Can moderators / high-rep users delete revisions from the revision history?
I am asking this because the revision history for this answer here seems to be missing the original posted answer (which I saw and clearly remember).
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Sign up to join this communityCan moderators / high-rep users delete revisions from the revision history?
I am asking this because the revision history for this answer here seems to be missing the original posted answer (which I saw and clearly remember).
No, neither moderators nor high-rep users have the ability to delete revisions. The dev team can, as long as there's a subsequent revision (they can't delete all the revisions for a given post)
This comes up when users accidentally post their password or other confidential information. You can edit the post to remove it (creating a new revision), flag it for mod attention, and a mod will contact a dev to have them delete the original revision. You can tell when this happens because revision 2 will show up as revision 1 in the list, but both revisions still have entries in the history, so revision 2 will now be empty. For example:
Update: as mentioned in the June 2015 edition of the moderator newsletter (which is open for public view), Community Managers can now alter specific revisions rather than just deleting them. This means that it is no longer necessary to do an edit in order to create a revision - redactions can be made directly.
I am asking this because the revision history for this answer here seems to be missing the original posted answer (which I saw and clearly remember).
This is most likely because the OP edited it within the 5 minutes editing grace period. In that case there is no revision, and the old revision is modified instead.
High-rep users cannot delete revisions from the history. Of course I consider myself high-rep, but that is a discussion for a different question.
According to @mmyers, it is not a diamond-mod ability either.