Wikipedia:Guide to Community de-adminship

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THIS GUIDE WILL SHORTLY BE DISCUSSED AT A REQUEST FOR COMMENT. SUGGESTIONS ARE WELCOME ON THE TALK PAGE BUT PLEASE DO NOT ALTER THE GUIDE WITHOUT PRIOR DISCUSSION DURING THE RFC SO THAT THE COMMUNITY CAN DISCUSS A STABLE VERSION OF THE PROPOSAL.

Community de-adminship is a process where the Wikipedia editing community may request the removal of the sysop right from an administrator account. This guide explains how the process works.

What this process is

The Community de-adminship (CDA) is a process where the community as a whole may request the removal of administrator ("sysop") rights from an account. Each CDA request is formatted as a nomination (by 10 editors, all with a minimum of three months and 500 edits experience, or by the Arbitration Committee) followed by an accompanying outcome poll and discussion, which must contain at least 50 !votes in support of the CDA, reaching (as a rule of thumb) at least 65% of the total !votes polled. The decision to de-sysop will be based on whether there is a clear consensus to do so.

Although there are some important differences, CDA is intended to be a comparable process to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, about which you can read more at the Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. That is also the process to use in order to re-gain the sysop right after it is removed by community consensus.

What this process is not

This process is not for:

Emergency de-sysopping
Emergency de-sysopping of accounts for the immediate protection of the project is the province of Jimbo Wales, Stewards, and the Arbitration Committee. Discussions here take no less than 7 days, and are unsuitable for emergency measures.
Temporary de-sysopping
Temporary de-sysopping is the province of the Arbitration Committee. Requests for the same should be made to the Committee.
Voluntary de-sysopping
An administrator who wishes to no longer have access to administrator tools may apply to Stewards in the normal manner at m:Steward requests/Permissions.
Blocks, bans, topic restrictions, or other community sanctions
This process is solely for removing the sysop flag from accounts, and determining whether the community at large has a consensus for doing so. Blocks, bans, restrictions, and sanctions should be enacted through the usual mechanisms.
Dispute resolution or other discussions
Dispute resolution should proceed through the normal channels. Disputes with an administrator must be discussed first with that administrator, and then via the normal channels such as third opinion, mediation, request for comment, and arbitration. Mild or one-time only incivility should instead be reported to Wikiquette Alerts. If the administrator is listed at Administrators open to recall and you believe the conditions listed there have been met, they should be reported there.
A CDA request may only be initiated after substantial community discussion at a suitable venue, such as Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard or Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User, has failed to produce a resolution, and there must be documentation of these prior attempts.
Removing the flag from inactive accounts
Any administrator account nominated here must be an account that has used editor or administrator tools recently.
Removing rights other than the sysop right
This process covers only the sysop right.
Getting administrator actions undone
The places for doing that are variously the enacting administrator's user talk page, Wikipedia:Deletion review (for deletion/undeletion), Wikipedia:Requests for page protection (for protection/unprotection), and Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents.

Requests are not valid if made on these grounds, and are subject to speedy closure as described below.

The CDA process

Before nomination

You should attempt persuasion first, by discussing your concerns with the administrator, and by pursuing dispute resolution. Also, ensure that your nomination would not be excluded by the #What this process is not restrictions above, taking particular notice of the requirement to have attempted substantial community discussion at a suitable venue, where a resolution was not forthcoming.

(needs to be discussed) Note that the purpose of the nomination is to address the core issue of whether the community as a whole does or does not trust the administrator to have the sysop right. Nominations that do not address this issue will likely fail. If this is not the issue in your case, then you are in the wrong place. In all but the most extreme cases, there should be a demonstrable history of unacceptable behavior(s), and not just one single incident. This process will result in intense scrutiny of all involved parties, thus realize that your conduct may be questioned as well.

(needs to be discussed) Note that nominations that do not focus on the core issue of whether the community as a whole does or does not trust the administrator to have the sysop right will likely fail, and possibly backfire spectacularly. If this is not the issue in your case, then you are in the wrong place. In all but the most extreme cases, there should be a demonstrable history of repeated unacceptable behavior, and not just one single incident. Processes like this one usually result in intense scrutiny of all involved parties. The bright light you are about to shine on a particular administrator will reflect on you as well.

It is generally not acceptable to make repeated nominations of the same administrator for the same reasons, without materially new evidence. Repeated resubmission of failed nominations may be speedily closed as noted below, and may be treated as disruption.

Nomination

Nominations are made by creating a sub-page of Wikipedia:Community de-adminship, which is named after the account being nominated. For example, to nominate the User:Example for community de-adminship, you would create a new page Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/Example.

Nominations may be made in either of two ways:

By the Arbitration Committee
The Arbitration Committee may, by a motion, decide to refer the decision about the sysop right to the Community for consensus. An Arbitrator or a clerk must sign the nomination, linking to the Committee's motion.
By the Community at large
Nomination by the Community at large requires the signatures of at least 10 editors (whose eligibility to do so is defined below), within a period no longer than 7 days. Signatures must be placed in the nomination area of the requests, as a simple signed bullet point.

