Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Shortcuts:
WP:RFDA
WP:FIRED
WP:DESYSOP

Throughout the history of the project, there has been a convention that adminship may be removed only in cases of clear abuse. Users have proposed a variety of processes to ensure that admins have the continued support of the community, but none have gained widespread acceptance. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances; see Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall.

Through 2003, there had been only one case where adminship was revoked. Since 2004, the arbitration committee has dealt with cases involving abuse of adminship, both through review of de-adminships imposed in emergencies and through removal of adminship as a remedy in an arbitration proceeding.

There have also been cases where users have voluntarily relinquished adminship, and there have been cases where adminship has been suspended temporarily to enforce a cooling-off period in conflicts between admins. Throughout the history of the project, some purportedly voluntary de-adminships have taken place in the presence of a growing consensus that adminship may not be appropriate for the affected user. The arbitration committee has taken the view that users voluntarily resigning their adminship in such a circumstance may not automatically request it back and must go through the regular processes.

Contents

[edit] Cases

As of 2008-05-16 there are 32 cases, involving 42 users, where adminship has been removed involuntarily for more than a trivial length of time:

[edit] Removed using ad hoc decision-making:

  1. Isis was banned in February 2003 after making legal threats against another contributor. She had previously been an administrator, and became the first administrator to be banned from the project. The ban was solely due to legal threats and was unrelated to her use of administrator-specific features of the wiki. The ban was issued by Jimbo and implemented manually by developers, since at that time there was no user interface available either for blocking logged-in users or for removing adminship.
  2. Uwe Kils had his admin status removed temporarily by Eloquence in May 2003 after a discussion on the village pump and a discussion on the WikiEN-l mailing list. The removal was a result of his involvement in a campaign by the user Viking to censor sexually explicit content on Wikipedia. Uwe Kils subsequently stated that he no longer wished to be an admin, and so adminship was never restored.
  3. 168... lost adminship in March 2004 as a result of edit warring on a protected page with multiple other admins, and then deleting accusations against him on relevant project pages. During the dispute resolution process, he was temporarily desysopped following a poll, had admin privileges briefly restored, then had them removed permanently after the dispute flared up again. Jimbo and the Arbitration Committee both reviewed the action and declined to reverse it. 168... then left the project.
  4. Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Tim Starling in May 2005, after he had deleted a number of images along with his user pages. As he had given no explanation for the deletions and appeared to have discontinued making useful contributions, the intervention was taken to prevent him going on an image deletion rampage, since at the time deleted images could not be recovered (some explanation was offered later). Subsequently, a new adminship nomination in October 2005 failed to reach a consensus to restore his admin status.
  5. Carnildo and Karmafist and three other admins had their admin status temporarily removed by Jimbo Wales on February 6, 2006, after a wheel war. The arbitration committee was directed to make the final decision in the case, which was that Carnildo and Karmafist were to remain desysopped while the three others (Ashibaka, El C, BorgHunter) were allowed to regain their admin status automatically. Karmafist was blocked indefinitely from Wikipedia on August 30, 2006 after violating rulings of a subsequent arbitration case (block log) and was later to be considered community-banned. Carnildo was resysopped on September 5, 2006 (RfA).
  6. Husnock had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Steward Jon Harald Søby in December 2006, due to suspicions of a compromised account. A few days later, Husnock indicated he would not challenge this decision, and the Arbitration Committee later confirmed the desysopping (see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Husnock).
  7. Yanksox, Geni, and Freakofnurture were temporarily desysopped by Jimbo Wales on 23 February 2007. These desysoppings and related issues were reviewed by the Arbitration Committee in the Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war case. Freakofnurture's admin status was restored by a motion of the Arbitration Committee.
  8. Robdurbar had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Steward Jon Harald Søby in April 2007, due to a spree of disruptive deletions and blocks. He may not re-apply without approval from the Arbitration Committee [1]. (He was since banned and discovered to be a sock of User:Wonderfool.)
  9. AndyZ, Jiang, Conscious, Marine 69-71, and KnowledgeOfSelf were emergency desysopped in May 2007 due to having their accounts compromised. They were all resysopped after regaining control of their accounts.
  10. Vancouverguy was desysopped and banned in June 2007 after deletions of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. He had long been inactive, see Wikipedia:Missing Wikipedians. (His account was also blocked for being "compromised", see log.)
  11. Shreshth91 had his admin status removed at the request of arbitrator Mackensen in August 2007 [2], due to a failure to explain a disruptive block in June 2007.
  12. Zscout370 was desysopped in October 2007 by Jimbo Wales for undoing a ban made by Jimbo. Zscout370 was resysopped a day later when things calmed down.
  13. Eye of the Mind had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Steward Shanel in December 2007, due to the deletion of the Main Page. The account had been compromised by his sister. Eye of the Mind was unblocked later on, but has not yet been resysopped.
  14. The undertow was desysopped by mutual agreement with the Arbitration Committee on 2008-05-15 following a series of incidents of incivility. See request for arbitration and AN thread. He is not permitted to reapply for adminship without leave of the Arbitration Committee.

