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Requests for adminship and bureaucratship update

No current discussions. Recent RfAs, recent RfBs: (successful, unsuccessful)

It is 02:12:08 on December 5, 2024, according to the server's time and date.

Maybe de-admin Maury Markowitz?

Maury Markowitz (current rights · rights management · rights log (local) · rights log (global/meta) · block log)

I have little interest in the admin side of things, and honestly can't even recall why I RfAed so long ago (or even if I did?). In the 20 years I've been here I've used it maybe five times for actual admin-things.

On the downside, having the bit made me the _target of Russian hackers who stole my account to post garbage, which in turn made me the _target of nasty comments. I suspect removing the bit will lower the likelihood of that happening again.

However... one capability I use all the time is the ability to see and restore deleted edits/articles. Is that solely part of the admin bit, or can I gain that capability through a less powerful userright?

Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:10, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi Maury. The right you are talking about, Wikipedia:Viewing and restoring deleted pages, is bundled in with admin rights: WP:MOPRIGHTS, and is not one of the rights you can request separately. Let us know if you still wish to go ahead and return the tool kit. SilkTork (talk) 15:19, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Enabling WP:2FA may be prudent. –xeno^talk 15:21, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Here is your RFA: Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Maury_Markowitz - you were nominated by User:UninvitedCompany. SilkTork (talk) 15:25, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

10 supports and 0 opposes, a veritable feast of participation there! Funny how things were in the old days...  — Amakuru (talk) 17:44, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

It was also a time where there were 12 RfAs a week. They were different times for sure as we were barely out of the "RfA over the email list" day and age. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:15, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Ok, well then I guess I would like to keep the bit for the time being. What would be the process of getting this capability separated out? Impossible or doable? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:31, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

{{noncrat comment}} (well, it should exist) My understanding is it's impossible, because the WMF has decreed somewhere that the ability to view deleted contributions requires a substantial community vetting process. The frequent use of the ability to view/restore deleted edits is a perfectly legit use of the admin toolkit. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:38, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Agree here on appropriateness, almost no admin uses every component of the admin toolkit - "only" using a couple of them is not a problem that community has expressed a problem with for existing admins (for prospective admins it is a bit harder, as even if they declare they only want the kit for one reason that is not binding). — xaosflux ^Talk 15:43, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam: {{nacmt|crat}} exists, but is a bit messy. Sdrqaz (talk) 15:52, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Sdrgaz: what we need is a generic {{kibbitzer}} template. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:34, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

eyeroll. I meant @Sdrqaz:. sigh. --Floquenbeam (talk) 17:35, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Floquenbeam Had a go at creating something similar: ( Peanut gallery comment) Sdrqaz (talk) 20:11, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) @Maury Markowitz: thanks for the note, it is possible but is far from simple. Viewing deleted content (and being able to restore deleted content) requires going through an RfA or similar process to comply with some global rules; as such, a new community review process for anyone that wanted that would be needed (which could be using the current RfA process with ONLY asking for that access). As this requires a community review process for anyone new that would need this - traditionally the community has pushed back that it isn't worth the time to not just give out the full admin toolkit. The technical components for such a process are the easy part. It is likely that if a permission group included viewdelete/undelete - it would need to contain related permissions like delete/revision delete - so that such users could reverse anything they did wrong. The next steps if you really really want to go down that road would be to set up a page and workshop what this new group would include and the processes that it will involve, get some input likely from VPI - then run a RfC that is widely advertised and attended to get support for it. — xaosflux ^Talk 15:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Can anyone offer some insight as to why this is considered so high-security? I've yet to see anything particularily worrying in the deleted content - spam and vandalism, but mostly just insufficiently cited works. Am I missing a use case? Maury Markowitz (talk) 23:36, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

WP:OUTING and similar offenses are obvious situations. But in general, you won't want to end up in a WP:BEANS or Streisand effect situation where by deleting something you end up attracting attention to it. Tarl N. (discuss) 23:40, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

Deleted material might be defamatory or illegal (child abuse) or outing or serious copyright vio or possibly more. I guess that means access should be restricted as much as reasonable. I seem to recall a failed proposal that a "reviewer" or "researcher" right be created to allow approved people to do what they think is research by trawling deleted pages. Johnuniq (talk) 23:45, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

It exists, but on special grant from the WMF only. Btw, here is an ancient comment from Mike Godwin somewhat explaining the Foundation's position. The crux of it is (although I think the Foundation has been careful to avoid ever saying this explicitly), by having "deleted" materials still visible to 1,000+ people, most of whom haven't been vetted by the WMF, there's already a bit of a legal gray area when it comes to what counts as "publication" for the purposes of laws like defamation. That's why they are very opposed to expanding access further, and why OS has to exist (for cases where the pool of users with access needs to have a legal relationship with the Foundation... and then true database-level deletion for the worst of the worst). -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she/they) 23:51, 27 September 2021 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: a major deletion use case is for copyright violations, and the additional legal gray areas Tamzin's alluded to above about WMF not making such works widely available. — xaosflux ^Talk 00:28, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz: - we delete in order to remove material from public view for a whole bunch of reasons, some of which have significant legal implications. We grant trusted users access to that material on the understanding that they have some grasp of why it has been deleted so they don't do anything damaging to themselves, someone else, or Wikipedia. Be aware that the Foundation are these days reluctant to give financial aid to users or admins who face legal actions as a result of doing something inappropriate on Wikipedia, and they may seek damages against you if they themselves are sued because of an undeletion you made - you need to use common sense as well as your understanding of Wikipedia's rules and the law in general when undeleting material. Most undeletions are harmless, but you do need to double check the reason why something was deleted. Of all the tools you have, undeletion is the most significant, and the one most likely to trip up an unwary admin. SilkTork (talk) 10:49, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

All of the above are true - but it is also true that we delete for lots of other reasons, totally mundane reasons. Those, in my experience, greatly outnumber the use-cases above. Literally, in every single case I have used the tool, the deletion was due to missing references in a stub-like article or advertizing-like posts, which nevertheless has some useful bits that can be rescued. While I don't argue that the above cases don't exist, and should have some protections, it seems like we have a baby/bathwater issue here. But I am clearly tilting at windmills, which is precisely why I don't use admin much, so I'll leave it at that. Maury Markowitz (talk) 11:13, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

JGHowes

User:JGHowes unfortunately needs to be desysopped [1]--Ymblanter (talk) 15:54, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

 Done with sympathies, and gratitude for their long and dedicated service to the project. –xeno^talk 16:31, 28 September 2021 (UTC)