Nominations are expected to provide a short, single, and objective statement of the nomination, supported by detailed and specific evidence.

Certification

Discussion does not open until an Arbitration Committee clerk, a Bureaucrat, or an Arbitration Committee member certifies a nomination as valid. Nominations are not valid unless all of the following apply:

The nominators

When a nomination is made by 10 editors, those editors:

  • must be active editors on the English Wikipedia, with accounts at least three months old and with at least 500 edits.
  • must all have signed the nomination personally, within the 7 day period. Signatures made outside of the 7 day period are invalid.
  • may not be subject to Arbitration enforcement editing restrictions, Arbitration Committee restrictions, or Community restrictions, including, but not limited to, topic bans, project bans, and paroles without the permission of the Arbitration Committee or another person or group empowered to lift those restrictions.

Tip for editors who are not eligible to make nominations: If you cannot convince 10 independent eligible editors of the merits of your request, such that they take it up themselves, then your request is probably without merit and should not be pursued.

In addition, nominations by editors during an active arbitration process concerning the administrator to be nominated may be initiated only with the permission of the Arbitration Committee.

Canvassing

(needs to be discussed): All communication pertaining to a CDA must be in accordance with WP:CANVASS. Parties to the CDA process may, however, legitimately contact other editors individually to request specific input, making note of that contact on the CDA page.

Discussion and poll

Discussion and polling proceeds for at least 7 days after discussion opens. Discussion and polling may be summarily closed ahead of that 7 day deadline at the discretion of Bureaucrats or the Arbitration Committee.

Discussions are subject to the usual rules. Community de-adminship discussions follow the normal Wikipedia talk page etiquette. All editors are reminded in particular that the Wikipedia:No personal attacks policy applies to all parts of a de-adminship request.

Extended discussion belongs on the discussion page. The main request page is for the nomination, the poll, and the closure. All discussion not directly relevant to the purpose of the nomination, i.e. evaluating the level of community support for a given Administrator, may be refactored to the talk page of the request. (Tip: If you want to provide an extended comment, or to begin a discussion of an indirectly related point, link to a section on the talk page.)

Anyone may participate in the discussion. Civil and relevant discussion, based upon Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, is welcome from any editor in the community, whether with or without an account. However, disruptive comments, and contributions by sockpuppets, banned users, or blocked users (unless blocked by the administrator being reviewed and when the CDA is materially related to that block, in which case an uninvolved administrator, on request, shall unblock the editor for the sole purpose of participation in the CDA) are not permitted and will either be removed or struck out. ((placing of last sentence needs to be discussed))

The poll

The poll contains three sections: support, oppose, and neutral. An opinion is registered with a signed numbered list entry (the # markup).

Commenting next to the vote is strongly encouraged. !Votes presented without a rationale and "per" comments are both strongly discouraged, and may be discounted by the closing Bureaucrat.

Community de-adminship is not a replacement for Wikipedia:Requests for comments, and is not structured like a user RfC. In particular, there is only one poll of signatures, because there is only one thing to assess: the consensus for removing or not.

Editors (including nominators) may change their minds during the discussion period. To signify that, they can strike through the old opinion (changing the # markup to #: so that the list numbering remains correct) and sign the new opinion. Nominations, once certified, are not stricken.

Closure

Sometime after the 7 days for the discussion have elapsed, a Bureaucrat will review the request and close it. Bureaucrats are volunteers, and closure is not required to occur exactly on the deadline.

Bureaucrats determine the consensus of the community, using both the opinion poll and the discussion on the talk page. There are two primary outcomes: either the sysop right is to be removed, or it is not. If the consensus is for removal, then the Bureaucrat will present the request to a Steward, showing project consensus for its removal. In either case, the Bureaucrat will close the discussion, recording the outcome, and archive it.

The point of the process is determining the consensus of the Community at large. For an Administrator to have the sysop right removed, a Bureaucrat will review the discussion to see whether both a minimum of 50 editors and a general consensus supporting the removal has taken place. Consensus can be difficult to ascertain, and it is not a numerical measurement. As a general descriptive rule of thumb, most of those above 80% (this figure needs to be discussed) support for removal are passed, while most of those below 65% fail, and the area in between is subject to Bureaucratic discretion.

Bureaucrats are, explicitly, free to take into account rationales and discussion, and to discount any and all forms of sockpuppetry and canvassing to recruit people who are not part of the Wikipedia editor community (including single-purpose accounts created for the purpose).

Extension

Bureaucrats may, at their discretion, extend the discussion period in order to obtain wider input, or to allow on-going active discussions to continue in order to reach a better consensus.

Appeal

Appeal of a decision is to be made to the closing Bureaucrat in the first instance. Someone who has had the sysop right removed by this process may re-apply to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship in the normal way.

Speedy closure

Discussions may be closed by an uninvolved Administrator or Bureaucrat if the nomination is clearly frivolous and/or subject to WP:SNOW in favor of opposing. Speedy closure also applies to nominations that are excluded by the "What this process is not" restrictions, or are repeat nominations against the same administrator for the same reason, without materially new evidence.

Review

After one year or five CDA nominations, whichever is sooner, a formal review of this process will be made.