User talk:The Wordsmith/Requests for comment/Administrator conduct

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WT:RFC/ADMIN

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Getting Started

@Floquenbeam: You asked to be pinged when I got started on my proposal, so here we are.

I've sketched out a rough idea and will develop it more, but essentially the workflow is: AN/ANI consensus to open discussion > RFC results in consensus to desysop > Request to Arbcom, Crats etc to remove the flag. RFC would be heavily structured to prevent the kind of loose, interminable back-and-forth bickering of ANI, and have a set time limit (2 weeks?). I used the old RFC/U page as a basic template, but I plan on gutting much of the remaining structure and redoing it to streamline it and prevent all the nonsense that happened with those.

Happy to hear any thoughts. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 20:56, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the ping. I'm a bit swamped IRL, but I'll try to help/comment. I see there's a community desysop discussion at one of the village pumps, but haven't had a chance to see if it conflicts, agrees, or supplements this? My primary thought is that your idea overcomes one of the main objections to community desysop: that an angry mob will vote to desysop without adequate discussion. If the vote instead is to recommend to ArbCom that the community has lost trust in the admin, then ArbCom can act as a brake. But I think, even if there are no major fuck ups, that the community should still be able to say "this admin is rude/too fast/too aggressive/etc, and probably wouldn't pass RFA today", and have that alone be a reason to desysop. Floquenbeam (talk) 13:45, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've commented on the Village Pump proposals, but the basic overview is that ones there are more procedural housekeeping-style proposals formalizing the long-held that banned users can't be admins. What I'm doing here can coexist with that, since they target different use cases. The idea here is more for situations where somebody is no longer trusted with admin tools, but hasn't earned (or there isn't enough support for) a site ban.

Other than the recent Dbachmann case that started this I'm reluctant to give any names of past cases where this might have been a good alternative, but there are a number of editors around who were either desysopped after months/years of drama or resigned under a cloud. They made lousy administrators but good writers/researchers etc. The Wordsmith^{Talk to me} 16:27, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]