Wiktionary:Votes/2021-12/Deleter role

Voting on: Creating the “deleter” role for certain non-admins. A “deleter” would be able to delete pages, undelete pages, and (similarly) view deleted pages. This right would be granted through the WT:WL page, where one admin would nominate a user and another admin would approve that nomination.

(Note: This proposed role would not include the right to delete/undelete page revisions or view deleted ones.)

Rationale: This would be useful in closing RFV's and RFD's, which have created backlogs; deleting mistakes and obvious misspellings; and fighting vandalism. In addition, it would give admins the opportunity to delegate these menial tasks and concentrate on more complex issues that really require admin attention: blocks, monitoring role in debates, adjudication in disputes, etc. And it would help people entrusted with the tools to do their job more efficiently.

Schedule:

• Vote starts: 16:00, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
• Vote ends: 16:00, 12 January 2022 (UTC)
• Vote created: Imetsia (talk) 15:39, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

Discussions:

• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2017/June § Conditionally renominating User:Dan Polansky for admin per User talk:Dan Polansky#Renomination for admin?
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2019/March § Page-deleter role?
• Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/December § Deleter role

1. Support. I think what truly sets apart admins from others is their power on other users: to block, to modify user rights. There are many users I can think of who, according to me, aren't fit for adminship, but fit for deleter-ship. —Svārtava 16:00, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
2. Support as proposer. Imetsia (talk) 16:46, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
3. Support — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 16:59, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
4. Support. AG202 (talk) 19:13, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
5. Support Given some recent discussions on other votes (lol), it feels like there could be real use for powers between whitelist/autopatrolled and adminship. Of course, like with other such roles, we would have to be careful who we give these powers to, but that's a given. Vininn126 (talk) 19:18, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
6. Support --Numberguy6 (talk) 20:14, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
7. Support I do think there is a group of people who are not interested in adminship but would be interested in "deletership". ObnoxiousCoder (𒅀𒀀𒋾𒁺𒁍𒌒) 01:09, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
8. Support -- 𝓑𝓱𝓪𝓰𝓪𝓭𝓪𝓽𝓽𝓪^{(𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓴)} 02:05, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
9. Support Overlordnat1 (talk) 02:33, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
10. Support.
    -Taimoor Ahmed^{(گل بات؟)} 22:51, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
11. Support ᛙᛆᚱᛐᛁᚿᛌᛆᛌ ᛭ Proto-Norsing ᛭ Ask me anything 10:39, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

    Support --Rishabhbhat (talk) 05:22, 16 December 2021 (UTC) withdrawn --Rishabhbhat (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

12. Support. Helpful. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 06:37, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
13. Support PUC – 13:25, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
14. After some deliberation, Support. Hythonia (talk) 21:11, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
15. Support I'm not really interested in becoming an admin but I've considered asking for admin status solely in order to have the ability to delete pages I've created in error. Linguoboy (talk) 21:17, 6 January 2022 (UTC)
16. Support. DonnanZ (talk) 11:36, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

1. Oppose on the following grounds:
   1. The right to view deleted pages, equivalently to undelete pages, should not be granted to those who cannot be entrusted to have sysop rights, because much like with revision deletion, pages are often deleted due to containing potentially sensitive information, content that infringes on some copyright, etc.
   2. Without the right to undelete pages, the role would be left incomplete, unable to clean up after a user's own mistakes.
   3. There are likewise sufficiently worrying technical concerns regarding a deleter role like this that have been discussed before.
   4. None of the points for implementing something like this are likewise convincing; they're nothing that {{delete}} doesn't solve. Delegating tasks from sysops to subroles simply doesn't appear to be necessary.

   — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 19:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

   1. An editor like PUC, whose admin vote didn't get consensus but is a long term and good contributor, should get the deleter right if they want. Being and admin is much more than having the ability to delete pages. Plus, every internet user should be careful enough not to release their sensitive information on such places. Forget about Wiktionary, what can we do if that user publishes that on some other place or social media or even their own blog? Hiding such info is good, but not a boundation; not releasing such info on publicly accessible websites is something basic that every internet user must know and strictly speaking, no one is obliged to protect such users.
   2. Undeletion has been included in this proposal, so that the role isn't incomplete.
   3. The technical concern is that it would not be possible to have a page-deleter role without the right to (un)delete or view deleted page revisions. This doesn't seem likely to me, but in case this isn't possible, we'll see what else can be done. This vote is about whether we should have the role or not, not if this is technically possible or not. Technically, opposing on this ground is irrelevant.
   4. It would be convenient, like, for example, the extended mover role. One could have argued against the extended mover role on similar grounds, saying that the residual redirect could be tagged with {{delete}}. Compare also the rollbacker role: it saves time and improves efficiency, but what it does can be done through the regular "undo" button and through manual reverts also.

