User blog:C.Syde65/Introducing SelectiveDelete, a brand new extension for experienced administrators in need of more deletion options

''This post was made for April Fools Day, 2019. Please don't take the blog post content seriously!''

For many years, we have been receiving numerous complaints from communities and their administrators due to the fact that they cannot select individual or multiple revisions to delete from pages the same way they can restore them.

Well over the next few weeks we are delighted to announce the upcoming release of a brand new extension called MultipleRevisionDelete. In addition to the abilities to delete pages with the (delete) permission, and restore individual and multiple revisions, or entire pages with the (undelete) permission, (multirevisiondelete) will allow users to delete individual or multiple revisions. But only on communities that have the extension enabled.



Only on communities that have the extension enabled? Does this mean that it won't be rolled across all wikis by default?
As much as we'd love to grant Administrators with the ability to use this extension on all wikis, it would be a rather detrimental practice if any community of Administrators were to have it. And even then, we prefer to only grant this ability to individual Administrators on certain wikis instead of every Administrator on those wikis.

MultiRevisionDelete is only intended to be used by Administrators to remove revisions that contain information that is too sensitive for non-administrators to stumble across. Similar to how (rollback) is only intended to be used to revert obvious vandalism. We can't really rely on all Administrators to use (multirevisiondelete) the way it is intended to be used, which is why we must restrict the tool only to those wikis and administrators that really need it.

MultiRevisionDelete should not be used to settle editing disputes; for example, delete revisions from histories made by a specific editor, in order to settle an editing dispute that isn't vandalism. It shouldn't be used to settle simple disagreements between users that are acting in good faith.

MultiRevisionDelete should really only be used to delete revisions that are obvious vandalism, and even then it shouldn't normally be used unless an Administrator has a very good reason, such as deleting revisions from the page history containing information - personal or otherwise - that is too sensitive for non-administrators to stumble across.

Do users have to be Administrators to be granted this permission, or can Content Moderators be granted it as well?
While Content Moderators do have both the (delete) and (undelete) permissions, their scope is really only intentionally limited to moderating the wiki's content. Deleting selective revisions containing information that obviously shouldn't be left on the surface is really something that Administrators alone should be entrusted with.

And if Content Moderators want to be entrusted with that sort of thing, they can still remove the revisions by deleting the pages and then restoring all revisions except the ones that they intended to delete.

There's another permission called Revisiondelete, isn't that the same as MultipleRevisionDelete?
Despite the similarities of their names, MultiRevisionDelete (multirevisiondelete) and Revisiondelete (deleterevision) are not related to one another, nor do they function the same way. MultiRevisionDelete is built on the same page as the (delete) permission, and doesn't work as a standalone permission. Which is why it isn't granted to user-groups unless they have the (delete) permission.

Revisiondelete cannot remove revisions of pages so that they don't show up in the page history. It can only be used to show and hide the contents of individual or multiple revisions, the edit summaries of the revisions, the names of the users/IP addresses that made the edits, or any combination of those three. Once a revision is hidden, users without the (deleterevision) permission cannot view or restore them.

You will know if (deleterevision) has been used on specific revisions and events, because parts of their content will appear crossed out and cannot be viewed or clicked on. MultiRevisionDelete does not have a special page of its own, as its only purpose is to add additional options to the (delete) permission, so that pages don't have to be deleted entirely and then partially restored. To put it simply, MultiRevisionDelete is the same as (undelete) only the exact opposite.

I still want to know more about this new feature. What do I do?
As usual, if anyone has any additional questions or comments about this new feature, feel free to leave your questions or comments in the comments section below.