Wikipedia talk:Requests for de-adminship

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/Old proposal contains discussion surrounding a de-adminning process suggested in March 2005, which failed to gain support and now resides at Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Old proposal. As of March 2005, the Wikipedia:Requests for comment process remains the first step for dealing with abuse of admin powers; see Wikipedia talk:Requests for review of administrative actions for the discussion that led to this process. —Charles P. (Mirv) 05:28, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC) [edited]

Contents

[edit] Isis

Why is Isis' de-sysopping listed in a separate section from the other "involuntary revocations of sysop status"? --DropDeadGorgias (talk) 18:14, May 17, 2005 (UTC)

I listed her in a different section because she was banned, not de-sysoped. Since there are many other users who have been banned for one reason or another, it isn't entirely clear that she belongs here at all. However, since one could argue that banning a sysop implies de-sysoping them as well, I included her -- mainly in the interest of thoroughness, since my purpose in having a list here is to demonstrate how rare "de-sysopping" actually is. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 20:48, 17 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jimbo's statement

Can someone please cite a source that justifies this line - "Jimbo Wales has stated that the presence of any process to remove adminship would result in a reduced motivation for all parties to work together to seek consensus.". -- Netoholic @ 21:12, 2005 May 17 (UTC)

I've replaced that line, which was still uncited after over a year, with a sourced quote from a recent mailing-list post by Jimbo. Tim Smith 22:19, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Trial run with consensus

This is an interesting idea at face value, but I think there would need to be a massive consensus to get rid of a user...and only admins can vote. If that is the case, then 99% of the voters are respected members of the community who can be trusted to read into the issue at hand. I reccomend something like a 85-90% consensus and a trial run. I don't really believe blackmail will be an issue, because users who use that as blackmail will lose all credibility, and the user getting blackmailed will easily overturn the nomination for de-adminship, earning himself some pseudo-martyr points with the community. I think we should try this proposal out with a high consensus percentage. Let's all remember that Jimbo Wales' opinion on the matter is just that...it's not divine word. He's a computer programmer, not a social psychologist...unless he is one of those, then I'm just an idiot. JHMM13 (T | C) 14:31, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Move this page?

I think the title of this page might be confusing for new readers. They come across the title and expect an actual de-adminship process page. Therefore, I propose moving it to "Wikipedia:De-adminship" or something to that effect. Any thoughts? szyslak (t, c, e) 07:32, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Requests for de-adminship is really along the lines of Wikipedia:Admin recall Anomo 08:28, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Which is now superceded by the revised process proposals at Wikipedia:Administrator recall. For what it's worth, I think this page is fine where it's at, there's a LOT of namespace taken up by these ideas, and any one that does finally get approval will become clear. -- nae'blis 21:13, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nathanrdotcom

Will he be going up here? He is forever banned but retains his adminship. Anomo 08:29, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, Nathanrdotcom (talk • contribs • block log) is not an administrator. He doesn't show up as a sysop in the user list, and the user rights log shows no record of him being sysopped [1]. Perhaps he's an administrator on another project, such as Wikibooks or Wikiquote. szyslak (t, c, e) 11:31, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
I thought he was sysop. Hmmm. I know that user rights log isn't kept for very long though, but this is odd. I guess my memory is bad. Anomo 20:07, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Survey says...not likely. He was a vigorous entity on talkpages, though. -- nae'blis 21:20, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Well it doesn't have all sysops. For example why is this blank? Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/ContiE Anomo 21:27, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
RFA didn't always use individual subpgages for discussions. e.g. Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Stormie doesn't exist either, but you can find my admin nomination here - and as coincidence would have it, User:ContiE is on the same page. —Stormie 21:36, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Nathanrdotcom's logs show only uploads and moves. So if he was a sysop, he never used his buttons. szyslak (t, c, e) 00:03, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Too many inactive admins

