This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump.
This is a Request for comment (RfC) on a proposal to implement Community de-adminship (CDA) on the English Wikipedia. Community de-adminship (a form of Administrator Recall), would be a method for the Wikipedia community to remove the administrator tools from existing Administrators who have lost the confidence of the community.
You can read an F.A.Q., prepared by editors who worked on it and support it, here.
This page opened for comments 18:50, 22 February 2010.
This poll has closed. (Please note that discussion is still open on the talk page, and will remain so.)
The proposal has closed as failed. The final poll numbers are 167 (44%) support, 190 (50%) oppose, and 25 (6%) neutral. (Looking only at the supports and opposes, the percentages are 47% support and 53% oppose.) A script providing analysis of some of the voting trends can could once be found here.
I urge editors not to waste time arguing over whether certain !votes should or should not be counted, and, instead, to move forward to examine what can be learned from this discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:04, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The community is being asked whether a proposal for community-based removal of administrator privileges, called Community de-Adminship (CDA) should be implemented as policy on the English Wikipedia.
If WP:CDA is adopted this will require two other amendments:
It will also be necessary to amend the policyWikipedia:Administrators to include reference to the WP:CDA process. This step will be undertaken as a technical matter at that page as and when needed.
When the debate here is concluded, it will be closed in the usual way. If sufficient consensus has not been reached after thirty days, and further discussion would be useful, it will be extended.
If the RfC ends in consensus to implement, such implementation will then be subject to review by the Bureaucrats and Jimmy Wales.
There, a poll was conducted that attempted to evaluate the levels of community support for various proposals seeking to create a method by which the community at large (as opposed to Arbitration Committee) could pass comment on the actions of and if necessary remove the tools from, existing Administrators.
The main conclusions of this poll were as follows:
The status quo, (i.e. no such process being available) whilst garnering some support, was very unpopular. 77% of respondents did not support its continuation.
Only one proposal achieved a greater degree of support than opposition – "Wikipedia:Community de-adminship" (CDA) – which received a majority of 13, and the support of 65% of those who considered it. This proposed process was designed as a "mirror image" of the existing Wikipedia:Requests for adminship (RfA), and part of its appeal was evidently its familiarity.
The reasons for dissatisfaction with the status quo are complex and varied, but a view was regularly expressed that if the community at large has the authority to appoint administrators through the RfA process, then the community should also be able to remove their powers.
Some wording changes and clarifications as identified above (Section: Update from WT:CDADR). Few of these were controversial.
An increase in the nomination period from 3 days to 7 days.
More emphasis on pre-nomination attempts to resolve any disputes.
Most complex of all, a more specific statement about how the outcome shall be judged. Various options were considered and two specifics are identified as part of this RfC (see below).
In many cases the above discussions were a conflict between:
The desire to make the process simpler or easier to implement in order to avoid allowing those perceived as having abused their Administrative tools to continue without fear of sanction, and
The desire to avoid a system in which Administrators, who almost inevitably find themselves taking on potentially controversial tasks on the community's behalf, are discouraged from taking action for fear of reprisals via a Recall method that is too easy for aggrieved editors to make use of when they don't get their way.
The resulting changes to the Guide to Community de-adminship were a compromise between these two poles.
Caution: Imagining CDA as a 'reverse RFA' or mirror image of RfA is misleading and harmful.
The CDA proposal has been portrayed as a 'mirror image' or 'reverse' of the RfA process. This representation is potentially quite harmful, as it implies certain symmetries. While at the most simplistic level one could argue that the two processes are equal and opposite – one flips the switch on, one turns it off – in practice the circumstances surrounding each case are very different.
RfA is voluntary; CDA is compelled. An RfA starts at the time of an editor's choosing. A CDA is imposed by other editors, generally at a stressful time, and probably right after the admin was involved in a major conflict.
RfA generally begins with the presumption that a candidate is competent and ought to be promoted. CDA demands at least prima facie evidence for misconduct, misuse of tools, malice, or incompetence. CDA is inherently confrontational.
RfA begins with (at most) one or two nominators' support in the tally. CDA begins with the admin 10 votes in the hole, as all of the nominators can be expected to vote.
RfA is predominantly about an indvidual's contributions and efforts. CDAs will almost always arise from extensive interpersonal conflicts, and will often fit within a pattern of broader disputes among multiple parties.
RfA places virtually all of the evidence and discussion right on the RfA page. CDA hides the admin's statement and counter-evidence on the talk page, leaving only the nomination.
RfA is a frequent, everyday event. Standards are well-established, most candidates typically face the same sort of questions and examinations. Most participants (candidates and voters) in the RfA process know what to expect, and have extensive experience in it. CDA will be an exceptional occurrence. Neither parties nor voters will have much idea of what to expect, nor will there be an extensive history or archives to look back on.
The glib assumption that since the effect of the two processes mirror one another then the mechanics of the processes ought to mirror one another too does not stand up under scrutiny. It is a specious, even dangerous false analogy.
Proposal development was hampered by set-in-stone votes barring review of previous decisions.
While this proposal has nominally been under development since at least mid-November, in practice the process being voted on now is essentially identical to the proposal drafted by Uncle G on 5 October 2009: [1]. Despite the many issues raised below, any suggestion of substantial changes to the proposal have been rejected as the issue was 'already decided'. A series of rigidly-structured majority votes have been used to introduce minor tweaks (number of days for nomination, adjusted eligibility rules, suggested percentages for 'consensus' to reduce Bureaucrat discretion, etc.), but there has never been any question of – or opportunity to – modify the original process in light of subsequent discussion.
Kim Bruning recently offered perhaps the most insightful analogy; I will allow those words to speak for themselves: [2].
Policy proponents have not identified any specific situations where CDA would be useful, nor any metrics against which it should be evaluated.
The proposal's proponents have repeatedly rejected calls to describe any specific situations – past, present, or future – where they believe that CDA could be used to benefit the Wikipedia community. In their FAQ, they explain this reluctance on the basis that such discussions might lead to "abusive sidetracks". At some point, the community will find out how this proposal will be employed. I think it would be far better to be open about this before it becomes policy rather than after — and it isn't fair to ask Wikipedians to vote on this pig in a poke.
As recently as 2 February, Hammersoft was still trying to get the proposal's proponents to express clearly and straightforwardly what the purpose and goals of the process should be. He was asking how we should define success or failure of the process — what problems is it expected to solve? His request was briefly rebuffed, and ignored.
By far my greatest concerns about this process turn on its gross unfairness to its participants — especially the administrator being examined. The proponents of the process have been very concerned about creating a process which is very rapid, which has a low barrier to entry, which sysops should find genuinely threatening, and which has a 'democratic' appearance. Unfortunately, the result is a process that does not contemplate an administrator who wants to defend his actions, situations where there is misconduct by multiple parties (particularly by the nominators), or any interest on the part of participants in examining the evidence or discussing the situation.
Accusers enjoy a privileged, protected position from which to attack.
The sole issue open for consideration in the CDA process is whether or not the subject admin is to be desysopped: yes or no. While the CDA proposal offers the vague acknowledgement that the nominees' conduct will also be subject to scrutiny, the plain fact is that this process only generates one actionable response to one specific yes/no question. Unlike all other dispute resolution procedures on Wikipedia (RfC, RfArb, AN/I, etc.), the only party who can face sanction as a direct outcome of CDA proceedings is the sysop.
An unjustly accused admin – or even a justly accused admin who is not solely to blame – has no directly parallel venue in which to address the conduct of his accusers. Taking nominators to AN/I during the course of the CDA is bound to provoke an inconclusive but destructive firestorm. Any other option (RfC/U, RfArb) which might allow the community to deal with nominators' misconduct will run much more slowly than CDA. An admin who survives CDA might then have relitigate the same issues at RfArb. An admin desysopped by CDA will be accused of seeking revenge if he attempts to address the nominators' misconduct. A CDA will muddy the waters and exhaust the community's interest in dealing with any non-admin portion of the dispute.
Canvassing is essential to ensure the participation of involved parties, but will unbalance the decision-making portion of this process.
This process operates on short timelines. The nomination window is a maximum of seven days long, and the voting period is a further seven days. In order for a nomination to be successful, editors who share concerns about a particular admin will need to be able to organize themselves to marshal their arguments and evidence. This will require coordination and requests for participation. Similarly, the admin under scrutiny should be able to invite the participation of other editors who may have insight into or experience with the dispute in order to present a thorough, balanced defence. Whether such coordination occurs on-wiki, by email, over IRC, or at Wikipedia Review, it will happen. Moreover, in the preparation of a complaint (and in the presentation of a response), broad solicitation of involved and interested perspectives and testimony will often be highly desirable. To allow the community to fairly judge an administrator's actions, we want to have access to as much relevant detail as possible.
Unfortunately, once all of these editors have become involved in the preparation of a nomination (or a rebuttal), there is no way to ask them all to return to blissful ignorance for the voting stage of the CDA. The first, and loudest, voters on CDA are almost certainly also going to be the most deeply-involved parties.
CDA voters are self-selected, not community-selected. Many voters will be partial and biased.
As a corollary to the above point, it should be noted that participation in the voting is not in any way limited beyond the bare 'usual' blanket editing restrictions barring socks and banned/blocked users. While this has occasionally been presented as making the process 'fair' or 'representative' or allowing for a 'jury of one's peers', in practice we must acknowledge that there will be three rough groups voting in any given CDA.
Nominators and friends. These individuals drive the nomination and/or have had run-ins with the admins in question. However good-faith the nomination was, this group will end up attracting every POV-pusher who ever received a 3RR block.
Admin and friends. This bloc contains all of the people who think the admin is overall doing a good job, who disapprove of railroading them through a CDA, plus all of the people who think that any of the editors in the first camp are disruptive, wikilawyering wastes of time.
Crusaders. This last category contains all of the self-appointed Guardians of the Faith. They have strong (and often negative) opinions about admins collectively and the concept of adminship, and they have found in CDA an opportunity to proclaim on their particular hot-button issues. This group will be the only one which watchlists the CDA page and actively tracks new cases; they will form their own somewhat isolated, somewhat insular community around CDA. Many of them will initially be drawn from the small group of editors who developed this proposal.
Far from being an impartial and independent jury, these three groups will each have their own goals and their own particular axes to grind. The number of fully neutral, uninvolved individuals who will be willing to take the time to find the CDA nomination, review all of the evidence in detail, engage in discussion where necessary to clarify any points of confusion, and then vote (with attendant risk of future abuse from the 'other' side) is vanishingly small — and unfortunately much smaller than the three camps I've identified.
Note that this stands in stark contrast to the process by which (for example) Arbitrators are chosen.
There's no place for the admin to defend himself on the CDA nomination page.
The CDA nomination form includes no place for an admin to offer a response or defense. It's just nomination, signatures, diffs of notifications, and 'evidence in support of the nomination', followed by votes.
In other words, it's easy to drop in, see the nomination, the list of accusations, the cherry-picked evidence, and vote — all without even an inkling that the admin might have had something to say on his own behalf.
Detailed discussion and evidence will be shuffled off to a talk page.
An extended statement from the nominators – and any statement of defense or presentation of counter-evidence – will be stored on the talk page. This arrangement discourages any close inspection or analysis of evidence. Many voters who show up may not even be aware that such discussion is going on. Separating the discussion from the voting page may give the superficial impression of a smoothly-running, uncontentious process, but it discourages the openness and transparency that should be the ultimate aim.
Voting begins before discussion of or challenges to the evidence.
CDA offers no requirement or guarantee that an admin facing this process will be allowed time to prepare and present a statement in his own defense. After the nomination is filed, there is no time allotted to discuss or examine evidence before the process jumps directly into voting.
In an attempt to produce a process which is conspicuously 'faster' than the existing alternatives, corners have been cut.
There is no opportunity for compromise solutions.
Editors may agree that there are problems with a particular admin's conduct, but feel that alternative approaches (short of, or different from, desysopping) could be more beneficial. This lack of nuance is harmful. It could be that Wikipedia would well-served by imposing a topic ban or an interaction ban to keep an admin out of a contentious area. Some manner of probation subject to future review may be equally effective. If the only binding outcome possible is desysopping, it puts the community in an awkward place — do we let the defendant go free, or do we send him to the gallows? Parole, probation, community service? Not on the table.
There are too many bites at the apple.
How many times does an admin need to face the axe? There is no provision to protect admins from double jeopardy. As noted above, a CDA started as part of a larger dispute may require the same issues to be litigated twice: once in CDA, again in a follow-up RfArb. Other parts of the proposal seem to suggest that CDA can be used to desysop after a failed attempt via RfArb.
This process cannot handle sensitive or confidential information effectively.
The usual venue for handing desysopping – ArbCom – has established protocols and procedures for handing sensitive information. Under the heading of 'sensitive' I would include information that is specifically governed by the Privacy Policy, along with emails between users, IRC logs, methods for detecting sockpuppets, etc.
At CDA, the vote marches on during the whole period of time that the admin is seeking permission from email authors, participants in IRC conversations, or checkusers to refer to sensitive or restricted-access information in his own defense. Should an admin describe in detail and in public the method used to identify a recurring sockpuppeteer, just to save his own neck?
The way in which CDA proposes to close its discussions is flawed and prone to failure.
The thresholds are wild-assed guesses.
In technical terms, the thresholds coded into this proposal are 'wild-ass guesses', based loosely on the thresholds that apply at RfA. Given that this is a novel process with no historical precedent on Wikipedia, it seems presumptuous to assume that similar numbers with a similar 'discretionary range' should apply here as at RfA. It also betrays something of a lack of trust in the ability of 'crats to determine what constitutes 'consensus'. Are the 'crats expected to determine if a consensus exists, or just to count votes and add a veneer of respectability to the process?
The decision has a single point of failure: one individual's judgement.
Ultimately the decision comes down to a single bureaucrat's call — yes or no, thumbs up or thumbs down. The 'crats seem to generally be good, competent people, but even good people have off days. With the exception of emergency desysoppings and the very arguable authority of Jimbo himself, we do not recognize the authority of any individual on Wikipedia to desysop. It always requires a formal, clear, final vote by the Arbitration Committee (even the emergency desysoppings are subject to ratification). This proposed process would place that ultimate authority and responsibility – for the first time – in the hands of a single bureaucrat.
I would be the first to acknowledge that members of the ArbCom are at times just as flawed, biased, sloppy, grumpy, petty and human as any other senior editors — including the 'crats. However, the requirement for deliberation and a majority vote of the ArbCom before their motions and remedies take effect means that their individual defects can (hopefully) cancel each other out. The lone 'crat in this proposal doesn't have the backstop of a committee sharing the responsibility or officially making the call. While the single Bureaucrat may engage in public or private consultion before rendering a decision, it's ultimately down to him. Moreover, the first avenue for appeal is also to that single 'crat — one editor (under tremendous pressure and intense scrutiny) is allowed to reverse a decision on his own.
By far the most visible role of Bureaucrats on Wikipedia is in the evaluation of Requests for Adminship and the promotion (or not) of new admins. They have both the technical and policy means to grant the sysop bit within the framework of existing policy. What they cannot do - under policy and by deliberate design of the wiki software permissions - is remove the sysop bit once granted.
What this CDA proposal aims to do is grant bureaucrats a new power to enact desysopping decisions. This represents a substantial expansion and shift in their powers and responsibilities.
Bureaucrat selection did not contemplate this responsibility.
When editors have been granted the Bureaucrat rights on Wikipedia, it has generally been through an RfB process. This process has generally focused almost exclusively on whether or not the candidate can carry out the existing roles and responsibilities of a 'crat — largely on whether or not they will judge RfAs in accordance with the established traditions in that area.
Two current 'crats didn't even pass through RfB; they were selected as enwiki's original 'crats so that we would have a way to create admins. None of the current 'crats was ever questioned about his or her views on or potential role in deciding CDA cases. The community has not had a chance to examine them in that light, nor have we had an opportunity to endorse them (or not) to carry out such a responsibility.
Traditional 'crat roles do not involve dispute resolution, inter-editor conflicts, or significant 'weighing' of evidence.
For better or worse, the traditional role of the Bureaucrat has not' been to exercise his own judgement to any signficant extent. After subtracting off sockpuppets, the expected role of the 'crat is to count votes and declare a promotion where the fraction of support exceeds 70-75%. The post is largely ceremonial, rather like a constitutional monarch who on paper holds substantial reserve powers, but who principally rubber-stamps decisions made by raw voting.
In the vanishingly few cases where a bureaucrat has seen fit to pass a candidate with less than 70% support it has prompted an uproar. I know of no cases where a 'crat has failed an RfA candidate with 80% (or more) support. The community's expectations of our 'crats in evaluation of an RfA are generally that they will act as 'moist robots' and just count the votes. If an RfA falls into what is the only 'true' discretionary range of roughly 70 to 75%, the 'crat can close as 'no consensus to promote', or just toss a coin. The community doesn't compel detailed explanation, and the understanding is that a borderline candidate can edit heavily for a few months and then come back for his successful RfA.
Oddly enough, the current wording of this proposal (and a source of much wrangling voting during its development) implicitly seems to acknowledge a lack of faith in the 'crats judgement. This CDA proposal imposes specific numeric bounds above and below which Bureaucrats are emphatically discouraged from exercising their discretion. This hard-numbers approach persists despite the fact that no one yet knows what a single CDA discussion will look like, or what range of discretion might be appropriate (or peculiar) to this process.
Bureaucrats should not be required to review their own decisions.
As the members of the community who did make the final call on whether or not an RfA was successful (vote-counting based or not), the 'crats would be placed in an uncomfortable position by the CDA process. If the original promoting 'crat thought his original decision was good, he might engage in public or private lobbying of his fellow 'crats. If the original promoting 'crat felt that the original promotion was in error, his judgement would again risk carrying far more weight than it should.
The 'crats need to be able to work together and to provide a united front to the community; it helps to maintain our trust in their judgement and their ability to fairly close RfAs. CDA will be much more divisive and controversial than RfA. The proposed expansion of powers and responsibilities will encourage greater inter-bureaucrat conflict, and potentially damage the trust in (and reliability of) the RfA process.
Finally, we face the extremely unpleasant prospect of Bureaucrats called before the ArbCom to defend their decisions and participate in appeals. I can see no way that such an eventuality will benefit the project. If people are unhappy with the way CDAs are closed, are we going to have to develop a Community DeBureaucratship protocol?
The proponents of CDA have spent a substantial amount of time and effort to construct this elaborate proposal, but we are still left with the serious flaws detailed above. More unfortunately, they have rejected any suggestion that their goals could be accomplished by different, simpler means. Indeed, I believe it is possible to achieve the goals of this process without any need to write new policy at all.
An RfC followed by ArbCom motion serves the same purpose, with greater flexibility and resistance to abuse.
This approach has been suggested by Jehochman, among others. It requires no new policy whatsoever.
In a user/admin RfC, one of the statements can simply be "Based on the evidence presented, I do not feel that JoeBlow should remain a Wikipedia admin. ArbCom should withdraw his adminship." or some variant. If this statement is heavily endorsed by the RfC participants, the matter can be presented to ArbCom at the close of the RfC. An RfC isn't on a fixed clock, so there is also the opportunity to suggest and consider alternative remedies. (Note that non-desysopping remedies may not need to be forwarded to ArbCom; they can be enacted after a suitable announcement and brief discussion at WP:AN.)
The RfC should present evidence of misconduct, an opportunity for the admin to respond, the chance for other parties to comment, and a clear statement that the community supports desysopping. If the ArbCom finds the evidence and statements persuasive, it may proceed by motion. The ArbCom can simply desysop, or can impose probation or restrictions it feels will resolve the problem(s) identified. The ArbCom will also be able to sanction other parties whose conduct has been brought up in the RfC, restoring a fundamental balance that is lacking in CDA.
Arbitrators were explicitly selected by the community to resolve these sorts of disputes. They are not self-selected, they are not bound by raw numbers recruited by canvassing, and they are required to recuse themselves where there may otherwise be a perception of bias. This process separates the involved parties from the decision to impose sanctions.
If the ArbCom feels that there are more complex issues that should be examined, they can open a full case. Much of the evidence-gathering and a great deal of discussion will be available from the RfC, so one hopes and expects that the remainder of the case (workshopping and closure) should be able to proceed briskly.
While some might argue that policy modification violates the 'no new policy required' standard, I offer this alternative as still being substantially more lightweight than a new full-on CDA bureaucracy and framework.
One of the major arguments raised in favor of CDA is the claim that ArbCom are reluctant to desysop admins who have not misused the tools. I do not believe this to be entirely correct, however it is certainly true that bright-line abuses of admin tools tend to lead to desysopping. Our administrator policy explictly lays out the standards of conduct we expect from Wikipedia administrators (Wikipedia:Administrators#Administrator conduct) and notes that consistent failure to meet those standards "may result in the removal of administrator status". If there is a concern that ArbCom are not applying that policy with sufficient enthusiasm, the community can propose changes to emphasize, endorse, enhance, or otherwise strengthen the admin conduct provisions of the policy.
Admins who consistently fail to meet the standards (new or existing, as the case may be) can and should be brought to the attention of ArbCom if other stages of dispute resolution fail to achieve improvement.
We have CDA already: The ArbCom just enacted a rapid, community-driven desysop request.
