February 2016 Newsletter

(The “We’re not dead anymore” edition)

New Moderator Ability to Redact Revisions

We’ve reworked the entire revision redaction system, into something not only less destructive than the old system of revision destruction, but also into something which moderators can perform. Now, rather than simply destroying revisions which contain the old data, the existing revision is directly modified. This is, as always, to be used when there is sensitive information to be removed, for example when an author inadvertently posts passwords or license keys.

To redact a revision, first head to the revision history of the post in question, and locate the latest revision that contains the sensitive information. (For posts that haven’t yet been edited, the revision history may be obtained by navigating to the URL /posts/[id]/revisions, where [id] is the ID of the post being redacted). In the far right of revision actions is redact, select that to bring up an edit window. Remove or replace the content as necessary for the situation, and provide an appropriate edit summary explaining the redaction. A moderator who submits a redaction must then have their redaction approved by another moderator or an employee. Redactions are reviewed via the moderator flag queue, and use a flag labelled “revision redaction approval” which can be filtered like any other flag type. Once the redaction is approved, the revision is modified and a “redacted by” annotation will appear on it to moderators on both the revision history and in the timeline view. When filling in the “Redaction Summary” field, describe the reason for the redaction; this will be visible to other moderators and eventually to trusted users.

In the event that multiple revisions contain the sensitive data, each revision containing this data must be individually redacted, from most recent to earliest. However, the system will attempt to aid you in this: performing a redaction on an earlier revision will attempt to smart-apply the changes made to the later revision, offering the options to accept the automatic changes, perform additional redactions, or discard and perform manual redactions. Please review the the provided diffs on the page in order to confirm that the redaction is sane; in most cases you can rapidly redact all remaining revisions with this automatic assistance (each submitted redaction will still require approval from another moderator before being applied to the revision).

New Moderator Ability to Modify Edit Summaries

Moderators can now modify the revision comments of individual revisions, in order to address abusive or offensive content which people stash in there. When viewing a post’s revision history, there’s a new option edit comment, which will bring an inline editor for the current edit summary. The edits from this action are applied instantly, and are treated as if the original revision used this edit summary.