   —Svārtava 10:08, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   2 was in reference to 1. It is simply ludicrous to grant the right to undelete or view deleted pages to a user who does not have the equivalent rights to view deleted revisions (because the two are equivalent; we are viewing content that a sysop has deleted, probably for a good reason), and if we cannot trust users to have sysop rights, we cannot trust them with those rights either, plain and simple. That in itself is enough to oppose this proposal. Citing comparisons to the extended mover role is not appropriate, since that role was created to fulfill an exceptional need and should not have ever, in my view, become something more than that. In fact, it still isn't - I can't find a page for nominating users to be extended movers. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 14:16, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   You're mistaken regarding this proposal. To make it clear, the rights related to page revisions are not included in this proposal merely for the sake of less components, simplicity, and straightforwardness; for instance, if they were grouped together, someone may oppose the right to view deleted revisions along with this and may just oppose the whole proposal on that basis. According to you, they're equivalent, but it might not be so for some other user. This isn't supposed to mean that viewing deleted revisions requires more trust than deleting pages. Also, AFAICT, content which is mostly hidden is either promotional material, spam or vandalism, and rarely personal info. Per my above comment, we are not, in any way, obliged to protect the private info of a user who has been careless enough to publish it on Wiktionary in the first place. Regarding the admin-ship vs deleter-ship, there are different criterias; someone might assume a certain amount of time of a user on Wiktionary to be a prerequisite for admin-ship, for example. If a user is here, for say, 5 months, not yet fully familiar with all policies, etc., but working diligently and responsibly, with good quality contributions, active in RFD, RFV, vandalism-reversion, they could be entrusted with the deleter role, but maybe not the admin role because they're not yet familiar with *all* policies which is needed for an admin. —Svārtava 15:57, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   I'm not mistaken in any way. This vote is proposing a new role, granted not by vote (like with sysops), but via a less formal process, that lets someone view deleted content, and that in itself is a dealbreaker. I would be less opposed to the proposal if the only way to get the deleter role would be via a vote, but what's the point then? — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 16:42, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   On what grounds do you classify letting someone approved through WT:WL view deleted page-content as a “dealbreaker”? —Svārtava 16:47, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   If someone cannot be trusted with sysop rights, they cannot be trusted with the right to view deleted content, period. — SURJECTION ^{/ T / C / L /} 18:44, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   Well, you can have whatever opinion you want to, but in the above discussions and all, many have said that the admin has other rights also, which are more potent than deleting pages (eg. blocking right). —Svārtava 04:31, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

2. Oppose — Zack. — 22:36, 13 December 2021 (UTC)
3. Oppose The proposed nomination / approval path towards giving someone the "deleter" role seems absurdly lax. Furthermore there is no backlog of pages that need to be deleted and there is no lack of admins willing to delete pages. DTLHS (talk) 22:51, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

   Rather, it is simple and straightforward. It isn't like if once somebody becomes a deleter, they are exempt from all the rules and are free to delete any page they want to. And if used irrationally and irresponsibly, any admin could remove the role. Like I also said above, this would be convenient and isn't really proposed because of backlog of pages that need to be deleted or lack of admins willing to delete pages. Is there any lack of admins to move pages or revert vandalism that we have extended movers and roll backers? —Svārtava 10:08, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   So you admit it's not needed for any reason and yet you still want to do this because you're bored or something? DTLHS (talk) 23:38, 14 December 2021 (UTC)

   This role isn't a necessity, but a useful addition, like some other roles. Read the rationale given above. —Svārtava 04:31, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

