Topic on Extension talk:Nuke

Nuke revisions, not whole pages - how? NukeRevision?

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142.177.67.157 (talkcontribs)

There's already a RevisionDelete and some scary instructions on how to make deletion permanent, i.e. like nuking, from 2008 and involving SQL manipulations that may or may not work with your mediawiki as installed and extended. There's DeletePagePermanently which seems to be functionality equivalent to nuke, on a tab. There's DeleteBatch, etc. which doesn't "really" delete pages.

Given all that, why is there no way to nuke specific revisions through the mediawiki shell tools or tabs? That's what we need to remove spam, SQL manipulations are very likely to leave things in an inconsistent state.

For wikis that are hit with bots that spam pages with legitimate edits, which cannot simply be restored with the correct timestamps after a "nuke", there's presently no solution at all. This can multiply smaller SQL DBs' size by hundreds of times and sure makes wiki farms very difficult to run.

Larger wiki farms like Wikimedia, Wikia, etc., probably have legal reasons to never truly remove anything and can pay to keep expanding disk space.

However if there's a frequent backup regime, or if you're hosting on a proper web host or in the cloud, you are paying for every gigabyte you move... we really need a NukeRevision.php shell tool and extension that lets someone tag spam in the history for permanent irrevocable removal, and purging to get the actual saved size down.

Jasper Deng (talkcontribs)

Extension:Oversight, but most pages look strange without revisions. Selective deletion (deletion of page followed by restoring only a few select "good" revisions) has been used to good effect, but it still isn't hidden from admins.

142.177.67.157 (talkcontribs)

"Most pages look strange" just because some purely spam "versions" were removed with just a marker left?

The "oversight" extension seems only to "delete" or "archive" (very dangerous abusive overload of terms in shell commands) without permanently nuking it. Perhaps "nuke" isn't permanently deleting it either? After hundreds of nuked pages this DB is the same size.

Jasper Deng (talkcontribs)

Yeah, nuking does not remove them either. It just is equivalent to pressing the ordinary delete button repeatedly.

142.177.67.157 (talkcontribs)

So, the insanely named script deleteArchivedVersions must be invoked? It should be called eradicateDeletedVersions or something that keeps the terms clear. And this script only gets rid of "deleted" and "nuked" stuff? No other purges or rebuild scripts required?

If so then the question is answered: DeleteRevision moves the stuff to "Archived" status, from which point it can be "deleted" (truly insane term clash here, that script must be renamed).

Jasper Deng (talkcontribs)

I can tell you that yes, "deletion" is not permanent in MediaWiki.

Bawolff (talkcontribs)

>(truly insane term clash here, that script must be renamed).

Perhaps, but that train left the sation at least 5 years ago. Very very few mediawiki things do permenant deletion.

Harry Wood (talkcontribs)

I've added a bit to Manual:deleteArchivedRevisions.php docs and linked it from this Extension:Nuke page down in the 'See also' section. For me this seemed like a good despamming combo: Use Extension:Nuke to perform a controlled (and reversible) mass deletion, and then later on use deleteArchivedRevisions to reduce the size of the database which was bloated with (deleted) spam.

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