On 20 January, an issue was raised at AN/I regarding a history of misconduct by a Wikipedia administrator, Craigy144. [3] The misconduct did not seem to involve any use of administrator tools or privileges, however the brief AN/I discussion generally concluded that Cragy144 should not retain his sysop bit. The matter was transferred the same day to ArbCom. The ArbCom declined a full case, opting instead to handle the situation by open motion. After allowing a week for Craigy144 to offer a response or explanation for his conduct, a summary motion was filed on 28 January. The motion passed with unanimous approval on 30 January: [4].
It seems that in situations where an administrator falls seriously short of community standards – even without misusing his admin buttons – and fails to respond to constructive criticism or take steps to remedy his misconduct, the ArbCom is ready, willing, and able to desysop. From filing to desysop was less than two weeks — this process actually ran faster than a CDA would have. The onus is on the community, however, to be clear about what its standards are, and what it considers to be a desysop-worthy problem.
For this long list of reasons, I find that the proposed process and structure are unfair and untenable, and unlikely to benefit Wikipedia. Virtually all of these points were brought up during discussions about the CDA process, but no resolutions were forthcoming. I must therefore oppose this proposal. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to try to refrain from making a habit of disputing every criticism raised, but I do feel compelled to point out one thing. In the second part of the first group, the issue is raised of the conduct of one editor. That editor does not speak for the other editors who support this proposal (as neither do I) and in fact is now an opponent of it. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I actually was in the process of amending that out when I saw your comment here. I don't think that this process should be accepted or rejected based on the (mis)behaviour of one individual. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:34, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that. If, as the RfC goes along, editors would like for me or other supporters to respond to any of the other points you have raised, I'll be happy to give it a try, but I figure it would be premature and maybe kind of badgering for me to do that now. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:37, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for preparing this material. I think there is a lot of meat here: first, with regard to the diminished fairness of this process versus the existing. Second, with regard to the manner in which this proposal, while attempting to derive authority by styling itself as an offshoot or modification of an existing process, actually has little to no relation to any currently existing process; its closest forebear is probably the dramatically failed Wikipedia:Quickpolls. It's quite unpredictable how this will act in practice and the proponents have consistently refused to engage with any attempt to explore this issue. Christopher Parham(talk)20:25, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"The glib assumption that since the effect of the two processes mirror one another then the mechanics of the processes ought to mirror one another too does not stand up under scrutiny." Although earlier versions of this proposal were written as "reverse RfAs", the actual proposal presented here has moved beyond that glib oversimplification. Please read what the proposal actually says. The mechanics of the process are not by any means a mirror of RfA. Anyone can start an RfA, but the barriers to getting a CDA certified are considerable. TenOfAllTrades makes valid points that that the ten nominators should perhaps not !vote, and that there should be a dedicated space on the CDA page for the administrator's response. It is becoming clear that supporters of the proposal are friendly to correcting these two points. However, the fact remains that the community that confers RfA ought to be able to make use of CDA. Being an administrator is not a right.
Was the process of working up the proposal a mess? No argument from me. I was involved in it from beginning to end, and it often felt like root canal! But we are here to evaluate the proposal, not the proposers, nor the process that led to the proposal. The claims that there were never opportunities to modify the proposal are, however, utter nonsense; indeed, the opportunities probably went on for too long. For editors coming to the discussion of this proposal for the first time, I urge you to read below and see what happens when opponents of the proposal have been invited to make suggestions for improving it. TenOfAllTrades frames the process as being one where he and others offered improvements, but were turned away. While I do not deny that some of my colleagues have been unpleasant at times, the truth is that Ten and others simply said that the proposal being prepared was a waste of time and should be abandoned. I've read the quoted analogy many times, and I still do not get the point of it.
Please read the FAQ, number 11, for why we have refrained from "naming names" of administrators who might be subject to this process. It has apparently been a strategy of some of the opponents of the proposal to try to bait supporters into naming specific administrators who would be CDA candidates. A very few supporters in this poll have unfortunately done so, and it is worth noting how little other users have endorsed this unfortunate behavior. In contrast, supporters have in no way "repeatedly rejected calls to describe any specific situations" where CDA would apply. We only reject calls to name names, to make personal attacks. I invite you to look at my own comment at "support #1", where I describe non-"bright-line" situations for which CDA is well-suited. The proposal calls for an automatic review after one year or five nominations, and the community can evaluate it by whatever "metrics" the community wishes.
Many of the points raised are stated melodramatically, but do not hold up under scrutiny. The wording in the proposal about accountability for those who start the CDA is actually quite strong, not "vague acknowledgment". Does it really make sense to build into the process a requirement that nominators be evaluated for sanctions as part of the CDA? CDA is no different from any other process of dispute resolution on this project, in reality, with respect to complainant accountability. As with any other process, parties who are observed by members of the community to be acting badly can be brought to the appropriate noticeboard. Will such bad actors tend to make unfair complaints of revenge seeking and such? Yes, but they do that now, and our dispute resolution procedures allow the truth to be sorted out. The actual proposed policy allows for a deliberate and thoughtful discussion of the case, with plenty of opportunity for the accused administrator and defenders to present a detailed rebuttal and have it considered before the polling is closed.
Canvassing: read the proposal. The accused administrator has plenty of leeway to "canvass" help from those with exonerating evidence. There are significant restrictions on canvassing by those accusing the administrator.
Despite the claims made, any certified CDA will be well-publicized and will be able to draw a representative portion of the community. Required publicity includes the administrators' noticeboard. Let me repeat: every CDA must be publicized at the administrators' noticeboard, allowing any interested administrator to be aware of the proceedings and to come and rebut any claims they choose. There is every reason to expect that editors will come to the defense of a good administrator unjustly accused. Just look at the responses here at this RfC! It sure looks like there are plenty of community members who are sensitive to the need to come to the defense of good administrators. (Why isn't there some unruly mob pushing this proposal through?) In fact, a case could be made that administrators (some of them, not all!) would vote in a block to provide the 30-40% margin to defeat any CDA.
The accused administrator does indeed have the opportunity to present a defense. There is an entire section of the page for that purpose.
The proposal requires discussion on the poll page, while the associated talk page is for peripheral matters. In fact, per !votes and !votes without explanation are to be discounted.
Not enough time for the administrator to respond? Seven days before the CDA can be certified, and at least seven days before the polling is closed (unless a snow close for "acquittal").
"[D]o we let the defendant go free, or do we send him to the gallows?" No opportunity for compromise solutions? One can !vote against removal of administrative rights, which is the logical thing to do if one disagrees with de-sysoping, and comment on milder alternatives. Again, discussion, which includes discussion of compromise outcomes, is actively encouraged.
As for bites at the apple, please read what the proposal actually says about multiple nominations against the same administrator for the same reasons.
Sensitive, confidential information sometimes comes into play at RfA too. It has been handled there by a trusted person (often a Bureaucrat) reviewing the matter independently and reporting the nature of the situation to the page, without breaching privacy.
"Are the 'crats expected to determine if a consensus exists, or just to count votes and add a veneer of respectability to the process?" The language of the proposal clearly answers that question: they are expected to determine consensus and not simply count votes. (Those "wild-assed" thresholds went through more hand-wringing discussion than, I don't know what. If you would like to take a look at the sausage-making, you can start at Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC/Archive 1#5. Need more concrete percentages for de-sysoping, and go on to Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC#January Poll.) If the numbers do prove to need tweaking, that will become apparent through experience, but is it really that difficult for a Bureaucrat to determine consensus here? If, after discounting all the per !votes and out-of-policy statements and ineligible comments and so on and on, there are 70% or 80% of the community saying they have lost trust in the administrator, is it really such a hard call?
If one Bureaucrat is unsure of the decision, they can consult others or extend the poll period, and there are mechanisms for appeal.
Yes, this would represent an additional role for them. Are they really not up to it? Are they really more fallibly human than Arbitrators? The questioning of Bureaucrats' ability to determine consensus appears to be incredibly overblown.
This proposal would not do away with RfC/U or ArbCom. It gives the community an alternative. In developing this proposal, many editors looked at many alternative methods, and they all have shortcomings. (Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Admin Recall. And when you do, please take particular notice of the discussion of the status quo as the first option considered. It was overwhelmingly rejected.) It's easy to say there is some better way, but what is it, and what would it look like after scrutiny like that here?
This proposal is, in many ways, an alternative to making RfA more difficult. Do we really want to make RfA more difficult? The existence of CDA should actually be a sort of stress-release for RfA, in that a positive RfA decision would not be irrevocable.
As for how ArbCom is changing, there's an interesting chicken-and-egg phenomenon. I agree that the community as a whole is evolving towards higher standards of expectation, and both this proposal and recent trends at ArbCom reflect that evolution of standards. Perhaps the knowledge that this proposal was being developed was present in Arbitrators' minds; I don't know. Perhaps the very existence of CDA would make the few problematic administrators behave better and obviate the need for formal actions. It's hard to tell. Perhaps this very RfC is contributing positively to this evolution.
If you haven't already, please read the proposal itself. I think you will see that it is much better thought out than the critics portray it as. And please read the FAQ, as well as the excellent essay Wikipedia:WikiProject Administrator/Five Problems with a Single Solution. It is only fair that the community be able to withdraw its trust, once given. The procedures in this proposal actually make it very difficult to apply CDA frivolously. It will be an improvement over the status quo. --Tryptofish (talk) 06:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that readers of the 'Five Problems' essay also look at its talk page, where I (and another editor) raised clear concerns about 'The Fix' described: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Administrator/Five Problems with a Single Solution. I will avoid a point-by-point counter-rebuttal of Tryptofish in this space, as I feel that readers of this page can compare my comments with his glib dismissals to reach their own conclusions.
I will raise one factual point, however. Regardless of what Tryptofish states above, the sample CDA page (Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/Example) does not now include – and to my knowledge has never included – any space in which the accused admin can offer a statement in his own defense. The proposed policy is equally silent on this point. Whether this oversight is deliberate or accidental, the statement that "[t]here is an entire section of the page for that purpose" is flatly untrue. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Then please let me clarify. The section to which I referred was the "oppose" section. Now, that said, perhaps you raise a good point, that the Example page should be modified to have a section specifically for the nominated administrator's rebuttal. That would be very easy to add with a simple edit, and is hardly a convincing reason, by itself, to oppose the proposal. And please do not insinuate about "oversight is deliberate". --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That you believe (or believed until now) that it is appropriate and sufficient for the sole response from the admin on the CDA page to sit jumbled in with the 'Oppose' votes is telling. In any event, being permitted to make a few brief comments in a numbered list of votes is not the same thing as having "an entire section of the page".
When I suggested that the oversight was deliberate, I didn't mean that you were wilfully misstating the content of the proposal. I did mean that leaving out any dedicated space for an admin to respond to the charges might have been a conscious choice to further grease the wheels of a desysopping. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, both would be extremely helpful: a) to include a prominent space in which the accused admin can offer a defensive statement(s) and b) to enhance the proposed policy to clearly articulate this point. I'd even go so far as to require the accused administrator to make such a statement, however succinct or not so.Duff (talk) 21:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Duff, as discussion here continues, I'm increasing convinced that you are correct. That's the kind of thing Ohm's Law was asking in #Intentions, below. (As for Hammersoft's point about not requiring, I would think that a non-response would be considered as such by the community.) --Tryptofish (talk) 21:50, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To me, it does seem reasonable to REQUIRE an admin to respond to such a process (should this RfC result in one), once a nomination for CDA has certified and the CDA candidate is under consideration, if they want to keep their buttons. Of course you can't FORCE anyone to respond, volunteer or otherwise. Too, there might arise some now-unforeseen situations wherein the interests of the CDA-nominated admin or of the project are seen as best served by offering no defense. If so, a brief statement to that effect could be required of the admin and any such situations could perhaps be evaluated in context, as they emerged.--Duff (talk) 00:39, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One issue related to that point, that came up in earlier discussions, is whether an administrator could game the system by choosing not to offer a defense, and then claim that they didn't know the CDA was taking place until it was too late. At the time, the decision of editors discussing the issue was to not require a response, and to trust the closing Bureaucrat to know the difference, with appeal possible in the unlikely event that the administrator really was on a break. (After all, there's a difference between a pre-announced wikibreak during which the administrator has had no user contributions since before the nominations began, and a simple absence of a defense during a period when other edits occurred.) --Tryptofish (talk) 17:35, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Although this thread did indeed become quiet, and I have no objection to it being moved, I still think it raises interesting questions about going forward. I still urge interested editors to follow the link to it, and if possible continue talk about it. Basically, I think there is still some miscommunication between ArbCom and the larger community about how welcome or unwelcome inquiries to ArbCom about non-"bright-line" behaviors would be. Perhaps a very constructive outcome of this page as a whole might be to find ways to make more of those who !vote support below see eye-to-eye with those among the oppose !voters who say that ArbCom is fully capable of dealing with what problems we have. I'm not saying that as a criticism of ArbCom. I'm saying it as a way of finding solutions that the community will support. In a way, the very fact that the thread went quiet indicates that there are questions hanging out there that aren't yet answered. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
Support. It makes very good sense that the same community that confers administrator status at RfA should have the ability to retract that status when confidence has been lost. This proposal have been very carefully thought through, incorporating lessons learned from previous proposals. I urge editors to actually read the proposal: I think that you will find that many of the criticisms raised by opposers are actually not problems with the proposal as it is written. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:05, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Now that I've had a chance to read the comments so far from those who oppose the proposal, I'd like to add this to my own comment. I note the large number of users who state that ArbCom is already sufficient to handle the problem, and that this proposal would add nothing further that would be good. As editors worked on the early stages of this proposal, one idea that was much discussed was that of "bright line" misconduct by administrators, situations where an administrator unambiguously does things that violate policies of administrative conduct. I think there is consensus among both supporters and opponents here that ArbCom is, in fact, becoming very effective at dealing with that. But CDA addresses something else. There are a small number of administrators, certainly a small and unrepresentative minority, who make patterns of doing things that do not quite cross a bright line, but which leave substantial numbers of community members with a bad feeling about how things work at Wikipedia. They may be chronically incivil in ways that don't require AN/I sanctions but which are hurtful to other editors. They may POV push, or be imperious in the ways that they edit. Please don't get me wrong: this is not the same thing as someone who has a bad day and gets hot under the collar and makes a blunt remark once. It's not the same thing as someone who consistently makes difficult calls and does so in a professional way, even though it makes enemies. And I believe strongly that most of the community, far from being a mob, can readily distinguish the former from the latter. Just look at the "oppose" and "neutral" sections of RfAs. It is very common for editors to bring up issues that are not bright-line, and we accept the ability of the community to assess such things at RfA. The community should be able to assess this later, as well. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Tryptofish. This proposal provides a very moderate process--at least two thirds of the community need to disapprove of an admin for desysopping even to be considered. Ucucha19:26, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. ArbCom could be in the business of evaluating whether admins who haven't directly abused the tools have nevertheless lost community trust, but is poorly poised to do so and a separate process is better. This is not a response to a particularly recent or major crisis but simply remedying the mistake made when initially designing the RfA process: the community grants adminship but cannot take it away. Eluchil404 (talk) 19:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The details don't really matter, since they will be changed after this is adopted regardless. The fact that "administrator" privileges are effectively given permanently right now is simply too problematic. This process is way over-processed right now, and I in no way endorse it's current structure, but even an imperfect system is better then nothing. — V = IR(Talk • Contribs)22:06, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But how can we have a simple CDA process? The details are everything, surely. To adopt it first and work on it later cannot be right. There are other Admin Recall solutions that can be worked on (including RfA), so it is not really 'CDA or nothing'. Matt Lewis (talk) 22:13, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support a CDA process. The actual details of the process will be subject to modifications and evolution over time but this is a good place to start. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:46, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support a CDA process. Bureaucrats have earned ridiculously high support and trust from the community; granting them the power to remove the sysop bit will do more good than bad. In my mind, this is comparable to the re-evaluation of featured articles. Standards have changed, and the community continues to evolve. Details will be ironed out through RFC processes like this one. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz23:28, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The core problem with RfA is that it does not allow us to be bold in electing admins because we cannot revert our decision later should it prove to be a mistake. Is CDA a perfect way to remedy this? No. But it's a reasonable approach. RfA is deeply imperfect itself, but as yet we have developed no better process for appointing admins either. I think RfA could be much improved, and the admin ranks greatly broadened, just by giving us the option to withdraw our trust from candidates, once we saw that it was being abused. It's unreasonable to expect us to be able offer our trust to any candidate on an irrevocable basis. Admins serve at the discretion of the community -- yet the community has no ability to enforce that discretion. As a recently appointed admin, I want the community to have the power to hold me to their standards on a ongoing basis. If they can be trusted to give me the tools, why can they not be trusted to withdraw them if I fail to live up to their standards? "Admin immunity" has to come to an end. CDA is long, long overdue.--Father Goose (talk) 23:32, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support on the basis that, however imperfect this is at the start it will become better as time passes, and a process for formal revocation of use of the tools is most assuredly required. Fiddle Faddle (talk) 23:44, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. My principal objection would be that with a sufficiently noticed poll, a majority should be adequate to remove tools, or even less than that when well-supported by cogent arguments, that's enough hysteresis for protection against frivolous removal. But this proposal is better than nothing, clearly. It provides for self-review, and if it turns out to be damaging, that can be fixed. There will be no mass removals from this process without that additional review of how it is working, good design. --Abd (talk) 23:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, I think Father Goose puts it extremely well. It has long struck me as ridiculous that the community has had no workable method of establishing loss of trust in admins, and this has actually harmed the standing of admins in general. DuncanHill (talk) 23:49, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Accountability is the issue here. Community de-adminship will hold admins accountable to the community and will help prevent them from taking actions that don't have the community's support. Of course the details would have to be worked out not to prevent witch-hunts and the like, but it is important to have a way for the community to recall an admin who hasn't performed to an acceptable standard. ThemFromSpace00:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't agree with the idea that this is redundant to ArbCom procedures--it's useful to have a community-driven process, because it's important to decentralize power and because often ArbCom is bogged down or moves slowly. Just because relying on them has worked sometimes in the past (and I'm sure sometimes it has not worked, too) doesn't mean it's going to continue to, or that it's going to be as good as if we had an additional, community-driven process. I don't expect to see a lot of desysopings from this since the bar is really high for passage and since consensus is so hard to obtain on this project, but it's better than nothing (and that's why I don't share the concerns of some opposers that this process will make it too easy to deadmin people who don't deserve it). I'm also seeing in the opposes some quibbles with the procedure, from people who don't object to the notion fundamentally. I think that type of thing may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and preventing progress. delldot∇.00:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reluctant Support. I don't believe that arbcom is an effective agent of desysopping. Those who lose the bit tend to be admins with years of abusive behavior. Being a bad admin is not enough; you basically have to beg to have your powers revoked, and be friendless in terms of the committee. IronDuke01:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The appointment of users as, essentially, admins for life, is, I believe, harmful to the community and the project, and since there is no move afoot to require re-certification after a certain amount of time, there needs to be a mechanism in place for recalling adminstrators who have overstepped their bounds or misused their power. The current proposal may have flaws in it, but at this time it's the only game in town, and I think it's preferable to have a procedure in place that can be tweaked once its flaws become evident in operation, as opposed to deep-sixing in advance it over some hypotethical flaws that never get confirmed. (The bird in the hand...) Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:31, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support As has been pointed out, the details are not set in stone. I do not accept that the community as a whole can't be trusted to recognize bad faith nominations of CDA. We are able to sniff that sort of thing out in every other community forum. Opposers who oppose on that basis show a stunning lack of faith in the community. Gigs (talk) 01:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - The community should have a method of removing the sysop bit just as they have a hand in granting it, and it should not require ArbCom to do so. -- Atama頭01:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's a great start. As IronDuke said, there have been admins with years of abusive behavior that are allowed to continue. This needs to stop. --Kbdank7102:02, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support the concept The details can be ironed out once there is consensus on whether there should be a de-admin process at all. I strongly believe that admins should vote in a separate section in this RfC. Many will have valid opinions both in favour and opposition to this proposal, and their voices should be heard, but I can't help but suspect that admin opinion will differ significantly from non-admin opinion. The distinction is clearly relevant. WFCforLife (talk) 02:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This is something that absolutely needs to happen. I'd prefer that the terms were modified to make desysopping easier—I don't like the requirement of having 65% support the desysopping—but this would be a big improvement over the current situation. Everyking (talk) 02:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. There is vaccum on cases where there is community loss of trust and not so clear abuse of tools. That vaccum is not currently dealt with by ArbCom. Sole Soul (talk) 02:38, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's a shame that this proposal clearly won't pass, as it or something like it is absolutely necessary to restore faith in wikipedia's fractured system of governance. --MalleusFatuorum02:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Effective tenure for life at being an admin has to end, or the RfA process will increasingly grow to resemble, well, real deliberations over tenure. RayTalk02:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The community granted the powers of an admin to a user, so it should have the ability to revoke those powers. There should be enough eyes on the process that admins will not be bounced out for no good reason, nor will accusers be allowed to go on a witch hunt without consequences. — MrDolomite • Talk03:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm surprised to see such a lack of faith in the community. Surely the "unruly mob" concerns apply to RfA as well? What about implementing CDA on a trial basis, at least? Dabomb87 (talk) 03:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I have seen repeated abuse from an admin (imposing his POV and get away with it) so this policy would have came very handy to stop this kind of abuse (as he had the unconditional support of his admin pals, though, it took a couple years for him to finally be de-adm).--Mariordo (talk) 03:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Administrators like Arthur Rubin have proven that we need such a policy. There have been times in the past when administrators have been abusive on an ongoing basis and editors have complained of bias in enforcing rules against such administrators. Rather than imposing lighter sanctions, what I've noticed is that fellow administrators will sometimes judge the level of offense to be less than what it really is, sort of covering up for them in a way... or in other cases, letting the abuse go on longer than they would with the ordinary editor. A policy like this will help to counter such abuse. ClimateGate (talk) 05:20, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. But just why Jimmy Wales should have any special right of review, when he has proved incompetent at using the block button himself, is a mystery. I strongly object to that aspect. The previous supporter's example of Arthur Rubin is spot-on, BTW. Tony(talk)07:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. This isn't perfect, and there are some valid concerns from those opposing, but I do not see this as a great threat to admins who do basically good work, nor as a process ripe for gaming that will be used to settle grudges (there are protections against that). ArbCom has been doing a better job of late dealing with problematic admins, but there's no question that a good chunk of the non-admin (and indeed admin) corps here at en.wikipedia think we need a community process for desysopping. I agree with that, and can pretty easily live with this proposal. I would add that I'm a bit bothered by some comments in the oppose section that suggest 65% non-support from the community is not sufficient to warrant a desysop. We would be talking about dozens of editors (more than 50) and two-thirds of the total saying, "this has gone too far, you are done with adminship." I think it's considerably harder to get those kind of numbers than some opposing might think, and personally I feel that even if 30 some editors who represent only 50% of the total are commenting in favor of desysop the admin should resign, because ultimately one's status as an admin is based on community trust, not on the fact that an RfA was successful once upon a time. While admins who work in difficulty areas deal with a lot of complaints about their actions, there's quite a gulf between saying "you screwed that up" and "turn in the bit right now"—at least for most editors who would bother to take the time to participate in a process like this. I think this thing is worth a shot. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs08:21, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support because I have come across a couple of idiot admins in my time on Wikipedia (proving that everyone is human, even admins) so having an easy way to remove them is a good thing.--Simple Bob (talk) 09:13, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support It's a start. The Wiki way is that the process will be modified as it goes along, and stopped completely if it goes wrong. We wouldn't have much on Wikipedia in terms of articles or processes if everything had to be word perfect before it was started. It's interesting to recall why Wikipedia was started - because Nupedia was too bogged down in an extensive peer-review process and was not moving forward. The community wants this process - let's get it moving. This is a decent workable proposal. My guibbles are wordings which make it appear that the process is current practise, or any parts of the process are the result of working consensus. It should be run as a beta version, with a full awareness of everyone involved that the process itself is up for discussion. SilkTork *YES!10:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've do have a couple of points on the SilkTork's above comment because it appears sensible in many respects (I may have said a lot of it myself at one point):
1) Regarding the detail being ironed out later, well ok to a degree - but some of it (like admin and canvassing) needed at least some serious work beforehand. I'd like to see at least a possible solution to the various problems before pushing the CDA. It is worrying that so many weak compromises had to be in the proposal (words like "admin must be editing recently" are just too ambiguous). I've seen a little evidence that things would be easier during (or after) a CDA trial to be honest, and it would be a while before every important facet of CDA is covered by examples of use. Is waiting for admin to be put up for CDA the best way to adapt the CDA? I'm not sure it is. Even labelled 'trial', CDA will likely be too disruptive imo, because of what I have come to believe are intrinsic flaws.
