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Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Macdonald-ross

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The following discussion is preserved as an archive of a successful permissions request. Please do not modify it.

Macdonald-ross

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Macdonald-ross (talk · contribs · count)
RfdA of Macdonald-ross
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Last comment by: Chenzw.

End date: 21:25, 6 September 2024 (UTC)

Hello there,

I'm requesting that Macdonald-ross have his adminship removed here, for misusing admin tools – primarily not following quick deletion criteria and not being responsive to previous concerns about the way he is using his tools.

Much of this de-adminship request centres around misuse of the "A4" quick deletion (QD) criterion and notability in particular. A4 is about, quoting from deletion policy, people, groups, companies, products, services or websites that do not claim to be notable. (bolding mine). There is a difference between articles on non-notable topics and articles on non-notable topics that have a claim to notability (or a credible claim of significance on enwiki), yet there have been many cases where claims to notability seemingly have gone unnoticed and even articles for notable topics have been deleted. He has also deleted many articles in cases where QD criteria do not apply, or just used his own reasons with no reasoning in policy instead. I would like to provide a few examples, although this is obviously not an exhaustive list:

  1. On 16 July 2022, Macdonald-ross deleted Priyanka Rani Joshi as A4 but, as was pointed out at Deletion review, she won a national beauty pageant, Miss Nepal, that is a clear claim to notability. No comment was made by him at Deletion review.
  2. On 25 October 2022, he deleted 2022 WhatsApp Outage as a test page. The public log entry indicates it clearly is not a test page. No comment was made at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Archive 5#2022 WhatsApp Outage. The page was later deleted at Requests for deletion (RfD), but it did not meet any QD criteria.
  3. On 12 January 2024, Coat of arms of Bulgaria was deleted as A4 by Macdonald-ross, despite it being the coat of arms for a country. Complex language was also noted in the deletion reason, but the article is not a copy from the English Wikipedia and complex language is not alone a reason for quick deletion. No comment was made at Wikipedia:Deletion review#Coat of Arms of Bulgaria.
  4. On 26 March 2024, X-Men '97 was deleted as G2 but this is clearly not a test page. I restored it following a request on my talk page.
  5. On 28 March 2024, Puppy Bowl was deleted for the reason of "not notable". Sure, there is no claim to notability in that article, but pages are not deleted for failing notability guidelines (or just being "not notable" as the deletion reason says), as this is determined at RfD. Simply reviewing the enwiki equivalent will show plenty of references to prove notability. No comment was made at Wikipedia:Deletion review#Puppy Bowl.
  6. On 9 July 2024, Area code 712 was deleted for the reason of "Area codes not notable in encyclopedia". If this is the case, we have hundreds of articles to get deleting. Area codes are not eligible for A4, as they do not fall under any of the categories listed in A4. No comment was made at Wikipedia:Deletion review#Area code 712.
  7. On 29 July 2024, Lena Katina was randomly deleted for the reason of "Notability scarcely justified". Again, deletion policy is usually referred to if making a quick deletion over it yet this did not happen here. Lena Katina is one half of the duo t.A.T.u. (enwiki link), a group that produced many popular songs, one example being "All The Things She Said" that reached number 1 in 19 countries. I restored it, as it was a long-standing article on a clearly notable topic.
  8. On 28 August 2024, Fourth Sarkar ministry was deleted as A4, despite it previously being the government for an Indian state with 3.67 million people, which I believe is a clear claim of notability. I should note this was an article I created, but I wasn't made aware until I was scrolling through my own logged actions for other reasons.

I believe these deletions show a pattern of not listening to the community's concerns and not following Deletion policy over a long period of time. There are definitely other inappropriate deletions I could probably find, but I don't think it is necessary to find dozens of these deletions and collect them in one place.

I would like to note I did not want to start this RfdA. Macdonald-ross is one of our most active administrators, and editors in general, and I have a lot of respect for his work here. All admins make mistakes, but these have been repeated many times without any sign that he is intending to start following policy. The comment at Deletion review in 2021 here particularly concerns me, as it indicates he will continue to delete pages at RfD early in "obvious cases", rather than following the quick deletion criteria. Indeed, as shown by the evidence above, this is what he has continued to do despite criticism from other editors and admins. Finally, there is a fine line between being tough on spammy articles and biting newcomers trying their best to create new articles. I find it the case that that line was crossed long ago and Macdonald-ross' attitude to deletion is hindering constructive articles from being created. --Ferien (talk) 21:25, 30 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Support

