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:History of de-adminship proposals - Misplaced Pages

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The following is a proposed Misplaced Pages policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption.
This page in a nutshell: A proposal for a mirror-image of RFA to provide a community-driven method of removing sysop permissions from admins who have abused the tools.

A large number of Wikipedians are in agreement that RFA is broken. What they cannot agree on is how it is broken, or what to do in order to fix it.

That being said, a great number of Wikipedians agree that the community needs some sort of desysopping process that doesn't involve having to go to Arbcom (with its attendant prerequisites) or Jimbo (with the attendant concerns about having a 'constitutional monarch' become directly involved in day-to-day process).

It is probably fair to state that a large number of people who say RFA is broken feel that way due to the possibly unfairly adversarial nature of the process. And it is probably fair to say further that one of the reasons the bar is set so high is the very lack of a robust desysopping process; admins are currently essentially promoted for life, and so a great deal of care must be taken--perhaps too much--when promoting them.

There are many desysop processes that have been proposed. The one below has been largely stolen from inspired by the one at User:MBisanz/Recall.

This process is intended to fit into the dispute resolution ladder somewhere between getting a third opinion and going to Arbcom. Unlike admins open to recall, Requests for De-Adminship is intended to be a non-optional procedure for all admins.

New RFDA proposal

Who may initiate an RFDA

An RFDA may be initiated by any registered user who:

  • Is not under editing restrictions imposed by an admin pursuant to arbitration enforcement, Arbcom in a case where the user is named, or the community. Editing restrictions imposed by an admin unrelated to the above reasons do not count.
  • Has at least 500 edits
  • Has at least three months tenure on enwiki
  • Has never been blocked by the admin who is the subject of the RFDA, except where that block was found to be improper or excessive by ArbCom, community discussion at AN or AN/I.

Users who do not meet the above criteria may ask any uninvolved editor to file a request on their behalf, but are cautioned to avoid canvassing, and ensure that the request is made openly onwiki. Any user that files a case on behalf of someone else must clearly state such in the request. In particularly serious cases, the certifier(s) of the RFDA may ignore any of the above conditions, but are cautioned to be judicious when doing so.

An RFDA may be initiated
  • Once per incident, with 'incident' broadly defined.
  • Once per editor per year.
  • Once per editor per admin.
  • Only for actions that involve use of an administrative function (something an auto-confirmed user couldn't do), or abuse of the role of an administrator. There are plenty of noticeboards to handle other actions as well as User Conduct RfCs.

Who may comment on an RFDA

Any user who may initiate an RFDA may comment on one. Users who wish to comment on an RFDA but do not meet the criteria may comment on the talkpage or in the discussion section, but are not permitted numbered !votes.

Grounds for initiating an RFDA

RFDA may only be used after other avenues of dispute resolution have been pursued. At minimum, an attempt at either formal or informal mediation, an RFC/U, community discussion on AN or AN/I, or an Admin Review must have been attempted without any resolution of the abusive behaviour. Or in a nutshell: try other dispute resolution processes first, and use this only if the abuse has not been resolved. Truly egregious cases and emergency desysoppings are handled by Stewards and/or ArbCom as part of their regular duties.

Events at issue must be reasonably current and either egregious or part of a repeated pattern of abuse. Resurrecting stale cases is not acceptable and it is essential to assume good faith and allow for the possibility of honest mistakes.

An admin must have abused one or more of the following admin abilities in order for an RFDA to be filed. If there has previously been a community discussion on this issue at AN or AN/I where the consensus was that no abuse occurred, the person initiating the RFDA is encouraged to re-visit that consensus and examine whether another form of dispute resolution would be a better way to address the issue.