2) Regarding the community 'wanting' CDA - I do very much agree that the community want to see changes regarding admin, but I haven't seen enough evidence that they are particularly crazy about this particular method, despite the expected and understandable support votes. The "Reverse RfA" idea of CDA just didn't take off. CDA doesn't address all the concerns directly, like giving admin 'terms' instead of that "job for life" for example. CDA is a bit of a bandage on a structural problem, in many ways, and a bandage we can't keep clean. I'm not against any form of Admin Recall, I just haven't seen CDA stand up to the various criticisms (or enough attempts to make it stand up to them), and I cannot see CDA better withstand criticism simply for it being trialled. I've seen too much blind faith in CDA coming good, and it's been too protected, quite fiercely so at times. Matt Lewis (talk) 11:28, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's logical. The community must have the power to change its mind. We can tweak the process once we see how it works. It would be interesting to see how many of the oppose votes come from admins. --Michael C. Pricetalk11:51, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
But who are the 'community' who can vote someone in and then can change its mind? 'Community' is a useful general term for a 'broad consensus' here really: so a community "changing its mind" is a situation where a there is a new consensus to remove an admin. While the idea of reverse voting is fine in principle, I good idea alone is just not good enough: the guaranteed negatives of a CDA process (resulting from how the consensus is achieved) far outweigh the possible positives.
I do hope that this RfC pushed Wikipedia into publically looking at some much needed (and often discussed) changes: Set terms for adminship and a review process for existing admin. I think for that, the time has now come. Well, perhaps not immediately, but it can't be too far off now surely. Matt Lewis (talk) 12:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting indeed. As at the time of this posting 52% of the oppose votes come from administrators, with only 27% supporting. Kind of obvious who "the community" is I think. --MalleusFatuorum16:04, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Administrators should be directly accountable for their actions and potentially will return power to a disenfranchised community from controlling administrators and cabals. TorstenGuise (talk) 12:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The community give the tools so the community should be able to decide if they retain the tools. Also it will be interesting as stated above to see the amount of Admins who will oppose. Mo ainm (talk) 12:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think whichever beaureaucrat, steward, closing this poll, should research how many of the votes in either direction are sockpuppets, as this is a very weighty important poll. In any case, I personally view this, as, although it might warrant some small changes here or there, the best solution so far to some important problems (see Five Problems with a Single Solution), by the way thanks to commenters urging me to temper this comment's earlier form. :p sometimes I put my foot in my mouth. --Lyc. cooperi (talk) 12:45, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Five Problems with a Single Solution is a good argument that some form of deadminship was needed, and were this only a poll an whether, in-principle to support such an idea, I would supoort it. But this is a poll on a specific, detailed proposal. That proposal does not look like being the solution envisioned by "Five Problems" to me -- indeed one of the points in "Five Problems" was that any "RfDA" process must be appealable to arbcom, which this process is not. Any supporter ought, IMO to consider not just the need for a deadminship process, but the merits and flaws of the specific proposed process. You may have doen so, but your comment, like many above, does not mention those merits and flaws at all. DES(talk)13:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Many ArbCom desysop motions have been on the basis that a specific administrator has lost the community's trust. Clearly ArbCom thinks admins should serve at the will of the community. A poll like the proposed CDA is a much better way of gauging the community's will than the opinion of fifteen individuals of what that will is. --GRuban (talk) 13:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Necessary. The standards have been quite high after extensive preliminary polling and discussions to prevent abuse. Pcapping14:13, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The community decides who becomes an admin, the community deserves the right to desysop. I think this proposal works as well as any we could come up with. Angryapathy (talk) 15:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I think the points made about indirect effects of having CDA in place are important, i.e. that it can take some pressure off the RfA process, no longer being irrevocable, and so on. Also, the argument back and forth about whether the Admin being recalled can respond, is overblown. I think it's obvious the Admin should respond and should be given a prominent section in which to do so, not buried down within the Opposes. But that is a technicality about operation of the CDA process, which would rapidly be amended to allow special designation of the Admin's response. --doncram (talk) 17:12, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We have long been in the vicious cycle that RFA keeps raising the bar for prospective admins because of how hard it is to get rid of problematic admins, and that the ArbCom often shies away from de-adminning people because of how hard it is for them to regain the mop. Indeed, RFA success rates are at an all-time low. We need to break the cycle, both because adminship is No Big Deal, and because accountability is a Good Thing. >Radiant<17:36, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Adminship is granted via a bureaucrat's evaluation of a community discussion, so it should be possible to remove it the same way. Many of the criticisms of the current proposal are generic fears that could be directed at any proposal. There will likely be problems and "growing pains" to work out, but none of the specific concerns are significant enough to keep me from supporting. --RL0919 (talk) 17:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It should never be up to a bureaucrat whether or not an official can be removed. I don't think it should be a simple thing to remove an admin's rights, however, as a community, we should have a say in whether or not it happens. J DIGGITY (U ¢ ME)19:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You are aware that under current proceses no Bureaucrat ever desysops an admin, although the ArbCom as a group can and do desysop admins for cause? Under the proposed CDA process a Bureaucrat would make the decision as to whether the community discussion did or did not constitute consensus to desysop. DES(talk)22:46, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. We've a got a few too many runaway admins, and I'd like to see a more community-based approach to dealing with the problem. I wonder how often this will be used, but it's always good to have more arrows in our quiver. — Bdb484 (talk) 23:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support. I think this particular proposal is flawed, probably unnecessary, and likely ineffective - I doubt that, if implemented, it would ever lead to a successful desysop. But I'm supporting it on principle, because I still think the idea of having a de-adminship procedure is basically a good one. This proposal isn't great, but I support trying it out for a brief period at least, in the hope that it might lead to a functional system being developed at a later date. Robofish (talk) 00:45, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I've been holding back on this vote 'till the 'crats weighed in, but feel the time has come to speak up. As some here know, I have been involved in the early and middle stages of Cda but withdrew towards the end for reasons beyond the scope of a !vote notice. It is enough to say that I believe Wikipedia has a hefty problem and that I'm not alone in feeling that way. This version of Cda is not my favorite, but a decent-sized tally, even should the Cda fail, will give us something to build on and send a message that there are a goodly number of editors who feel the current system needs improvement. My best to all concerned with the issue, regardless of their point of view. Jusdafax03:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
And I see Dweller at #104. I have said from the start of my involvement with Cda that bureaucrat opposition (voting as a 'crat or not) would kill my support. Since the gap to 50% in this RfC continues to widen, the point is moot. I'm going to refocus on administrator term limits. Jusdafax19:56, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support as completely obvious. No admission process for anything is perfect. There obviously needs to be some way to get rid of problematic administrators or people who just aren't cut out for the position. If having an adminship is "no big deal" then it should be no big deal to revoke it, too. SnowFire (talk) 06:27, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry, CDA cannot be used just to remove admin who aren't 'cut out for the position'. It is either a misunderstanding of CDA, or a con to say that it is. CDA would be damaging to Wikipedia, as dodgy admin can say "Look the system in fair! Vote me out if think you can!" when with CDA the system would not be fair, and people cannot vote them out. How will that make Wikipedia a better place? It's a step to a more solidly corrupt state. You can try for a CDA, but that in itself will only cause so much drama that all the extremely daft admin involved would prejudice the running of Wikipedia before, during and after the CDA. And if the admin has enough mates, you simply wouldn't win. The Bureaucrats couldn't judge that kind of thing anyway - so CDA simply won't happen. Admin are beyond canvassing (or any mid-range) rules, so CDA couldn't work until admin in general are better quality people, and that needs to ahppen via a different route to CDA. Matt Lewis (talk) 10:08, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support: I agree with constructively critical comments above that this isn't the best possible version of admin recall, but any version is a step in the right direction. The current system's just dysfunctional. By way of real-world analogy, in those democratic legal systems in which judges are appointed/elected for life, there is generally a way for the people to take a judge back out of office for abuse of power. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀContribs. 06:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)
Comment to above few votes: CDA simply cannot be used as a 'reverse RfA'. And isn't CDA trying to 'paper over the cracks' anyway? Many (if not most) of the 'oppose' arguments say that CDA will damage Wikipedia, and are not arguing that is should not be allowed in principle. Would people consider actually offering a fixed term to admin, rather a "job for life"? And instead of 'patching up' an archaic system with a well-meaning but toxic 'CDA' process, actually address the problems directly? There are proposals like 'Admin Review' processes too, where admin get reviewed. All of those are less destructive to Wikipedia in general than the CDA process. It they don't work, then maybe we should look at a form of 'admin recall' (and there are much better ones than this CDA). Matt Lewis (talk) 10:08, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that people saying it can be "worked on later" are prepared to donate their magic wands! I put hours into trying to make CDA work, and it has flaws we could not resolve, which are simply insurmountable given the desperate state of adminship that we have (admin themselves will wreck CDA). Adminship needs to be changed from the ground up - we need to make it a fixed term, and subject to review. After a number of previous attempts to do so, someone just ran this CDA proposal with clear holes in it, and with various elements that did not meet consensus. A lot of issues were in the end simply denied. The "we can sort it all out later" philosophy, after hitting dead ends, is just foolishness given the seriousness of the process itself, and the stumbling blocks faced. The creation of this proposal failed consensus at various points in its making, and consensus being the glue that holds Wikipedia together, that in itself is a bad sign. Matt Lewis (talk) 11:11, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support In general I support the idea as deadminship is not really ArbCom's role and another mechanism needs to take its place. That said, simply adding a board of Bureaucrats to report such problem admins could easily lead to appropriate RfCs or a nomination to remove the "bit", or summary dismissal. I do NOT support this as the best method around, but that it is A method and the concept is both sound and necessary. — BQZip01 —talk16:49, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds to me like what you are saying is "Fleas on cats are a serious problem. It has been proposed to solve the problem by throwing cats into furnaces. I do NOT support this as the best method around, but that it is A method and the concept is both sound and necessary."--Wehwalt (talk) 17:05, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak support. A community-based administrator recall process is long overdue. ArbCom, an appointed body which itself consists entirely of administrators, cannot substitute for the wider community. That said, I do have concerns about this proposal. First, it requires a consensus for desysopping, "reaching (as a rule of thumb) at least 65% of the total !votes polled". Then admins need only 35% support to retain adminship. I think that's far too low; I would require a consensus in the other direction, so that to keep their position, admins would need 70-80% support, just like at RfA. Second, the proposal says that the 10 nomination signatures must occur "within a period no longer than seven days", but I cannot tell whether this period has a minimum duration. If not, I am concerned that discussion and polling could start before the administrator has had time to respond to the nomination. Personally, I prefer my own proposal, User:Tim Smith/Administrator-initiated recall. Nonetheless, if implemented, this one could be improved and clarified over time, so I support it over the status quo. Tim Smith (talk) 21:03, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The signatures could be collected in 10 minutes, but can't be certified for at least one week, so the accused admin will always have at least 1 week to prepare and 1 week for the process itself under this proposal. CRGreathouse (t | c) 16:04, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing in the proposal to prevent certification immediately after the 10 signatures are gathered. The seven day discussion and polling period would then begin. A safeguard like the one you mentioned was suggested, but was not incorporated into the proposal. Christopher Parham(talk)16:40, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Seems to have adequate safeguards; provoking an admin into an abuse would be easier and more satisfying than pushing such a de-admining through. --Gwern (contribs) 21:12 24 February 2010 (GMT)
In the rare case that an administrator goes "vandal", how does initiating a 7 day community discussion address the need of not "waiting for other administrators"? --Allen3talk22:05, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It's flawed, but it gets the ball rolling slowly in the right direction. Something has to be done to loosen the "pry my buttons from my cold dead fingers" mentality, and every journey begins with a single step. – iridescent23:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support. I can't believe this wasn't in place already. For what reason should we unconditionally trust the admins? We should be able to recall them. Kelseypedia (talk) 23:23, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Not the perfect system, but would be an improvement. I don't believe POV groups can hijack the process; they will provoke a reaction against themselves. Johnbod (talk) 03:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support After looking at the vote analysis script results (see comment at the bottom of the page). Too many "oppose" votes came from admins. Clear conflict of interest / neutrality violation. --Dc987 (talk) 08:14, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Agree that the non-admin vs. admin !vote gulf is strikingly wide at the moment. I have added the script link to the top of the page with the other links there. Jusdafax09:36, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not the best reason to do that surely? People need to read the voting comments without prejudice, so I've deleted the top link (it's at the bottom of the page anyway, and discussed in Talk too). Matt Lewis (talk) 10:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, with some reservations. As of today, admins are almost completely unaccountable, and this has to change. The problem with this proposal is that it makes the recall a traumatic process. Being an admin is still seen as some kind of god-given right, so it will be necessary to have some "due" process to recall them. The opposite should be true: nobody has a right to be an admin; they are provisionally vested with some authority. They consequently should have terms and be automatically de-admined at the end of the term. Then they should be reconducted, if and only if, there is a consensus that they are good admins. Ninguém (talk) 10:27, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. When an admin no longer has the trust of the community, the community needs a way to remove them. I would hope that if this process were to be put in place, admins would also be far less likely to abuse their privileges. Wine Guy~Talk10:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. RfA rates have been dropping, because at present admins are effectively for life. So in the long run the CDA proposal will help RfA rates as well as get remove of bad admins. There are a few bad admins, who do harmful dispropionate to their number. ArbCom will be need in some cases, for example there a clique of admins / or non-admins with drudges. But ArbCom can be be slow. A procedure at as fast RfA is needed. --Philcha (talk) 12:50, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Currently, when there is a problem with an administrator, the only channel available is to request input from other administrators. Because of concerns about wheel warring and sometimes and "old boys club" atmosphere, most administrators have been reluctant to look into issues involving potential admin abuse. I believe this policy takes the burden away from administrators and gives the community a chance to weigh in. This policy is long overdue. Wapondaponda (talk) 10:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support as one of the key principles of any wiki, and one that is oft quoted at RfA, is that anything that can be done can be easily undone. This puts the ability to undue an action right where it belongs - with those who are able to do that action in the first place. If the community has the ability to grant Admin, it must have a parallel process to remove that status. The proposal itself is detailed and contains adequate protections for administrators to avoid nuisance requests. Jim MillerSee me | Touch me16:12, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support This isn't my preferred solution, as I believe it is flawed and a huge drama-magnet, but it is perhaps a move in the right direction. I still would prefer that adminship have set a set term length, after which an admin would be able to apply again, if they choose. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε18:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - in practice, I doubt it'd occur except in truly exceptional circumstances. But it's the morally right thing to do. WilyD20:45, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support We need a process. This one seems as good as anything else. Arbcom gets rid of those who go _way_ over the line, but we need something to remove those who often go just a bit over the line. Hobit (talk) 22:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. There is nothing I like less than a "for life" appointment. The fact that all these nice people gave so many good reasons to get rid of it is just icing on the cake. J.M. Archer (talk) 00:34, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support--I support the proposal. I believe an important new feature of this policy is that it allows a bottom-up proposal from non-admins, and then allows the outcome to be determined via a very open emergent process. N2e (talk) 01:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - Furthermore, I am surprised to find out that there is no formal process to remove sysop equivalent to RfA. Obviously, the emergency, temporary etc processes should remain in force --Jubilee♫clipman02:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I prefer the more democratic approach, but I seriously do not expect to see much in the way of community response. Most people do not participate and those with the administrator inclination do. My limited experience with internal procedures against an abusive administrator shows that existing Administrators protect their own. Therefore we do need additional tools to try to sidestep that gauntlet.Trackinfo (talk) 05:03, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Support a while back there was a certain extremely stubborn admin (who will remain unnamed) who deliberately did not engage in straightforward conversation and refuse to date and time stamp his comments. despite many concerns raised, we could not apply de adminship. worse still he became an admin years ago before any stringent WP:RFA criteria was set. LibStar (talk) 11:37, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Switching to support. I believe all the issues I've had have been fixed, and while I don't like the general idea of desysopping good admins, I figure that's no reason to oppose this policy for serious circumstances. ALInomnom13:33, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - better than current situation; adequate safeguards. Admins are not a vulnerable minority that needs protection, and the wider community is not a pitchfork-waving mob (well, not often ...). Gandalf61 (talk) 14:28, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I am an administrator, and I would be willing to submit to this process. If the community has a serious concern over the behavior of an administrator, then the community should have a forum - short of Arbcom - to allow their voices to be heard. In many cases, I don't believe it's any better to have 18 members of Arbcom decide rather than have a larger portion of the community decide whether someone keeps their bit. Karanacs (talk) 17:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support -- Admins need to be held responsible by the community. Even if the mechanism isn't used often, it offers an additional incentive for admins to maintain a collaborate relationship with the Wiki community. Uncle Dick (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I must have become recently sensitized to seeing uncivil behaviour and biased judgement from a number of active admins, to such an extent that I am puzzled at how some people managed to become admins in the first place. Any community must have appropriate checks and balances to stay healthy. This process is obviously not perfect, but it provides a way for action to be seen to be done. The structure makes it unlikely that a single-minded mob would kick out admins on partisan grounds, though no other system could guarantee to always stay absolutely free of group-think issues. Ash (talk) 23:11, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - any social community that elects a subgroup that holds particular powers or responsibilities should have a standard mechanism for periodically (re)choosing those individuals. These things are usually called elections, and in all democratic communities, the people who stand for these roles are generally volunteers, as at Wikipedia. As a political scientist in a democratic country, i am amazed at the amount of heat this debate generates. I've heard many of the arguments, but remain of the view that all admins should have to put their hands up every, say, three years, and see if they still have support. All the arguments about it being a volunteer community etc are not relevant in my view. However, since there is no widespread support for such a measure, i will support any proposal that begins to make re-evaluation of an elected/vetted sub-group more possible. This is a small step in the right direction, but bigger steps will be needed in future. hamiltonstone (talk) 10:36, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support -I personally have had some good exchanges with adms, but several bad exchanges with those who were arrogant and opinionated. I would like to have a chance at a recall vote of both groups. รัก-ไทย (talk) 13:51, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The arbitrary misuse, and occasional abuse, of misplaced authority by admins is unreal at times. I am not necessarily thinking of English WP here. Presumably any change of policy will apply generally across all projects of WP? Varlaam (talk) 17:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Default to support, I don't oppose and am not neutral. However, there was a chaotic tinge to the process that led to this particular iteration of a CDA-method RfC. My sincere hope is that this !vote will serve as a catalyst for all editors, opposers and supporters to agree to work together on something much more viable during 2010. Tryptofish, TenOfAllTrades, Ben MacDui and Jehochman for example could attempt to find common ground and work together to meet the desires of many to counterbalance the unfortunate current perception that has been expressed of admin-for-life/run-amok possibilities within the present project governance/maintenance structure. Sswonk (talk) 18:02, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it is early, apologies for throwing this RfC under the bus so quickly. For those viewing this comment in the future, at the time of my !vote (included) the count was 120 support to 134 oppose. I will be happy if the support increases significantly beyond that and am encouraged that, at a total minimum, impetus toward future implementation of CDA can start here, regardless of the outcome of this RfC. Having a community elected position which does not allow for a future simple community based mandate is counter-intuitive and we should remedy that sooner rather than later. Sswonk (talk) 19:01, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No problem, no apology needed. You said it in the spirit of constructive discussion, rather than the minute-by-minute horse race that I've been cautioning against. (But since you brought it up, I'll point out again that the "motion to close" last month was leading decisively for the first few days, only to be rejected 2:1 as time went on.) Anyway, I stuck my neck out on this, and I'm getting quite used to being under the bus. :-) --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The problem I see with the seeking 'common ground' approach is that I just can't foresee any variation on this process that would satisfactorily resolve the concerns I raise above, or acceptably answer the questions posted in Wikipedia:De-adminship proposal checklist. In order to modify this proposal to have sufficient checks against abuse and make it fair to all participants, we'd have to change it sufficiently drastically that it would no longer be any faster or more open than the existing de-adminship processes and tools. (I refer again to the alternatives that I offer in my rebuttal.)
