User:Tyrol5/De-adminship reform

See also: Wikipedia:RfA reform 2011 and User:Tyrol5/Recall

On Wikipedia, administrators (a.k.a. sysops) are users with the technical ability to perform tasks that aid in the maintenance of the project. This essay/list of possible reforms and proposals pertains to the process by which a user's access to administrative tools is to be revoked, or de-adminship, after the abuse thereof. Below is a list of issues that need to be addressed at some point during reform of the process of obtaining adminship, or RFA, and possible solutions to them. Anyone is welcome to add to this list, and discussion can be carried out on the talk page.

Problems that need to be addressed and some possible solutions

1. Problem: A possible reason for harsh treatment/strict nature at RFA: filing a request for comment or a case with the Arbitration Committee is too time-consuming and/or stressful. The problem is there is no easy way to remove the administrative tools when an editor or editors believe that an administrator is misusing them.

Solution: Implement a process that requires administrators to (temporarily) relinquish their tools after a certain number of experienced editors in good standing (preferably a mix of admins and non-admins) have verbalized a belief that the admin in question has misused them. This way, the community/those editors could deliberate as to whether the admin ought to retain the tools or not.

2. Problem: Filing a request for arbitration is too time consuming/drama-filled. It's not worth the time or the effort to pursue arbitration with all of the stress/drama/subjectivity involved. There needs to be a process in which the issues can be addressed objectively with the admin in question.

Solution: Require admins to relinquish the tools after a certain number of uninvolved editors in good standing petition them to do so (at least until the community determines whether or not the tools should be retained). There needs to be a way to dispel the theory that there is some sort of 'control conspiracy' or 'power cabal' among administrators and make it known that they should be approached/criticized/reprimanded in the same manner as any other editor.

3. Problem: Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikipedia project, said himself that "becoming a sysop is *not a big deal*". If becoming an administrator is *not a big deal*, then why should un-becoming one be?

Solution: It shouldn't. Quite simply and honestly put, Wikipedia's regulations regarding the behavior of admins should be amended to include a no tolerance policy pertaining to abuse of administrative tools including (but not limited to): gaining advantages in disputes where the admin in question might have a conflict of interest (i.e. protecting pages where they have participated in edit wars or blocking users with whom they have warred with). From there, the community can decide whether or not the tools should be permanently revoked. If rollback rights are removed after violation of WP:3RR or autopatrolled rights removed after copyright violation, why should administrators get special treatment?

Recall

Why? If the community has the prerogative of assigning the administrative toolset via consensus, the same should also be true of the removal thereof. This is one of the root reasons for the problems currently pertinent at requests for adminship. By encouraging/requiring administrators to be open to community recall, concerns of !voters at RFA would be alleviated on the basis that if the tools are misused, they can be removed just as easily as they were granted.

Recall as a vehicle to fix RFA? Regardless of one's opinion of whether RFA is 'broken' or not, it can be agreed to that the current methods of removing administrative tools (Arbitration Committee, Jimmy Wales, etc.) are either too time-consuming, or really not worth the drama. Requiring administrators to be open to recall via community consensus would, in addition to easing the concerns of RFA participants, create an easier, much less time consuming/dramatic method of removing the administrative tools.

---