Procedure

  1. A user who wishes to initiate an RFDA will create a subpage (location to be determined, using a template same as RFA does), add a short summary of what they are basing the RFDA request on (must be less than 1,000 words and 100 diffs), and place an "X" in the check boxes of the administrative power(s) abused; the statement of the request must explain how each administrative tool was abused.
  2. They must notify the admin of the initiation of the RFDA. (The order of steps 1 and 2 may be reversed at filer's discretion).
  3. They must then place a notice on the talkpage of WP:RFDA, indicating that they have started an RFDA
  4. The RFDA must be:
    a) certified by any two administrators, using normal Misplaced Pages guidelines on being uninvolved when making admin-related decisions. This is to prevent frivolous complaints. If the RFDA is not certified within one week, it is closed and courtesy-blanked with no further action required. Uncertified RFDA requests, if the user feels there is a valid case, should be brought to ArbCom via RFAR. Note that the certifiers do not need to agree that the admin should be desysopped; they are only required to double-check that the request has prima facie grounds and that the filer has followed necessary prerequisite steps.
    b) or, if the AdminReview process is adopted by the community, a finding of admin abuse there allows the initiator of the RFDA to bypass the need for certification.
  5. Upon certification, the subject of the RFDA will be given 72 hours to include a statement/rebuttal before the RFDA is transcluded to WP:RFDA. If they do not respond but have edited in that time period, the RFDA will be transcluded anyway. If they have not edited or made any admin actions in that time, the RFDA will remain on hold until a reasonable time after they next edit.
  6. The RFDA will remain open for seven days, same as an RFA.
  7. After seven days, the RFDA will be closed by a bureaucrat, same as RFA, using the same general principles as the pass/discretionary/fail percentages in use at RFA.

Outcome

If an RFDA is closed with a clear consensus for desysopping, the closing bureaucrat will direct a steward to remove the sysop rights from the subject. An RFDA that closes with a desysopping confers no prejudice to the subject standing for a full RFA at any time, at their own judgement and discretion. As with community bans, decisions may be appealed to the Arbitration Committee.

Notes

  1. as of this edit.
  2. ^ Avoiding grudges and axe-grinding
  3. ^ Avoiding SPAs and socks
  4. This is to prevent multiple attempts to desysop a given admin over a single incident/issue.
  5. For example, a series of sockpuppet blocks are one incident rather than 10 separate (ab)uses of sysop tools
  6. That means a given user may only initiate an RFDA against a specific admin once per year. Abusive initiation of multiple RFDAs can be handled easily by normal DR process.
  7. This means that a given user may only call for a given admin's desysop once.
  8. Same principle as IPs in RFA discussions.
  9. If the AdminReview process is implemented
  10. Regular users who abuse rollback may have the flag removed. This is not possible with admins except via desysop.
  11. Non-admin members of any of the following groups can also certify: Arbitration committee members, Arbitration clerks, Mediation Committee members, and Bureaucrats
  12. e.g. 80+% support required to desysop, 70-80% support discretionary range, under 70% support means no desysop, though the exact numbers are up for debate
  13. Or perhaps RfB, which is slightly more stringent
  14. A 'no consensus' should probably result in the admin retaining privileges

Past history

Throughout the history of the project, there has been a convention that adminship may be removed only in cases of clear abuse. Users have proposed a variety of processes to ensure that admins have the continued support of the community, but none have gained widespread acceptance. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances; see Category:Misplaced Pages administrators open to recall.

Through 2003, there had been only one case where adminship was revoked. Since 2004, the Arbitration Committee has dealt with cases involving abuse of adminship, both through review of de-adminships imposed in emergencies and through removal of adminship as a remedy in an arbitration proceeding.

There have also been cases where users have voluntarily relinquished adminship, and there have been cases where adminship has been suspended temporarily to enforce a cooling-off period in conflicts between admins. Throughout the history of the project, some purportedly voluntary de-adminships have taken place in the presence of a growing consensus that adminship may not be appropriate for the affected user. The arbitration committee has taken the view that users voluntarily resigning their adminship in such a circumstance may not automatically request it back and must go through the regular processes.

Unless otherwise mentioned, users are free to reapply at WP:RFA at any time. Those users desysopped by the Arbitration Committee may also appeal to that Committee.

Cases

As of 14 September 2009 there are 47 cases, involving 58 users, where adminship has been removed involuntarily and indefinitely for more than a trivial length of time. This does not include removal of adminship for a defined period.