I will note that the "admin-for-life/run-amok" perception shouldn't in itself be a justification for developing new policy — and especially not bad policy. If we grant (for the sake of argument) that there is a widespread perception of 'lifetime admins run amok', it should trigger a calm, rational, fact-driven examination of the perceived problem. The community needs to figure exactly what the issues are. What problem admins have we dealt with successfully, and how does that differ from the situations where we have failed to do so? How do we define a problem admin, and why types of (mis)conduct warrant desysopping? Have our existing processes failed to respond correctly to problems, or have these processes simply not been used (or not been used correctly)? Can our existing policies and processes be tweaked to resolve these issues, or do we need genuinely new and separate mechanisms to fix the problems? If we find that there are really only a few admins who would be the focus of a new process, does it make sense to establish a whole new regulatory framework with all its overhead and drama?
Unfortunately, there has been a preference to shortcut that rational discussion of problems, expectations, experience, examples, evidence, and desired results. Over and over again, we've jumped past the analysis of the problem directly into attempted solutions. These proposals will continue to fail because they don't know what problem they aim to solve — or even if the problem exists in fact or primarily in perception. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:06, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As I said above, I'm happy to work on ideas. I can't help observing how the response to Sswonk's suggestion resembles the "health care summit" that just occurred a few days ago in the U.S. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:04, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support We've needed a way to desysop admins without ArbCom for some time now. This would also free up ArbCom for more important tasks. -- Sk8er5000 (talk) 23:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong support -- This is an excellent proposal. I agree with Tryptofish's comments above. ...If the community can be trusted to vote for someone to be a sysop, then they can be trusted to recall them. That is how any serious democratic institution works. Stripping the community of recourse after they've voted someone into office doesn't benefit the community at all. ...Claims that this will "discourage editors from acting boldly" are unfounded. It will only discourage them from acting irresponsibly and inappropriately. The community will not de-sysop them unless they act this way -- they won't de-sysop them for acting boldly. How do I know this? That is, how do I know that the community won't irresponsibly revoke admin priveleges from people when they don't deserve to lose them? Because the Wikipedia community is mostly decent and fair. That's why the encyclopedia doesn't totally suck ... Claims that this would "increase drama", I don't believe are well founded either. This wouldn't magically create new "drama" -- it would just relocate a certain type of drama that's already taking place to a different spot ... it might even reduce drama by allowing people a proper outlet for serious problems that they are having. -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 08:24, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support, as the need for this should be glaringly obvious. Bullying administrators are a serious problem for this project, and there needs to be some way that all of us plain ol' editors can remove the extra buttons at the top of their screen, that seem to empower them in their bullying ways. It's long since past, the time when adminship was no big deal. Now, there exists a number of administrators who view their adminship as some kind of "badge" by which they get to "police" other editors, instead of a mop, to be used to clean up messes. This has to end, and this proposal -- doomed, though it may be by the "blue wall" of administrators lined up against it -- is a good start. Scottaka UnitAnode16:22, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support not a perfect proposal, but I think it will work. It has the checks and balances required to make it hard to game the system and in the end it will be up to the Crat. Hopefully we never have to use it. -- RP459Talk/Contributions16:47, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The idea of introducing greater accountability into the system appears to be a good one. The CDA will need to be handled responsbibly (same as RFAs) and I think the community has shown itself mature enough to handle that process well enough. It is clear that abuse of this process should not be tolerated nor do i expect it will be. My only suggestion would be that Admins should all be subject to re-evaluation after a fixed period of time (every 2-3 years) as I find that service as an Admin has a lot of similarities to the teaching profession - namely length of service is directly correlated with influence but not necessarily correlated with performance. Something to think about. |► ϋrбanяeneωaℓ • TALK ◄| 20:26, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support If we had 2-yr admin term limits (perhaps with a simple vote for all re-affirms, without all the Q&A stuff that goes in RfA's), this would take care of itself. The fact that we have to do this re-call stuff in the first place, is a result of WP's poorly-thought-out "admin for life" policy. SBHarris23:15, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I strongly support the proposal because a lot of administrators had taken bad decisions. When questioned why a certain action was taken, in response to this I got an answer " You will be banned from furhter editing for being uncivil". They should be held accountable for all the actions they take and if an administrator does not follow the principles, he/she should be removed as an administrator and all the priviledges should be snapped. Nefirious (talk) 04:22, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I completely support this proposal, as I believe there needs to be greater accountability for administrators. The CDA is a great proposal, which allows the community to put a check on those we originally gave our confidence vote to; I think it's only fair that we have the right to remove that confidence ourselves instead of relying on ARBCOM. -- Nomader(Talk)05:19, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Unfortunately, this is obviously not getting consensus to implement it. I fully support it as admins, like myself, should be accountable. --Bduke(Discussion)09:16, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It seems measured, transparent and if it is found to be abused then those abusing it can be taken to task, nothing to fear here. Unomi (talk) 15:04, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. A reasonable proposal that has been long discussed and is well thought out; it will make life better for all (except rogue admins) users of Wikipedia. LK (talk) 15:40, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support No block-ability without accountability. I don't buy the lynch mob argument. I trust the community to spot and outvote a lynch mob. MoreThings (talk) 15:09, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I'm open to recall, and have gone through the (eventually unsuccessful) process once already. The procedures set out seem to have a reasonable chance of bringing a desirable outcome.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 22:02, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support As I said in one of the earlier incarnations of this, ArbCom should not remain the only recourse for the community to rescind the trust it gave at RfA. Admins currently get voted in, but lacking term limits and reconfirmation votes, it is immensely difficult to remove one that no longer behaves to the standards he displayed and claimed to uphold on his election as long as he doesn't engage in glaring misconduct. The notion that one is pretty much seated for life unless one goes on a rampage is IMO tightly related to the current climate at RfA, the drop in active admins, but also in the us vs. them perception that is prevalent in pretty much every single policy discussion on this site and that stiffles progress, innovation or attempts at reform in areas that sorely need it. Is the proposal perfect? Not yet. It needs more safeguards against revenge for the infamous difficult blocks, EEML-type coordination, and unpopular but necessary AE actions. But we have to start somewhere, and this looks like the least unlikely proposal for a foreseeable future. MLauba (talk) 22:46, 3 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Removal of admin access happens when you have a consensus against you. Handling a controversial issue properly may alienate some users who will oppose you, but it will hardly turn the entire Wikipedia community against you. When dealing with a controversial issue causes most of the community to lose trust in your ability to wield the admin tools, it is most likely because you handled the issue poorly. Most of the people I see on RFA/AFD/ANI and other discussions argue decently, and it is unfair to call them part of a "lynch mob". We have informal processes on WP:ANI for imposing community bans, and a process here should not be nastier than that. Sjakkalle(Check!)08:30, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support I understand many of the oppose concerns, but I think the Wikipedia community is smart enough to recognize the gaming and elevate concerns if neccessary. Many are treating this proposal as THE only way to remove an admin and not an additional tool. I can see at this point the proposal does not have much confidence from the community, but I do support.--v/r - TP14:06, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I support this proposal with the understanding that it will still be worked on to incorporate some of the great modifications brought up by parties on all sides of the issue. — Bility (talk) 16:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support the principal that Admins. are ultimately responsible to the community. This is only true if there is some mechanism by which ordinary eds. can enforce a desysop sanction directly. Good points made by opposers which would need to be accomodated, but on balance my take is to support this proposal. RashersTierney (talk) 16:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Support. I agree with the criticisms about the process being something of an ordeal. I generally favor a system where if a dozen or so editors in good standing request that admin stand down, then the admin should either stand down, or go through a RfA. That way if an admin has been under a lot of stress, and has made more mistakes than usual, s/he can take a few months to recover, and then face a RfA. The process under discussion here creates, by default, a stage in between the petition and the RfA, which I think is unnecessary - if anything there should be a RfC before the petition. Anyway, I'm weakly supporting, because I agree with the general idea, if not the details. PhilKnight (talk) 17:36, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Wholeheartedly This approach is fair, balanced, requires sufficient evidence of chronic problems with a nominated admin, and long overdue as a codified process. --BlueSquadronRaven20:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No Monarchs for Life! A lot of admins should be desysopped. Wikipedians need to get serious about doing something about worthless or rogue admins, or nothing can be done about rogue rank-and-file editors. The mop is meant to be used, and used responsibly, and a higher level of behavior should be expected of admins. Currently, people won't go to admins about Wikipedians that are problems for the project, because so many admins are problems for the project. There are admins with no time to look into anything they're making a decision about, and that don't even know Wikipedia's policies and guidelines, but they've got no problem throwing their weight around. Others are activists using and abusing policies and guidelines for their own ends, and they make 'friends' and allies. People see this and they withdraw from the project, as I did. Wikipedia's a huge game and the admins are doing nothing about it. (They know how to play it.) -- Rico23:29, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. I can't see a trial of this damaging WP. At least that way we'll have a better feel for whether the process works (or needs refining). HWV258.00:17, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. My experinece with adminstrators has (with a few exceptions) been one of arrogance and inability to consider the observations of those outside their own ranks. Having recourse held over their heads will increase their ability to listen and to think. Brews ohare (talk) 02:23, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Easier admin removal will make the bit less of a big deal. There seem to be threads on de-adminship every month or so at WT:RFA; it's about time we tried a de-adminship system. Shubinator (talk) 02:25, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support.
If the community decides on who gets tools, the community should rule on who has the tools.
RE:There's arb comm. Arb comm should never be seen as a substitute for a community process for forseeable events. Wikipedia is a self governed project. the community is paramount. Arb comm / Jimbo are for emergencies where normal procedures fail. Power corrupts. The rule of arb com and Jimbo will be corrupted due excessive reliance on it.
RE:"don't trust the community". Wikipedia is a community self-governed project. If you don't trust the community, Wikipedia is not for you. This is a matter of self-fulfilling professy.
TenOfAllTrades presents some excellent criticism, and it is even constructive. The proposal should be approved, with TenOfAllTrades given decent lattitude to fix problems once demonstrated. But don't get too hung up on theoretical problems.
Support. I acknowledge and respect some of the concerns listed in the Oppose section below, but remember, adminship is no big deal, because we're all really here to write articles, right? If someone is unfairly deadminned by a cabalistic pile-on using this process, I suggest that ArbCom or some other review board act as the appeal authority. Cla68 (talk) 06:54, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Better than what we have now, which is nothing, Support. It is interesting to note the percentage of admins vs Wikipeons who oppose this to those who support it. They clearly wish to remain a caste here, where only the very few can take them to task. Reform is impossible long as the inmates are in charge of the asylum.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) (talk) 21:43, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You wrote, They clearly wish to remain a caste here, where only the very few can take them to task.
Do you really believe that? Your comment implies that there is no possibility, in your view, that a sysop might oppose this proposal in good faith. Do you really believe that all of the sysops who opposed this proposal did so out of a desire to avoid accountability rather than because they actually believe what they are writing (i.e., that the proposed new process is unnecessary or problematic)?
Yes, I am a sysop and I oppose this proposal (though, see ad hominem circumstantial: a possible or potential "disposition to make a certain argument does not make the argument false"). I have no intention of trying to change your opinion about this proposal or the arguments made against it, but I would ask you to reconsider your characterization of the people making those arguments. That being said, I genuinely would like to know your true opinion, and will harbor no hurt feelings if your response to my question is "Yes".
I know you weren't asking me, and I'm not trying to speak for R.D.H., but I've been thinking a lot about the same question, and I'd like to offer my own take on it. I've been saying repeatedly during this process that I oppose casting any group of the community as being a monolith and that I appreciate the many administrators who have supported the proposal, so I start from that. But speaking of some and not all of the administrators who opposed, I cannot help noticing the ardency of some of the opposes, an almost nasty tone, and an eagerness to dismiss the concerns of those who support. Again, that's not everyone, and some may really reflect strongly held opinions that the proposal is a bad thing, and there also has been nastiness on both sides of the debate. But I am persuaded that some administrators have responded to the proposal like the "angry mob" that it has been claimed would be on the other side. So, yes, I think there are some administrators who really want to drive a stake through the heart of any proposal that would subject them to review. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:59, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt, no doubt. And there are some in the support section who so clearly are pissed at admins that it's almost palpable. And as a regular follower of AN/I, I know what they did to cause admins to take action. If there's an "almost nasty tone" in this, it's present on both sides of this, Tryptofish, and there are people who are determined to get their claws on admins by any means necessary.--Wehwalt (talk) 00:08, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See? That's why I said there has been nastiness on both sides. Anyway, I think the numbers of supporters who came here with their "claws" extended are actually much lower than might have been expected, whereas I've been unpleasantly surprised by the number of administrators who seem hostile instead of, well, administrative. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:34, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I think that any adequately-large or -heated discussion (regardless of the specific issues or opinions involved) is likely to attract some opinions that are not the result of neutral evaluation of the merits of the proposal. I think that this is an unfortunate reality, and am not really surprised to see it in a discussion involving more than 350 people. What I am curious about is whether phrasing such as is present in R.D.H.'s comment reflects actual beliefs. (I had a similar discussion here, but failed to receive a clear explanation/response.) Still, I do appreciate your thoughts on the matter. -- Black Falcon(talk)00:37, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One should not, of course, allege bad faith in the absence of clear evidence of it, and I realize that this is a sensitive issue, but I think that one should be able to express unease about the phrasing of others' comments as long as one does not attempt to effect a particular outcome based only on one's interpretation of the motives of a few others (i.e., as long as one does not base arguments or decisions on an unproved assumption of bad faith). The extent to which it is "helpful" to express unease in this manner is another matter, of course. -- Black Falcon(talk)01:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(outdent) First, a thank you to Fish, for making a case for my remarks. Now Black Falcon (from a fish to a bird..oh my:), since you seem to sincerely desire a frank discussion, I shall indulge you. This project is riddled with injustice, and the admin caste is the source of most of it. Yes, I said Caste, because that is what it has become. For too long it has been too seldom held to account by too few. This has bred arrogance and corruption amongst its ranks. The supposed servants of the community have become its masters. The only way to peaceably and democratically change this is through consensus. But the admin caste is now too deeply entrenched to allow this to happen. They are more politically active and better organized than us mere peons. They can effectively mobilize themselves to block any substantive changes (the inmates run the asylum). Yes, this proposal has flaws. My friend Cla68 acknowledges this quite well in his remarks above. And I think it has as much chance of passing as a winged snow swine in Hades. But something like this is long overdue, if not too late. We should have been having this discussion years ago!--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) (talk) 03:56, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we have creatures of the air and the sea ... are there any terrestrial critters lurking nearby? :)
Perhaps it will come as no surprise, given what I wrote above, that I disagree with several of your opinions, especially your characterization of the sysop user group as acting with a single mind (all sysops most definitely do not share the same attitudes, opinions, and preferences) and your presentation of an us-versus-them conflict between admin and non-admin editors—both of which are to me, because I studied nationalist and ethnic politics at university, reminiscent of the manner in which nationalist and sectarian leaders portray inter-group relations: there is the same us-versus-them frame of reference, with the 'other' presented almost always as a monolithic and destructive or dangerous entity. I don't mean to suggest that there is any malice in your characterization, but the structure of the argument—ignoring individual variation and instead focusing on broad classifications, and generalizing individual experiences to an entire group—is similar, in my opinion. Regardless, I thank you for providing a detailed and honest response. -- Black Falcon(talk)07:37, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course human groups are not monolithic. There are a few good members even in bad groups- Oskar Schindler and Mikhail Gorbachev for instance. Sometimes they can make a small difference and on rare occasions even large ones in changing their groups' behavior for the better. But unless and until they are able to change enough of their fellow members' hearts and minds to significantly change the groups' culture for the better, they remain good soldiers for a bad cause...good cogs in a flawed machine. Over the past year or so, I've seen a slight change in the admin caste's culture here for the better. But I fear it is too little, too late and happening too slowly to make a big difference. If I use the language of us vs them, it is because your caste has engendered that response. Rather than taking me to task on my terms, you should be asking yourself; what has my group done to make him employ such stark words?.--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) (talk) 12:44, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The caste of non-admins are a group of sniveling snot nose children who don't understand what consensus means, how to build an encyclopedia, nor even understand much of what is written. Offended by my comments? Offended by my (in jest, people, in jest) appraisal of non-administrators (of which I am one, by the way)? My assessment of the case of non-administrators is every bit as valid as your assessment of the "caste" of administrators. Can you cite anything to support your opinion or is it pure speculation based on anecdotal experience? As to "We should have been having this discussion years ago", we have. Many times. See Wikipedia:Requests_for_de-adminship#Proposed_processes. There's a reason this general topic is part of Wikipedia:PEREN#Adminship. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wow! Hammersoft, after reading your words of wit and wisdom above, I now realize how wrong I was. Yes, us Wiki-peons are peons for good reason...we are a bunch of argumentative, know-nothing smegheads! Real change can only come from above, from our betters. More importantly, I now realize that you are the one! The Wiki-Messiah whom it has been prophesiedwould come to bring peace and justice to all Wiki-land! My lord, embrace your destiny! See the change...BE the change! Only you have the knowledge and the power to end the abuse and corruption...or will, once you become an admin. Please,lord, I beg you, allow this humble servant to nominate you post-haste!--R.D.H. (Ghost In The Machine) (talk) 10:14, 11 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, it's like you're following a "how-to" guide on nationalist mobilization:
If necessary, I will acknowledge the fact of diversity within my enemy's ranks, but immediately sweep it aside by refocusing on the behavior of the enemy as a whole. I will express a willingness to compromise, but make conciliatory behavior on my part contingent on unspecified improvement or positive change in the behavior of my enemy. I will justify divise rhetoric by characterizing it as a response to actions by my enemy. I will explain away any criticism of my divisive behavior by claiming a long history of wrongs committed against my group—I will avoid particular examples so as not to get bogged down in the details, which are rarely ever as black-and-white as I would like them to be—and stating that our patience is exhausted. I will not abandon my preferred terminology; if I use it enough times, the discussion will take place in that context.
