WeRelate:Suggestions/Disallow the deletion of spousal pages if the family page is watched

Implementation

Implemented 18-19 Dec 2020:

For non-admin users, the Delete option no longer shows up on the menu for:

• A person page if the person is a spouse in any family page watched by another user.
• A family page if the person page of any of the children is watched by another user.

Users can no longer delete an entire tree. This function might be added back again (see WeRelate:Suggestions/Allow user to delete isolated tree), but only if:

• no pages in the tree are being watched by other users
• no pages outside the tree will be left with broken links

Outstanding:

Dallan and I agreed that from now on, users should only be allowed to delete a tree if there is no impact on pages watched by other users. That is, if any person or family page watched by another user links to a page in the tree, the user should not be allowed to delete the tree. Therefore, I removed the link that allows a user to delete a tree. That is, for now, users will not be able to delete trees at all, other than manually, one page at a time. I may re-instate a limited ability to delete a tree in the future (see WeRelate:Suggestions/Allow user to delete isolated tree).

Other possible restrictions for non-admin users that could be added (by suppressing the Delete option on the menu):

• If another user is watching the person page of a child in a family, prevent the delete of the person page of either parent. This would help to maintain, not only the immediate family, but links to the previous generation if they exist.

If anyone wants this change, they should create a new suggestion, as I have archived this one.--DataAnalyst 17:24, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

This is the same item seen in the next section regarding John Bryant and Sarah Bonham. The difference between trees and pages is not clear, as trees seem to be the focus of this discussion. But this argument is that the watcher list is not an accurate gauge of who is reacting to/counting on/expecting a page to be there. For a family page, it is any watcher of any child of that family. This is in regard to deletion of a page. Restricting deleting trees certainly catches the worse cases, but I am not sure rules should be different if deleting solo pages or by deleting an entire tree. --Jrich 19:01, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

• WeRelate:Suggestions/Prevent non-admin delete when multiple contributors - Prevent the delete of a person or family page if another user has revised the page and NOT marked it as a minor revision.

Personally, I find this appealing, as I am contributing to thousands of pages in the process of ensuring there are no pages for living individuals. I continue to watch most of these pages so that my efforts are not destroyed, but I would prefer not to have to. Minor revisions, on the other hand, usually mean no research was done, just some reformatting, and I am more willing to let that effort go to waste if the page is deleted.--DataAnalyst 15:44, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

In all cases, any user could add the Speedy Delete template and have an admin user delete the page. Currently, I keep reasonably on top of the Speedy Delete requests (usually leaving about 1-2 months after the request, depending on the reason given). Users can also unlink pages from other pages and then delete them - hopefully they would only do this to make a correction, not just to remove a page they had contributed.--DataAnalyst 15:40, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Suggestion

If a user is only watching the family page; the pages for the husband and wife may be deleted. Then one is watching an empty page. See Family:Kay Ottenberg and Unknown (1). The person page for Kay Ottenberg has been deleted. So the user who was watching the family page is now watching an empty page.--Beth 10:36, 26 February 2012 (EST)

Family:John Bryant and Sarah Bonham (1) is a family page where the user loaded it, and after 12 edits by 'other users, the family was fleshed out. However, the original user remained the only watcher being the only one to edit the page directly, and so was able to delete the page, leaving, it looks like, 9 dangling person pages who all belong to the deleted family and now need to be manually reconnected via a new family page. What is the point of allowing this? Permissions to delete a page should be tightened up. Perhaps only contributor should mean they are only person to make any change to the page, not simply the only watcher... Input to the family page is based on what is already there, and it is frustrating to have that stuff disappear after years of being there. So even deletion of person pages should be more restrictive. It has been pointed out elsewhere, that any contribution is donated freely, thus the logic of allowing such unrestricted deletions is unclear, since everything is so interconnected. --Jrich 17:30, 23 May 2013 (EDT)

On the other hand, it would be harder to fix one's own mistakes. -- Ypnypn 15:21, 26 May 2013 (EDT)

Fixing one's own mistakes could still be done using edits and speedy delete, plus presumably some slightly less wide-open form of delete. But there is a need to slow people down and make them realize pages do not belong to them alone and they are not working in a vacuum. This is something that may not be obvious since most genealogy websites don't have this philosophy... Mostly what is being complained of here is the mass delete used when some user, deciding not to participate any more, deletes an entire tree they input years ago without regards to what was built around it since they added the data. --Jrich 17:29, 26 May 2013 (EDT)

>> deletes an entire tree they input years ago without regards to what was built around it since they added the data.

I think above comments like this have an essence if we were to communicate what WR is really about

woepwoep 03:51, 29 September 2020 (UTC)