Stream: troubleshooting

Topic: default admin role for new collections?

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:21):

@Ines Schmahl and I stumbled over some not well documented behavior of Dataverse today. If someone has "Dataverse Collection Creator" permission any new collection will have admin rights granted to them. This is not very helpful in cases where curators want people to structure things in collections, but not allow them to publish on their own. @Philip Durbin 🚀 are you aware of any issues regarding this? (I looked, but did not find anything. Yet I know your issue-digging shovel is much more mighty than mine!)

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:22):

Ha, I feel like Sherry Lake brought this up at least once. She always created collections on behalf of her researchers.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:23):

As you may know, at Harvard Dataverse, we allow users to create collections and then publish them themselves.

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:23):

(I already looked at CreateDataverseCommand and yes it is hardcoded in there.)

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:24):

I was going to open one issue for a docs change, so this behaviour is at least documented.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:24):

I just looked through https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/created_by/shlake but I don't see anything relevant.

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:24):

And another issue about a potential future code change to make this flexible/configurable.

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:24):

Sure, docs are always good!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:27):

If it helps, https://guides.dataverse.org/en/6.7.1/installation/config.html#root-dataverse-collection-permissions starts with this:

The user who creates a Dataverse collection is given the “Admin” role on that Dataverse collection.

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:27):

But it's under "root dataverse" :wink:

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:27):

Ha, and a bit down it says, Again, the user who creates a Dataverse collection will be granted the “Admin” role on that Dataverse collection.

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:27):

Hmm I didn't see that.

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:28):

Weird

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:28):

Oh wait! Now I see - this is on the configuration page!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:28):

But the docs are a bit light on explaining the permissions system, I'd say.

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:28):

I had a look at the user guide!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:35):

Please feel free to post something in #docs about this. :smile:

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:43):

Here's the issue. https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/11802

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:43):

And a feature request: https://github.com/IQSS/dataverse/issues/11803

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:44):

They both look great! Thanks!

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:46):

As you may know, for datasets, you can choose which role is assigned to the person who creates the dataset:

Screenshot 2025-09-09 at 9.45.44 AM.png

Philip Durbin 🚀 (Sep 09 2025 at 13:46):

Maybe we should have something like that for collections. :thinking:

Oliver Bertuch (Sep 09 2025 at 13:46):

I'll add the screenshot to the issue

Last updated: Oct 30 2025 at 06:21 UTC