I've provisionally tagged this as an essay because it seems to be given over largely to the expression of personal opinion. -- Tony Sidaway 18:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if the above proposal could be merged in with this? It's a formal procedure of admin recall, but allows it to be voluntary in nature. The recall procedure is fair, it needs 6 people to endorse a recall request, followed by a community vote, with 75% in favour of a recall before the admin loses his bit. The numbers can be adjusted slightly, but I think the two proposals could work well together. Ryan Postlethwaite 20:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
OK thanks for the clarification. Ryan, why don't you try editing this proposal to incorporate the features of that one that you think have merit. Who knows, maybe your changes will stick. ++ Lar: t/ c 11:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
That's an assertion that I do not at all agree with, and I suspect that on close examination many others will not either. I've analysed the 11 recalls I am aware of already to specifically refute it, here: [1]. I would strongly suggest that it is a divisive statement, casting bad faith aspersions on wide swaths of people. Such a statement ought to be struck from any policy proposal. Don't take that as opposition for developing this process further but if you want my support you are going to need to remove all of the aspersions you cast in the runup to the policy. Try positioning this as an enhancement to a policy that works, and works well but could stand tweaking instead. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
Also, I am struck by how similar to the existing system this is. But the differences are ones that I'm not sure are workable ones. The existing system relies on the force of public opinion, which, in the final analysis, is how policy gets done here, not by fiat. So it may be a distinction without a difference. This policy would also need buyin from a lot of people to make it as official a process as deadminship by ArbCom before stewards would honor it (stewards act on consensus, never on their own... a campaign slogan). The existing process only requires (via the force of public opinion, no other enforcement teeth are needed) that the admin voluntarily ask for de-bitting themselves, which stewards always honor. Worst I fear that you would be asking others to judge how a process went and decide if the admin adhered "closely enough". If I am elected I will never ever do that. It is completely outside the Steward's remit to do that. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
That one I very much support the notion of. See user:Lar/Accountability where I already do this for admins. But it leaves non admins out of the process which is not fair to non admins. So I have (in my criteria given there) made provisions for that as well. Mainspace edits will qualify non admins. That seems fairer than exclusion entirely. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't feel overly strongly because however it's worded I probably wouldn't sign up personally, but I do worry that it may make admins who are called upon to make tough choices or get involved in insoluable disputes to pussy-foot around rather than make tougher choices, if they know that they are bound to step down if N editors on one or the other side of the dispute are sufficiently displeased with the admin's action or inaction that they recall the admin. Now it could be said that there will be three types of admins: those not open to recall; those open to recall but not open to acting in a particularly contentious arena; those admins soon to be on their way out. We keep referring to ourselves as janitors with mops, but our functions are more than that. Some editors view us as police with batons, but our functions are more than that. Some seek out our help in doing janitorial tasks (tagging crap for speedy deletion; making moves over redirects, reverting lots of vandalism quickly with rollback instead of undo, etc.). Others seek out our help in doing policing tasks ( WP:AIV, WP:RPP, WP:ANI, blocking, etc.). I really don't have much knowledge on how one dismisses a janitor or maid - I assume one just gets displeased and sends them packing. However, most places with police forces have a review board so that civilian complaints can be raised and assessed before firing a cop. Why? Because an accusation is cheap and easy and a false accusation has little to no consequence to the accuser. Here, we have such a review board: ArbCom. Now, it isn't bound by all the formalities of litigation and procedure and rights, and it isn't perfect, but it does a decent job of de-sysopping bad admins. Indeed, many admins resign after the ArbCom decides to take a case to look in to whether the admin's conduct was egregious enough to be de-sysopped. Sorry for the wordiness of my comments, butI worry about all new admins being cajoled in the RFA process to accede to this new regime of easy-out making them too timid to be fully useful. All admins make mistakes and a single mistake that makes N people mad earns a de-sysop from anyone who volunteers to that standard will neither make the admin a more careful one nor a better one without simultaneously making them a meek one and a play-it-safe one. And one last comment on the details of the plan (if I have sufferage to tweak a plan I doubt I'll buy into): make sure that it isn't N editors, make it N screw-ups; alternatively, make the N editors all within a short period so no one can game the system by seeing which admins have N-1 editors on their case just to exploit that: akin to basketball teams knowing who is one foul away from fouling out or soccer where you know who has been given a yellow card. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 01:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I share Carlossuarez46's concerns with this proposal. If you're an admin here long enough, sooner or later you're going to step into a messy dispute. That's part of an admin's job - to be the "older, wiser head" and bring some perspective (and a lot of policy knowledge) to the dispute. To fulfill your admin responsibilities and to do what's right for the project, you're going to take some action that will set off the editors involved. Much as we think of ourselves as janitors, at times we are mediators. Any policeman will tell you that of all the dangerous things they do, they are most likely to get hurt on a domestic disturbance call. It's a thankless, miserable part of the job and is more likely to get all the participants angry at you even as you do what's right for the people involved.