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  1. Support Mistakes can be forgiven, but repeating them after warnings is not acceptable as an admin. --Cactus🌵 spiky ouch 04:58, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I am really sorry @Macdonald-ross but if you had cleaned up your mess after and not let others do or even just responded to peoples comments, this would not have happened. If you improve, I will support your adminship in the future. Cactus🌵 spiky ouch 11:01, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support The biggest error I know is special:redirect/logid/2631723, and this was finally corrected by others. We already lost 3 admins in this year and I don't think we have enough admins to correct others. MathXplore (talk) 09:09, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support This user has multiple times shown issues with their actions, like the whatsapp outage listed here. While we do understand mistakes, we also understand that continuing to make said mistakes after being told previously is not a good activity. His actions also harm his trustworthiness, and in my opinion, an admin fails when they can no longer be trusted to execute proper policy.- FusionSub (Talk page) (Contributions) 11:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support Mistakes happen, but this is a repeated pattern of disruptive behaviour with little to no signs of change. Maybe I can support a future admin request in a year or two when they've evidenced change, but right now I don't see any way out of this other than a desysop nom. --SHB2000 (talk) 11:30, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support - While I acknowledge that our Wikipedia currently has a limited number of administrators and losing one, especially an active one like @Macdonald-ross, is a significant loss, but I share Ferien's concerns, especially regarding the handling of QD and RFD requests. I have seen articles deleted by Macdonald-Ross, perhaps "by mistake", such as the Fourth Sarkar ministry (deleted as A4) and Abdulrahman Abed (Deleted during an ongoing RFD). Mistakes like Special:Diff/9736830 only increase the workload for other admins. Contributions like this removed just because it wasn't very detailed and mistakes like Special:Diff/9705761, Accidental revert, and Indefinite block of an IP are concerning. Everyone makes mistakes, but consistently repeating them is not acceptable behavior for an admin. The diff by MathXplore also concerns me, and I’ve noticed that most comments left on Macdonald-Ross's talk page are left unaddressed or answered by others. In conclusion, I support this de-adminship, but I hope Macdonald-Ross continues to be an active editor. I still appreciate your contributions here, as you are one of the most active editors on this small wiki. – Cyber.Eyes.2005Talk 11:55, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    FYI @Cyber.Eyes.2005 I'm not saying this is the case but the indeffing of the IP may have been a glitch with the system as I recall this also happened with Drmies and a few other admins at the English Wikipedia whom were all unaware until it was pointed out to them, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 16:09, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I understand that it might have been a system glitch, but it's concerning that Mac didn't address the issue when the reason for the block was questioned. I would be willing to support a future admin request if there is evidence of improvement in addressing the concerns raised here. – Cyber.Eyes.2005Talk 16:24, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Cyber.Eyes.2005 I completely agree with you, "Ooops I wasn't aware, I'll fix this now" or any response would've been better than just silence, Thanks, –Davey2010Talk 16:35, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support Many times I have filed an RFD only for the article to be quickly deleted by Mac. In those cases, the RFD in question isn't even closed by Mac. Their application of QD criteria, especially ones that have to do with notability, shows a disregard of the deletion policy. — *Fehufangą ♮ ✉ Talk page 14:35, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support, due to concerns raised above unfortunately. Sometimes, admins who do not attempt to help new administrators after a successful RfA... that can potentially lead to not-so-good errors from said new administrators. Codename Noreste 🤔 Talk 14:41, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support per everyone above - We certainly need all of the admins we can get so I take no joy in supporting this de-adminship however Macdonald-ross's QD-deletions have been questionable for a very long time but the deletion of Lena Katina was the final nail in the coffin for me, They were told here to stop with the random deletions and yet unfortunately it still continued. Mistakes happen but the random deletions of articles under your own criteria aren't mistakes - they're disruptive and damaging. Unfortunate support. –Davey2010Talk 16:31, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support per nom; shame. Queen of Hearts (talk) 20:47, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support While I do support I wanted to state that this has nothing against Macdonald-ross himself. Rather, this is from a policy standpoint. --Tsugaru let's talk! :) 02:45, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support we expect a little more from our admins (see w:WP:ADMINCONDUCT). Whilst I don't think anything specific here is a red flag in of itself, there's clearly a lack of communication, which is the base minimum I expect from an admin. The sheer amount of vandalism deletion and other admin only actions is quite vast on simple, so we might struggle without this user, however, we still need those with the toolset to be trussted. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:51, 1 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support Cactusisme's comment echoes my thoughts. Mistakes - no problem, but improving, clear communication and owning up to errors is needed. The QD's when there's a solid article on enwiki is really bothersome. More than once I've tagged an article here with no sources and just a line or two and only afterwards realized there's a better article on another wiki that shows notability. Revert the tag and go on. That's not happened here. Ravensfire (talk) 23:09, 2 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  13. Support I am sorry and I promise it is nothing personal, but I have to support this request. I too have a story to share, happened late August 2024: see this discussion. I think there was a mistake on my part, when I asked for the G6 deletion of the redirect (I wanted to move that userbox, I probably should have asked in the admin's noticeboard instead), however I have never ever asked for the deletion of the userbox itself (and I never placed any QD tags on it). Problem is, the userbox was deleted as "G2: test page" (single deletion log, all logs). Careful: my concerns do not come from the accidental deletion of the userbox, but from the reason for that deletion. It was a nice looking userbox, used by 103 users, clearly not a test page in any way. He might have deleted it by mistake (the title is very similar to its redirect), but how was that a test page? ✩ Dream Indigo ✩ 16:01, 5 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Dream Indigo adding on, even when Indigo told him about the mistake, he still didn't undelete it. Mathxplore undeleted it based on my request. Cactus🌵 spiky ouch 09:12, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    (Note) The request is archived in User_talk:MathXplore/2024/08#Concern. MathXplore (talk) 10:03, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  14. Support unfortunately. It's sad it has come down to this, but the disregard for policy is concerning. Ternera (talk) 20:39, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  15. Support It's sad but it's obvious that the trust of the community has been lost. fr33kman 21:39, 6 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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Comments

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The above adminship discussion is preserved as an archive of the discussion. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the talk page of either this nomination or the nominated user). No further edits should be made to this page.
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