IMSLP Forums

I was thinking... I use to publish typesets of my own compositions at IMSLP, and they seldom get posted in their final versions in one try. Not because I keep changing stuff, but because I'm a rather lousy proofreader of my own work, and often discover errors long after the original score is published. So I often end up with 2-3 archived, faulty versions and one definitive one.

To be clear: those old versions don't have any reason of existence anymore and ideally shouldn't be kept on the server anyway. I can understand that it's a different situation if someone else adds an improved version of a file, and the possibility of a rollback must remain. But in my case (and in many other cases) it's just server pollution.

So how about a "request for removal" function for old versions of files? Maybe the system could display a "report" function for old files if the newer ones were posted by the same contributor?

Did you know that admins are the only users (like myself) can delete files about what you are mentioning? The reason I think we don't have such a feature like this is because this creates security issues on the site, like blanking workpages as an example, which alerts us admins to go and deal with the person to stop doing what he/she is doing.

I do understand what you are saying about the request for removal, we have an option for users to request to delete a Workpage by entering in some wikicode in the editbox on the workpage, but I have no authority in adding in the feature, only Feldmahler can do this and is up to him to decide if he is Ok with it.

I'm not talking about complete workpages or even files on work pages. It's logical that these need to be protected.
What I meant is the sometimes multiple obsolete versions of individual files that show up when you click the file's number.

For instance: http://imslp.org/wiki/File:PMLP648578-165.pdf

Only the top version is valid, the other two are just server pollution. If we had a report function (something like "request removal" under "revert"?) we could get rid of those and free valuable server space. Maybe it could even be implemented that if you upload a new version of a file that you uploaded originally yourself, you can delete the old version yourself?

The MediaWiki software (used by IMSLP but also by many other sites like Wikepedia) implements strict rules and features related to the traceability of the contents. In principle, one should be able to determine what were the contents of the whole website at any given time.

Traceability is useful for several purposes, such as reverting mistakes, restoring vandalized pages, or documenting that certain information were present (or not present) on the website over a certain period of time (e.g., in the case of copyright issues). For this reason, the history of each and all pages is retained, and file pages are no exception from this viewpoint: the previous versions of a file are retained for traceability reasons.

Max

Max, thanks for the explanation. I get your point about transparency and trace-ability of each page's scores.

I'm still wondering though - if removal isn't an option, wouldn't it be better to have the obsolete versions of each file blocked by default, so they can only be restored by request? That would eradicate the danger of old file versions being used by people with bad intent to vandalize pages and still keep the complete history of the page intact.