The core problem with this proposal is that it requires the admin in question to agree to accept the judgment of the people making the complaint without any prior assertion that they will be impartial or fair in their presentation of the complaint or that they be knowledgable about the policies that you may have been enforcing. No matter where you set the bar, it will be possible for the partisans to game it and deliberately abuse the system.
Now, you might be able to mitigate that concern if there were adverse consequences for a frivilous or abusive complaint. But then who decides that a complaint was frivilous? The proposal rightly says that the current process of letting the accused admin determine whether the complaint is reasonable is a conflict of interest. So it has to be someone else. Who? Are you going to establish the equivalent of the police review board that Carlos mentioned above? (And, by the way, once that someone has decided that a complaint was frivilous, how will any sanctions be enforced? What will stop an abusive nominator from simply creating a new account, free from whatever consequences you tried to impose?) Without answers to those concerns, the "adverse consequences for a frivilous complaint" fail as a mitigating control.
There are two models that I see that might be effective. One is the same one that Carlos mentioned above - some equivalent to a police review board. The ArbCom largely fills that role.
The other is a "jury of your peers". If the policy set a standard where the accused felt that he/she could reasonably trust the judgment of the people making the nomination, voluntary recall might be a viable alternative. Unfortunately, the only threshold of trust that we have at Wikipedia is the granting of adminship. I suspect that you could get more people to sign up if the policy required some quorum of other admins to determine that de-admining was appropriate. The problem with that approach is that it reinforces the impression that adminship is a club. Some (many?) non-admins will be skeptical of the willingness of an admin to comment harshly about another admin. Still, I think with that modification the policy might gain support.
Without something like that, I have grave concerns that even on a voluntary sign-up basis, this will make it harder for us to keep the good admins. Rossami (talk) 02:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
At first when I read this, I outright dismissed it once i read "they make the solemn promise to step down given sufficient complaints about them, even if they are not convinced themselves", because if an admin isn't being complained about somewhere in the world, they're not doing a good job. But then I read who comprise the eligible editors. While I think the general community should air their grievances (what's weird is that I just finished watching the episode of Seinfeld in which they celebrate Festivus), I like the idea of the final judgment power being given to the others in the category. I think it could work. J-ſtan Talk Contribs 02:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I like this idea; but in addition, if someone were to open an RFC about me and suggests that I step down as an administrator, and if there were consensus on that page (as judged by a bcrat) that I should step down, then I would. Is there a problem with this solution? Should this be mandatory for admins? – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 20:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
There are currently around 1000 active admins. Let's imagine this becomes quite popular, and half of all active admins join up. Now let's say there's a Big Divisive Issue, where many admins take a position that is strongly opposed by many other admins. "Allegations of Apartheid" articles; deletion non-free images; ads; blocking based on non-public information; whether NPOV = SPOV; use your imagination. So ten of the hard-core members of Faction One decide to ask for the deadminship of a dozen or so leading members of Faction Two, many of whom had performed questionable acts, but which wouldn't be a huge problem to a non-partisan. These dozen from F2 counter-deadmin the ten from F1, and so do their friends, who are offended at the attack. Repercussions ensue. It's mentioned on AN/I, and some F2 members ask for the deadmining of even those who voiced support of the F1 faction's actions. Uninvolved admins ask for the deadmining of that person, simply because he "abused the AAA system", and some F2 members deadmin them. Normally, these things would die down rather quickly, but if all it takes is 5 more admins, out of 500, there could be a remarkable amount of bloodshed before it ends. 5 is a big enough number when there are only 50 AAA members that it should be manageable, but it doesn't scale.