Wikipedia:List_of_administrators#Inactive has too many inactive admins. Do we have any policies to end their adminships?--Jusjih 17:06, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Why bother? john k 17:24, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
eBay. Anomo 18:25, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
?? Does this mean something? It seems to be a complete non sequitur. john k 22:01, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
I guess the question is whether someone who is an admin would be willing to sell, and someone else would be willing to buy, the ability to access an account with the admin bit set. Presumably this business opportunity (such as it is) is open to active admins too... -- ALoan (Talk) 23:13, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
While administering many other Wiki sites, some sites desysop admins for long (such as one year) inactivity. Security concerns have been raised should abandoned admin accounts get broken in by unauthorized users to misuse and abuse admins' privileges. Why not bother with those who are inactive for more than one year of inactivity?--Jusjih 14:55, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I think if any kind of unathorized activities started to take place, it would be pretty easily recognized and could be dealt with. If a long inactive user suddenly reappears and begins doing odd things, we can de-sysop in such circumstances quite easily, I'd imagine. There's no particular need for a preventative policy - no sysop action is so potentially damaging as to require protecting against it in advance - another admin can always protect/unprotect, block/unblock, or delete/undelete as the situation requires. john k 15:18, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree that inactive admin accounts pose a problem and have suggested systematically removing them in the past. There has been widespread opposition. Inactive accounts pose a unique security problem because if compromosed, their rightful owner is unlikely to notice. On the other hand, if for example User:Bryan Derksen's account were compromised and actually used for anything, Bryan would notice. Anonymous accounts where the user has never made their real identity public, and where the user is no longer familiar to Wikipedians, pose the greatest risk because even if suspicions were aroused there would be no way to determine whether the account was in control of its original owner or not. Finally, I note that Wikipedia itself, its adminship standards, and its public profile have changed dramatically in the last couple of years, and some of the people who have had extended absences may no longer make suitable admins for these reasons. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 15:28, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

See this if you are interested.Voice-of-All 15:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
If someone has hacked into an inactive admin account and starts using it to do dubious things, the problem will become apparent very quickly. If they return and are not doing dubious things, we should assume good faith. I don't see what the big deal is. john k 15:59, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
Different Wiki sites have different rules. For example, inactive admins desysoped from Wikimedia Commons require regular voting to be readmitted, but inactive admins desysoped from English Wiktionary just require the request with evidence of recent activity.--Jusjih 16:20, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I guess I just don't see what the point of bothering with this is. If you all want to come up with some policy, far be it from me to interfere, but it seems entirely unnecessary to me. john k 19:05, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, what should be done is maybe make a ridiculous time limit of inactivity (2 years would be what I'd do, maybe 3), and if they have made 0 edits in that time, we remove the adminship, but leave a notice that if they want to be reinstated they can be without having to go through the process again. --Wizardman 16:04, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wording needs dating

The initial wording, and other instances in the document, need dating: "Throughout the history of the project" means different things when read in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2020, etc. Readers shouldn't be expected to go to the page history to find out when something was written. Carcharoth 14:08, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stewards

I removed this from the section on "how to request someone's de-adminship:"

  • Nominally, it is possible for the Wikipedia community to decide The community may request the stewards to revoke another user's adminship. The community should make the request at m:Requests for permissions, and must provide a link to the page where the decision was taken by the community.

I am very sensitive to policy creep in this area. While the stewards have acted upon requests from other projects, the English Wikipedia has never in the history of the project permitted this by policy let alone actually conducted such a process successfully. In all the cases of which I am aware, the stewards have de-sysopped people in response to a community request only from projects where there either is (a) no arbcomm or (b) a policy that adminship must be renewed on a periodic basis.

I think that it is important to be clear that the dispute resolution system ending with the arbcom is the mechanism for such requests. The arbcom has demonstrated that it is willing to act on such requests, and has a history of doing so effectively. Accordingly, there is no need to create a parallel process.

The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:24, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, UC, you're just objecting to the entire effort being made on this page. We're here because we don't think ArbCom is enough. The text you removed isn't "policy creep"; it's a statement of fact. You're factually inaccurate in your statement; ArbCom is only able to de-op through a steward.

