Why can't users delete their own Confluence pages?
Asked by Adam Bartlett:

Can Confluence be configured to make it possible for users (who do ++not++ have Space admin rights) to delete pages that ++they++ have created?

Even if it could only be done within a certain time period of a page being created or only if the page had not been commented on or edited by another user it would be a useful feature.

We have many new users to Confluence and Space admins are getting frequent requests to delete pages created in the wrong Space.


Answers:
author: Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
body: Yes. There is an option to allow deleting own content.

See <https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/space-permissions-overview-139521.html>

comments: author: Adam Bartlett
body: Thanks Jobin.

"Delete own" might work for us but I'm not too keen on this giving the user the ability to delete their content after it's been edited by another user.

In my opinion, as soon as the user's page has been edited by someone else then we would probably want to consider that page as a valued, in-use, resource. We therefore probably would not want to allow it to be deleted by anyone other than a Space admin user.

I doubt I'll have much luck requesting a "Delete own unless edited by another user" privilege feature although personally I think that his would be a better way for the "Delete own" privilege to operate.


author: Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
body: I understand where you are coming from. Honestly, I don't mind much because there is an option to recover pages in Confluence. And the point of a collaboration tool is to give some power to its users. But it won't hurt making a feature request.


author: Rodney Hughes
body: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR!!

BE VERY CAREFUL!!

You may just get what you wished for.... and regret it

Giving general Users Page Delete Permission as recommended by Steffi and Jobin also means the User can delete ANY page created by ANYONE.

If they can create a page by mistake, they can delete a page by mistake.

THE safer option is if they have created a page by mistake, they can just set the Page View Restriction to just themselves - the page will exist forever but no-one else will know about it!!

comments: author: Jobin Kuruvilla [Adaptavist]
body: Actually, there is an option in the latest versions to delete only the content owned by a user. On top of that, Confluence won't permanently delete the pages. The deleted pages goes to trash and the admin will have to remove them permanently. It is a slightly safer option compared to JIRA :smile:


author: Adam Bartlett
body: As mentioned I am interested only in whether it's possible for a user to delete content that they had created ++themselves++ - I specifically want to avoid allowing full Space delete privileges.

Jobin's suggestion below might work for us but as "Delete own" will allow users to delete content they've created even when it's been edited by ++other++ users it might not be suitable for us.

The "Page View Restriction" suggestion might be a useful stop-gap though. Thanks.


author: Steffi Frank
body: Check the space permissions:

delete.PNG  
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