Wikipedia:Viewing deleted content

{{for|help on viewing and restoring deleted pages|Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages}}

On Wikipedia, only administrators have the right to view deleted materialThe 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. (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."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. This page summarises the Wikimedia Foundation's view on this issue, given in response to a 2008 discussion.

{{cquote|1=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)|4=[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump_%28proposals%29%2FPersistent_proposals%2FStraw_poll_for_view-deleted&diff=242245446&oldid=242205474 13:47, 1 October 2008 (UTC)] Mike Godwin, then legal counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation}}

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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)|4=