So should it be 10%? Or "more supporting the deadmining than opposing"? What do you think? – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 21:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I'm wondering what happens with those who are not eligible to request. Non admins for example will clearly have no say here, as they would not be on the list. This, to me makes the adminship position seem extremely elite. I'd hope never to have to request someone step down, but as I'm not an admin, with this proposal, I'd not even have the choice. I think that it should be "editors in good standing". Of course, admins are preferable, and if the admin being asked to step down disagrees that a particular non admin is not in good standing, then if other editors disagree the "vote" should still count. Still, even better would be a minimum amount of edits/time etc. Thanks. Red rocket boy 21:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Here are some issues that, in my opinion aren't addressed:
Don't get me wrong, the idea is generally speaking good. I just feel that this idea in current form leaves too many loopholes in all ways, and adds yet another process – this sort of things have not flied all that well in past, so we should learn from the mistakes. We have tons of these processes as is and adding more processes makes things even more murky. We have big processes and I don't know if adding yet another partially redundant process for special purposes does any good. One way I could see this work would be that this thing would be somehow meshed into existing best practices and policies. Currently, it stands out as yet another gnarl in our already twisted and gnarled policy tree. It kind of says to me "If you want to address a problem, don't go to the court if you can just pass leaflets to people on the street, thereby forcing someone else to go to the court and waste their time and money."
I'm sorry to paint bleak pictures, but I feel that possible bad sides of the proposals have to be brought to light =( -- wwwwolf ( barks/ growls) 12:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I do not know how to resolve this, except having people be more willing to confront troublesome admins. In practice complaints on AN/I usually do get a fair response. There is also a side channel: most admins will if they think appropriate comment privately to each other. Almost everyone wants to stay in the good opinion of their colleagues. DGG ( talk) 04:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, so I'm an admin. It is, however, regardless of this fact that I don't like this idea - not insomuch as it is part of the controversial history of trying to make an effective process for removing adminship, but rather in that it ignores the principal method of resolving disputes on Wikipedia. It has been my experience that the most accepted method of questioning some edit, action, or message is to approach the person for comment, and to seek outside mediation only once such an approach has proved fruitless. I know that as an admin, if someone comes to me with a comment about what I've done, I will try to address that to the best of my ability because it is my responsibility to be accountable for my actions. If I have some reason to suggest that a matter needs no further action or that I will not take such actions, I will say why. It is not so much that admins are necessarily evil or authoritarian, but that sometimes admins appear to not be accountable for actions that they have took, and refuse to address it adequately.
I would propose that any policy or guideline or even essay like this must take into account that a process like this should be created in such a way that it is much more difficult to try to desysop a user in the case where they are open to discussion about an action they have made. In particular, I think that it's unreasonable to take one controversial action as a reason for desysopping - if it isn't clear that what something someone did was unacceptable, then it is for the community to decide whether the action, not the user, was problematic. Granted, there will be cases where users who are administrators are acting improperly using the mop and are actually abusing it (the Alkivar ArbCom case, as closed, comes to mind) - but this should not be a reason for us to potentially alienate good users who might have made a couple of bad decisions but are willing to realize that they could have done better and make an honest effort to improve, or who are being slammed for actions that are controversial in a case where they might just have been slightly
bold.