4. Oppose per Surjection. Thadh (talk) 08:02, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
5. Oppose per Surjection and DTLHS. Brittletheories (talk) 20:17, 14 December 2021 (UTC)
6. Oppose per Surjection and DTLHS, and (to a lesser extent) points I have made in the BP discussion. PseudoSkull (talk) 23:39, 15 December 2021 (UTC)
7. Oppose. There is marginal utility to this proposal, but the proposers have not created an approval system that handles the risks. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 05:39, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
8. Oppose: Bad idea. Deletion rights is just as powerful as being an admin with none of the oversight. --{{victar|talk}} 18:13, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
9. Oppose — justin(r)leung _{{ (t...) | c=› }} 02:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
10. Oppose per my comment below. --Rishabhbhat (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
11. Oppose – Jberkel 21:51, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
12. Oppose Approval process for deleter seems too easy given the destructive power involved. DCDuring (talk) 20:56, 21 December 2021 (UTC)
13. Oppose per Surjection and DTLHS. I don't see any shortage of admins that justifies creating a new role at this time. — SGconlaw (talk) 21:51, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
14. Oppose per Surjection --DannyS712 (talk) 10:05, 31 December 2021 (UTC)
15. Oppose per Surjection and DTLHS. The proposal requires deleters to be able to view the revisions of deleted pages. So deleters would have to be trusted not to disclose or misuse private information, like admins. I don't see proponents clearly addressing this issue. Svartava says dismissively, "we are not, in any way, obliged to protect the private info of a user who has been careless enough to publish it on Wiktionary". Depends what you mean by obliged; admins are expected not to disclose or misuse private information from deleted revisions or deleted pages. It is also our practice to delete revisions or pages containing private information, though there aren't any rules on how quick we have to do it.

    Further explanation: based on mw:Help:Undelete, deleters can't undelete without the deletedhistory right and the undelete right, because the deletedhistory right lets you view Special:Undelete. To view the text of deleted pages, deleters would have to have the deletedtext right. Without the deletedtext right, undelete and deletedhistory would be useless because deleters wouldn't know what they were deleting. So deleters would have to have the undelete, deletedhistory, and deletedtext rights. They could view the history and the text of deleted pages. This is different from viewing information about deleted revisions, which seems to be part of a separate right, deleterevision.

    Undeletion means viewing deleted pages, which allows you to see personal information that admins have chosen to hide. This is a security concern that wasn't resolved by proponents before the vote was started. In Wiktionary:Beer parlour/2021/December#Deleter role, proponents suggested that the revisions of deleted pages should be revision-deleted. That seems to be possible, but it means that admins would have to go back and find all revisions of deleted pages that contain private information and revision-delete them. I don't think that's practical because of how many deleted pages there are. There doesn't seem to be a way to search the revisions of deleted pages, though there is a way to search the titles of deleted pages. So, a deleter would need to be trusted to not misuse private information in deleted pages, just like an admin. — Eru·tuon 06:56, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

    @Erutuon While this vote is certainly doomed to failure, I would like to address this personal information argument. If a user posts their personal information on Wiktionary, 1) they should not have been so careless to do it 2) sometimes pages are left out there for hours, until then the information can be seen publicly 3) “admins are expected not to disclose or misuse private information from deleted revisions or deleted pages” -- expected by whom?! Who knows if some admin does misuse it after being deleted? No one. I believe it to be solely the poster's responsibility; even if we never hide the revision, it isn't our fault, it is just something we do in good faith. Although the other points like granting laxity, technical/implementation problem, unneeded split between admin and deleter, etc. make sense to me, this argument seems invalid. —Svārtava 07:53, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

    @Svartava2: Personal information is not always posted by the person it belongs to. Most of the time it isn't. But even if that weren't the case, "well, they shouldn't have done it" is not a good defense IMO. — Fytcha〈 T | L | C 〉 15:01, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

    I agree with Svartava on this, but I don't think it's a very convincing argument to change someone's mind. The Internet is a vast place, and if someone is willing to post sensitive information about themselves or others on Wiktionary, then they are equally as willing to post it anywhere else. We may have good admins here who revert those edits, but we can't police the rest of the Internet to ensure that personal information doesn't go into the wrong hands.

