revision. Rewriting is at Meta:Rewriting/Oversight policy.

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[edit] Older discussion

So this differs from a regular deletion in that the versions won't even be seen by admins. Is this correct? Thanks. --Lord Voldemort 16:31, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes. In fact no one not even someone with oversight can see the deleted edit. Only a developer can restore it or even see it. Prodego Talk 23:21, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
That last bit has of course been changed, the page is correct now. - Taxman 04:04, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

How possible would it be to be able remove deleted revisions without first restoring them? It's both inefficient and disconcerting to restore personal information before hiding it, and the handful of us with oversight permission are not likely to get there before another admin at least deletes the edit. There could be a "hide revisions" box right next to "reset" in Special:Undelete. Dmcdevit 08:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Well this is only supposed to be temporary. Prodego Talk 14:33, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted versions?

So, now that this is here, what about the ability to view deleted revisions? As I recall, it was removed because the fears that people would see personal info in the edit summary, which this seems to deal with... 68.39.174.238 04:33, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Users with oversight rights

I strongly urge that this power be limited only to the users who already have it, and that the final version of the code include an undelete function. This would be a very, very mischevious tool if it fell into the wrong hands, for instance if an admin's laptop were stolen or password were hacked.68.33.63.117 23:57, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

The data is not removed completely, it's just rammed well out of sight, somewhere core MediaWiki doesn't have an awareness of, and so will never access. If the tool was abused, a database administrator could restore the revisions without too much additional work. In such a case, the user account would lose permissions as an obvious precaution, and might end up being blocked on various wikis if it were compromised.
The permission is strongly limited. At present, only a local wiki's Arbitration Committee can order that it be given to a non-developer/system admin/database admin, and the latter groups don't want the additional work anyway. ;) 86.134.116.228 15:16, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Extended to clear vandalism and testing

This or similar mechanism would be useful if applied to clear vandalism (and subsequent revert) and/or testing by novices, immediatelly changed back by themselves. It is now practically impossible to use history of many "popular" articles.

A mechanism labeling those edits as "absolutely worthless" could be safeguarded against misuse. Say, several people would need to agree unanimously, the votes would be assigned randomly, those who would try to misuse it would not be allowed to use it futher and all their past votes would be nullifyed, etc.

The option to see all edits, including those hidden would be available. Pavel Vozenilek 15:59, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] other wikipedias?

Is that option limited only for en: Wikipedia? Is that an intention? In cs: we'v got an accident when some (previously blocked) user strongly claimed removal of his nonpublic personal information even from history of the page... Another user not very soberly included them previously . We had no option to solve it. With regards --Reo On|+|+ 11:42, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

A local admin can delete specific revisions by deleting the page and then restoring every other revision but the problem ones. There are various javascripts available that can help with that. That makes the revision only available to admins and should be good enough in most cases. - Taxman 17:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
see also Talk:Requests for permissions#Oversight in other Wikis? -- MichaelFrey 17:08, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] How to install oversite rights on wiki's

How do I install the oversite rights on my wiki? Can they be installed under mediawiki version 1.6.8? I notice that the download information for hidden.sql states: "Requires DiffViewHeader hook in 1.7 (r14358)" does this mean it will not work under 1.6.8? (I cannot install 1.7 because of the wrong php version).

When I edited the Main Page of my newly set up wiki I found that at the bottom of the page it says: "This page was last modified 14:58, 17 August 2006 by [username]. Based on work by Anonymous user(s) of [wikiname]" - not very elegant! Under history, the "Anonymous user" is transformed into "MediaWiki default". Is there a simple way of deleting this reference to the "Anonymous user(s)" (other than hiding the names of editors, which I have deliberately set to show)?

It would be better if default pages had a creation user for default pages as "MediaWiki default" rather than "Anonymous user(s)". Or alternatively, "MediaWiki default" should not be classified as anonymous.

You can't install the HideRevision extension under MediaWiki 1.6.x. 86.134.49.147 19:11, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: replacing hidden revision with marker

I removed the following commentary from the policy page for discussion here. - Taxman 17:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

It is possible that the system will be changed to replace the removed revisions with an explicitly visible marker.
Should be, including display of the comment. As well as the issue above, accountability requires it. Something obvious in the revision list and perhaps a similar call-out to that for deleted revisions as well. Jamesday 02:42, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
I think one solution is to implement this patch [1] developed by User:Tietew. With that, we can hide the main text of a page without hiding the comment, user name, and timestamp of the revision in the edit history/ revision history page. People can understand, then, that there are some revisions that is not viewable. Wrong attribution could be prevented with this to a certain degree. Tomos 03:20, 21 August 2006 (UTC)
The timestamp? I don't remember it being able to do that, though I suppose it is quite possible. Still, that could leave a messy history. Perhaps a "show deleted revisions" toggle could appear on such history pages.Voice-of-All 22:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Solution to misleading revisions