Removed using ad hoc decision-making:

  1. Isis was banned in February 2003 after making legal threats against another contributor. She had previously been an administrator, and became the first administrator to be banned from the project. The ban was solely due to legal threats and was unrelated to her use of administrator-specific features of the wiki. The ban was issued by Jimbo Wales and implemented manually by developers, since at that time there was no user interface available either for blocking logged-in users or for removing adminship.
  2. Uwe Kils had his admin status removed temporarily by Eloquence in May 2003 after a discussion on the village pump and a discussion on the WikiEN-l mailing list. The removal was a result of his involvement in a campaign by the user Viking to censor sexually explicit content on Misplaced Pages. Uwe Kils subsequently stated that he no longer wished to be an admin, and so adminship was never restored.
  3. 168... lost adminship in March 2004 as a result of edit warring on a protected page with multiple other admins, and then deleting accusations against him on relevant project pages. During the dispute resolution process, he was temporarily desysopped following a poll, had admin privileges briefly restored, then had them removed permanently after the dispute flared up again. Jimbo Wales and the Arbitration Committee both reviewed the action and declined to reverse it. 168... then left the project.
  4. Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Tim Starling in May 2005, after he had deleted a number of images along with his user pages. As he had given no explanation for the deletions and appeared to have discontinued making useful contributions, the intervention was taken to prevent him going on an image deletion rampage, since at the time deleted images could not be recovered (some explanation was offered later). Subsequently, a new adminship nomination in October 2005 failed to reach a consensus to restore his admin status.
  5. Carnildo, and Karmafist and three other admins had their admin status temporarily removed by Jimbo Wales on February 6, 2006, after a wheel war. The arbitration committee was directed to make the final decision in the case, which was that Carnildo and Karmafist were to remain desysopped while the three others (Ashibaka, El C, BorgHunter) were allowed to regain their admin status automatically. Karmafist was blocked indefinitely from Misplaced Pages on August 30, 2006 after violating rulings of a subsequent arbitration case (block log) and was later to be considered community-banned. Carnildo was resysopped on September 5, 2006 (RfA).
  6. Husnock had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Steward Jon Harald Søby in December 2006, due to suspicions of a compromised account. A few days later, Husnock indicated he would not challenge this decision, and the Arbitration Committee later confirmed the desysopping (see Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/Husnock).
  7. Yanksox, Geni, and Freakofnurture were temporarily desysopped by Jimbo Wales on February 23, 2007. These desysoppings and related issues were reviewed by the Arbitration Committee in the Daniel Brandt deletion wheel war case. Freakofnurture's admin status was restored by a motion of the Arbitration Committee. Geni's admin status was restored on January 22, 2009 (RFA).
  8. Robdurbar had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Steward Jon Harald Søby in April 2007, due to a spree of disruptive deletions and blocks. He may not re-apply without approval from the Arbitration Committee . (He was since banned and discovered to be a sock of User:Wonderfool.)
  9. AndyZ, Jiang, Conscious, Marine 69-71, and KnowledgeOfSelf were emergency desysopped in May 2007 due to having their accounts compromised. They were all resysopped after regaining control of their accounts.
  10. Vancouverguy was desysopped in June 2007 after deletions of Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion and Category:Candidates for speedy deletion. He had long been inactive, see Misplaced Pages:Missing Wikipedians. (His account was also blocked for being "compromised", see log.)
  11. Shreshth91 had his admin status removed at the request of arbitrator Mackensen in August 2007 , due to a failure to explain a disruptive block in June 2007.
  12. Zscout370 was desysopped in October 2007 by Jimbo Wales for undoing a ban made by Jimbo. Zscout370 was resysopped a day later when things calmed down.
  13. Eye of the Mind had his admin status removed as an emergency measure by Steward Shanel in December 2007, due to the deletion of the Main Page. The account had been compromised by his sister. Eye of the Mind was unblocked later on, but has not yet been resysopped.
  14. Ike9898 was desysopped in January 2008 as his account was believed to be compromised. He was resysopped once it was ascertained that he had regained control of it.
  15. The undertow was desysopped by mutual agreement with the Arbitration Committee on May 15, 2008 following a series of incidents of incivility. See request for arbitration and AN thread. He is not permitted to reapply for adminship without leave of the Arbitration Committee.
  16. Two retired administrators, Zoe (inactive since 2007) and RickK (inactive since 2005), were desysopped in July 2008 by a steward after someone found their passwords were easy to crack.
  17. Bedford was desysopped by Jimbo Wales on July 26, 2008 for wheel warring, and for posting inappropriate remarks to an offsite blog following the incident.
  18. Scarian was desysopped by Jimbo Wales on November 17, 2008 for incivility amid suspicions of a compromised account. He was resysopped later following an apology.
  19. Hemanshu was desysopped on January 3, 2009 for suspected sock-puppetry, pending an ArbCom motion
  20. Mitchazenia was desysopped on April 5, 2009 for safety after some erratic postings to WP:ANI . After an ArbCom motion, he may regain his adminship at any time by request to a bureaucrat.

