Community Wishlist Survey 2019/Admins and patrollers/Feature parity for tools dealing with deleted revisions

Random proposal ►◄ Admins and patrollers  The survey has concluded. Here are the results!

Feature parity for tools dealing with deleted revisions

• Problem: Special:Undelete/PAGENAME and the corresponding API are clunky and cumbersome to use because of their limited functionality. To make it easier for admins on any project to deal with deleted content and achieve equivalent functionality to live page histories, the following should be implemented:
  • Paging for Special:Undelete, so that long lists of deleted revisions don't take ages to load. And again, except for deleted title search.
  • Add deleted title search to the API. Add a namespace filter for this.
  • Add date cutoff filters to Special:Undelete and sizediffs, in a similar manner to the page history. Add the sizediffs to the API as well.
  • I want to be able to compare non-adjacent deleted edits on the same page.
  • I want to compare deleted content to live revisions under the same title, or live/deleted revisions for a different title. This is especially useful to check whether a page has been substantially reposted. I could do this via Special:Diff or the API... but deleted revision links should use "rev_id" not "page/timestamp". Not being able to easily discover the revid is a damn nuisance.
  • Likewise, the undelete API should take a revid parameter that is a list of the revision IDs to be undeleted.
  • Deletion log entries should be interspersed with the deleted revisions so I can easily see when a page was recreated. Edit summaries are an unreliable indicator of this.
  • API alldeletedrevisions should be vectorized over adruser like API usercontribs is vectorized over ucuser.
  • I understand that not all of these will be worked on if successful, but this is one of the reasons why the admin tool package is not fit for purpose in 2018.

• Who would benefit:

• Proposed solution:

• Phabricator tickets:

• Proposer: MER-C (talk) 11:49, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

I note that T20493 may be relevant, in that it contemplates changing how deletion works which might make many of the things complained about here obsolete. Also, the action API's alldeletedrevisions will probably never work like usercontribs; instead we'd create a "deletedusercontribs" module. Anomie (talk) 14:16, 30 October 2018 (UTC)

MER-C and GeoffreyT2000: Is there any way to reconcile this proposal, and Make undeletion page ID sensitive? These are both very long, detailed solutions for a problem that basically boils down to "Special:Undelete is clunky/outdated". Our team is having a hard time figuring out what to make of these two mutually exclusive proposals, and I imagine that people voting in the survey will also be confused about which to vote for. Is it possible to merge these, or simplify them? -- DannyH (WMF) (talk) 01:28, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

The proposals have a lot of commonality:

Paging for Special:Undelete, so that long lists of deleted revisions don't take ages to load.

Add date cutoff filters to Special:Undelete and sizediffs

I want to be able to compare non-adjacent deleted edits on the same page.

deleted revisions, their diffs, and deleted page histories could be viewed directly by using the "oldid" and "curid" parameters in the URL.

The proposals are equivalent as long as the deleted page history page is presented identically to a live page history - with pagination, date filters and radio buttons to select revisions for diffing.

And again, except for deleted title search.

Special:Undelete would not list deleted revisions anymore. Instead, it would list deleted page IDs from the "pagearchive" table as radio buttons

Adding a search box and prefixindex box to this listing of pages, and making the listing/search results pageable means the two proposals are equivalent.

I want to compare deleted content to live revisions under the same title, or live/deleted revisions for a different title. This is especially useful to check whether a page has been substantially reposted. I could do this via Special:Diff or the API... but deleted revision links should use "rev_id" not "page/timestamp". Not being able to easily discover the revid is a damn nuisance.

See point immediately above. Special:Diff should admit deleted and non-deleted revids and function as expected when I have the rights.

but deleted revision links should use "rev_id" not "page/timestamp". Not being able to easily discover the revid is a damn nuisance.

deleted revisions, their diffs, and deleted page histories could be viewed directly by using the "oldid" and "curid" parameters in the URL.

Is this not the same thing?

Also, Special:DeletedContributions would be fixed to look more like Special:Contributions, by displaying size differences and, for deleted revisions where the ar_parent_id is zero, the "new page" mark.

I also want this.

I don't care what happens regarding back end development. I just want to be able to perform all the same actions with the GUI and API and make equivalent API calls to get the same information as I can currently can with live page histories. (I disagree with the force a different title restriction - sometimes an undeletion for the same title is useful). MER-C (talk) 12:38, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

I think we can combine the proposals, but I want GeoffreyT2000's consent first. MER-C (talk) 11:50, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support – Ajraddatz (talk) 18:20, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Galobtter (talk) 18:57, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support MER-C (talk) 18:58, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 03:34, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 10:02, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Though, I think that a radical reform of the deletion system is in order. Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 13:00, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support JAn Dudík (talk) 19:54, 17 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Ciao • Bestoernesto • ✉ 07:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Would be hugely beneficial to sysops ~ Amory (u • t • c) 11:28, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support stwalkerster (talk) 17:05, 18 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Courcelles 14:52, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support As per last year, this is the single most useful thing that could come from this, but it isn't sexy. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:57, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

• @TonyBallioni:-How about using the administrators-newsletter for canvassing?Winged Blades of Godric (talk) 12:53, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

•  Support Novak Watchmen (talk) 23:05, 20 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Laboramus (talk) 07:21, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Nihlus 22:12, 21 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support — Insertcleverphrasehere ^{(or here)} 15:48, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Matěj Suchánek (talk) 09:52, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support PMG (talk) 10:54, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support DMacks (talk) 18:49, 26 November 2018 (UTC)
•  Support Schniggendiller (talk) 10:55, 30 November 2018 (UTC)