♦ copied from User talk:John Reid:

I tightened up the language in your edit after it was reverted, see here. Since that explains the procedure, and sits in a section headed "How to request someone's de-adminship" I hope it's tight enough, but see what you think. Steve block Talk 13:37, 1 November 2006 (UTC)    ♦

Doesn't matter how you word it; somebody's not going to like it. See [2]'s edit sum: ...Stewards and Jimbo are not starting points for such requests. From a political point of view, this is a perfectly sensible statement. Yelling at Stewards when you want somebody deadminned is just plain stupid; they're not going to listen. Nor do we really want to provoke people into thinking this is a route, so I had reservations about making the edit in the first place.
The thing is, this is the truth. ArbCom can't deadmin anybody; neither can any b'crat. Only stewards have this technical capacity. (BTW, Jimbo is a steward.) Stewards hold sway over all Wikimedia projects, of which en: is only the biggest. Most smaller projects lack our elaborate bureaucracy; some don't even have b'crats to promote admins and go to stewards for this. Note that m:Requests for permissions has a number of project-specific subpages; most redirect to some sort of RfA. I imagine that for smaller projects lacking ArbComs, stewards actually listen to demands for deadminship made by whoever they think is responsible enough to bring up the matter. I simply don't know; you'd have to be a polyglot to really understand what's going on all over the entire WM farm.
These are kinda abstruse points. I think some understand the various levels of subtlety involved; some confuse a few things. When I put in the line about stewards, I simply wanted the section to reflect the actual truth of the technical power structure around here. This information is probably of no use to somebody who wants to instance RfDA; it is extremely pertinent to the question of whether the class of RfDA's is possible.
From our local, political point of view, the most interesting section here is #en:wikipedia, a sub-section of #Removal of access. Note well the instruction:

♦ copied from m:Requests_for_permissions:

To request the another user's de-adminship, please gain consensus on your own wiki first. All discussion must be kept on your local wiki. When it is finished and there exists community consensus that the user should be de-adminned, a trusted person from that wiki should just provide a link here to the discussion and a very brief explanation of the reason for de-adminship and results of discussion.

Do not begin or continue de-adminship discussions here.    ♦

At first blush, it would seem stewards might respect a RfDA, just so long as it looked reasonable. I really have no idea; we'll have to try it and see.
I limited myself to this little technical note because I don't see how to make RfDA a civil process. I don't mind rotten tomatoes thrown at admins, even in bad faith; our trusted servants must be above such; they must fail to react in bad ways to bad comments. I do mind the inevitable cross-bickering and personal attacks that go back and forth from supporters and opponents on RfA and I don't see that it will be any better on RfDA. I won't feel comfortable supporting any RfDA process until this concern is met. John Reid 17:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • I object to this removal, since this is how stewards act as per m:Requests_for_permissions. It's merely your POV that only arb-com can do it. It's quite clear that there is no consensus for a de-admin procedure, but it's not correct to say that the community can't de-admin someone. If an admin went rogue and protected every single page and deleted all images and made the main page a gallery of porn, I'd think we'd pretty quickly bypass arb-com and head straight for the nearest steward.
  • The English Wikipedia doesn't permit, preclude or prohibit anything by policy, see WP:IAR. That you do not like this may be true, but that it cannot happen is not. That it may never happen may also be true, but that does not preclude the possibility that it could. This is not policy creep, I would argue instead that it is policy creep to remove it, since there is no policy which dictates we cannot do this if there is a consensus to do it. It's not clear that "the dispute resolution system ending with the arbcom is the mechanism for such requests", since we have a category of admins open to recall, and we also have Jimbo desysopping and we also have RFC's on admins.
  • It may be true that there is a dispute resolution system ending with the arbcom, who have the power to desysop, but it has also been made clear that the community has the power too but chooses not to exercise it. At no point have I seen the community dictate it will never desysop through the above removed mechanism, and even if it did, consensus can change. The mechanism I described in my addition to the page is a mechanism which can be used, and I would like to see it added back. It's in the right section and it describes the process. I don't tend to edit war, but this is going to need more than the fact that you don't like it to convince me it's wrong.
  • I've done my part, I've sourced my info and I've read the rules and I've engaged in discussion on this issue all over Wikipedia and on the mailing list. It has been made clear to me that it has always been the case that this method is open to the community if they want to use it. That we don't is our choice, not something dictated to us. The stewards, by the rules under which they operate, can not refuse a request provided a consensus exists and it is linked to alongside the request. Steve block Talk 19:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
  • And I want to make it clear I too can't square the circle of how to make de-admin requests civil, but I'd point out that not making the effort because of that fact implies a lack of good faith. I include myself amongst those who start from a position of no faith. But just because we can't see it happening, doesn't mean it is impossible. I doubt anyone will ever get desysopped through a community process, but that doesn't mean they can't. Steve block Talk 19:43, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
UC, you've made your POINT -- at least three times now. We do understand what you're trying to say; you don't want any individual, acting alone, to ask a steward to deadmin anybody. And I agree with you.
The thing is, this is eventually the only way it ever gets done. Some individual editor makes a request of a steward and the admin loses his hat. That's reality. In some cases, an arbitrator may also be a steward and he just tells himself to do it. Anyway you look at it, stewards really are the ones with the big red buttons in their hands. Period. That's a fact, not some biased opinion or political movement.
Now, Steve and I have tried a number of different ways to include this fact on the page, for the benefit of editors who don't know as much as you and I do. You have rejected all of these statements. I don't believe we are going to think up anything you like better.
So, I ask you politely to include, on the front of this page, a link to m:Stewards, together with whatever explanation of this user class's power and scope you think is accurate. Be nice, suit yourself, and please don't blow this up into a shoving match. Thank you. John Reid 03:20, 2 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Swedish term limits