How hard would it be to specify the offending text, and then have it removed from all revisions? This would avoid misattributions and misleading revisions. Further if the offending text removal process renders any given revision to be of null effect(the article shows no changes when diffed to the previous revision) then that revision can be removed entirely as well.--DataSurfer 18:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Assuming that it remained in all versions exactly the same, that would work, but editing old revisions is a bit strong. Doing it by hand would be the only sure-fire way, but that seems to push things too far.Voice-of-All 22:46, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Oversight votes

Is oversight only granted where an Arbitration Commitee has approved it, or is it available to anyone who gets the votes? Is there a minimum no. of votes required? Archer7 15:16, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

My sense is that access to oversight will be granted in the way CheckUser is (CheckUser_policy#Access). Not all projects have Arbitration Committees, but the ones that do will aprove oversight users that way, and the ones that don't will use a community vote. Dmcdevit 18:00, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hiding images

Is it possible for oversights to hide old versions of uploaded images? MaxSem 19:42, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Nice Question.
The Picture Description page clear yes.
The picture self:
No, it hasn't a revision ID for Special:HideRevision and I dont see a delete button when I click on the deletet picture.
It looks like that you can only normall delete files.
-- MichaelFrey 12:29, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
Only edit histories, not file histories, may be oversighted currently. There is an open feature request for file oversight at bugzilla:8196, but a developer responded "This may have to wait until live image storage is converted to FileStore format like the archives. Otherwise the code would end up useless soon anyway." I don't know when that will be. Dmcdevit 23:51, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
The new deletion system will be able to further hide deleted images. It can also hide usernames from the user list, blocklist, and block log, as well as individial revision and archived revision content/usernames/edit summaries.Voice-of-All 02:25, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Adding a new rule

Can we add "Removal of information that might harm users"? I mean, getting you into jail or losing a job...--The Joke النكتة‎ 13:40, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Concerns from English Wikipedia

Any thoughts on the arguments here? The change to the local policy looked likely to stick around, until someone remembered this is a centralized policy: w:Wikipedia_talk:Oversight#Added_IP_addresses_to_list. -- 146.115.58.152 21:07, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Title

Would Oversight not be better? After all, that's what this page is concerned with. --Anonymous DissidentTalk 12:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps. Doesn't a redirect already exist? ++Lar: t/c 23:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it does, but that's not relevant to whether the current title is correct. ----Anonymous DissidentTalk 09:27, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] email addy on "All wikimedia projects"

The email on Hiding_revisions#All_Wikimedia_projects does not work, as far as I can tell... I'm seeking further clarification and I suggest it be removed for now. stewards-l is a private list and would not be suitable. I am trying to see if a new list for this (to publicly contact stewards, or to publicly contact oversighters in general) might be a good idea. ++Lar: t/c 23:10, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you sure it does not exist? There's an OTRS queue for stewards... wouldn't it feed to that? Cbrown1023 talk 23:24, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the queue exists and works. It's very low-traffic, though. No emails since I joined, back in late December/early January. --FiLiP ¤ 23:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
Shouldn't it be a private list? You don't have to be a list member to write to a list, but do need to be to read anything; and that's exactly what would be needed for oversight reqs.--Nilfanion 23:43, 5 February 2008 (UTC)


Dungodung, do me a favour, go in OTRS and see if the test mails I sent are on there. That would explain where they went I guess :).. meanwhile I will try to get added to the queue myself. Nevertheless I think some mailing lists might be good. the "oversight-l" list appears currently to be only for en:wp use... it maybe should be repurposed and more (wiki specific) lists set up. Or maybe not. maybe that mail is sufficient. (actually never mind about sending them, Shanel sent them on to me so yes, it works :) ) Nilf, that's how the OTRS queues are, you need access to the queue to read them but anyone can send stuff to them... What threw me was that I was not a member of the stewards queue. Working on getting that fixed. I undid my undo of your change on commons... ++Lar: t/c 23:57, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I was responding to the "stewards-l is a private list and would not be suitable", rather than the OTRS side of things: I'd imagine that as a private stewards list it is exactly what would be wanted. The emphasis on the "publicly" seemed like suggesting a mailing list readable by anyone... No prob on the edit warring :P--Nilfanion 00:09, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, the oversight maillist is suitable for any edits requiring oversight. While mostly used by enwp oversighters, if there is a request that they can't fulfill directly (such as log item removal or removal on a wiki with no local oversights), they will forward it to someone who can. ~Kylu (u|t) 00:22, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
That's not what I was told when I enquired about joining it a bit ago. I like the idea of the most general name being for the most general use... but only en:wp oversighters are on there. If oversight (unfortunately) expands much beyond where it is specific now, it may become complex for someone from en:wp to route a request to the right specific oversighter. Hence my interest in exploring mechanisms now... ++Lar: t/c 05:20, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
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