This project is heading in the direction of politics and excessive bureaucracy. Frankly, I don't see any reason why this jurisdiction should exclusively remain with a committee whose very foundations are drowned in politics. I don't believe the community is clueless, gullible, or incapable of examining genuine concerns; unless the Commiittee possess diverse qualifications that this community does not have??? All stages of dispute resolution are abused; even ANI is abused, and RFA has also been abused - expecting a desysop proposal that cannot be abused is an insane and impossible expectation. Perhaps moving the proposal off the ground and improving with time and collaboration (i.e. actually working together) is better than just shutting out another option; the current system is simply unsatisfactory on this issue, and has been for a long time. I applaud the initiative that has been taken by the users who have poured their time in making these proposals while attempting to remedy some of the opposer's concerns. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:02, 6 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Wikipedia is fundamentally a community based effort to build an encyclopedia, so decisions can only be taken by consensus. This is why we elect Admins. Admins who have lost the support from the community will sooner or later cause trouble, not per se because they will themselves do something bad, but rather the mere fact that decisions taken by controversial Admins will be, rightly or wrongly, questioned more, so the Admin loses its moral authority. We therefore need a mechanism like the one proposed here by Tryptofish to remove the Admin status of such editors. Now, one can argue about the rules for community de-adminship, but the rules cannot always be designed optimally in advance; you have to try something first and then modify the rules using the community feedback on the process. I.m.o., ArbCom cannot optimally fulfill the task of removing problematic Admins for various reasons. They are chronically overworked, they may not decide to hear some cases for many possible Wiki-legal reasons. This leads to some problematic Admins being desysopped, but others will escape that fate. Final comment. Since Admins are a small minority of the Wiki-community and they clearly have a COI in this vote, I request that Admin votes here should only count for half. Count Iblis (talk) 14:51, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've said this before, but I feel it useful to repeat it now. I consider the poll part of this page to be governed by WP:POLL, and I think that any argument based on excluding any class of the community from having their !votes counted the same as anyone else's is without merit. It's useful to understand how different members of the community have !voted differently, and that information is valid to consider in interpreting consensus, but arguing that this person or that should be discounted is going to be a waste of time. Just above, some editors raised the issue of discounting administrator !votes, and so another editor went through the page and noted !votes by editors who apparently contributed in violation of sanctions. (An AN/I thread has already occurred over one !vote having been stricken.) We could have an unpleasant and unproductive drama over hanging chads, or we can recognize that this RfC is heading towards showing that there is not sufficient consensus to implement the proposal in its present form, and that there is likewise not sufficient consensus that the status quo is acceptable to the community. My point is that I'd like to see ideas from all areas of the community considered fairly here. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:13, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why are you assuming that there is a COI? Do you suggest that a sysop who has absolutely no reason to expect that he or she will ever be subject to a CDA, much less a successful one—and, unless CDA is blatantly abused, I think that applies to most sysops—somehow has a conflict of interest regarding this proposal? If you are, then should you not also claim a COI on the part of any editor who has ever had a disagreement with a sysop or who would like to de-sysop a particular admin?
I would like to repeat my call that we focus on the merits of the positions and proposals that have been presented in this RfC rather than trying to undermine or discount individual votes (or groups of votes) through ad hominem arguments. Thank you, -- Black Falcon(talk)23:27, 7 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why are you assuming that there is a COI? Wow! Only an admin could ask a question so dumb. And I'm not kidding - does any non-admin have a problem with this concept's applicability here? --Michael C. Pricetalk00:45, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Only an admin could ask a question so dumb. - I tremble before that logic and bow my head in shame. Shall I flog myself now, sensei?
Extending Michael's idea, perhaps we should discount any voters who've been blocked before who are not administrators. Obvious COI. Let's see, starting with the supports that gets rid of Abd, DuncanHill, Crossmr, IronDuke, Beyond My Ken, Gigs, Yellow Evan, Sole Soul, Malleus_Fatuorum, Dabomb87...Wow, what a trend I've discovered! Oh, and let's not forget we'll need to discount your vote too, Michael. Dotting i's and crossing t's, --Hammersoft (talk) 14:23, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"I would go further and suggest that Admin votes on both sides be totally discounted." Your words. Not mine. I can't very well discount votes that have already been discounted by you. It therefore follows to only look at non-administrators for who has been blocked. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support Seems like a reasonable first step in giving the community a say in who governs. The votes of admins should be discounted since they have a conflict of interest in preserving their admin for life status. ChildofMidnight (talk) 03:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So administrators are all criminals? Is that it? So you don't think a person who has been blocked might have a significantly greater chance of having an axe to grind than a person who hasn't? Why is it that people who have been blocked show a 50% greater chance of voting in support of this proposal? --Hammersoft (talk) 18:43, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To continue a really bad analogy, though, victims of crime can't serve as jurors at the trials in which they were a victim. On that basis, it is utterly reasonable that those who have a reason to have a grudge against the admin corps should be disallowed if admins themselves are. In the real world, however, the votes of neither should be disallowed. Otherwise we don't have a community consensus, because like it or not, admins are part of the community. Black Kite19:00, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note that ideally you want to have the opinion of every Wikipedian. Any editor can have some COI we don't know about, but if we ask the entire community where they want to go, that is no longer relevant (the COI's are a relevant part of the community too). The problem is not the COI in itself, rather that in a poll like this a particular minority COI is overrepresented. That then can distort the outcome of this poll relative to the ideal poll where you would have asked everyone's opinion. Count Iblis (talk) 00:25, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to have it on the record that I don't believe your !vote/comment should be immediately "discounted". Instead I feel administrator comments (both "support" and "oppose") should be categorised separately to non-administrators. A debate about this is happening on the talk page. Unsurprisingly, there is tremendous resistance to the idea from—administrators. HWV258.02:18, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I am in favor of term limits and reasonable checks and balances to anyone's power or tenure in any organization, including a volunteer organization. Arrogance of power is, unfortunately, all too common in life and we need ways to deal with it, if/when it arises. --Mdukas (talk) 05:34, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Maybe this is not perfect (a sentiment I see in many of the support votes), but something is needed, and we won't learn the fine points of the pros and cons if we do not try something. Wikipedia is getting bigger and the number of admins is big. The reality is that there is a large and growing variability in the quality, policy understanding and judgement of admins now, and if the admin sub-community has no accountability like this from the bigger community it will become (or is becoming) a higher empowered community unto itself, with its own sub-communities, priorities etc. The obvious direction we are headed otherwise is towards admins who see themselves as managers, and as more truly wikipedians than mere editors. (I would say this is already happening in some cases.) I do feel a concern that this will be used against good admins, but upon balance I doubt they'll be attacked more than is currently already sometimes happening, and who knows maybe it will even be less if this proposal leads to a better quality working environment with less wikidrama. Poor quality admin work certainly sometimes plays a role in creating the situations which lead to wikidramas of various kinds.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The ArbCom system is a good way of dealing admin misconduct. But it's a bad way of dealing with admins who have poor judgement, have lost the confidence of th community or who prioritise their own views over community consensus. The Wikipedia community is based on an equality of editors - the power structures and hierarchies that have grown up are an antithesis to this. Arbcom is just senior admins disciplining junior admins - it just reinforces the hierarchy. AndrewRT(Talk) 22:52, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Many of those who have opposed the proposal have asked for a better explanation of what "bright-line" was referring to, and why ArbCom may not be as well suited to deal with it. I think Andrew has articulated it in a very clear way here. Thanks for that. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:04, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
We have children and self-confessed drug users among our admin corps. I consider it only a matter of time before an administrator has a major lapse of judgment, and we need proper tools to deal with this when it arises.—S MarshallTalk</sup/Cont14:40, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Kidding me, right? Yes, we have older teenagers who are admins. The community knew of their age when they !voted them in. One or two have screwed up, like User:Cremepuff and been shown the door. As for self confessed drug users, anyone who can't keep drugs and alcohol off their editing won't be made an admin or won't stay one. And any proposal here will not deal with the off the reservation admin, but will take at least a week to consummate. We do have procedures for emergency desysoping of an admin who goes off the rails. It has happened, and has been dealt with, and all this is public information. Your !vote comments reveal a stunning lack of knowledge in the area in which you comment.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:01, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support. The current system is like a one-way door; admins get approved through a community !vote, but can't be removed through the same (or similar) process. Firsfron of Ronchester23:37, 13 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
'Not helpful' for whom? And why would you cite NPA in your response, Tryptofish? Why would it be a personal attack to identify the administrators whose misconduct demonstrates the need and necessity for this process, but not an attack to actually subject them to it after this proposal is enacted? I grant that details, specifics, and examples might make certain people uncomfortable, but discomfort is no reason to hide from open discussion of how this proposal would be applied. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 18:47, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A reasonable way to do it would be this: discuss the matter without naming names. In my understanding, it would be a personal attack to say on this page that so-and-so is a bad administrator, whereas presenting evidence for it as part of a process designed for the purpose would not be. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Overall, I have found the broad use of generalizations, hypothetical situations, and discussions about things which everyone just 'knows' to be less than helpful. For several months, I and others have asked for evidence-supported descriptions of specific, real problems which would be remedied by these proposals. Tryptofish, I realize that you have no intention of providing such specifics, but perhaps there are proponents of this proposal (or variants thereon) who might be more open about how they would use it. If I saw some sort of convincing evidence, you might be more likely to bring me (and editors like me) on side. Of course, you might also find that the cases brought forward could be dealt with successfully through normal channels — or that the cases aren't nearly as cut and dried as the involved parties might like to think (and thus unsuited to resolution through this sort of trimmed-down process). Would you be willing to abandon the development of this process (or its offspring) if you found that it wouldn't be of any practical use? Or would you want to push ahead if its only practical application was as a threat? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 19:38, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think if you click through to the link in my post immediately above, you will find answers to a lot of those questions. As for me (among others) not doing a good enough job of making the case here, guilty as charged. Do I want to create something whose only practical application is as a threat? No, of course not. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:46, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your link – which I have read through more than once, and did so before I responded – refers to your own personal experience, but does not describe (explicitly) a case where you believe a desysopping is required. Moreover, your statement is devoid of diffs, or detailed descriptions of specific, real cases where the CDA process would be (or would have been) applicable and useful. I fully recognize that it is your privilege not to fulfill my requests for information, but your link does not provide answers to 'a lot of those questions' and shouldn't be represented as so doing. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(ec)And this really is the rub for me because in all the discussions I have seen about admin abuse, no-one has ever articulated who it actually is who needs to lose their bit. Until that time, I'm afraid that this continues to look for a solution in search of a problem. And the NPA edit summary confuses me. I sincerly hope that I'm not being accused of making a personal attack. SpartazHumbug!20:30, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Let me be very clear about this: I did not mean to imply that Spartaz had made a personal attack. What I was trying to say was that a reply to Spartaz's question would risk being a personal attack. I hope that is now clear. Now the broader question is one where I suspect those of us on both sides continue to feel very frustrated with the other. Please understand that some of us sincerely believe that it would, indeed, be a personal attack to come to this or to a related page and say "so-and-so" should be de-sysopped, as opposed to pursuing an existing or a proposed method of dispute resolution. Naming names, providing diffs that reveal names, and the like, would be personal attacks if stated in the course of a discussion that was not part of an actual process of dispute resolution. Now, as has been stated by me and by others many times already, that reality creates a catch-22 for supporters of this proposal or any proposal like it. We can either name names and be, rightly, criticized for doing so, or we can refrain from naming names and have the proposal criticized as it has been here. Please consider: in the discussion to which I linked, have there never been any administrators whose conduct resembles that description? Have there never been any whose conduct of that nature would undermine their ability to serve the project as administrators? Are there none who, as of today, remain administrators in the face of existing policies? To those who sincerely and in good faith answer that they are unaware of any administrators fitting these descriptions, please consider whether you think that all of the slightly-less-than-half of users who have responded to this page as supporting the proposal are either wrong or acting in bad faith. It appears that a sizable portion of the community, including quite a few administrators, has concerns about this issue, and not all of us are complaining about something that does not exist. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:20, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Previously noted by me. The existence of a perception of a problem by some editors is not the same as the existence of the problem. The lack of naming names or considering specific cases leaves us with the present situation — Alice thinks Bob is a bad admin; Carol thinks Dave is a bad admin; Eric thinks Frank is a bad admin; but no one has actually looked at whether or not Bob, Dave, and Frank are really problematic or just subject to individual dislikes. This will continue to be a problem in the development of any CDA-type process that avoids looking at specific current or historical cases. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:00, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
(I wonder whether the editor whose !vote started this thread realized what it was going to lead into!) I think a lot of this comes from the fact, as discussed recently on the talk page here, that different users have had different experiences. What seems obvious to me, from my experiences, may seem unreal to someone whose experiences have been different, but it doesn't mean that either I or the other user are wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:26, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The asymmetry in this discussion is quite staggering. Administrators routinely make judgements about who they consider to be "bad" editors, and issue blocks in accordance with those perceptions. Yet regular editors are not allowed to make similar judgements about "bad" administrators. I could give you lots of names TenOfAllTrades, but here's one for starters: Beeblebrox. --MalleusFatuorum00:41, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reminded of the saying "with friends like this, who needs enemies". Malleus, I want to distance myself from what you just said by a distance wider than the internet. Personally, I have had consistently excellent interactions with Beeblebrox, and I consider him to be an excellent administrator. And in fact, he wrote one of the variant proposals that led to CDA, and I personally fought to have some language from his proposal included in the version of CDA being discussed here. Sigh. Of course, what is going to happen now will be that some of the opponents of CDA will point to what Malleus said, and say, see, this shows how CDA could be misused. And honestly, I would have to concede that they would be right (although Malleus by himself would not be ten nominators, much less 65% of the !vote, nor 50 users !voting to remove). On the other hand, I will point out that the more reasonable proponents of CDA have consistently urged that no one name names. In a better world, that would mean no distracting personal attacks. Here, sadly, it just means that it makes me look like I have been trying to hide the kind of thing that just happened here. A promise: anything by way of a revised proposal that will come in the future will only have my support if it includes consequences for those who make invalid accusations. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:34, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You are just about as wrong as wrong can be Tryptofish, but you believe whatever makes you happy. It doesn't matter what anyone says, blatant self-interest will always ensure that no propsal like this one will ever be allowed to pass by the administrator corps. You are wasting your time and you are deceiving yourself. --MalleusFatuorum19:43, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That has to be the most ill thought out reply I've ever seen, and no, I'm not passionately involved in this debate at all. I was simply struck by the sheer mind-numbing obliviousness of those words. You could read the thousand-page archives of WP:AN and the related noticeboards for one, if you seek evidence that not all admins are unquestionably beloved. There are thousands of valid arguments for and against this proposal. Your comment is not one of them. —what a crazy random happenstance02:21, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, his comment makes a hell of a lot of sense. There have been many people in this RfC claiming this or that fact without providing any evidence of it. To ask on what basis one has claimed "obviously many" is certainly a valid question to ask. The simple fact that archives exist of WP:AN is not evidence. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:15, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support The behaviour of admins, such as the one who initiated this thread, points to a real need for straightforward processes where out of control admins can be admonished or desopped. I would also like to see admins restricted to a term of say two or three years, after which they can initiate another RfA. --Epipelagic (talk) 01:23, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Support (a) per Alex Harvey, (b) because I found Tryptofish to be more convincing than TenOfAllTrades, and most importantly (c) because there should always be a means of recalling those we place in positions of power (even if it is expected to be little used). --GoRight (talk) 06:33, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Note: TenOfAllTrades (an administrator) has just asked ArbCom for an MYOB restriction on GoRight (and a permanent ban on Abd, another supporter), after his having "been repeatedly blocked recently for his own counterproductive approach to Wikipedia editing". This measure would enable revenge (all GoRight would need to do is WP:HOUND TenOfAllTrades to gather a handful of "victims") and curtail administrators (even those who always follow policy to the letter) if it passed. Which it won't. -- samjinout09:45, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom have been more willing to desysop administrators who have shown to use the tools poorly. Generally speaking, if an RfC comes to the consensus that an administrator no longer holds the trust of the community, ArbCom will desysop them. I don't personally believe there is a problem to fix. I fear that if this proposal was to move forward, a lynch mob mentality would result and administrators who deal with controversial issues would regularly be brought through the community deadminship process. I also fear that administrators who make one mistake would also be sent through the deadminship process. All in all, I believe it will lower morale in the admin corps. Whilst the RfC, then to ArbCom route might not be ideal, I believe it serves as a good check and balance. RyanPostlethwaiteSee the mess I've created or let's have banter19:09, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal is likely to be harmful on a number of levels, discouraging administrators from boldly responding to sensitive and complex issues, while encouraging those who would use wiki-process to pursue personal grudges and vendettas. The current system, meanwhile, is humming along very nicely. I know of no administrator in the past 2-3 years whom ArbCom did not desysop, when presented with evidence of flagrant abuse of the tools, or place on probation which would lead to desysopping "next time," when presented with evidence of severe error or other inappropriate use. Christopher Parham(talk)19:21, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course if one is an administrator for life, then the current system is humming along nicely. But this view is not held by everyone, as many of us see significant problems. Egregious cases of admin abuse are in fact quite rare, but administrators frequently make poor choices, that may include favoritism or a lack of impartiality. Because poor decisions that are not egregious are tolerated by other administrators, certain administrators continue to make these poor decisions, and some start believing that their behavior is acceptable. It is because of these poor decisions that some editors hold personal grudges and vendettas against certain administrators. If an administrator is competent, fair and impartial then I see no reason why reasonable editors will hold a grudge against him or her. Because administrators are not accountable to the community, many administrators are too quick to pull the trigger when a problem arises, and fail to consider other ways to resolve problems that don't leave a bitter taste in anyone's mouth. By implementing the CDA, I believe admins will be more thoughtful about the decisions they make. As for Arbcom, the process works well for egregious violations, but Arbcom is somewhat mysterious, distant and isolated from the wider community. Consequently admin abuse may persist for a long time before it gets to Arbcom level. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you could point to some of the instances in which you attempted dispute resolution against an admin who made such poor decisions, but the current system failed to act in the way you desire. A good example would be an RFC where the community clearly indicated that an admin had made repeated errors, but where a later ArbCom case did not result in desysopping. Christopher Parham(talk)16:09, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As previously mentioned, it is usually egregious or persistent breaches that tend to gain attention, enough for an RFC to be created. Other activities that involve poor decision making are simply forgotten, by most except maybe the aggreived parties who then hold grudges. I do not have a major problem with decisions made by Arbcom, however most grievances never get to arbcom. Wapondaponda (talk) 18:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
An RFC requires a mere two users to be confirmed; an incident so forgotten that it didn't meet the two-user hurdle does not sound to me like one demanding removal of the bit. If these grievances aren't getting to ArbCom, it's not because of a flaw in the system, it's because of the unwillingness of the offended parties to work through the dispute resolution process. Christopher Parham(talk)13:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I've put a lot of work into CDA since I found it flagging a little in a 'Motion to Close' at the end of Dec (over 100 hours - and this is important to note), and a lot of it is still in there. In my experience the proposal hasn't been that carefully considered (serious discussion on the central Canvassing issue was very 'last minute'), and at least one major consensus has been ignored - the desire for a higher 'threshold' percentage (it was clear to me that 85% was the conservative 'mean average' of the voting results - not 80%, but the vote itself was disputed. A lot of people preferred the Bureaucrats to make the full decision, not the "percentages" so-to-speak, and felt the threshold shouldn't be too low). During my work on CDA, I have defended CDA quite passionately at times (eg "don't so be angry and cynical in your opposition", "we must give it a go" etc), but my eventual realisation is that CDA cannot work. A CDA-related AN/I on me made me realise what I had been blind to: the rapid amount of support (almost instant support) designed with no other intention than to get a decent editor into trouble. Selfish perhaps - but it was a real epiphany regarding CDA. It wasn't the editors that concerned me (I expected certain people to turn up) - it was the admin involved in it all. It was so unpleasant that I asked myself "does Wikipedia really need this?". A decent Canvassing section (and despite attempts, this CDA proposal doesn't quite have one) can possibly prevent a number of editors causing mayhem even before an official CDA starts (enough to be worth trialing CDA anyway). But it cannot stop admin - who are easily in contact - behaving badly, and supporting each other instinctively, and as various 'favours', as they so often do. We cannot be in denial about these things. Admin are editors too, and are fully capable of attacking another admin unfairly (and extremely bitterly too), and I cannot believe that any Bureaucrat would want that to be played out in such a public forum. CDA will prejudice Wikipedia itself - before, during and after the CDA, and the Bureaucrats decisions could become impossible to make fairly. The Crats just wouldn't be interested in it... Matt Lewis (talk) 20:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I worry that chasing decent-but-awkward admin will even be the 'norm' with CDA nominations, as most of the 'canny' admin could easily escape CDA anyway. Decent admin are easier to catch because they don't wriggle so much. CDA is not the only possible version of Admin Recall though, and RfA (the actual 'Request For Adminship' process) can still be improved, regardless of any form of Admin Recall that might be around. Basically, CDA is an unwashable bandage on a structural complaint. We need to get to the root of the problem: the quality of the RfA process (esp in the past, where it was much easier to become an admin), and the actual wisdom in actually awarding someone we don't really know such a veritable booty in the first place, eg such powerful and varied block tools, and a "job for life" over a sensible fixed term. Matt Lewis (talk) 20:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I largely agree with TenOfAllTrades's analysis. I also feel that there's far too much drama on Wikipedia already, and CDA would simply add to this, without, I think, giving us much benefit in return. Scog (talk) 21:31, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To be direct, I simply don't trust the Community to not abuse this ability. They (collectively; as one) are too quick to rush to judgment (generally speaking). Given the arbitration committee's willingness to desysop as of late, as Ryan P. points out above, I'm comfortable that any administrators who really should have their rights removed will have them removed. - Rjd0060 (talk) 23:08, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I agree with a lot of what TenOfAllTrades has said. I also take issue with the supporters' proposed stance of "working out the details later". This is certainly a case of where the details matter, and at present, this is only going to lead to more drama. (Note: this doesn't imply that I have a solution, only that I think the proposed idea is worse than doing nothing). -- Bfigura(talk)23:12, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm not trying to say that all supporters were in favor of working out the details later, at least two currently are. I'm merely stating that I disagree with them (not trying to put words in anyone's mouth). -- Bfigura(talk)23:18, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think it should be clear that the details can change, through normal processes of consensus for change. The long build-up to this proposal might give some the idea that it is now "finalized". No policy or process on Wikipedia is ever finalized. Gigs (talk) 01:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I understand. But if we implement a flawed CDA policy (like this one), the flaws won't get fixed until after they've been used to axe an admin or two. I don't see a reason to risk the damage, since I haven't seen any persuasive arguments as to why CDA is needed in the first place. -- Bfigura(talk)04:30, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On thinking about this further, I'd like to make an observation. The procedure for closing this RfC requires that, if (and I said if) the proposal is supported, it must still undergo review by Bureaucrats and Jimbo before any implementation would be possible. I would suggest that revisions to the proposal that acquire consensus during this poll would need to be incorporated at that step. Now, please don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that editors should !vote for anything on faith or that they cannot logically oppose it on this basis. But I am pointing this out for any editors who might be interested, or who may wish to advocate for such changes. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:22, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: I believe the net harm to the encyclopedia will outweigh the benefits of weeding out a few bad apples. ArbCom is sufficient, and I hate to see abuse paralyze the already understaffed and overworked admin corps. bahamut0013wordsdeeds23:15, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I was expecting to support CDA. After reading the comments by TenOfAllTrades above, i think the current proposal is fatally flawed. I do think that a revised proposal, which deals with some or all of his concerns, might be worth enacting, but in light of the recent Craigy144 case, i am not convinced that there is as much urgency about this as IMO there once was. DES(talk)23:16, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I want to be clar, i suport the idea of CDA in principle, i have long though that some sort of community-driven process for removal of admin tools was needed. But I can't support thsi proposal, particularly not on a promise "oh we'll fix the details later". And the problem was worse when the ArbCom would only desysop for the most egriguious misuse of the tools. DES(talk)00:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While the proposal has some subconscious immediate appeal (live by the sword, die by the sword), the fact that no bright line is drawn—nor is there a mechanism proposed for defining one—makes this difficult to support. At a minimum there ought to be a mechanism to attract the attention of a random sampling of impartial editors to review the CDA, and a clear mechanism for them to interact with the agrieved (including none at all) and agree on the true facts of the matter, and how that relates to a de-sysopment verdict. —EncMstr (talk) 23:41, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with many of TenOfAllTrades's points, especially those regarding procedural fairness. I'm also not a big fan of the "requiring 10 people to support before the process actually starts" part. On one hand it helps to prevent frivolous requests, on the other hand, it runs the risk of starting inertia toward support before the process even begins. One of the main reasons that ArbCom elections switched to a secret ballot was so that the early voters wouldn't have the ability to set inertia and have their comments in the prominent position at the top of the section where they might have a disproportionate effect on later voters. This has a similar risk, except it would always force it in one direction. Given that ArbCom seems more willing to deal with cases through motions, I don't think this process is necessary as it may have been a year or so ago. Mr.Z-man23:45, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm very much worried about any proposal which would place administrators at the mercy of any mob that has an agenda to push. I would support a proposal for some sort of streamlined (and more orderly) RfC-like mechanism which makes the community's will known — something which this proposal approaches — but not make it binding without the check and balance of the committee being the final word.