I do feel we really need some sort of easier road out of adminship than ArbCom. I like the sv: (Swedish) approach: term limits. See sv:Wikipedia:Administratörer. I don't read Swedish so I took a look with the help of the good folks at Systran:
The Swedes do seem to have their own ArbCom but they have term limits for admins; each admin serves for about a year. The "about" part comes because they create new admins continuously but only remove them from office quarterly -- so as to put a neat package before the stewards. I think this is really smart. The driving philosophy is plain enough:
  • (from the last citation) If an administrator carries out a willfully coarse act, they probably will lose their admin's-cap through sanction of the arbitration committee, when it meets. Before that point, distrusting community members can petition for an admin's removal. In both cases, the process risks to create prolonged conflicts and (spä) on top of what already exists. That already ordained administrators must be appointed again gives instead the community the chance of a more natural way to sort out administrators who don't correctly have confidence in wikicommunity, and that thereby cause excitements. (my loose, assisted translation)
This seems like a sane and rational approach. The Swedes have ArbCom and it works but not always; they may have some sort of RfDA and it causes additional contention; they have term limits and seem pretty happy about it. John Reid 17:47, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Perennial_proposals#Reconfirm_administrators Raul654 17:58, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

    • Did we ever think of having longer terms. That would cut out the time consuming aspect, surely? What, if we made a term, um, let's check stats...we could certainly have a five year term no problems, and a four year term would hold no problems either. A three year term would be manageable, we'd have a hurried start, but it's doable. We could deadmin the first day of the month following the month an admin was created. It looks workable, and it might be needed to make RFA workable again. We have to return to the fact that adminship is no big deal. It should be within any editor's grasp but the very worst, those that an argument against is mounted on behavioural issues rather than any given random criteria. Steve block Talk 20:05, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
        • You have made a leap of logic here which caused me to go "Huh?" at first. If I understand your argument correctly, the reason that fixed terms would "make RFA workable again" is that RFA voters could be less stringent knowing that, in the worst case, the admin in question would be up for re-election in a year. The very worst admins would get hauled up in front of ArbCom and the bad but not quite ArbCom-quality admins would get booted at the end of the year. Did I get this right?
        • If I got your line of reasoning right, my counter-argument is that a recall mechanism would keep us from having to put up with a bad decision for a whole year. --Richard 03:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
      • At the very least, you'd see admins with agendas behaving more properly and circumspectly in the period leading up to the expiration of their term of adminship. At the worst, it would degenerate into people campaigning against those who were coming up for renewal. Carcharoth 22:38, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
I object to the no-comment link to "perennial proposals"; a quick way to dispose of something without thinking about it. Making Pi exactly equal to 3 is a perennial proposal; it's never going to fly. Term limits have been discussed before and the en: community has found fault with the idea. Other WM communities have adopted it and find it works well. There is considerable pressure on the entire adminship process right now; that's why we're here. Maybe our community is ready to take a fresh look at term limits.
One way to speed up RfA is to go over to a straight vote, no comment allowed on the voting page. You want to discuss somebody's adminworthiness, you do so on his talk page, the same way you would discuss the subject of any page. Yeh, this is another idea that's been floated before. Maybe it's time now. John Reid 03:34, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
The question is whether the problem is that RFA's are too slow (which John Reid's proposal addresses) or whether RFA's are too stringent (which fixed terms attempts to address) --Richard 03:36, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
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