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I saw a PPT posted by Jeff that showed a revision page which had the delete revision function, like this:

enter image description here

But I have never seen this functionality on SO's revision pages. I guess that's because I don't have the privilege.

My questions is: Who has the privilege to delete a revision?

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We no longer hard delete revisions. Instead, we now redact them.

And currently, moderators have that ability too. So instead of contacting us if you for some reason accidentally posted sensitive information, please proceed by editing your post to have said information removed and replaced with dummy text/data/code that fulfills the same purpose — take care not to break context of the post, especially if answers are already present — and then flag the post for moderator attention (this is covered in this help center page). In both the flag and the edit descriptions, please try to be as descriptive as possible (p.e., mention "removed IP and e-mail addresses" or "removed e-mail address and password").

If the answers already used sensitive information before you noticed and edited it out, please do the same thing for them.

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    Thank you for this information. Accidentally posted my last name as part of an error in Terminal on my Mac once.
    – bb216b3acfd8f72cbc8f899d4d6963
    Commented Jun 7, 2016 at 17:40
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    Who can see redacted revisions? Any mod?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 9:52
  • @ShadowTheKidWizard Nope - after a redaction is complete - mods can see that a redaction happened but not what the redacted content was. I believe you have to be a CM to be able to see the actual content.
    – Jon Clements
    Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 14:46
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    Redacted revisions aren't accessible to any non-staff member, @ShadowTheKidWizard. And it's not easy for staff members to get access to them either — the revisions are purged from the DB, so we'd only be able to access them if that revision made its way to an old back-up.
    – JNat StaffMod
    Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 15:12
  • @JNat so it's hard deletion (that's exactly the definition for purged from the DB), just getting a catchy short name. :)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 16:41
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    guess the distinction I was trying to make at the time was that the way we purge the content is different: before, the whole revision would be gone, and now we redact only part of it. Feel free to edit to make it more technically correct if you will, @ShadowTheKidWizard ;)
    – JNat StaffMod
    Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 17:34
  • The answer is fine. Thanks! :)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Aug 24, 2022 at 17:57

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