Wikipedia:Guide to Community de-adminship/The original Uncle G proposal

[NOTE: This page was originally created by Uncle G on October 4, 2009. It is a proposed Wikipedia policy, posted for reference purposes; Please do not change it. Jusdafax 20:07, 19 February 2010 (UTC)]

Community de-adminship removes the sysop right from an account, per the consensus of the Wikipedia editor community. This guide explains how the process works.

Overview

What this process is

This process is for removal of the sysop right from an account of a currently active administrator account, per the consensus of the Wikipedia editor community at large. Each request is formatted as a nomination, with accompanying outcome poll and discussion page, one per request per account that is to have the right removed.

This process is intentionally structured as a mirror image of Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, about which you can read more at the Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. That is 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 desysopping 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 desysopping

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 should be discussed first with that administrator, and then via the normal channels of third opinion, mediation, request for comment, and arbitration.

Removing the flag from inactive accounts

Any administrator account nominated here must be an account that has actively used editor or administrator tools recently. There is no consensus at the English Wikipedia for removing the sysop flag from inactive administrator accounts (and indeed, some evidence from the English Wikibooks and English Wikinews that such actions are arguably detrimental to projects in the medium and long terms), and this process is not intended to cover that function until such a consensus is reached (if it ever is).

Removing rights other than the sysop right

This process covers solely the sysop right. And it only applies, of course, to accounts that actually have that right in the first place.

Getting administrator actions undone

The places for doing that are variously the enacting administrator's user talk page, Wikipedia:Deletion review (for deletion/undeletion), and Wikipedia:Requests for page protection (for protection/unprotection), and Wikipedia:Administrator's noticeboard/Incidents.

Requests here are not valid if made on these grounds, and are subject to summary closure by Bureaucrats or the Arbitration Committee.

Other similar processes

• Wikipedia:Requests for adminship — where the community decides whether to add the sysop right to accounts
• Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval — where the community decides whether to add the bot right to accounts

The process

Before nomination

Before nomination here, consider whether your nomination is covered by the #What this process is not restrictions above. Attempt to discuss your concerns with the administrator, and to enlist the aid of other administrators. Attempt persuasion first.

Consider that nominations that do not address the core issue of whether the community as a whole does or does not trust the account to have the sysop right will likely fail, and possibly backfire spectacularly. Determining that is the purpose of this process. If this is not the issue in your case then you are in the wrong place.

Nomination

Nominations are made by creating a sub-page of Wikipedia:Community de-adminship. The sub-page is named after the account that it is to have the right removed. So to nominate, for example, User:Jimbo Wales for community de-adminship, the page is Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/Jimbo Wales.

Nominations may be made in two ways:

Nomination by the Arbitration Committee

The Arbitration Committee may, by a motion, decide to refer the decision about the sysop right to the Community as a whole, for community consensus. An Arbitrator or a clerk must sign the nomination, linking to the Committee's motion.

Nomination by the Community at large

Nomination by the Community at large requires the signatures of no fewer than 10 editors in good standing (defined below), within a period not longer than 3 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, objective statement of the nomination.

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 Arbitration Committee has passed a motion, or the requisite number of signatures have been collected.
• A notice of the de-adminship request is currently placed on each of Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous), the Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard, and the Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard. (Anyone may post such a notice.)
• A notice of the de-adminship request is currently given to the account whose rights are to be changed.

Where nomination is made by editors in good standing, those editors:

• must have all signed the request, themselves, within the 3 day period. Stale signatures are invalid and must be re-signed to be made valid.
• 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.
• must be active editors on the English Wikipedia, with accounts more than three months old and with no fewer than 500 edits.

Tip for editors who are not in good standing: If you cannot convince 10 independent editors in good standing 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.

Requests made for an account that has been previously nominated for Community de-adminship within the past calendar year are invalid, and subject to summary closure, at the discretion of Bureaucrats and the Arbitration Committee, who may take into account any circumstances surrounding re-nomination and allow such re-nominations to proceed in exceptional circumstances.

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 and 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.

Discussion belongs on the discussion page. The main request page is for the nomination, the poll, and the closure. All discussion may be mercilessly refactored to the talk page of the request. (Tip: If you want to provide an extended comment, or begin a discussion of a point, link to a section on the talk page.)

Anyone may participate in the discussion. Civil, relevant, discussion, based upon our policies and guidelines, on the discussion page is welcome from any editor in the community, whether with or without an account.

The poll contains three sections, support, oppose, and neutral. An opinion is registered with a signed numbered list entry (the # markup), exactly as is done at Requests for Adminship. A short comment may be made.

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 enacting or not.

All of the editors who sign a Community-initiated nomination are implicitly considered to support the removal. It is not necessary to separately sign in the poll as well. However, if a nominator changes from supporting to opposing or neutral, as discussion progresses, then xe should strike through xyr signature below the nomination and sign the appropriate part of the poll.

Similarly, other editors may change their minds during the discussion period. To signify that, simply strike through the old opinion (changing the # markup so that the list numbering remains correct) and sign the new opinion.

Closure

Sometime after the seven 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 outcomes. Either the sysop right is to be removed or it is not. If the sysop right is to be removed, the Bureaucrat will present the request to a Steward, to show project consensus for the right to be removed by the Steward. In both cases, the Bureacrat will close the discussion, recording the outcome, and archive it (by renaming it to an appropriate sub-sub-page).

Bureaucrats are given the same discretion, and determine the community consensus in exactly the same manner, as at Requests for Adminship, with one added restriction. In unclear cases, multiple Bureaucrats may be involved. The added restriction is that no request shall be closed as a de-sysopping if fewer than 100 editors in total express opinions in the poll. (The point of the process is determining the consensus of the Community at large.)

Bureaucrats are, explicitly, free to take into account rationales, discussion, and to discount any and all forms of sockpuppetry and canvassing to recruit people who are not part of the Wikipedia editor community. (The point of the process is determining the consensus of the Community.)

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

Appeal of a decision is to the closing Bureaucrat, in the first instance. One may also apply to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship in the normal way.