Removed by Arbitration Committee ruling

  1. Guanaco lost adminship in December 2004 as a result of an arbitration ruling requiring him to re-apply for adminship. The stated rationale for the ruling was an ongoing pattern of controversial use of page protection and unblocks. Guanaco's first three re-applications failed, but his fourth re-application was successful. He was later desysopped (see below), and cannot currently re-apply for adminship. He remains an admin on Wikibooks.
  2. Stevertigo lost adminship in November 2005 as a result of an arbitration ruling. Initially, the Arbcom ruled that he would be subjected to the same re-application process as Guanaco, but after widespread objections (RFA1 vote 17/29/7/49, ) to this ruling, the Arbitration Committee voted again, this time to remove admin status and leave the possibility of renomination open for the future. Stevertigo nominated himself for re-adminship on December 22, 2005, and was turned down on a vote of 16-37-5.
  3. Ed Poor lost adminship in December 2005 as a result of an arbitration ruling. Ed Poor had previously been a bureaucrat, and had resigned those powers in September 2005 in response to a previous arbitration case involving him. He also had shell access until an incident in March 2005.
  4. Freestylefrappe lost adminship on February 12, 2006 as a result of an arbitration ruling. He later applied unsuccessfully for adminship as KI without revealing his previous identity. He has since been banned.
  5. Guanaco was desysopped again on April 12, 2006 after being granted adminship for a second time, as a result of a new arbitration ruling. The ruling also denies him the right to reapply for adminship.
  6. NSLE (now Chacor) was desysopped on June 10, 2006 after the arbitration committee found evidence of sockpuppet abuse. The ruling denies him the right to reapply by RFA without leave of the ArbCom. He has since retired in September 2007.
  7. Dbiv (later renamed to Fys) was desysopped on August 21, 2006 by an arbitration ruling, although he had resigned a few hours earlier. He has since returned to editing as User:Sam Blacketer, under which name he gained admin rights and was elected to ArbCom.
  8. Everyking was desysopped on September 3, 2006 after the arbitration committee found what it described as evidence of his willingness to misuse sysop privileges to reveal deleted information. This desysopping was considered controversial by some. Everyking is permitted to reapply for adminship through RfA, but four attempts to do so in September 2006, February 2007, August 2008, and May 2009 were all unsuccessful.
  9. Marudubshinki was desysopped on October 19, 2006 due to the repeated use of an unauthorised bot and related admin actions. However, he had stated that he had quit the project on September 10, and has not edited since.
  10. MONGO and Seabhcan were desysopped on December 16, 2006 for misuse of administrative tools and other reasons by arbitration ruling.
  11. Darwinek was desysopped by the Arbitration Committee for incivility and blocking users with whom he was engaged in a dispute, on April 5, 2007. He was later resysopped per the ArbCom decision.
  12. Betacommand lost his privileges by Arbcom decision for high-speed blocking by automated process on May 3, 2007.
  13. Runcorn was desysopped on May 30, 2007 after the arbitration committee found evidence of sockpuppet abuse.
  14. Rama's Arrow was desysopped on July 11, 2007 after the arbitration committee said his actions were "sub-optimal, combined with the fact that he has failed to recognise the suboptimality of his actions".
  15. Alkivar was desysopped on November 8, 2007 for wheel warring and other poor judgment in performing administrative actions. He may not reapply by means of RFA without leave from the committee.
  16. A user who has exercised a right to vanish was provisionally desysopped on February 13, 2008 for six months. He may reapply to the committee after that time, but given the choice to vanish, it is unlikely that this will happen.
  17. Archtransit was desysopped on February 19, 2008 after the arbitration committee was dissatisfied with responses to its questions on several disruptive sockpuppets he was found to have used and due to poor conduct as an admin. He was community banned the same day, and has since been determined to be a sockpuppet of community-banned user Dereks1x.
  18. Tango was desysopped on May 16, 2008 for using administrative tools in disputes in which he was involved, and inappropriate blocking.
  19. FeloniousMonk was desysopped on September 24, 2008 for inappropriately using administrative tools when involved, having been admonished in two previous cases to avoid doing so.
  20. Ryulong was desysopped on May 24, 2009 for misuse of admin tools, failing to respond to community concerns, and inappropriate off-wiki behaviour.
  21. Geogre was desysopped on 1 August 2008 for running an inappropriate sock account.
  22. Aitias was desysopped on 4 August 2009 for disruptive and inappropriate conduct involving his administrative duties, although he resigned shortly beforehand.
  23. William M. Connolley was desysopped on 13 September 2009 for using admin tools whilst involved.
  24. Pastor Theo was desysopped on 14 September 2009 after the ArbCom determined him to be a reincarnation of an indefinitely-banned user.