Frankly, the relative inertia of the committee in cases of desysoping is a good thing; and there is nothing that would prevent the committee to simply "rubber stamp" by motion the result of any process that was fairly run and where concerns were properly heard. — Coren(talk)23:51, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I like the general idea of community-driven de-admining, but cannot support this proposal. In particular, I'm sure we would see admins who take action against any large, vocal group facing CDAs, causing a natural reduction in admin boldness. (This is a corollary to TenOfAllTrades's point about procedural fairness.) Designing a robust CDA procedure would be quite difficult and (I suspect) not a productive use of our time. I think Coren's suggestion (immediately above) is a much better option. CWC00:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose- I agree with many of the points put across by TenOfAllTrades. I believe ArbCom is sufficient in dealing with admins who should have their adminship removed. I think the system proposed would be too easy to abuse. OohBunnies!...speak00:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am afraid that this will become Wikipedia's grand theater of High Drama. I am also concerned that editors who have been justifiably sanctioned by administrators, including some who are very frequent guests at AN/I and similar fora, will use this mechanism against good cops. There are plenty of persistent troublemakers with more than the requisite account age and edit count, and well more than 10 of them can be rounded up in short order. I don't want administrators, or other editors for that matter, spending unnecessary time in recall proceedings, when they can better spend that time enforcing Wikipedia's policies and guidelines and improving Wikipedia's articles. The existing mechanisms are sufficient to deal with the very small minority of administrators who abuse their authority or tools.—Finell00:56, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I count two critical flaws. First: the committee is an important check on any movement that seeks the removal of administrator rights, but it is entirely ignored in this proposal as it stands. Second: the proposal holds that 65% in support of a desysopping means that there is a consensus to remove sysop rights. Hardly—anything lower than eighty would be unacceptable.
A community de-sysopping process should exist. And this proposal has clearly had a lot of work put into it. (Those editors who are its proponents have my thanks for their efforts in tackling what has long been an elephant in the room.) But a CDA process must incorporate a requirement to have the advice and consent of the arbitration committee in relation to every desysopping, as otherwise we will suffer quite grievously from the problems that Ryan Postlethwaite and Coren envisage. And we need to set the bar much, much higher, to reduce the incidence of trigger-happy desysoppings. A good start, but adjustments are needed. AGK00:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - This seems less like a reasonable tool for quality control and more a way for people angry at admins to go on the offensive. I see the word "community" in here but I'm not seeing the mechanism that somehow accurately represents the will of something so large. Is there no intermediate step that could be tried first before resorting to this mob magnet? Rob Banzai (talk) 01:00, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I oppose out of one specific concern that I don't feel can be adequately expressed by this or many other CDA proposals. I mean very well for those who deliberated upon the topic and worked and compromised to get this package of a proposal. I hope this process serves as a model for processes in the future. Regardless, my concern is that this role is not only handled by the Arbitration Committee competently, but more fairly than a community de-adminship process could. While arbitration cases by design scrutinize each party as the embattled editors they are, CDA is inherently biased towards the administrator; even if the nominees are scrutinized, it's the administrator whose name gets put on the CDA and its the administrator around whom all discussion is focused. This is especially problematic in cases where a lynchmob goes after an administrator who made a controversial yet appropriate decision. Because of these things, I feel I must oppose for now. harej01:12, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you "mean well for those who deliberated upon the topic", perhaps you can explain why a Wikipedia admin sees fit to place a bogus 'Om box', clearly designed to cast discredit on this RfC, at the top of the page in its opening hours? I'm sure many besides myself will find your answer of interest. There is also a specific section regarding this issue, above. Jusdafax06:19, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - On balance this seems more troubling than helpful and as someone has said, a drama magnet. I am not convinced that there is a sufficient problem requiring this particular solution. I am happy to allow arbcom to handle wayward admins. JodyB talk01:21, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Leave it to arbcom, there is no need for an additional layer of drama. Letting admins run the gauntlets to see if they make it to the other side is not the way to go. -- Kim van der Lindeat venus01:29, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I don't see a need for it and as many have highlighted above, ArbCom can deal with this issue effectively and in a balanced manner. If anything is needed then it would be an extension and formalising of an ArbCom process. → AA(talk) — 01:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Having read other comments and opinions, I want to add that what I think could work is an "admin suspension" policy as a compromise, with ArbCom having the final say on either re-instating or revoking admin rights permanently. Pre-requisites for initiating this action would be clear evidence that admin tools have been abused on a number of occassions and could in fact be a quicker route to "suspending" abusive admins than this proposal suggests but I still oppose this process as it is too easy to be abused by blocs of editors with a grudge and will keep admins away from dealing the controversial subjects. → AA(talk) — 09:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wouldn't it be possible to achieve exactly the same thing by modifying the "appeal" section of this proposal to add an automatic, required, appeal to ArbCom? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:24, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That may be so (or may not be) but what we are discussing is the proposal as presented and as such it does not have this or other sufficient safeguards. If this is to become policy, it needs to be sufficiently workable in the form presented without a need to re-engineer the policy substantially. Having taken another look at it, it strikes me as flawed since nowhere does it provide the criteria upon which the CDA process should be initiated and why ArbCom is not capable of dealing with it. This, I think, is a fundamental requirement that needs to be stated. → AA(talk) — 20:21, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, with reservations. Although the community gives the admin bit, you might assume it should also be able to also take it away. However, in my experience, it does not take much effort for a momentum to develop against an admin who, although generally competent, has made a few bad decisions. ArbCom emergency de-sysopping exists if that gets gross, and Arbcom can apply conditions for re-sysopping. Otherwise, RfC and RfArb exist. I don't think we need further process as an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Rodhullandemu01:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose due to terms of process, though I may support an alternate form of community de-adminship. The currently stated requirement of "most of those above approximately 80% support for removal are passed, while most of those below approximately 65% fail, and the area in between is subject to Bureaucratic discretion" leaves an excessively large amount of discretionary power to 'crats, in my opinion. Policy that spells out the possibility of de-adminship with 65% (or near it) support is ludicrous. If that's the criteria, ArbCom alone is a much better solution than the proposed process. Steven Walling01:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I agree with Tenofalltrades' arguments sufficiently to give me serious misgivings about this proposal. A modified Arbcom process might serve the community better. dramatic (talk) 02:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose No ta, bad idea and open to manipulation and agenda driven desysopping. The Arbs are willing to desysop for cause so what problem are we solving here? SpartazHumbug!02:39, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I could see this being open to some abuse as per Spartaz, plus, the arbitration committee is willing to desysop for cause. Removal for cause by ArbCom makes sure that all other methods were exhausted, and establishes firm grounds for removal. This proposal seems to make the administrator position into political office rather than something closer to civil service. SchuminWeb (Talk) 02:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've been on the fence over this whole issue for a while. Ryan's points above, combined with Tenofalltrade's arguments have convinced me that it is a bad idea. Personally, I think that ArbCom does a perfectly fine job of desysopping admins who have actually done wrong, without getting the ones who just made bad decisions. I fear that if this proposal is enacted, a few admins will get their rights revoked for less than what they get now, which is perfectly fine. This is a well-thought out and well-intended proposal, but I cannot support it. (X! · talk) · @174 · 03:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A bad idea on several counts. Most obviously because it's not as if we have dozens of rogue admins running around damaging wikipedia. Arbcom, and the common sense of admins who resign, seems to do the job fairly well. But, beyond that, we hardly need more processes floating around and politicizing wikipedia. Enough time is already spent on various processes (navel gazing at WT:RFA is the prime example) and we definitely don't need more work for admins responding to questions and defending their actions in a desysop poll of sorts. One must bear in mind that this is a volunteer effort and adding more layers of non-encyclopedic work is hardly the direction we should be moving in. Finally, Wikipedia:Community_de-adminship/FAQ#7._Q:_Is_CDA_is_trying_to_resolve_any_existing_problems.3F is full of wishful thinking. One could argue the opposite on "beneficial" claims made there. Rather than act as a 'beneficial deterrent' it might be a detrimental deterrent with admins unwilling to take tough decisions. It might also be a 'detrimental deterrent' to running for RfA - why bother if ten editors and their socks can put you through the mill all over again. --RegentsPark (talk) 03:11, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose having been on the arbitration committee and in my time (and afterwards) there tried to highlight arbcom's role in reviewing admin tools, I can confidently say it is the least drama-inducing way of reviewing admin tools. The main problem I have noted in the past 12 months or so is a reluctance for the community to request a case of reviewing tools to the arbitration committee, not the committee's reluctance to take them. Another observation made while I was involved was that one of the areas where wikipedia needs admins the most is the trouble-spots, that is, articles and subjects which have been the subject of arbitration cases and are under some form of probation. It is these areas where admins using tools can quickly come under fire from one (or both) 'sides' if they have made actions viewed as unpopular. I fear a bloc of editors, especially eloquent or political ones, could easily take revenge by a path such as this. Hence this proposal could worsen admin shortage in wikipedia's sore spots. Casliber (talk·contribs) 03:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This was never a viable proposal (with this much discussion above, I have nothing to add on the subject of why that is), and it has been frankly disheartening to see editors with good intentions continuing to push refining it when any number of people have pointed out that fine details aren't what dooms such proposals. I hope the editors involved (who have, I repeat, good intentions) will accept at some point that it's time to stop moving on this. My apologies if the previous sounds patronizing; I don't know how else to say it, and it needs to be said. — Gavia immer (talk)03:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To be honest, as someone who's helped develop this proposal on and off, that's not the conclusion I'll be coming to. The response is pretty evenly split, and most of the opposition seems to be based on either (a) the case for why CDA+ArbCom is better than ArbCom on its own hasn't been adequately made and (b) the details are either too sketchy or particular items are objectionable. In my mind that means we need to draft a better proposal and come back again in a few months' time. AndrewRT(Talk) 23:06, 10 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'm against this for the same reason I support Life time appointments for Supreme court. If a single controversial action by an Admin can bring down wrath of a small group of editors, and then have a single beaurocrate make a up/down vote it corrupts the integrity of the adminship. I'm all for oversight but this method would cause admins to play ball to much to accomodate everyone, or worse it would cause them to not take an action strictly to maintain their position rather then because it is the right thing to do. Smitty1337 (talk) 04:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Would open a new arena for massive drama and would politicize adminship to an unacceptable degree. If there were multiple, recent instances in which ArbCom had failed to act when desysopping was clearly appropriate, I'd reconsider. But WP isn't a popularity contest, and this would be simply one more way to distract from building and maintaining the encyclopedia. Rivertorch (talk) 04:48, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This proposal is an invitation to mischeif and creates a disincentive for admins to take necessary actions that are not also popular. There is already sufficient procedure to rein in truly rogue admins. This process will snare some bold admins and turn others into capons. David in DC (talk) 04:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I simply don't see where there are all of these cases where there has been refusal to remove admin privileges when adequate evidence has been provided. We can't risk admins becoming timid when difficult decisions have to be made and we should avoid yet more layers of rules and yet more places for people to argue when they should be writing an encyclopedia. SteveBaker (talk) 05:24, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
User:TenOfAllTrades and User:Matt Lewis echo many of the concerns I have had since this proposal was raised. Speaking as an editor, I feel that the proposal's problems outweigh its benefits, and would still prefer to see a subcommittee of arbcom serving to expedite Admin-abuse issues. Speaking as a bureaucrat, should this pass, I will accept the community's decision and do my best (as always) to implement the community's consensus in any CDA discussions. -- Avi (talk) 05:27, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Per many of the above comments, there are simply too many potentials for abuse in this particular process as set forth now. I have no blanket opposition to such a process, but really: some of the concerns TenOfAllTrades lists above are dead simple--like the right of the admin to respond to the accusations--and the fact that they remain outstanding and unresolved demonstrates that this is not yet ready for adoption. Jclemens (talk) 05:45, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose I think that the concept of community requested de-adminship is valid; however the details of this particular proposal need work. I didn't see anywhere in the proposal where the administrator can defend him/herself. Notanonymous0 (talk) 06:34, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose CDA would be too vulnerable to political games. Further, a pressing need for this policy has not been demonstrated as we already have systems in place to de-admin that can work faster than the proposal. AzureFury (talk | contribs) 06:35, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Spartaz's point about manipulation is well-made. Opening the de-admin process to community vote would expose Wikipedia to a new kind of troll: people who vote in CDA polls to de-admin someone purely for their own amusement and attempts to cause as much havoc with the process as possible. It will be next to impossible to weed out such under-the-radar-flying troublemakers. 3.14 (talk) 06:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About that new kind of troll: Please note that it is actually quite easy to pull up the user-contributions of such a person and see this kind of single-purpose account pattern, and the proposal as written specifically instructs the closing Bureaucrat to discount !votes from such SPAs. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:44, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, when an admin goes off the rails, there are many ways to get them to stop. Blocking or banning come to mind. Community disapprobation is also a powerful tool. Then there is arbcom, which I consider to be functional enough to handle a real problem admin. This proposal will only handle admins who rub people the wrong way but operate within the rules. We need more people like that, not less. Speciate (talk) 06:52, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per what Ryan Postlethwaite, MrZ-man, and others have said. The proposal seems to have too much room in it so that the system can be gamed, more drama can be had (than is necessary), etc. Killiondude (talk) 07:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, this proposal will guarantee that any unpopular but needed tasks will never get done. It also is extremely prone to provide agenda-driven grief and drama to last for at least a couple of buckets of popcorn per week. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff)08:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This is why we have ArbCom. They are there to review the evidence dispasisonately, this process can be abused by grudge-bearers and will deter admins from taking necessary but unpopular actions. There has been no significant delay in ArbCom desysopping abusive admins in recent times. There is merit in suspension of tools during consideration of arbitration cases on abuse of tools, I think that is the only change we actually need here. The complexity of the proposal is an excellent indication that this is an issue fraught with massive difficulties, and in the heat of the moment we, as a community, are spectacularly bad at handling nuanced situations. I commend also Ten of All Trades' exceptionally thorough review, which points out numerous serious and inherent flaws in the proposed process. So, leave it to the arbitrators. Guy (Help!) 09:22, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This just inflates the idea that adminship is a big deal. There need not be a bureaucratic process to remove what should be and always have been janitorial tools. WP:RFA and adminship in general should be reassessed such that the "power" and/or stigma should not be attached to a "Block" button, a "Delete" button, and a "Protect" button. Adminship should be easier to take away and give, like it is on nearly all of the other Wikimedia projects. As it stands, the arbitration committee and processes do a good enough job removing the tools when the community feels it is necessary as I am very well aware.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 09:38, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose the problem with compulsory de-adminship processes is that many administrative actions, even if done perfectly, will make an administrator a lot of enemies. If these enemies decide to use the de-adminship process then the administrator will end up in a long, drawn-out fight to save their neck and with no guarantee that dispassionate members of the community will outnumber those with grudges. We already have people supporting this proposal "because admin X would be a good candidate for it". With ArbCom this problem does not arise, because if the people with grudges can't present solid evidence then the case will be declined quite quickly. The proposed process doesn't offer any way of countering this problem, and the removal percentages have been imported from RfA - which is a different process entirely. Hut 8.510:01, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose — In reading through all of the comments here, I'm reminded of a famous saying: "What is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right". By placing the actions and decisions up to a popular vote through this process, elements of the community can and will seek to substitute its opinion for the judgement of an administrator. The admins were all elected or selected by the community to exercise their individual judgements. Many times a single admin will be called upon to make a single decision. That's why we as a community have them in place. The RfA process is designed to vet them for sound judgement in the first place. Yes, I acknowledge that good people don't accept nominations at RfA, and I acknowledge that the community, in good faith or otherwise, as individuals give the bit to people who turn out to be bad choices. I came here today thinking that I would be supporting the proposal, but I can't in good conscience let factions of aggrieved editors use CDA as a forum to seek retribution and retaliation against administrators that utilize the tools given to them, in good faith, for the benefit of the encyclpedia. Looking to the US Constitution for an example of guidance, members of the federal judiciary "shall hold their Offices during good Behavior" (US Cont. Art. III Sec. 1). This does not make them immune to being removed, rather they must be impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate. The analog on Wikipedia already exists in RfCs referred to the Arbitration Committee. We already have the tools and the people in place to impartially judge administrator action, so this proposal is instruction creep and bureaucracy creep. Returning to the quote I used to open my comments, popular opinion may not provide the right solution in a situation. In all actuality, the right solution will likely ruffle feathers from time to time. Imzadi1979 (talk) 10:16, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This seems to be a solution looking for a problem to solve, and would serve no purpose other than to make it easier for disruptive editors to harass admins. I agree with Hut 8.5's comments above - by the nature of the job us admins upset disruptive editors, some of whom bear grudges (which extend to a genuinely irrational level with surprising frequency), and there's no need to give these editors extra opportunities for disruption when ArbCom and the various appeals processes provide a high level of protection against irresponsible admins. Nick-D (talk) 10:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I appreciate the need for the community to be able to remove admins, but this process still smacks of knee-jerkism for all the work that was put into it. Permitted canvassing makes it to easy to game the process or turn it into a popularity contest (a clever user can coach people on what to say to keep their opinions from being discounted) and shunting the admin's defense to the talk page really is a big deal. Instead of canvassing I'd rather the nominating editor have to gather signatures the same way they do for an RfC, and once certified there should be a site-wide notice about the CDA, just like there was for this RfC. ArbCom has the ability to act swiftly in emergency situations, so we can take the time to work out a process that provides a bit more room for due process than this.--~TPW(trade passing words?) TPW is the editor formerly known as otherlleft 12:48, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I wouldn't be an admin (not that anyone would ask) for all the tea in China. Sometimes the get it wrong. Mostly they get it right. We don't need this. Fmph (talk) 13:11, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per previous comments I've made regarding the development of this proposal (in particular the way less bureaucratic and otherwise more desirable alternatives were sidelined after the first Administrator Recall RFC) and its outcome. Rd232talk13:54, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Just don't like the what the community gives, the community can take away sort of thinking. The community attracted to this sort of procedure have the potential to turn it into a kangaroo court. Admins on the whole do a pretty good job and as volunteers they dont need a vehicle such as CDA being available to editors with axes to grind. The existing procedures (RfC escalating to ArbCom) are by far the best way to deal with admins perceived to be not up to scratch. --Bill Reid | (talk) 14:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There are perfectly good means of desysopping a problematic admin. This proposed process feels too vulnerable and easily abused to be an improvement on the current system. ALInomnom15:18, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Switching to support. I believe all the issues I've had have been fixed, and while I don't like the general idea of desysopping good admins, I figure that's no reason to oppose this policy for serious circumstances. ALInomnom13:32, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I used to support a form of a community de-adminship, but the flaws that Ten of All Trades points out in the current proposal are too serious to ignore. Sandstein 16:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose There is already too much drama in the many venues for Wikipedia processes, and I think this will just add to it, taking resources away from other, needed, areas. I was almost convinced by the 'review' after five CDAs, or one year, but it's the drama leading up to an official CDA that will be so time consuming. And we already have a remedy for this procedure. Sorry supporters, I oppose. DD2K (talk) 16:57, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose — It should be substantially more difficult, and more objective, dispassionate, and neutral, to remove an administrator than it is to create one. By creating an administrator we are, by definition, moving away from the pure-wiki ideal by entrusting them with additional powers to act in those situations where ordinary editors cannot be trusted not to abuse those powers. Administrators — and I am not one — need the freedom to act without fear of having to defend themselves except in those rare instances when they have, in fact, abused their trust. ArbCom works just fine for that. — TRANSPORTERMAN (TALK) 17:04, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - This measure will force admins to either avoid areas involving contentious decisions or spend half their time defending themselves against vengeful editors. Bms4880 (talk) 18:10, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - CDA in theory is a very good idea. This proposal in reality is a half-baked mishmash of poorly thought-out ideas that actually wouldn't achieve its aims in most circumstances, and is extremely prone to abuse. If we really want admins to never make a contentious decision again, this is the way to go. Black Kite18:50, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - I don't see any evidence that the existing channels of RfC, noticeboards, emergency de-admining, and ArbCom are broken or insufficient. Of the very few WP admins I've encountered that I felt were unsuitable for the job, all but one are no longer administrators (and I'm not sure that the one can't be chalked up to a temporary bout of jackassery). Should an admin step out of line there are a dozen more who are available to intervene. I think this proposal addresses a perception rather than an actual problem, namely that admins have unchecked power and potential to abuse. In reality, there are plenty of checks and they are working. In this proposed process, I fear there aren't enough checks to keep it from being hijacked for abuse, as a vehicle to air grievances regarding editing disputes, or as a forum for people who have authority issues and want to use it to take perceived authority figures down a peg just for kicks. I'm sure you could find ten users who don't like any administrator, and if you can't, that just means that the admin is either new or isn't doing his or her job and is dodging potentially controversial problems. Gamaliel (talk) 19:14, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - Agree with most of the opinions in this section, including: CDA being a good idea in theory but in writing a different story. As stated by someone above, the community grants Adminship to individuals and should (again in theory) have the ability to remove said Adminship but I, as well as others it seems feel this particular process of CDA might be too easily abused. These among other issues have forced to oppose. Jeffrey Mall (talk • contribs) - 19:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose lol, I like Recognizance's succinct statement. Unnecessary, will almost certainly lead to abuse. Dougweller (talk) 19:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC) This user voted twice; merging this comment with later, more extensive vote. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:52, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I am not inherently opposed to such a process, just to some of the details of this one. We should not enact a flawed process with the vague promise it will probably get fixed later. I agree that rogue administrators must not be allowed to go around using the tools to further their own interests, or to bully and abuse, but there appear to be other adequate means of stopping such behavior. Some of the provisions are thoughtful, such as requiring 10 editors to initiate the procedure, and requiring a supermajority to desysop, but I have real concerns about the vagueness of the canvassing provision. It would be all about "getting out the vote" and efforts to notify those likely to vote pro or con the de-adminning. It is vague as to how many editors the accusers may contact soliciting signatures, and it is vague as to how many editors the defendant may contact. This is quite unlike the RFA process, where I understood it was improper to contact others to go and participate, or even to place a notice on ones talk page that RFA was underway. Many parts of Wikipedia where editors !vote or where their arguments stack up pro and con are very thinly attended, and mention of a CDA on a project page, in a newsletter sent out to people interested in some particular thing, or even in forums outside Wikipedia could bring in enough votes to oust a good administrator (or contrariwise to keep a bad one). Fix the canvassing provision, and make sure there is an adequate way for the accused to defend himself, before trying again to create such a process. Would each CDA be listed in a box on the side of many commonly looked at pages, such as the "Centralized Discussions" box shown on the AFD log page, or at WP:AN? (Curiously, current RFAs are not listed there). Edison (talk) 19:49, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Excessively bureaucratic and moving WP even further away from the anyone can edit ideal. While does an editor have to have 500 edits to nominate instead of 490? Just more elitism creeping in WP.Gerardw (talk) 19:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - At first I liked the idea, but TenOfAllTrades' arguments regarding potential for compromise, single point of failure, and RfC/Arbcom alternative are very solid. Tryptofish just dismissed the compromise issue as "nonsense" and missed the point entirely about single point of failure (that a beaurocrat may be sure about their decision when they shouldn't be). --Explodicle (T/C) 20:55, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm certainly capable of missing things, but I did attempt to respond specifically and accurately. Some of the criticisms really are nonsense, in that they factually misrepresent what has happened or what the proposal actually says. About having a compromise short of de-sysoping, the proposal allows editors who favor an outcome short of de-sysoping to !vote against the CDA (since they do not support the idea of removing administrative rights), and comment exactly on what they would advocate instead. (In fact, I pushed for adding that to the proposal.) And if a Crat makes a wrong decision (something I honestly find unlikely), it will be very public, much as a badly closed RfA would be, except even more conspicuous. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How do you figure that beaurocratic failure is unlikely? These CDAs are going to be a huge mess of drama (albeit warranted) so it will be much harder to find consensus than with an RfA... and good luck proving them wrong even if it's transparent. Also, !votes aren't a sufficient answer to the problem of polarized-by-design Support and Oppose camps; minority opinions will seldom gain enough consensus for a beaurocratic response. --Explodicle (T/C) 17:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose RfC plus ArbCom, or ArbCom alone in emergencies, are just fine. I am not aware of a single case where this method failed. There is too much politics and drama already; people should focus on article writing rather than playing survivor. Crum375 (talk) 22:09, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To be fair, cases where admisn are generally ulpleasent or bitey to many people, make poor decisiosn with some consistancy, etc, but where no one instance is glaring or way out of line, are not well handled by the current system. DES(talk)00:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, for the same reason why elected judges are a bad idea. This process would force administrators to worry about the political ramifications of their actions, rather than concentrating on being an impartial arbiter of policy. The RfC/Arbcom alternatives are far better practice. –Grondemar22:40, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My reference to "elected judges" wasn't in reference to RfA (which I have no problem with), just this proposal. Like how judges who face reelection sometimes make politically-popular yet legally-questionable rulings, administrators if this system passes will be tempted to avoid making difficult policy calls in order not to make enemies that could bring them before this process. For example, an administrator might be more reluctant to protect a page or make appropriate blocks in the middle of an edit war between two nationalistic factions, fearing that one or both of the factions will drag him into CDA. I don't think that's desirable. –Grondemar05:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your position makes no sense. You're apparently uncomfortable with judges being elected, but completely oblivious to the fact that administrators are also elected. Live in your own world, I prefer mine. --MalleusFatuorum05:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is a difference between judges elected once, but never needing to face re-election, and those who are subject to periodic re-election and/or popular recall. The latter might well temper justice with political calculation more than the former. That is, i think, Grondemar's point. DES(talk)00:32, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Ryan Postlethwaite, Christopher Parham, Crum375, Grondemar, et al.. While I like the idea, it's not needed and could be dangerously abused. The new ArbCom system needs to be tried first. RfC is also there. I don't want to have both eyes on a recall, but I'm open to the idea of recall. I make a lot of controversial blocks and deletions, and do not want that held against me. Bearian (talk) 22:52, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose In principal I would support a CDA proposal provided it was fair and I thought it might work as well as Arbcom, which for all its flaws is not known for reluctance to desysop admins. This proposal has some positive features, it has moved partway in the direction of giving crats greater discretion over remedies, but this needs more fleshing out and doesn't fit well with the current structure which is overly focussed on one remedy - desysopping. Now it's a racing certainty that those who file a CDA will do so because they consider that a desysopping is appropriate, but views in the community are liable to vary from filing a sockpuppetry case against the ten filers to community ban for the admin - with every conceivable shade of grey in between. I'm not convinced that the response to that should be to widen crat discretion, rather it should be to spell out that participants are being asked two very different questions. Is this admin at fault? and What should be done about it? Then let the crats work out the consensus. That could be as simple as only 55% consider that user:example merits a desysop, but a further 20% support admonition and a topic ban from Diesel trains, and 92% support a topic ban on the ten nominees from all steam train articles. But this proposal fails on several counts: Ten people are allowed to canvass on one side but only one on the other? The defendant and anyone choosing to defend them can't do so on the page but only on the talkpage? However those flaws could be easily remedied, rather more serious is the issue of gaming. Wikipedia Review already has way more influence on this site than I think is healthy, and they aren't the worst out there. I know this may sound paranoid, but we do need to be aware that there are sites out there that want to take us down, whether for the lulz or because our neutrality offends their world view; This proposal simply makes us and especially any admin willing to use the tools in contentious areas, way too vulnerable. I think this scheme could be less gameable if we required nominators to verify their identities with the office, but once we get to that stage, we seriously have to ask what is so wrong with Arbcom? ϢereSpielChequers23:26, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If user:example dares to edit another article about either diesel OR steam trains, outright banning from the 'pedia would be appropriate, and assassination would not be beyond consideration! Edison (talk) 04:14, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Given my own recent experiences, I totally hear you about those lulz, but I'd like to clarify a few of the other things you said. The proposal does allow users who oppose de-sysoping to comment that they prefer, instead, an admonition or topic ban, etc., but I think it would put a difficult and unanticipated task before the Bureaucrats, if they have to decide amongst various possible resolutions (and who carries it out, if they don't?). About the canvassing points you raise, the ten people are only permitted to canvass enough to amass that first ten, whereas the administrator is essentially unlimited. And, although discussion here suggests that a section ought to be created on the CDA poll page for the administrator's defense, there is already an "oppose" section where extended comments are encouraged, and so it is untrue that the defense gets sent off to the talk page. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:41, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I hadn't spotted the bit about only permitted to canvass until they achieve the first ten, and agree that sounds a little more balanced than I thought. However it leaves us with a proposal that I consider nigh on unworkable. Stopping a canvas operation at a set point is a recipe for Dwamah and disputes as to whether it was done to excess, and allowing the admin whose judgement is in question to break the normal rules of canvassing is bound to end in tears. I appreciate that the admin can respond in the oppose section, but still think they need their own response section. As for the difficulty of achieving alternative resolutions in CDA, remember Arbcom already can do this - and what would be the point of this system if it didn't aspire to be as good as the current system? ϢereSpielChequers18:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Proposal places all administrators at risk as conflict is inherent in administrative actions. I would, however, support a "term limit" proposal for all administrators, perhaps two to three years. The former administrator would then have the option of returning to an active editor's status or opening a new RFA to provide the community an opportunity to evaluate the Administrator's accomplishments and limitations. WBardwin (talk) 00:53, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The current system where the Arbcom can desysop is working fine. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. RFC/U and AN/I already provide opportunities for comment on questionable administrator actions. Ngchen (talk) 01:50, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. While I support the concept in a general sense, I feel that this proposal is not the way to go about it for the reasons others have raised. Probably a better idea would be to have each admin have their status re-confirmed (or taken away) by a regularly-scheduled community process every few years. (Give an admin an an initial renewable term of 2 years, for instance.) Good Ol’factory(talk)07:20, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that some system of de-adminship would be good, but this is not it. There are flaws in this proposal, something which even the supporters accept. We can talk about formal reviews, "developing as we go" and easily making changes, but how much time and how many RFC's would be required to actually make a decision? Something of such importance and significance should be better developed before we adopt it, or we'll have lost a number of good admins while we are still perfecting the proposal. Most admins (including myself) stick to relatively uncontroversial areas, and we have very few who are willing to make contentious decisions. I don't think we need to discourage them by hanging this over their heads. Also, some of the support !votes seem to be based on a lack of trust in ArbCom, without even considering the actual proposal. A large part of the community are not exactly fans of ArbCom, but I don't really see why we can't trust them with de-sysoping somebody when required. The general argument seems to be that ArbCom will deal only with issues where the admin has violated policy, but not where he has lost the community's trust. Why would somebody lose the trust of the community unless what he's doing is wrong? I can't think of a situation where it would be appropriate to bring something to CDA when it would be rejected by ArbCom, and not even a hypothetical situation has been presented by the proponents as far as I know. ≈ Chamaltalk¤12:57, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose reluctantly. We do need an easier de-adminning process than we have at present, but one that largely relies on polling is not desirable since I'm afraid that that will end up promoting greater cliquishness, strategic and defensive administering, politicking, drama, further dearth of admins in POV and sock-infested areas, and leave bad-blood in its wake irrespective of whether an admin loses her bit or not. Any de-admining process needs to rely on rational discussion, and assessment of strength of evidence and arguments rather than raw numbers (compare from, FA promotion process, and Arbcom setup). Abecedare (talk) 13:27, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose As unfashionable as it may sound, I believe that any CDA proposal needs to offer a modicum of protection for admins from spurious claims. These processes are always going to be painful for the candidate - just as RfA is - and we need to ensure that there is a legitimate grievance or misuse of their position before the voting! kicks in and that the votes! are made on such a basis. This proposal overly favours the nominator and, as far as I can see, does little to offer a platform for the admin even to defend themselves. My other concern is, just as RfA attracts its crowd, a regular core of voters would emerge with their own standards and POVs - there would be precious little "community" about it. CDA would need to be primarily discursive in order to be effective at weeding out the bad admins. A straight up or down vote is wholly unacceptable, we need to know why people are voting the way they are - just as we do at RfA. Especially with CDA, there are going to be people upset by legitimate admin actions and admins need to be protected from that; people could oppose if an admin took the other side in a discussion and we would be none the wiser. As it stands, this proposal could enforce an unbalanced pseudo-RFA on any admin at any time on the whim of a core of agitators - I am not suggesting all claims would be such, but you could find 10 people to back any POV, especially in contentious areas. In order for it to work, CDA would need to offer a fair and level playing field, I do not think that this is it. Rje (talk) 14:40, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Wiki.en has already an efficient and functional ArbCom which hadles these issues. A CDA could become a powerful weapon in the hands of trolls and their supporters. We don't need and we don't want ours administrators to be afraid of these people. I think that the seting up a process like that will certainly shy sysops away from dealing with sensitive problems. I agree with Rje and others who say CDA will always be harmful for the candidate even when the request is ill-formulated. Adminship is not only about popularity. Lechatjaune (talk) 16:10, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I admire that the community has worked hard to come up with this. However, it's an unnecessary increase in bureaucracy. We already have processes in place that can achieve the same end: Arbcom and RfC, per TenOfAllTrades.