[edit] Removed by Arbitration Committee ruling

  1. Guanaco lost adminship in December 2004 as a result of an arbitration ruling requiring him to re-apply for adminship. The stated rationale for the ruling was an ongoing pattern of controversial use of page protection and unblocks. Guanaco's first three re-applications failed, but his fourth re-application was successful. He was later desysopped (see below), and cannot currently re-apply for adminship. He remains an admin on Wikibooks.
  2. Stevertigo lost adminship in November 2005 as a result of an arbitration ruling. Initially, the Arbcom ruled that he would be subjected to the same re-application process as Guanaco, but after widespread objections (RFA1 vote 17/29/7/49, [3]) to this ruling, the Arbitration Committee voted again, this time to remove admin status and leave the possibility of renomination open for the future. Stevertigo nominated himself for re-adminship on December 22, 2005, and was turned down on a vote of 16-37-5.
  3. Ed Poor lost adminship in December 2005 as a result of an arbitration ruling. Ed Poor had previously been a bureaucrat, and had resigned those powers in September 2005 in response to a previous arbitration case involving him. He also had shell access until February 2004 when new servers were brought into operation and his access effectively lapsed.
  4. Freestylefrappe lost adminship on February 12, 2006 as a result of an arbitration ruling. He later applied unsuccessfully for adminship as KI without revealing his previous identity. He has since been banned.
  5. Guanaco was desysopped again on April 12, 2006 after being granted adminship for a second time, as a result of a new arbitration ruling. The ruling also denies him the right to reapply for adminship.
  6. NSLE (now Chacor) was desysopped on June 10, 2006 after the arbitration committee found evidence of sockpuppet abuse. The ruling denies him the right to reapply by RFA without leave of the ArbCom. He has since retired in September 2007.
  7. Dbiv (later renamed to Fys) was desysopped on August 21, 2006 by an arbitration ruling, although he had resigned a few hours earlier.
  8. Everyking was desysopped on September 3, 2006 after the arbitration committee found what it described as evidence of his willingness to misuse sysop privileges to reveal deleted information. This desysopping was considered controversial by some. Everyking is permitted to reapply for adminship through RfA, but two attempts to do so in September 2006 and February 2007 were unsuccessful.
  9. Marudubshinki was desysopped on October 19, 2006 due to the repeated use of an unauthorised bot and related admin actions. However, he had stated that he had quit the project on September 10, and has not edited since.
  10. MONGO and Seabhcan were desysopped on December 16, 2006 for misuse of administrative tools and other reasons by arbitration ruling.
  11. Darwinek was desysopped by the Arbitration Committee for incivilty and blocking users with whom he was engaged in a dispute, on April 5, 2007. He was later resysopped per the ArbCom decision.
  12. Betacommand lost his privileges by Arbcom decision for highspeed blocking by automated process on May 3, 2007.
  13. Runcorn was desysopped on May 30, 2007 after the arbitration committee found evidence of sockpuppet abuse.
  14. Rama's Arrow was desysopped on July 11, 2007 after the arbitration committee said his actions were "sub-optimal, combined with the fact that he has failed to recognise the suboptimality of his actions".
  15. Alkivar was desysopped on November 8, 2007 for wheel warring and other poor judgment in performing administrative actions. He may not reapply by means of RFA without leave from the committee.
  16. A user who has exercised a right to vanish was provisionally desysopped on 2008-02-13 for six months. He may reapply to the committee after that time, but given the choice to vanish, it is unlikely that this will happen.
  17. Archtransit was desysopped on 2008-02-19 after the arbitration committee was dissatisfied with responses to its questions on several disruptive sockpuppets he was found to have used and due to poor conduct as an admin. He was community banned the same day, and has since been determined to be a sockpuppet of community-banned user Dereks1x.
  18. Tango was desysopped on 2008-05-16 for using administrative tools in disputes in which he was involved, and inappropriate blocking.

[edit] Removed for lack of response to Arbitration case

  1. 172 left Wikipedia in March 2005 while an arbitration case was underway. Although the case was characterized as a "spurious arbitration on relatively flimsy evidence" [4] in a preliminary review, the Arbitration Committee decided that his admin status would be removed unless he returned to address the case against him. 172 returned to editing later in the year, but the case had been closed due to inactivity.
  2. Henrygb failed to respond to concerns about the use of multiple accounts and was desysopped in May 2007 by arbitration ruling. Furthermore, Henrygb was banned until he explained his actions.
  3. Eyrian was desysopped on November 29, 2007 for abusive sockpuppetry used to game the system, as well as failing to explain his actions. He may not reapply for administrator rights until he explains his actions to the Arbitration Committee. Furthermore, Eyrian was banned until he offers an explanation.

In general, users who have had their admin status removed are permitted to reapply for it through the RfA process. Such reapplications rarely succeed, however (see list of RfAs of desysopped administrators).

[edit] Former processes

As noted in the cases above, revocation of adminship was previously handled:

  1. On the mailing list.
  2. On the village pump.
  3. At Wikipedia:Requests for review of administrative actions

[edit] Proposed processes

While other processes have been set up or proposed for "de-adminship" in the past, none have ever actually resulted in adminship being revoked.

[edit] How to request someone's de-adminship

  • A small fraction of admins have added their names to Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, stating their intent that if a certain quantity of users ask for them to be recalled, the administrator may choose to resign voluntarily, or to engage in a discussion of such resignation. There have been several such recall proposals initiated by users, and in precisely one case, the administrator did voluntarily give up adminship. In all other cases, the administrator voluntarily decided that the request did not meet whatever arbitrary standards they decided it should have met.

[edit] See also