User:Risker/Conversion of Oversighted edits to Suppressed edits

At some point in February 2014, a script is scheduled to be run that will convert edits that were oversighted using the now-deprecated Oversight extension into suppressed edits using the Revision/Deletion extension.

Background

The original Oversight extension was first created and used in 2006; its purpose was to allow carefully selected community members to "remove" specific edits (those that met very stringent criteria) from the publicly viewable database. While the edits were no longer visible to anyone other than someone with oversight permission, they remained in the database; theoretically, they could be restored by those with root admin permission, but there is no indication that this was ever done. At the time the extension was initiated, there were known weaknesses in it (for example, it incorrectly attributes certain edits in a page's history), and it was understood that work would continue on a better tool. The Oversight extension was in use from May 2006 until early 2009, with only a few oversighted edits after that time.

In 2009, the revision/deletion extension was deployed, and with it the ability to suppress individual edits and log entries without adversely affecting page histories. This extension had other very useful features: suppressed or deleted edits could be unsuppressed/undeleted simply, it clearly identified in the page history what edits had been suppressed or deleted, and the suppression or deletion could be selective to the content of the edit, the username of the editor, and/or the edit summary. The revision/deletion extension has been stable for several years and has been shown to work effectively in all circumstances in which it has been tested.

There was some discussion at the time the revision/deletion extension was first deployed that the old oversighted edits should be converted to suppressed edits. The script being deployed over the next few months will finally accomplish this task.

How many oversighted edits are we talking about?

Throughout the WMF family of wikis, there are about 12,200 oversighted edits on about 70 projects; it was never used on most WMF wikis. On the English Wikipedia, there are about 9900 oversighted edits over about 2200 pages.

What will the converted edits look like?

The content of converted edits will be visible only to Oversighters. When looking at the page history, the converted edits will look like any other fully suppressed edit. The username and edit summary will all be greyed out for all users except oversighters, and the date/time, username and edit summary will be struck through. The date and time of the edit, and the size of the edit, will be visible. This is what the page history will look like:

Will Oversighters be able to change the level of suppression?

Yes, Oversighters may unsuppress any of the suppressed fields, they may unsuppress the edit entirely, or they can change the edit from a suppressed edit to a revision-deleted edit — just as they can with any other suppressed edit. Nobody other than an Oversighter will be able to modify the level of suppression.

But I thought oversight was permanent and that nobody was able to reverse it!

Oversighters have always been able to view the content of oversighted edits, and those few developers with shell admin access had the technical ability to reverse oversighting. However, in order to eliminate any user expectation that oversighting was reversible on request, it was emphasized that users should consider any oversights to be permanent in the absence of a legal reason to reverse. Thus, while it was technically possible to reverse an oversight, in reality no requests to reverse were entertained from within the community.

What about oversighted edits on now-deleted pages?

These edits will be reinserted into the deleted history archive for the page. Should the page subsequently be undeleted, those edits will remain suppressed.

Does this fix the glitch in attributing edits?

Yes it does, because it reinstates the correct history of the pages, including correct attribution of edits.

How will the Oversight and Suppression logs be affected?

The suppression logs will be updated to include the name of the oversighter, the date the edit was originally oversighted, and the log summary of the original oversighter. At some point the Oversight log will no longer be accessible, once the Oversight extension is removed from service.