Wikipedia:Removal of adminship

This is a failed proposal.

Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump.

The following is a proposal for a de-adminship procedure based in part on my own observations and ideas, Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (specifically Friday's section) and some of the earlier proposals for this. I'm purposely leaving many details vague or to be filled in later because I know that filling in specifics before the discussion will lead to too many complaints about the specifics and going back to change them. Anyone is welcome to make reasonable edits that don't significantly change the proposal (so that all the discussion is still applicable). Major changes should be discussed first. Specifics should be filled in as they are determined in the discussion. Please discuss on the talk page. If you can think of a better name that is not already taken, please suggest it.

Reasoning

Currently it is near impossible to have admin tools removed after they are given at RFA^{[citation needed]}. Either the admin has to request it, it is done in an emergency (hijacked accounts), or there must be an ArbCom case involving the admin. For an admin to be desysopped in an Arbitration case, there must be serious, documented, long-term abuse. As a result of the difficulty in removing the tools, standards at WP:RFA have been steadily increasing and scrutiny of candidates has vastly increased to prevent anyone who might have even the slightest possibility of abusing the tools from becoming an admin. This goes against the idea that "adminship is no big deal" and to a certain extent the doctrine of assume good faith. (From Friday's comment on the RFC) Almost the entire rest of Wikipedia works on a simple "What's easily done can be easily undone" basis, and this works surprisingly well. We already have crats who judge consensus; let them do the whole job instead of only half of it. Then, we can hand out the tools fairly liberally, knowing they can be removed when needed.

Process

Note: This is hardly set in stone and is purposely vague in some areas to allow for changes based on discussion and to avoid having too much bureaucracy. Please make this better!

Obviously this process should not be too easy or we run the risk of admins refusing to make controversial decisions or this process (or a threat of this process) being used as a tactic in disputes.

While excess bureaucracy and instruction creep are Bad Things, the easiest way to create an abuse-resistant process is through a multi-stage system.

Step 1

A request for de-adminship should not be started "out of the blue" because someone or some people may have a personal grudge with an admin. A request for de-adminship should only be created after a significant discussion of the admin in question's behavior at a centralized discussion in the Wikipedia or Wikipedia talk namespaces (such as ANI, AN, RFC or another location suitable for behavior discussions) where a significant number of people agree that a request may be a good idea. Each of the issues should have already been discussed on the admin's talk page.

Step 2

A subpage of the Request for de-adminship project page is created. The original requester must provide a summary of the reasoning (similar to the statement of nomination on RFA), a link to the previous discussion(s), and evidence of multiple instances of abuse/misuse of admin tools. A certain number of editors in good standing must endorse the request and if necessary provide additional evidence. The admin in question must also be informed on their talk page of the request. The page will also include optional questions for the admin to answer. It should be formatted similar to an RFA subpage.

Step 3

The evidence and endorsements will be reviewed by a trusted member of the community (bureaucrat, arbitrator?) and if it is determined to be a legitimate request the admin in question will be notified and after a certain amount of time (to give the admin time to answer any questions) the page will be transcluded onto a central discussion page (a new section on RFA or a similar page). Discussion from then on will proceed like a normal RFA, with people indicating their support or opposition of the admin keeping their tools. Standard RFA procedure will apply. People are free to ask the admin additional questions and RFA rules for who may comment will be enforced. When the time for discussion has elapsed, a trusted user (bureaucrat, arbitrator?) who did not initially approve the discussion will close it or extend it. If there is no consensus or consensus is in favor of the admin keeping their tools, the discussion will be closed and archived. If there is consensus that the admin should not have the tools, the discussion will be closed and archived and a request should be made at meta for steward assistance.

Abuse of the process

To avoid malicious use of this process there must be certain safeguards in place to prevent abuse/misuse/overuse of this process besides the safeguards worked into the process itself. Creating a Request for de-adminship page without Step 1 will be seen as disruption and could be a blockable offense if done as part of a larger campaign of harassment or done repeatedly. If a request is declined by the trusted user or the end result does not result in consensus for desysopping, another request may not be made for the same admin within a certain time period. Appeals of a denial must be made to the Arbitration Committee.

Resysopping

Any admin desysopped through this process may reapply for adminship through a standard RFA at any time.

Trusted users

In this proposal, trusted users are users who give the approval to start the discussion and who close the discussion. This could be either Bureaucrats, who already do RFA work or Arbitrators, who already do desysopping work and deal with major disputes. When considering whether or not to open the discussion, they should decide whether the concerns brought about are relevant concerns that show a problem with the admin's judgment/attitude/adherence to policy or whether it appears the request was brought up because of a grudge. Many admins work in controversial topics where feelings are strong. The context of the alleged abuse must be taken into consideration to ensure this is only used in cases of legitimate abuse and not used as a weapon against admins who may do controversial actions. The trusted user who "approves" the discussion should not be the same one who closes it.