Removed for lack of response to Arbitration case

  1. 172 left Misplaced Pages in March 2005 while an arbitration case was underway. Although the case was characterized as a "spurious arbitration on relatively flimsy evidence" in a preliminary review, the Arbitration Committee decided that his admin status would be removed unless he returned to address the case against him. 172 returned to editing later in the year, but the case had been closed due to inactivity.
  2. Henrygb failed to respond to concerns about the use of multiple accounts and was desysopped in May 2007 by arbitration ruling. Furthermore, Henrygb was banned until he explained his actions.
  3. Eyrian was desysopped on November 29, 2007 for abusive sockpuppetry used to game the system, as well as failing to explain his actions. He may not reapply for administrator rights until he explains his actions to the Arbitration Committee. Furthermore, Eyrian was banned until he offers an explanation.
  4. Can't sleep, clown will eat me was desysopped on July 19, 2008 for failing to respond to concerns about his blocking of users without contacting them or leaving them a message.
  5. Sade was desysopped on February 3, 2009 for sockpuppetry and failure to respond to ArbCom enquiries.
  6. Nichalp was desysopped on June 13, 2009 for using an undisclosed account for paid editing and failing to respond to Arbitration Committee enquiries about same. His bureaucrat and oversight flags were also withdrawn, making him the first user to involuntarily lose a bureaucrat flag.

In general, users who have had their admin status removed are permitted to reapply for it through the RfA process. Such reapplications rarely succeed, however (see list of RfAs of desysopped administrators).

Former processes

As noted in the cases above, revocation of adminship was previously handled:

  1. On the mailing list.
  2. On the village pump.
  3. At Misplaced Pages:Requests for review of administrative actions

Proposed processes

Several proposals for alternative or expanded desysopping protocols have been considered by the community. In general, none have achieved a consensus to enact.

Current methods of requesting de-adminship

  • Voluntary self-revocation of adminship can be requested at m:Steward requests/Permissions.
  • A small fraction of admins have added their names to Category:Misplaced Pages administrators open to recall, stating their intent that if a certain quantity of users ask for them to be recalled, the administrator may choose to resign voluntarily, or to engage in a discussion of such resignation. There have been several such recall proposals initiated by users, but in only one case did the administrator voluntarily give up adminship.
  • Requests to revoke another user's adminship may also be made using the dispute resolution process.

See also

Categories: