Wikipedia:Bureaucrat policy

Bureaucrats are Wikipedia users with the ability to promote other users to administrator or bureaucrat status, to remove the administrator user right in some situations, to grant or revoke an account's bot status, and rename user accounts. They have also been asked by the Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group to close nominations for membership in the group.

They are bound by policy and consensus to only grant or revoke access to permissions in a manner that reflects the wishes of the community. In like fashion, they are expected to exercise judgment in changing usernames, and in granting or removing bot flags on the advice of the Bot Approvals Group. They are expected to be capable judges of consensus, and are expected to explain the reasoning for their actions on request and in a civil manner. Bureaucrats are not super-admins, and have no authority beyond these technical competencies and the domains of requests for user access levels (RfX), bot flags, and account renaming.

Inactive bureaucrat accounts

Bureaucrat accounts which have been completely inactive for at least one calendar year (without any edits or other logged actions in that time) will be desysopped and have their bureaucrat permissions removed. This is not to be considered binding, or a reflection on the user's use of, or rights to, the tools; if an inactive bureaucrat returns to Wikipedia, they may be granted the bureaucrat bit without further discussion, providing they left Wikipedia in good standing and not in controversial circumstances, and that their identity is not in dispute. The bureaucrat will be contacted one month prior to the expiry of the one-year timeframe on their user talk page, and again a few days before the limit. If the account has a valid e-mail address, the user will also be contacted via that medium. The summary in the user rights log will make it clear that the removal of bureaucrat rights is purely administrative.