I like the idea of admins being accountable for their actions (I certainly hope people find I am :) ), but all too often proposals don't leave adequate room in for avoiding drama. Nihiltres{ t. l} 17:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You want the stewards to enforce something, but "this is not going to be policy". WTF? — Ashley Y 05:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
That's what I thought. I've edited the page to mention this. — Ashley Y 00:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
<QUOTE>The promise comes into play if at least five eligible editors take sufficient issue with said admin that they request him or her to step down, on said talk page. At this point, the admin must either (1) seek immediate reconfirmation at requests for adminship, with the understanding that adminship will be revoked should the RFA fail; or (2) take up to one week to discuss the issue, clear things up, and make amends as desired; if, after one week, there are still five eligible editors that want the admin to resign, his or her adminship will be revoked by one of the Stewards. In either case, the admin may reapply at requests for adminship at any later time. </QUOTE>
I do not think this is in accordance with Steward policies on meta (which, regarding the stewards, overrule enwiki policies, and most surely unofficial ones, imho). ("Their task is to implement valid community decisions." (...) "The only exceptions are in emergency cases where no local user with that right is available, or for projects that demonstrably have no community.")
A request by five people (unless we are speaking of a committee, which is a totally different matter) does not seem to me like a community decision at all, and only the vote part (if allowed by local policies) would be in accordance imho. So even if this would become an official policy, I would have serious doubts about implementing it (being a steward myself).
I see a possibility with a community vote, but that would require probably (if I understand enwiki's forest of policies well enough) a change of policies, so that also the community would have the ability to desysop admins. Which is, by the way, a quite regular option in other wiki's. However, it would require careful caution with setting up those policies, as they are sensitive for trolling. effeiets anders 09:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Currently this probosal is too similar to admins open to recall, and other similar ideas which havn't really changed much. The Problem as this proposal notes is that admins are only responsible to themselves. As such convincing an admin to step down is often futile. If however, the admins who volintarally join this idea, select another admin who would have to be convinved of a need to step down instead of themselves, this would work a lot better, as a third party (even if not nesicarally impartial) would be making the decision. -- T- rex 04:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I've marked this as historical, because it seems to have died. — Ashley Y 07:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
I've provisionally tagged this as an essay because it seems to be given over largely to the expression of personal opinion. -- Tony Sidaway 18:43, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if the above proposal could be merged in with this? It's a formal procedure of admin recall, but allows it to be voluntary in nature. The recall procedure is fair, it needs 6 people to endorse a recall request, followed by a community vote, with 75% in favour of a recall before the admin loses his bit. The numbers can be adjusted slightly, but I think the two proposals could work well together. Ryan Postlethwaite 20:21, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
OK thanks for the clarification. Ryan, why don't you try editing this proposal to incorporate the features of that one that you think have merit. Who knows, maybe your changes will stick. ++ Lar: t/ c 11:57, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
That's an assertion that I do not at all agree with, and I suspect that on close examination many others will not either. I've analysed the 11 recalls I am aware of already to specifically refute it, here: [1]. I would strongly suggest that it is a divisive statement, casting bad faith aspersions on wide swaths of people. Such a statement ought to be struck from any policy proposal. Don't take that as opposition for developing this process further but if you want my support you are going to need to remove all of the aspersions you cast in the runup to the policy. Try positioning this as an enhancement to a policy that works, and works well but could stand tweaking instead. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:58, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
Also, I am struck by how similar to the existing system this is. But the differences are ones that I'm not sure are workable ones. The existing system relies on the force of public opinion, which, in the final analysis, is how policy gets done here, not by fiat. So it may be a distinction without a difference. This policy would also need buyin from a lot of people to make it as official a process as deadminship by ArbCom before stewards would honor it (stewards act on consensus, never on their own... a campaign slogan). The existing process only requires (via the force of public opinion, no other enforcement teeth are needed) that the admin voluntarily ask for de-bitting themselves, which stewards always honor. Worst I fear that you would be asking others to judge how a process went and decide if the admin adhered "closely enough". If I am elected I will never ever do that. It is completely outside the Steward's remit to do that. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
