Wikiversity talk:Custodianship

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Please see the archives for prior discussions:

Proposal to allow custodians to use mass-delete[edit source]

Tracked in Phabricator
Task T360977
Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.


At special:permalink/2609683#Does_anybody_know_how_to_delete_all_pages_by_a_single_user?, there was a related discussion about this matter. I brought the agenda to the colloquium for the community's attention, and I was suggested to start a proposal here (special:diff/2610994). As can be seen at Special:ListGroupRights, only bureaucrats are allowed to use mass-delete under current settings, but many Wikimedia projects allow this to admins (equal to our custodians). Please note that global sysops can also use mass-delete. What does our community think about this? Should we keep the current settings, or should we grant mass-delete to our custodians as a new standard? MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 07:12, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Curious - is there is a list somewhere of what permissions are provided on which WMF projects? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:43, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Special:ListGroupRights is available at all WMF projects. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:17, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please also note that mw:Extension:Nuke and b:MediaWiki_Administrator's_Handbook/Page_Deletion#Mass_page_deletion assumes that admins can handle mass-delete. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:24, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
a) I'm curious if there's a conflict of interest seeing that there is a proposal to make you custodian (whatever that means), and b) What's mass-delete? Username142857 (discuss • contribs) 14:31, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not a conflict of interest, but the two issues are certainly linked. MathXplore was nominated because they have considerable administrative experience with other Wikis and because they are currently actively involved with Wikversity "cleanup". MathXplore's interest in mass-deleting was in response to my request for information on that action. I am not aware that MathXplore ever asked to be nominated, but if that was the case, I fully support it. A number of editors are interested in removing low-quality pages (or at least moving them to less conspicuous locations.) I am somewhat of a bottleneck to that process because as a custodian, I am one of the few people who can delete pages (see Wikiversity:Deletions.) Although there is no conflict of interest, there is a connection between these two requests: MathXplore is less prone to mistakes than I. Giving MathXplore custodianship and giving custodians mass-deletion would speed up this "cleanup" process. I have never see MathXplore display poor judgement, and that is why I support giving him both. Only the adoption of both proposals would allow MathXplore to delete a large number of pages without anybody's approval.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 15:39, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks @Username142857 and @Guy vandegrift for pointing out that there is a connection between: (a) this proposal by MathXplore to allow custodians to use mass-delete and (b) the nomination (by myself) for MathXplore to move from curator to custodian. As Guy points out, it is not necessarily a conflict of interest, but it is important that the connection be pointed out in case anyone has concerns they would like to raise. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 23:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your responses. I noticed that we don't have a COI-related policy. Until formal agreements, w:Wikipedia:Conflict of interest can be used as our reference. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 03:03, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Guy vandegrift: I declare that I never contacted anyone else about custodianship before special:permalink/2611262#Custodianship. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 03:05, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@MathXplore: I'm not accustomed to doing things by the book. Am I supposed to refrain from voting on this because I do have a clear benefit if it passes? My plan was to be one of the last to vote.--Guy vandegrift (discuss • contribs) 03:23, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Voting or not is all up to you. I'm not sure if you have benefit because the deletions that you are handling are not suitable for mass-delete. They come from different users, and they are neither vandalism nor illegal. Mass-delete aims to accelerate deletion of vandalism etc. by a single user. In the past, I have seen many discussions about admin configurations or deletion policy at other WMF projects (recently I have seen q:special:permalink/3478221#Flood_flag), but admins were allowed to join the discussion as one user. So I'm not suprised to see you at here. We are a smaller community (and a GS wiki), if custodians don't join the discussion, then others won't. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 06:16, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What does 'illegal' mean in this context, and why couldn't someone just make a resource titled 'Wikiversity: Conflict of interest' to create a COI-related policy? Also, how is this project different from others and what makes a difference meaningful as opposed to not meaningful (examples of both would be nice)? Sorry if I'm asking too many questions :) Username142857 (discuss • contribs) 15:01, 12 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Examples of illegal content include (but maybe not limited to) copyright violations, privacy violations, serious derogatory, etc. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Again, we are a smaller community. We don't have enough workforce to make every kind of rules, and making rules is not are main scope (please see Wikiversity:Scope). You are welcome to make drafts of COI-related policy, but promotion to official policy will need another discussion. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:08, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unlike others, we are an educational project. Things without educational objectives can disappear (WV:CSD). Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and may host school projects, but not exactly educational. There are many non-educational content over there, such as video games, movies, animation articles without any educational viewpoints. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:14, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For examples of meaningful differences at Wikiversity, I know WikiJournal (preprints) and Wikidebate. WikiJournals can be educational (especially for higher grades), but since they will include original research, they cannot be accepted at Wikipedia (w:Wikipedia:No original research, w:Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_manual,_guidebook,_textbook,_or_scientific_journal). Wikidebates can help people learn the subject in general or how to debate, but since Wikipedia disallows forums for subjects in general, it cannot exist over there (w:Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#Wikipedia_is_not_a_publisher_of_original_thought). MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:22, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How is this allowed, then? Username142857 (discuss • contribs) 11:33, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Things like that can only be agreed upon via local consensus, and that is beyond the judgment of Wikiversity curatorship/custodianship. While "Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought" (usage of original thought publication in the mainspace will not be accepted in the encyclopedia), some essays might be helpful for others, especially when they are related to the project. Please note that it doesn't mean that essay-only users are always accepted over there (w:WP:NOTHERE). MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 12:26, 21 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An example of possibly non-meaningful differences at Wikiversity was the collection namespace (special:permalink/2612077#RFC:_Deprecate_and_remove_the_Collection:_namespace.). In the beginning, it was believed to be meaningful, but it was found that it was not used efficiently. Another example of possibly non-meaningful differences at here is the issue that we are facing at here, limiting mass-delete to bureaucrats when more than half of our bureaucrats are inactive. This restriction is affecting the community's ability to handle vandalism quickly, and has nothing to do with Wikiversity's educational objective. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 02:33, 13 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The first part of your question has been answered by our current custodians, I don't think I have to add anything else. Technical details of mass-delete are provided at mw:Extension:Nuke. It can be used by selecting a specific user, and then deleting pages created by them at once. The scope of this feature is to remove obvious vandalism or illegal content (copyright violations, attack pages, etc.) faster. A recent example of using mass-delete is Special:Contributions/39.50.199.52 (already reported to WV:RCA). As I pointed out above, the Wikimedia standard is to allow mass-delete to admins (they are known as custodians in our project). If we are going to make a difference, then those who made them should be able to explain them. I have recently asked why we limited mass-delete to bureaucrats (special:diff/2609059) and the answer was special:diff/2609060. We are different from other projects. Meaningful differences should be saved, but questionable differences should be corrected (in this case, restore standard technical settings). We don't need to make differences to be different. This is the background of this proposal. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 03:01, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Voting
Support It seems that most of the clean-up work at en.wv is currently being performed by sysops/custodians and if they are requesting access to Special:Nuke functionality to help them do that work, I'm keen to support that. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:43, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support There seems to be a lot of content generated and a lot of content left incomplete and dormant. Probably there's a lot to maintain and I'm all for making it easier on whomever does it. Addemf (discuss • contribs) 02:04, 9 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support I've run into this problem where I've wanted to nuke a vandal's contributions but wasn't able to - manually deleting several pages is a hassle. This would be a great additional to our toolkit. —Atcovi (Talk - Contribs) 17:00, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support Safe enough to try, as I believe I wrote on a previous thread. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 17:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Would improve response times and any damage from incorrect use is reversible by a custodian anyway. Elominius (discuss • contribs) 00:47, 17 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support as it would be very useful in deleting so many pages made by socks of banned users or LTAs. Codename Noreste (discuss • contribs) 20:37, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Result[edit source]

I find that there is consensus to allow custodians to make use of the mass delete feature. If someone wants to file the request on phabricator please do so --DannyS712 (discuss • contribs) 15:17, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

checkY Done, please see phab:T360977. MathXplore (discuss • contribs) 03:33, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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