<blockquote> We should not delete the pages outright, but mark them deleted.
</blockquote>
Yeah, I guess we learned that when Milan from AIESEC deleted the entire certification test site... hhehehee.. oh Malte, the good old days 😉
Back again, yes, they idea is not to delete it back mark it as gone.
<blockquote> If someone else is reusing the content, he should get a notification
that the content has been deleted by the original author and a one
click link to copy the deleted item to a new location, with him as
the author.
</blockquote>
I thought about the notification for deletion and also for new versions of content available.
However, the tricky part will come when the part of the course is being used by several other lecturers (not just one).
Although, in the past few days, I've been trying to think on a different approach to this altogether. An approach that will make much more sense for a learning object repository:
What might works is a paradigm where content is uploaded not necessarily into a .LRN class, but to the repository directly. Then once the course is there, it can be "used" or linked by the owner in any of the classes that HE/SHE is part of. Additionally, the content owner should be the one who determines to what extend he/she wants his/her courses/learning objects/content to be shared with others. For instance as a content owner I could say 'Well, I'm just going to share this with people in my department'. Or if copyright issues are managed tightly in the University/company, then the content owner can say 'No, I just want this to stay within the limits of this class'. Using this approach we will be accommodating for both: repository centric content and class centric content.
So if we pursue this approach, then a lecturer that has upload content for people to reuse won't really delete the actual content, but will turn down permissions for other people to use it. A UI could be done so the content creator can see who's using the content that he's providing and in what context they are using it.
I think this will be more "open" (again, for lack of a better word) approach to content within a learning object repository.
Luckily, I think I'm on a stage where I can easily modify what I have so far to accommodate for this new approach.
I'd really like to hear what other people would have to say about this idea and whether it is the right way to go.
Ernie