That one I very much support the notion of. See user:Lar/Accountability where I already do this for admins. But it leaves non admins out of the process which is not fair to non admins. So I have (in my criteria given there) made provisions for that as well. Mainspace edits will qualify non admins. That seems fairer than exclusion entirely. ++ Lar: t/ c 20:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I don't feel overly strongly because however it's worded I probably wouldn't sign up personally, but I do worry that it may make admins who are called upon to make tough choices or get involved in insoluable disputes to pussy-foot around rather than make tougher choices, if they know that they are bound to step down if N editors on one or the other side of the dispute are sufficiently displeased with the admin's action or inaction that they recall the admin. Now it could be said that there will be three types of admins: those not open to recall; those open to recall but not open to acting in a particularly contentious arena; those admins soon to be on their way out. We keep referring to ourselves as janitors with mops, but our functions are more than that. Some editors view us as police with batons, but our functions are more than that. Some seek out our help in doing janitorial tasks (tagging crap for speedy deletion; making moves over redirects, reverting lots of vandalism quickly with rollback instead of undo, etc.). Others seek out our help in doing policing tasks ( WP:AIV, WP:RPP, WP:ANI, blocking, etc.). I really don't have much knowledge on how one dismisses a janitor or maid - I assume one just gets displeased and sends them packing. However, most places with police forces have a review board so that civilian complaints can be raised and assessed before firing a cop. Why? Because an accusation is cheap and easy and a false accusation has little to no consequence to the accuser. Here, we have such a review board: ArbCom. Now, it isn't bound by all the formalities of litigation and procedure and rights, and it isn't perfect, but it does a decent job of de-sysopping bad admins. Indeed, many admins resign after the ArbCom decides to take a case to look in to whether the admin's conduct was egregious enough to be de-sysopped. Sorry for the wordiness of my comments, butI worry about all new admins being cajoled in the RFA process to accede to this new regime of easy-out making them too timid to be fully useful. All admins make mistakes and a single mistake that makes N people mad earns a de-sysop from anyone who volunteers to that standard will neither make the admin a more careful one nor a better one without simultaneously making them a meek one and a play-it-safe one. And one last comment on the details of the plan (if I have sufferage to tweak a plan I doubt I'll buy into): make sure that it isn't N editors, make it N screw-ups; alternatively, make the N editors all within a short period so no one can game the system by seeing which admins have N-1 editors on their case just to exploit that: akin to basketball teams knowing who is one foul away from fouling out or soccer where you know who has been given a yellow card. Carlossuarez46 ( talk) 01:45, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I share Carlossuarez46's concerns with this proposal. If you're an admin here long enough, sooner or later you're going to step into a messy dispute. That's part of an admin's job - to be the "older, wiser head" and bring some perspective (and a lot of policy knowledge) to the dispute. To fulfill your admin responsibilities and to do what's right for the project, you're going to take some action that will set off the editors involved. Much as we think of ourselves as janitors, at times we are mediators. Any policeman will tell you that of all the dangerous things they do, they are most likely to get hurt on a domestic disturbance call. It's a thankless, miserable part of the job and is more likely to get all the participants angry at you even as you do what's right for the people involved.
The core problem with this proposal is that it requires the admin in question to agree to accept the judgment of the people making the complaint without any prior assertion that they will be impartial or fair in their presentation of the complaint or that they be knowledgable about the policies that you may have been enforcing. No matter where you set the bar, it will be possible for the partisans to game it and deliberately abuse the system.
Now, you might be able to mitigate that concern if there were adverse consequences for a frivilous or abusive complaint. But then who decides that a complaint was frivilous? The proposal rightly says that the current process of letting the accused admin determine whether the complaint is reasonable is a conflict of interest. So it has to be someone else. Who? Are you going to establish the equivalent of the police review board that Carlos mentioned above? (And, by the way, once that someone has decided that a complaint was frivilous, how will any sanctions be enforced? What will stop an abusive nominator from simply creating a new account, free from whatever consequences you tried to impose?) Without answers to those concerns, the "adverse consequences for a frivilous complaint" fail as a mitigating control.
There are two models that I see that might be effective. One is the same one that Carlos mentioned above - some equivalent to a police review board. The ArbCom largely fills that role.
