Wikipedia:Adminship renewal

On the English Wikipedia, administrative permissions are granted permanently. This is not the case on many other Wikimedia projects. This proposal intends to introduce a term of office for adminship, and any accompanying provisions necessary.

Rationale

The fundamental purpose of administrative access is to allow trusted contributors to perform essential tasks. Over time, some of these users have turned inactive, used these tools in a manner objectionable to the community, or lost the community trust that they held when the tools were originally granted.

Several previous de-adminship proposals have been rejected by the community, mainly due to their negative connotations or their voluntary nature. However, a number of Wikimedia projects, including two of the better-known ones (Meta and Commons), have provisions that are already in place for inactive administrators to be subject to re-confirmation or have their access removed.

Renewal of adminship will uphold the accountability of current administrators to the community. It will also serve as an endorsement by the community of actions performed in the course of their duty.

Process

For simplicity, renewal of adminship will be done every year, and will begin on the same date that the previous (successful) request for adminship was started. The process will be mandatory for all administrators, regardless of membership in the Arbitration Committee or Bureaucratship (the only exception would be board members or official representatives of the Wikimedia Foundation).

Similarly to regular requests for adminship, any registered Wikipedian could take part in the process; the criteria for renewal of adminship will be a minimum of 50% support by the community. Bureaucrats shall oversee the process, and determine the validity of the votes.

If renewal of adminship is not granted by the community, it will be removed at the end of the process; but the will be immediately eligible for re-application at requests for adminship at any time.