Training modules/Dealing with online harassment/slides/revision-deletion-or-suppression

Immediate action: Revision deletion or suppression

Revision deletion (sometimes shortened to "revdel" in English) is available to administrators. It is used to hide deleted content from those without administrator rights. This is a reversible action which can be a good first response to obvious attacks, even if you feel the larger issue needs to be discussed more thoroughly.

Suppression (also called oversight) is a tool that can be used to hide content even from administrators. Policies on suppression can vary a little by wiki. A global oversight policy can be found on Meta-Wiki. Of the criteria, those which most relate to harassment are:

• Removal of non-public personal information such as phone numbers, home addresses, and workplaces or identities of pseudonymous or anonymous individuals who have not made their identity public, or of public individuals who have not made that personal information public. Users with advanced rights are encouraged to use common sense and intuition when making a call like this. Suppression can be reversed, so it is usually safest to remove when in doubt.
• Removal of potentially libelous information on the advice of Wikimedia Foundation counsel or when the case is clear and there is no editorial reason to keep the revision.
• Hiding of blatant attack names on automated lists and logs, where such an action does not disrupt edit histories. A blatant attack is one obviously intended to denigrate, threaten, libel, insult, or harass someone. Note that usernames are created globally by default. You can "block-suppress" locally, but it's usually best to have a Steward "lock-suppress" the account globally. (Remember that, when it comes to registered user accounts, "blocks" are local actions, but "locks" are global.)

If the harassment in question doesn't meet these criteria, it might still be revision deleted as described above. Where there's doubt, refer the case to users with "oversight" rights or stewards.