The other is a "jury of your peers". If the policy set a standard where the accused felt that he/she could reasonably trust the judgment of the people making the nomination, voluntary recall might be a viable alternative. Unfortunately, the only threshold of trust that we have at Wikipedia is the granting of adminship. I suspect that you could get more people to sign up if the policy required some quorum of other admins to determine that de-admining was appropriate. The problem with that approach is that it reinforces the impression that adminship is a club. Some (many?) non-admins will be skeptical of the willingness of an admin to comment harshly about another admin. Still, I think with that modification the policy might gain support.
Without something like that, I have grave concerns that even on a voluntary sign-up basis, this will make it harder for us to keep the good admins. Rossami (talk) 02:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
At first when I read this, I outright dismissed it once i read "they make the solemn promise to step down given sufficient complaints about them, even if they are not convinced themselves", because if an admin isn't being complained about somewhere in the world, they're not doing a good job. But then I read who comprise the eligible editors. While I think the general community should air their grievances (what's weird is that I just finished watching the episode of Seinfeld in which they celebrate Festivus), I like the idea of the final judgment power being given to the others in the category. I think it could work. J-ſtan Talk Contribs 02:34, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
I like this idea; but in addition, if someone were to open an RFC about me and suggests that I step down as an administrator, and if there were consensus on that page (as judged by a bcrat) that I should step down, then I would. Is there a problem with this solution? Should this be mandatory for admins? – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 20:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
There are currently around 1000 active admins. Let's imagine this becomes quite popular, and half of all active admins join up. Now let's say there's a Big Divisive Issue, where many admins take a position that is strongly opposed by many other admins. "Allegations of Apartheid" articles; deletion non-free images; ads; blocking based on non-public information; whether NPOV = SPOV; use your imagination. So ten of the hard-core members of Faction One decide to ask for the deadminship of a dozen or so leading members of Faction Two, many of whom had performed questionable acts, but which wouldn't be a huge problem to a non-partisan. These dozen from F2 counter-deadmin the ten from F1, and so do their friends, who are offended at the attack. Repercussions ensue. It's mentioned on AN/I, and some F2 members ask for the deadmining of even those who voiced support of the F1 faction's actions. Uninvolved admins ask for the deadmining of that person, simply because he "abused the AAA system", and some F2 members deadmin them. Normally, these things would die down rather quickly, but if all it takes is 5 more admins, out of 500, there could be a remarkable amount of bloodshed before it ends. 5 is a big enough number when there are only 50 AAA members that it should be manageable, but it doesn't scale.
So should it be 10%? Or "more supporting the deadmining than opposing"? What do you think? – Quadell ( talk) ( random) 21:17, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I'm wondering what happens with those who are not eligible to request. Non admins for example will clearly have no say here, as they would not be on the list. This, to me makes the adminship position seem extremely elite. I'd hope never to have to request someone step down, but as I'm not an admin, with this proposal, I'd not even have the choice. I think that it should be "editors in good standing". Of course, admins are preferable, and if the admin being asked to step down disagrees that a particular non admin is not in good standing, then if other editors disagree the "vote" should still count. Still, even better would be a minimum amount of edits/time etc. Thanks. Red rocket boy 21:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Here are some issues that, in my opinion aren't addressed:
Don't get me wrong, the idea is generally speaking good. I just feel that this idea in current form leaves too many loopholes in all ways, and adds yet another process – this sort of things have not flied all that well in past, so we should learn from the mistakes. We have tons of these processes as is and adding more processes makes things even more murky. We have big processes and I don't know if adding yet another partially redundant process for special purposes does any good. One way I could see this work would be that this thing would be somehow meshed into existing best practices and policies. Currently, it stands out as yet another gnarl in our already twisted and gnarled policy tree. It kind of says to me "If you want to address a problem, don't go to the court if you can just pass leaflets to people on the street, thereby forcing someone else to go to the court and waste their time and money."
