Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/RfC

(Draft only! This page has not yet opened for comments.)

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The community is being asked whether a proposal for community-based removal of administrator privileges should be implemented as policy on the English Wikipedia.

You can read the proposal here.

You can read an FAQ about the proposal, prepared by editors who worked on it and support it, here.

This page opened for comments (time and date), and will close (time and date, should be thirty days after the opening).

Discussion

Background

See also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Five Problems with a Single Solution

This discussion follows on from those at:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Admin Recall
• the associated talk page.

There, a poll was conducted that attempted to evaluate the levels of community support for various proposals seeking to create a method by which the community at large (as opposed to Arbitration Committee) could pass comment on the actions of and if necessary remove the tools from, existing Administrators.

The main conclusions of this poll were as follows:

1. The status quo, (i.e. no such process being available) whilst garnering some support, was very unpopular. 77% of respondents did not support its continuation.
2. Only one proposal achieved a greater degree of support than opposition – "Wikipedia:Community de-adminship" (CDA) – which received a majority of 13, and the support of 65% of those who considered it. This proposed process was designed as a "mirror image" of the existing Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (RfA), and part of its appeal was evidently its familiarity.

The reasons for dissatisfaction with the status quo are complex and varied, but a view was regularly expressed that if the community at large has the authority to appoint administrators through the RfA process, then the community should also be able to remove their powers.

This led to lengthy discussions at:

• Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC

which attempted to iron out various issues in the then existing Guide to Community de-adminship. This resulted in:

1. Some wording changes and clarifications as identified above (Section: Update from WT:CDADR). Few of these were controversial.
2. An increase in the nomination period from 3 days to 7 days.
3. More emphasis on pre-nomination attempts to resolve any disputes.
4. Most complex of all, a more specific statement about how the outcome shall be judged. Various options were considered and two specifics are identified as part of this RfC (see below).

Purpose of this discussion

The aim of this RfC and its associated discussion is to assess the support for Wikipedia:Community de-adminship to be implemented on the English Wikipedia.

Between now and one calendar month from the date of nomination discussion will continue here.

• If sufficient consensus has been reached (see below) WP:CDA will be implemented subject to various steps identified below.
• If sufficient consensus has not been reached, and further discussion would be useful, it will be extended.

General observation

In many cases the above discussions were a conflict between:

• The desire to make the process simpler or easier to implement in order to avoid allowing those perceived as having abused their Administrative tools to continue without fear of sanction, and
• The desire to avoid a system in which Administrators, who almost inevitably find themselves taking on potentially controversial tasks on the community's behalf, are discouraged from taking action for fear of reprisals via a Recall method that is too easy for aggrieved editors to make use of when they don't get their way.

The resulting changes to the Guide to Community de-adminship were a compromise between these two poles.

Main Proposal

That Wikipedia:Community de-adminship be adopted as an approved community "process" in the same way that the existing Wikipedia:Requests for adminship is at present.

Secondary Processes

If WP:CDA is adopted this will require two other amendments:

• The Wikipedia:Guide to Community de-adminship will be described as a "guide to current practice" in the same way that Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship is at present.
• It will also be necessary to amend the policy Wikipedia:Administrators to include reference to the WP:CDA process. This step will be undertaken as a technical matter at that page as and when needed.

Closure

When the debate here is concluded it will be closed by the nominator in the usual way.

If the RfC ends in consensus to implement, such implementation will then be subject to review by the Bureaucrats and Jimmy Wales.