    The better argument though is that the deleter role is meant for those whom we trust to delete pages, view sensitive information, look over copyright violations, etc. BUT NOT to block other users. Some might say we're splitting hairs (Surjection above declares that no such category of users exists), but the fact is that we've had a number of discussions over the years in which we've recognized the need to carve out such a category. They're quoted in the original BP discussion. Imetsia (talk) 17:25, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

    Obviously we can't police the whole internet. We only have responsibility over our own tiny slice of it, regardless of what happens elsewhere. I appreciate the recognition that viewing deleted pages requires trust regarding sensitive information and copyright violations. That wasn't made very clear in the text of the proposal, so that it kind of sounds like a deleter wouldn't require much more trust than a mover. However, I don't see a big enough difference in trust level between deleting and undeleting pages, which would be granted to the deleter, and deleting revisions and blocking and abuse filter editing and other things that only an admin can do, such that deleters should be nominated in the same way as autopatrollers. — Eru·tuon 19:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

    If the only objection is the nomination process, I'd be fine with making the approval process more rigorous. I've offered to do just that. Members of the opposition have either refused that invitation or stayed silent on it. (In my mind, it's unfair in the first place to raise such an objection now since it was never made in any of the discussions preceding the vote). And then we're doubly disadvantaged because many of the people who've opposed this are the same people who've campaigned against quick revotes before. So the option of simply letting this vote run its course and proposing a modified version right after is also ill-fated. (I just finished writing my essay on this, which elaborates on these positions further). Imetsia (talk) 19:40, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

    @Svartava, Svartava2: "Who knows if some admin does misuse it": Perhaps no one, but it would be grounds for removal of adminship. Same if we had deleters. Obviously people shouldn't post private information, and admins have no legal responsibility if someone grabs private information before an admin deletes it, but it's still our ethical responsibility not to misuse it. Obviously "ethical responsibility" doesn't have as sharp teeth as "legal responsibility", but it should still exist for an admin. — Eru·tuon 19:09, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

16. Oppose due to the arguments already mentioned. Furthermore, I do not believe in good intentions of Imetsia's secret group, which he calls cabal or The party. Also in light of the next vote he started. Allahverdi Verdizade (talk) 14:40, 11 January 2022 (UTC)
17. Oppose: Aside from the very sound points raised by others, this is exactly the kind of overelaborate, ill-advised bureaucratism we should be trying to avoid here at Wiktionary. While it isn't likely to have much of a encumbering effect in itself, the passing of this vote could play a role in legitimising the foisting of greater and grosser bureaucratic loadstones upon Wiktionary in the months and years to come. Hazarasp (parlement · werkis) 08:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

1. Abstain. I agree with both Svartava and DTLHS. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 20:11, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
2. Abstain per Andrew Sheedy. Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty ⚧️ Averted crashes} 06:35, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
3. Abstain In-line with DTLHS' discussion with Svartava, it appears to be a solution in search of a problem. The only person who I am aware who has cited a specific surplus of entries that need to be deleted which could be better managed if someone has a deleter role is Taimoorahmed11/Taimoor Ahmed at the recent Beer Parlour discussion. If there are handful of other examples of such, I would be willing to support the creation of the role. I do think a deleter role involves a higher level of responsibility than being whitelisted or a rolebacker, so I think it should require a vote rather then a nomination-approval process. I would expect such votes to be fairly uncontroversial and move through smoothly. (For the record, Imetsia neutrally asked to share my thoughts on this vote via Discord.)—The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 21:42, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
4. Abstain. I don't feel it's necessary, so I don't want to support, but I do think it's unlikely to be harmful, so I don't want to oppose. —Mahāgaja · talk 13:10, 3 January 2022 (UTC)
5. Abstain. Same as Mahāgaja. Sartma (talk) 09:49, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

1. Upon reconsideration, I've withdrawn my support vote. The idea itself is great, however, I think the selection process should be a tad more stringent- given that deleting pages is a very powerful right. Could we have, let's say, one admin to propose a user and require two to approve before the right is granted? This, I feel, will prevent abuse and introduce some measure of seriousness in this position of great power. --Rishabhbhat (talk) 06:12, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

   Yes, that's a good idea, because many are opposing on this basis. Although, it probably isn't possible to change this vote now, as it has already started. 3 admin idea would be good to consider, if this proposal was to be re-proposed later on. —Svārtava 06:48, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

   Could we not add a second option in the vote? --Rishabhbhat (talk) 07:46, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

   It's probably too late for it… —Svārtava 08:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

• Failed: 16-17-5. —Svārtava 15:59, 12 January 2022 (UTC)