I'm sorry to paint bleak pictures, but I feel that possible bad sides of the proposals have to be brought to light =( -- wwwwolf ( barks/ growls) 12:55, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I do not know how to resolve this, except having people be more willing to confront troublesome admins. In practice complaints on AN/I usually do get a fair response. There is also a side channel: most admins will if they think appropriate comment privately to each other. Almost everyone wants to stay in the good opinion of their colleagues. DGG ( talk) 04:53, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, so I'm an admin. It is, however, regardless of this fact that I don't like this idea - not insomuch as it is part of the controversial history of trying to make an effective process for removing adminship, but rather in that it ignores the principal method of resolving disputes on Wikipedia. It has been my experience that the most accepted method of questioning some edit, action, or message is to approach the person for comment, and to seek outside mediation only once such an approach has proved fruitless. I know that as an admin, if someone comes to me with a comment about what I've done, I will try to address that to the best of my ability because it is my responsibility to be accountable for my actions. If I have some reason to suggest that a matter needs no further action or that I will not take such actions, I will say why. It is not so much that admins are necessarily evil or authoritarian, but that sometimes admins appear to not be accountable for actions that they have took, and refuse to address it adequately.
I would propose that any policy or guideline or even essay like this must take into account that a process like this should be created in such a way that it is much more difficult to try to desysop a user in the case where they are open to discussion about an action they have made. In particular, I think that it's unreasonable to take one controversial action as a reason for desysopping - if it isn't clear that what something someone did was unacceptable, then it is for the community to decide whether the action, not the user, was problematic. Granted, there will be cases where users who are administrators are acting improperly using the mop and are actually abusing it (the Alkivar ArbCom case, as closed, comes to mind) - but this should not be a reason for us to potentially alienate good users who might have made a couple of bad decisions but are willing to realize that they could have done better and make an honest effort to improve, or who are being slammed for actions that are controversial in a case where they might just have been slightly
bold.
I like the idea of admins being accountable for their actions (I certainly hope people find I am :) ), but all too often proposals don't leave adequate room in for avoiding drama. Nihiltres{ t. l} 17:30, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
You want the stewards to enforce something, but "this is not going to be policy". WTF? — Ashley Y 05:08, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
That's what I thought. I've edited the page to mention this. — Ashley Y 00:38, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
<QUOTE>The promise comes into play if at least five eligible editors take sufficient issue with said admin that they request him or her to step down, on said talk page. At this point, the admin must either (1) seek immediate reconfirmation at requests for adminship, with the understanding that adminship will be revoked should the RFA fail; or (2) take up to one week to discuss the issue, clear things up, and make amends as desired; if, after one week, there are still five eligible editors that want the admin to resign, his or her adminship will be revoked by one of the Stewards. In either case, the admin may reapply at requests for adminship at any later time. </QUOTE>
I do not think this is in accordance with Steward policies on meta (which, regarding the stewards, overrule enwiki policies, and most surely unofficial ones, imho). ("Their task is to implement valid community decisions." (...) "The only exceptions are in emergency cases where no local user with that right is available, or for projects that demonstrably have no community.")
A request by five people (unless we are speaking of a committee, which is a totally different matter) does not seem to me like a community decision at all, and only the vote part (if allowed by local policies) would be in accordance imho. So even if this would become an official policy, I would have serious doubts about implementing it (being a steward myself).
I see a possibility with a community vote, but that would require probably (if I understand enwiki's forest of policies well enough) a change of policies, so that also the community would have the ability to desysop admins. Which is, by the way, a quite regular option in other wiki's. However, it would require careful caution with setting up those policies, as they are sensitive for trolling. effeiets anders 09:50, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Currently this probosal is too similar to admins open to recall, and other similar ideas which havn't really changed much. The Problem as this proposal notes is that admins are only responsible to themselves. As such convincing an admin to step down is often futile. If however, the admins who volintarally join this idea, select another admin who would have to be convinved of a need to step down instead of themselves, this would work a lot better, as a third party (even if not nesicarally impartial) would be making the decision. -- T- rex 04:53, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
I've marked this as historical, because it seems to have died. — Ashley Y 07:04, 16 January 2008 (UTC)