Wikipedia:Viewing deleted content

This is an information page.

It is not an encyclopedic article, nor one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts

On Wikipedia, only administrators have the right to view deleted material^[1] (whilst some deleted material is restricted to an even smaller group of "oversighters", and some deleted hoax articles are visible to all users). There have been occasional discussions in Wikipedia's history about allowing wider access to deleted material, often referred to as "viewdelete" or "viewdeleted" rights.^[2] This page summarises the Wikimedia Foundation's view on this issue, given in response to a 2008 discussion.

“

Allowing non-administrator users to have access to deleted pages would vastly increase the frequency and volume of legal complaints. (It could have even worse consequences than that in the long term, up to and including corrective legislation by Congress, which would be a disaster.) It is difficult to overstate how much legal and practical difficulty this would cause the Foundation. To be frank, community adoption of such a disastrous policy would create an actual emergency that would likely require Board intervention. I normally favor and support community-driven initiatives, so please believe me when I say I am not raising this set of concerns lightly. The current system is not broken -- so the best advice is 'don't fix it.' MikeGodwin (talk) 13:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

”

— 13:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC) Mike Godwin, then legal counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation

“

I have been asked a couple of times whether, as WMF's present general counsel, I share Mike's view as expressed above. I can confirm that I fully agree with Mike's assessment. Geoffbrigham (talk) 02:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

”

— 02:18, 27 August 2011 (UTC) Geoff Brigham, then general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation

This position was reiterated in response to a discussion on Wikimedia Commons about extending access to deleted material to users with access to the Commons OTRS system, to facilitate handling of OTRS tickets:

“

We are always respectful of and impressed by community initiatives. For that reason, it is tough for us to put a barrier in front of folks who are sincerely seeking a solution to a challenge. So our apologies in advance, but, to be honest, it will be difficult for WMF to support the proposed solution in this case.

Please allow me to explain in brief. With this proposal, WMF is concerned about possible increased liability for the Foundation and OTRS agents. Sensitive legal matters may be deleted, and, for that reason, increasing the size of the group who can view such deleted material could arguably increase WMF's liability. In addition, OTRS agents could risk personal liability by undeleting content that had been originally deleted for legal reasons (either by the community or WMF). We appreciate the opportunity to be consulted, and we are sorry we cannot support this. Geoffbrigham (talk) 17:31, 6 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

”

— 17:31, 6 November 2011 (UTC) Geoff Brigham, then general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation

However, appointment by the Arbitration Committee following community consultation was held to satisfy the requirements for viewing deleted content:

“

[O]verall we're ok with non-admins being appointed by arbcom to CU/OS in the current system. The important part here is a good method of vetting and in this case we feel that happens both in the feedback garnered from the community and the arbcom's own election process where they become representatives of the community in this regard. This is also reflected in the Checkuser and Oversight policies on meta which is why they allow selection to be done either by a community election (with 70-80% support including at least 25 supporters) or by Arbitration Committees "whose members have been elected with the support of at least 25-30 members of the local community" . (cite). Jalexander--WMF 02:46, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

”

— 02:46, 10 September 2016 James Alexander, then Manager, Trust & Safety, Wikimedia Foundation

Technical notes

^ The default MediaWiki setting is that only administrators ("sysops") have access – see mw:User rights. On English Wikipedia, CheckUsers and Oversighters also have this permission implicitly; however, traditionally (and in almost every case), these users are already administrators. There is also a non-standard "researcher" user group which has access. Wikimedia stewards also have access to deleted content across Wikimedia, as do other global groups on select projects.
^ "viewdelete" and "viewdeleted" are actually informal terms for a bundle of 3 associated MediaWiki user-rights: deletedhistory, browsearchive, and deletedtext – see mw:User rights for what each one does.

[1] The default MediaWiki setting is that only administrators ("sysops") have access – see mw:User rights. On English Wikipedia, CheckUsers and Oversighters also have this permission implicitly; however, traditionally (and in almost every case), these users are already administrators. There is also a non-standard "researcher" user group which has access. Wikimedia stewards also have access to deleted content across Wikimedia, as do other global groups on select projects.

[2] "viewdelete" and "viewdeleted" are actually informal terms for a bundle of 3 associated MediaWiki user-rights: deletedhistory, browsearchive, and deletedtext – see mw:User rights for what each one does.

[1]

[2]