Admin Forum:Editing to Censoring the Summary Edits from other users?

I got a quick question that how does an admin (that I'm not an admin in that wiki yet) can edit other users' summary edit such as censoring as this, this, this, and some more so that it can be cleaned up without any profanity shown up on the history viewing on screen, what kinda of special tool would it allow to edit other user's summaries if they're an admin? 02:23, October 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * As an admin, there's nothing you can do to change/remove those summaries from the page history. (Well, technically you could delete the entire page, but I'm guessing you don't want to do that.) In order to remove those revisions, you'd need RevisionDelete, a tool that only Wikia Staff have access to. So in order to remove those edit summaries, you'd need to send a request to Wikia using Special:Contact, giving them links to those pages and explaining that you want them to remove those edit summaries.


 * In order to prevent future edit summaries like that, you can use mw:Extension:AbuseFilter (I use it on my home wiki). This is a MediaWiki extension that is used to prevent certain kinds of vandalism edits, but it is not installed by default. Again, you would need to contact Wikia staff and ask them to install it on your wiki. Also, once it's installed, you'd still have to write the filter to prevent such edit summaries. There are people who can help you with that if you're not sure how to write filters yourself.
 * Ok, I contact the Wikia staff about to removing the cursing on the summaries and and I will try to see about contacting about the Filter for the wiki. 03:47, October 11, 2012 (UTC)


 * As an admin, you're completely able to remove those edits from the page history.
 * Delete the page, with the edit summary "maintenance, back in a minute".
 * Undelete the page, choosing all revisions except the one with the edit summary you wish to remove. (Tip: Click the one you wish to remove, the invert the selection.)
 * Assuming there has been edits since the problem revision, the page will look the same as it previously did.
 * This method can be used to remove all traces of vandalism from public page histories, although it is a little time consuming. The deleted revisions can be reviewed by other admins. -452  07:04, October 22, 2012 (UTC)


 * Just as a heads up on the above method, if the page should be deleted and undeleted again, the revision/edit summary will reappear unless said revision is unchecked again.
 * Ah, yes, that's a very good point and something I hadn't considered myself. Here's a way to deal with that, which is to split the problem revision to a separate page:
 * Delete the page
 * Restore the problem revision only
 * Move/rename the restored page (probably as a subpage such as /deleted)
 * Delete the renamed page
 * Back on the original page, undelete the other revisions
 * Keeping track of the removed revision is actually simpler this way, as it appears in the deletion log. -452 00:48, October 27, 2012 (UTC)


 * While I don't disagree with user:452's excellent summary of how to remove revisions, and even though I also agree with Mathmagician that admin tools make the job a lot simpler, I do feel compelled to point out the downside of censorship.


 * There is no actual need to clean up this sort of vandalism. As admin, we have absolutely no responsibility to remove vandalism from the edit history.  According to Wikia's TOU, there is explicitly no guarantee that users will avoid profanity, pornography or anything other objectionable thing.  To quote directly: "... you understand and acknowledge that by using the Services you may be exposed to content that you may find offensive, indecent or objectionable and that, in this respect, you use the Services at your own risk."


 * Thus, there is no actual harm to leaving objectionable revisions in place. In fact, it may be useful to do so.  With the objectionable revision in place, you can specifically cite a particular revision as the proximate cause of why you banned someone.  Wikia Staff can then click a simple link and immediately see, "Yah, this content violates the 'User Conduct' clause of the TOU."  This will, in turn, strengthen your case for keeping that vandal off Wikia, should your actions be challenged in future.


 * People wrongly assume that Wikia, because it covers youth-oriented material, has some great duty of care to completely sanitize itself from "bad words". But it's explicit in the TOU that — even though it is against the code of user conduct to post pornography, hateful language or anything which encourages criminal behavior — Wikia cannot be guaranteed to be a completely "safe for work/school" service. In other words, it's against the TOU for you to post, say, homophobic remarks, but it's not Wikia's responsibility if someone encounters those homophobic remarks. 18:59: Thu 01 Nov 2012
 * I agree that in general there's no reason to do this normally, and have only ever done this a handful of times myself (vandalism on my userpage is one of them).
 * I agree that censorship is bad and that everything on wikia should be viewable by everyone with nothing "swept under the rug", and completely disagree when people "clean" their talk pages without keeping an archive other than the page history.
 * I also agree against sanitising "bad words", and believe that any language used in the subject-matter of a wiki is fair game to be used on the wiki. (Images also, although Wikia Staff have made a point of disagreeing with me about that.)
 * While it is useful to be able to link to a particular revision, that revision will also appear in Special:DeletedContributions and can be direct linked for the reference of admins and staff.
 * I do know one good reason in favour of doing this: Removing vandals from the list of wiki contributors.  One of the ways in which to comply with the CC-BY-SA license is to list all the contributors, so I wouldn't want "Wikia user Niggerpediholic" being listed amongst the authors, and would choose to remove the public history entry for that reason. -452  19:30, November 1, 2012 (UTC)
 * Another case which has occurred in the past is a recurring troll returning after an extended ban leaving an edit summary boasting of how "he's back and we can't stop him", I'd remove that entry from the page history on principle so there's no trace of him ever returning. (I don't know in practice if any vandals look on the page history as a "trophy", it's certainly possible that there's a vandal who would take any victory he could get.) -452  19:34, November 1, 2012 (UTC)