I also worry about attempts to game CDA. -- Flyguy649talk
Oppose I don't feel the assumed problem is a huge deal, although I acknowledge that it is there, but also that ArbCom has been dealing with it rather well. Regardless, I came here to support this, as a less-than-perfect alternative but an alternative nonetheless. Sometimes the bureaucracy of options is a good thing. However, less-than-perfect is not always a net positive, and TenOfAllTrades has utterly convinced me that this is the case here. I think that analysis could set a good framework for how an eventual process might look, but after reading all the above comments I must admit to now being more partial to the RfC->ArbCom route than I was previously. I'll also add that I don't think CDA would be prohibitive toward administrative actions. ~ Amory(u • t • c)21:08, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This proposal is a problem masquerading as a solution. The number of recall attempts on administrators open to recall has been very limited. The number of those that got little to no support has been quite high - indicating a significant proportion of attempts here would be wasteful. Assuming for the case of argument that this would open up the process to a total of 4 times as many admins as have been open for recall, it would likely result in only a couple admins deadminned a year. The Arbcomm is already doing that.... This process would deter administrators from working in troubled areas with longstanding disputes (nationalist, political, fringe science), many of which have editorial cabals. Only some of those cabals come to light, often years after the cabals behavior violates guidelines (for example see the history of disputes over Eastern Europe). I thus conclude that this process will make the Wikipedia editing environment worse. GRBerry21:21, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I need to point out a flaw in the first part of your analysis. Open to recall is a voluntary system for administrators to join. By and large, those who do elect to join are excellent administrators, whereas problem administrators essentially never join. How many administrators de-sysoped by ArbCom were members of open to recall? The extrapolation is not valid. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:33, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Too much potential for abuse, for being used as a vendetta or another forum to shop. I don't see strong evidence that existing means for desysopping are insufficient, so this seems to be a solution without a problem to solve. rʨanaɢtalk/contribs22:30, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - good on paper until you realise Wikipedia is edited by humans. You can easily get enough users to certify, then possibly even to desysop. Sceptre(talk)00:53, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose If it ain't broke, don't fix it. We have a perfectly good system for desysop, no need to create a new one, which as stated above, could possibly be abused. Ronhjones (Talk)01:21, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. On the fence to begin with, but skimming through the "supports" (a good example being #37) solidifies my gut feeling that this would be used by the willfully ignorant and superstitious as a bludgeon against any admin who dares defy their various pet whitewashing attempts. These various fringe groups have a demonstrated record of intense tenacity (for evidence, take a cursory look at WP:RFARB, where fringe-warring is at the root of two of the three currently open cases, and one of the three recently closed cases), a level of tenacity which I wager far outpaces that of clueful members of the community. Hence, any proposal which boils down to "!votes" will have an automatic oppose from me for this reason (and, yes, I do recognize the slight grain of irony in that statement :-) ). Net time sink with no real point, ArbCom can handle (and has handled) the admins who are an actual drain on the project (rather than a drain on the energies / ego / self-love of fringe pushers). Badger Drink (talk) 01:31, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per various reasons above. I trust the Arbitration Committee on removing admins, and I think that this proposition is a dangerous turn from discussion and debate to a majority-rules atmosphere. I think the only way I would support this would be to see convincing examples where ARBCOM members have failed to handle an admin situation properly. Sorafune+101:58, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per harej. This is way to one-way centered, and puts the microscope from the community on the administrator without necessarily looking at the causes. In my opinion, the Arbitration Committee can handle this just fine as of now, and has in the past. Forums like this, are also a very easy way to instigate forum shopping, and vendetta searching, and this very proposal could easily be gamed for those very two purposes. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." — Coffee // have a cup // ark // 04:49, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - there will only a consensus to remove an admin when it is so blindingly obvious that arbcom would do it anyway. This will cause drama and make no difference to the ease of removing under-performing admins.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Scott MacDonald (talk • contribs) 09:51, 25 February 2010
Oppose This moves us away from the examination of evidence as it is related to policy and community expectations and turns it into what will surely be a huge dramafest where the most vocal group wins. I have not yet seen any examples of what this new and extensive process with solve that our existing process does not. Chillum(Need help? Ask me)14:57, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Per TenOfAllTrades, and the many that can be summarised by "if it ain't broke". (At the same time, I am very close to !voting Neutral.) What I think lets this proposal down the most is that it is over-boiled, and as a result would be self-defeating. Rather than arriving out of current practice, it is a whole package presented as-is. The numbers (65%/80%) are arbitrary and the process was conceived in isolation. Before we introduce something like CDA, I would prefer that it was (a) seen to be necessary in practice and (b) based on what is known to work in practice. I'm unconvinced of both but I will focus my comments here solely on (b). We have ArbCom, we have RFC/U - we even have ANI. Under the CDA proposal, it would take a minimum of 33 or of 50 !voting editors to de-sysop an editor. I am unconvinced that so many editors would participate in a discussion at any of those venues except in the most exceptional of circumstances (in which case, I think the editor in question would be de-sysop'ed anyway). As such, I think that CDA would introduce a process that would be incapable of doing what it would be supposed to do. Let's start off working with the current processes - What are the problems with them? How can they be built upon? Foremost, I think there needs to a be an improvement in culture towards aminship - including among (some) editors with admin privileges. It is really is no big deal. -- RA (talk) 22:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About some of things you said about the process leading to this proposal, please read the FAQ linked to at the top of this page, which briefly recounts, and links to, what was actually a very extensive and open process leading to this proposal. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:11, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My experience with that very extensive and "open" process was being told that this page is for developing the proposal and that my opposition to the idea was not welcome, and that there would be time for that at the RFC. Not exactly a consensus driven proposal, more like something developed off to the side without regard to criticism now presented as a finished work for the community to examine. Chillum(Need help? Ask me)00:10, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Chillum, at this point I can no longer remember the specific exchange to which you refer, nor can I do anything about what any other editor might have said to you. But I can say that quite a few of the users who oppose here came to that discussion and said things to the effect of this proposal is never going to be any good, so shut down any work on it now, and were told that they would be welcome to make constructive criticisms on how to improve it, but that it would be unhelpful simply to say that it was bad without suggesting improvements. Now, that said, I can see as this RfC goes along that there were probably cases, for example where it may have been pointed out that there should be a dedicated place on the "example" page for the administrator's response, where suggestions were made in passing during confrontational negative comments, and may have been quite literally overlooked in the heat of the discussion. I, for one, am still receptive to such suggestions now. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:20, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To all who worked on bringing Community De-Adminship to RFC, for your effort, good will, determination and teamwork, I award to you (all!) these barnstars. -- RA (talk) 00:35, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply] (edit conflict) I appreciate that. I followed the discussion (at a distance) since the start of December and participated once or twice. I would like to clarify that I think that a great deal of work has been put into the proposal by those involved and that I appreciate their efforts, good will, intelligence and determination. Whatever my opinion about the final proposal, I think all of those involved in crafting the proposal and bringing it to the community deserve a very hearty round of applause and so I would like to offer to you all this barnstar. -- RA (talk) 00:35, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You excel yourself Ranpahiati. Teamwork! It was 80-90% bickering over proposal pushing v consensus building, as you couldn't fail to notice. This RfC eventually happened suddenly, partly because of the threat of a 'counter RfC' from one single editor. There was a number of outstanding concerns, and with only a small consensus on the chosen content between a couple of editors left in the room. As someone who is highly suspicious of barnstars at the best of times, is there a way of rufusing this one? Matt Lewis (talk) 11:25, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Initially I was prepared to support, weakly. But the flaws noted by TenOfAllTrades are too worrying, and the replies to those concerns were not comforting. The protection offered by the process for muck-splattered Admins in the more unpleasant areas of Wikipedia are minimal. Sabine's Sunbirdtalk02:57, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Additional thought - my concern with this proposal is not so much that a decent admin will get de-syoped. This seems unlikely. It is that it will provide another tool to harass a good admin by POV pushers and other assorted troublemakers. Even if the admin survives, it will be a stressful and unpleasant experience (like RFA), and it will consume time that could be used for something more constructive, like, I don't know, building an encyclopaedia. The barriers for entry are quite low in this process. The process suggested needs serious tweaking to improve protection for good faith admins from the wiki equivalent of frivolous lawsuits. Making barriers to entry harder for well known trouble makers (EDIT, actually re-reading proposal suggests that obvious trouble makers will be barred. I still worry that unobvious ones won't) and some kind of double jeopardy to prevent repeated harassment might be a start. Sabine's Sunbirdtalk01:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please see Wikipedia:Guide to Community de-adminship#Before nomination, the last paragraph, with respect to double jeopardy. You and I are discussing this at greater length at my user talk, but I'll point out that other editors have said here, correctly, that administrators get harassed like that every day anyway, but CDA can bring that sort of thing to a place where there is a procedure to deal with it, releasing the steam built up from valid complaints, and putting to rest the complaints that are not valid. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: Not only no, but Hell No. We've already seen that the community can't be trusted when it comes to choosing admins - a straight vote overwhelmingly dominated by bullet voting, "optional" questions that are nothing but, ambushes and hazing. In my observation, many of the most vocal advocates of community de-admining fancy that an admin's stepped on their toes at one point or another. If people feel that there isn't enough desysopping going on, work to strengthen/broaden the existing means; we don't need red meat thrown in the water. Wikipedia isn't supposed to be about voting. Why is RfA, and this proposal, curiously exempt from that ideal? RGTraynor 06:59, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I would support a community-based deadminning system, but this is not such a system. This is a community-based drive-by shooting system, and is especially unfair to arbitration-enforcers and admins working in ethno- or sci-political areas (which normally have a "Me-versus-them" style to begin with). One of the things that needs to happen to fix it is that the admin needs to be able to respond to accusations right on the page, where it'll be most visible to onlookers who'd otherwise have only one side of the debate and decide based upon that. —Jeremy(v^_^vBoribori!)10:36, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose basically per TenOfAllTrades's analysis. To go a little further: this method remains too open to gaming by POV-pushers. There are many areas of the 'Kipedia in which there are gangs of POV-pushers who'll try to take down any admin who stands in their way, and yes, some of these gangs are large enough that even if some members end up disqualified from certifying one of these recall efforts, enough will remain. The mere fact that the vast majority of cries of admin abuse on ANI are frivolous complaints from those who just didn't get their way leaves me hesitant about any form of community-based recall, and this one does nothing to alleviate my concerns. No, I'm afraid I cannot support. Heimstern Läufer(talk)13:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Shifting the power from impartial arbiters towards those who are more likely to be prone to bring personal vendettas with a lynch-mob mentality is a recipe for unnecessary drama. Spellcast (talk) 20:48, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why do you assume they won't be impartial just becase they have the same slightly expanded set of tools? Admins aren't the Borg, acting as one like a horde of army ants. Sabine's Sunbirdtalk01:21, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am assuming nothing, simply pointing out the obvious fact that adminstrators judging the behaviour of other administrators is not exactly a model designed to win friends and influence people. --MalleusFatuorum02:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
By arbiters, I mean ArbCom. They're the most trustworthy group here to evaluate evidence in making a decision to deysop, unlike the general community, where users are more prone to demand deysops based on personal conflicts. Spellcast (talk) 02:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Not because I think Arbcom is doing a fine job dealing with admins (much the opposite), rather because this version offers no meaningful protection for admins beset with vendettas. We often bemoan the shortage of admins willing to work in controversial areas. At the same time we propose to make it easier for those with a grudge to tie up admins with frivolous process. Cognitive dissonance, anyone? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 00:53, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's clear that you don't understand the meaning of the term "cognitive dissonance", but you have reminded me of an article I've been meaning to invest some time in, so thanks for that. --MalleusFatuorum01:07, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose- I'm not against the idea in principle, but the process suggested does seem to be somewhat biased against the admin. In particular, a clearer way for the accused to rebut evidence is, in my view, needed. I'm afraid they need to go away and think about this a bit more before I can Support it. Anaxial (talk) 07:45, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The problem that this proposal is intended to counter is much less than it was a few years ago. The proposal would encourage the gathering of mobs and I find the cure to be worse than the disease. Sam Blacketer (talk) 14:57, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strong oppose I do not feel it is appropriate for the non-administrator community to have the power to desysop administrators. It is better the way it is currently, with Jimmy Wales and the ArbCom being responsible for de-sysoping abusive administrators. Immunize (talk) 16:10, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I cannot see how this proposal has gotten to a vote with all the controversy surrounding it. The current system may not be the best, but if we are replacing it with something that is even more debated, it is just asking for more trouble. --Willy No1lakersfan (Talk - Contribs) 16:30, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose While I feel that there should be a mechanism for the community to revoke admin rights, and that this should not ultimately be in in the hands of arbcom, the current proposal is clearly bad. Any mechanism that proposes a vote immidiately after an on wiki conflict should not be implemented. Polls should be a mechanism to start a process, not a mechanism to reach a result. Taemyr (talk) 19:05, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your larger point, but I want to correct what you said about "immediately after an on wiki conflict". The proposal as written would not allow a successful CDA immediately after a conflict between users and an administrator. There must have been evidence of going through the prior steps of dispute resolution, or the attempted nomination cannot be certified. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:15, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I mean immidiately after in the sense that the process will be based on a specific insidence and will be driven by parties who are partisans. That there is a slight delay since the witch hunters will need to go trough the motions to show that they have tried dispute resolution helps, but does not eliminate the underlying problem. Taemyr (talk) 00:41, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - having ArbCom de-sysop abusive administrators works well enough. Unfortunately, I can only see such a process encouraging more conflict among editors. Arbitrarily0(talk)19:44, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - the proposal is instinctively appealing as others have commented upon (if community can offer up, via RfA, people it wishes to trust with the mop, then likewise should be able to seek the return of the mop to the cupboard). However the process is flawed for the bias that a single large group of editors involved in a single topic can mount a larger challenge to an Admin who strays into their field of action (consider an admin protecting or acting on a topic about Israel objected by pro-Israel editors, or the equivalent for Palestinian / Macedonia / abortion / alternative-medicine topics). Conversely, an Admin making repeated mischief across several small scale disputes will fail to antagonise enough (10) editors for them to be allowed to nominate a CDA case. We have mechanisms in place for dispute resolution of AN/I for single admin action review: other Admins can reject a cohort of editors aggrieved by the Admin's action in their territory, or agree with them and seek to reverse an admin decision... and of course blocked users can request Template:Unblock by other admins. If we believe that most Admins are good, and as an overall group an asset to the project, then AN/I seems in cases of minor slipups a reasonable means to undo mistakes. But for more serious issues the community has very careful elections for ArbCom whom we hold up to make judgements and take action on our behalf when an issue is brought before them (we are all familiar with past actions being taken over misuse of admin tools in content disputes and admins being defrocked). The mechanism of this proposal also seems inflexible (if only for single purpose to vote on whether to de-admin, then issues of policy interpretation discussion, of the Admin's approach to explain & educate on policy and warn erring-editors, of their impartial consideration etc will not be included) - and RfC seems a well tested and familiar mechanism to explore and discuss wider views. Clearly in a RfC about administrator's tool-use, widening to discussing content issues would seem off-topic and unhelpful – perhaps some rephrasing at the description of WP:RfC might strengthen the weakness some obviously feel with that avenue ? As others mention above, the ArbCom is able to look at issues (rather than just vote numbers who all respond "per...") raised in large scale disputes and able to take evidence in private (check-user, etc). Does anyone know where a RfC concluded a strong consensus for de-admin, that ArbCom did not at least accept for consideration? and if the answer to that is yes, then what are we saying: "we don't trust the ArbCom", or we routinely want to be able to bring forth some wikilawyering group-impeachment against the ArbCom itself? This (CDA) is a flawed solution for a problem that already has one (RfC and then ArbCom). David RubenTalk00:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
David, I'd like to correct one thing you said about inflexibility. The proposal as written actually does provide for outcomes short of de-sysoping. Users who favor milder sanctions can !vote against the CDA (which is logical if they oppose full de-sysoping), and comment on what they would like to see happen instead. If that ends up being the consensus, then the CDA will have provided a clear rationale for pursuing that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:20, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I can see that a lot of hard work has gone into this proposal, and I do not question the good faith of the many editors who have devised it. However, there is no way that any process such as this can avoid becoming a tool capable of being abused by lynch-mobs, and even if those lynch-mobs are unsuccessful the possibility will have a chilling effect on admins willing to venture into zones of conflict. I agree with the oppose by Ryan Postlethwaite at the top of this section, and particularly his point that we already have a way of removing admins: RfC, then ArbCom. It's slow, but it has been used successfully against admins who have gone rouge. This proposal will cause more problems than it solves, and while arbcom is not perfect, it does ensure some separation of powers. --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 00:54, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Simple: an RFC is how the community makes a preliminary assesses whether there is a case to be heard, and if the community thinks that there is, then the evidence in the case is brought to a separate small group for a decision. This is what happens with courts: anyone can bring a case, but judges make the decision .. except that these judges are elected. Arbitrators do not have to be admins, and some have not been; however the community repeatedly elects admins to arbcom. If you think that this is A Bad Thing™, then blame the community for repeatedly doing this Bad Thing™ ... but that rather undermines empower-the-community-because-arbcom-is-too-pro-admin argument, doesn't it? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 03:00, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What I find so strange about that line of argument is that administrators only choose to trust this mythical "community" when it suits them, i.e., at RfA. After that it's who gives a monkeys about what the proles think, they can't be trusted. --MalleusFatuorum03:05, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're still missing something. If (as you claim) admins get elected and then go power-mad, why do members of this same wicked grab-the-mop-then-machine-gun-the-crowd cabal keep on getting elected to arbcom by this downtrodden community? --BrownHairedGirl(talk) • (contribs) 03:49, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a specious reasoning at best, and sophistry at worst. Of course our most trusted group(arbcom) is going to be selected out of the larger group of trusted people(admins). If someone does not have enough community trust to be an admin they will not get into arbcom, this is just basic logic. What exactly does your point intend to prove? Chillum(Need help? Ask me)21:28, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I fall at the first hurdle, which is your assertion that administrators are "the largest group of trusted people". I wouldn't trust many of them even if I actually knew who they were and could see their hands at all times. If you, for instance, believe that you're one of wikipedia's "most trusted", then I would invite you to test your thesis by standing at RfA once again. --MalleusFatuorum21:48, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The process could be easily abused, and I echo what BrownHairedGirl noted so well above. Furthermore, I find that ArbCom works well enough in emergency situations and I do not see the need for a more complicated process. Malinaccier (talk)02:17, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I completely agree with BrownHairedGirl and TenOfAllTrades. The current system works fine for Admins that have gone crazy. But there are so many problems with CDA. Two of them are 1) the process goes straight into voting without any examination of evidence, 2) it can easily be abused be people ganging up on certain admins. Of course there are many other reason too. I strongly oppose. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Cityscape4 (talk • contribs) 06:04, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose this proposal. The idea of community control of adminship is attractively symmetric (thought the community doesn't select admins as things stand, so there's a logical problem with that impulse), and might even be reasonable. This proposal doesn't implement any such thing. First, it's a poll, explicitly so, and WP policy should not be made this way. Certainly not policy this important. There is no clear procedure nor standard for taking action even so, were it to pass by general acclaim, something which obviously will not be happening. Active admins doing good work are necessarily going to piss folks off. Some of them reasonable, some not so much. The proposed arrangement lends itself to misuse by the not so much crowd, of whom WP has at least its share. Active admins do thankless work for the benefit of the community and should not be set up for knee-capping by those annoyed enough to do some retaliatory drive-by shooting. Admins who have really gone off the rails may indeed need a snubber, but this proposal is not a reasonable candidate. Arbcom difficulties notwithstanding. Resort to "higher authority", even if not specifically authorized (eg, 'crats or stewards or even Jimbo), would seem to be a more sensible approach, however wanting from some idealistic perspective. ww (talk) 07:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Strongly Oppose. I wouldn't want the nominated user to have a list of people to target in response to a desysoping, especially since it would make a person more angry than losing an RFA. To prevent that, the system must be designed so that the reasons are provided anonymously, unlike our normal methods of consensus building. --Sbluen (talk) 11:40, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You bring up an interesting scenario. In fact, I would argue that having the nominations in public, rather than anonymously, actually provides a safeguard against bad nominations. A lot of the criticisms of this proposal have not really come to terms with this fact, making it sound like it would be too easy for ten malicious users to gang up on an administrator. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, but I don't think anyone should face losing their admin bit based on accusations and not be able to face the accuser. The idea of adding anonymity to the mix just turns an angry mob into an angry mob wearing hoods. Chillum(Need help? Ask me)21:33, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose current proposal. I do think some important points are raised by this, and I generally think there should probabbly be something more than what we have now, but I don't think the current wording is the right thing for Wikipedia. • It's got the feel of a vote trying very hard to call itself not-a-vote. If voting is okay (and I think sometimes it is (although this may not be one of those times)), then we should call it a vote. If voting is not okay, this proposal should be rejected as currently worded. • It's also a bit too bureaucratic for my tastes. • I suspect something more along the lines of a third-party-nominated Wikipedia:Administrator review would be more approrpriate for the consensus process that embodies the wiki way. • I do think the people who have worked on this are to be commended. I really think they were working in good-faith and trying to come up with a solution they saw as right; it just isn't the right thing for Wikipedia. —DragonHawk (talk|hist) 01:59, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
See the "Intentions" section above. The person who posted this RfC feels we shouldn't be discounting people's opinions here based on edit count. Or, do you want to have suffrage requirements for this vote? If so, what would you have those be? --Hammersoft (talk) 16:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Would you not agree that this is an unlikely venue for an editor with only 11 edits, and that (s)he seems strangely familiar with the work of ArbCom? Has QuattroBajeena voted before under a different username? --MalleusFatuorum16:24, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, I ask again; where would you like to draw the line in the sand? What suffrage requirements would you like to impose on this vote? There are currently 23 voters in the vote who failed to have one or both of 500 edits or 90 days of service at time of voting. Is that the line in the sand you'd like to draw? By the way, this particular editor's 12 edits is not the lowest edit count of people who have voted here. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:27, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You seem determined to miss the point. I have made no comment about suffrage and have no opinion on a minumum number of edits. I am simply suspicious of a new editor who displays such a deep understanding of the workings of Arbcom and such a strong opinion on this proposal after only 11 edits and a few days of editing. You may be more trusting than I am, of course. --MalleusFatuorum16:46, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You see determined to insult me. How pleasant. How about I say you seem determined to fail to understand the question I am asking? You are apparently saying this editor should probably be ignored in their vote, but can't decide what the criteria should be for ignoring any other votes. Or, do you want to just ignore this vote and not worry about 4 other editors with less than 100 edits, or the 22 others that fail the suffrage requirements for nominating a CDA? --Hammersoft (talk) 17:18, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am astonished at your accusation that I have insulted you, when you have quite clearly mounted your hobby horse and are riding away into the distance on it. I have already told you that I have no opinion on the suffrage issue, and it is only you that has the bee in their bonnet about ignoring votes; I have said no such thing. If you choose to reply again, please have the kindness to respond to what I actually said, not what you think I've said. To state it bluntly, I am suspicious that user QuattroBajeena is not what he or she appears to be, and may be a sock of someone who has already voted. I couldn't care less about the other 22 you allude to, and nor do I have any suffrage requirement, as you persistently and mistakenly keep trying to claim that I do. Argue about suffrage with someone who actually has a view on it, not with me who couldn't care less. --MalleusFatuorum17:43, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You had me up until comments about me riding a hobby horse, and I stopped there. If you can't understand the basic concepts of WP:NPA, we have nothing further to discuss. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:07, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The outcome of this RFC is hardly going to turn on a single possible sock vote (which was clearly Malleus' concern). How did this turn into a bad-tempered discussion about suffrage? In any case, whether someone has enough info for an WP:SPI or not, this discussion would be better left here. Rd232talk18:57, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Noting that I respect those who worked on this and would have supported something like this 2 years ago but we now have a competent ArbCom and I think the concerns noted on this RfC outweigh the need for this process. Vyvyan Basterd (talk) 18:47, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. Someone, I forget who, made a good point. The project is screwed without admins willing to make decisions most people won't like, and it's easy to worry that a community process could be used to settle grudges. Şłџğģő03:17, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This seems like a way to upset the balance by introducing more Wikipolitics and to punish administrators for doing their job, which is sometimes unpopular. The current oversight system is adequate. RJCTalkContribs03:54, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with TenOfAllTrades that we would do better to use the already-existing, simpler, and less bureaucratic means of revoking the admin bit from problem sysops based on a consensus reached by the community. Namely, the five-step process of: (1) engaging with the sysop; (2) inviting a new perspective from one or a few neutral, uninvolved editors; (3) initiating a discussion at an appropriate community noticeboard (such as the Administrators' noticeboard or AN/I); (4) initiating a user request for comment for broader community input, if necessary; and (5) filing a request with ArbCom to review the discussions and implement the community consensus via a motion. The Guide to CDA indicates already that a CDA request should be preceded by discussion with the sysop (#1), efforts at appropriate dispute resolution (#2, #3, and/or #4), and "substantial community discussion at a suitable venue" (#3 and/or #4). Could CDA be useful? Yes. Could CDA be abused? Yes. Is it worthwhile to establish an additional process, with its accompanying bureaucracy and problems (see 'Flaws in this process noted by TenOfAllTrades'), merely to bypass ArbCom? No, in my opinion. Despite my opposition to this proposal, I want to commend those who worked to develop it; the process was imperfect (as most are), but it was characterized over its course by commitment in good-faith to accuracy and transparency. -- Black Falcon(talk)06:24, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: A lot of the support for this proposal seems to be moral/ideological - "The community makes Admins, so the community should be able to break them". But with the limited resources we have available, I'm much more interested in practicality, and I am unconvinced that there is any practical need for this. In the time I've been following RfA discussions there has been an awful lot of "there's something wrong" hot air, but very little in the way of practical suggestions, so on those grounds I do commend the authors of this proposal for actually trying to do something. However, I just see it as addressing a problem that doesn't really exist, while the major problem is the shortage of admins. The suggestion that CDA will allow editors to be more bold in their RfA !votes is interesting, and it might well have that effect, but I think with the threat of a CDA nomination continuously over their heads, it is likely to make admins themselves less bold and less likely to deal with contentious issues, and will lead to fewer admin candidates in the first place. I just don't see Wikipedia being plagued by rogue admins, and I remain unconvinced that the current admin recall process is broken - the consensus/ArbCom process seems fine to me, and I've seen it work quite satisfactorily. -- Boing!said Zebedee08:13, 2 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose as a solution looking for a problem. ArbCom has shown itself to be fully capable of desysopping users whom it sees as unfit to hold the tools, and this will ultimately divert more editors from editing into dramafests and will dissuade administrators from taking unpopular but correct decisions while discharging their duties. Stifle (talk) 10:44, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per the reasoning given by TenOfAllTrades. I would be more inclined to support if there was a way to combat the potential lynchmob mentality - perhaps we could say that if you support the CDA, and the community disagrees, then you get a 1 year block from editing on Wikipedia? At least that way, if you put an admin up for potential de-sysop, you are taking a risk if it goes wrong! Only kidding - but it seems to me that the process is stacked against the admin, with no comeback to the editors putting the admin through all this. -- PhantomSteve/talk|contribs\ 10:52, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose We should not make it any harder for admins to make already difficult decisions. This could be used as just another way to retaliate against someone whom you disagree with.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:08, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose lol, I like Recognizance's succinct statement. Unnecessary, will almost certainly lead to abuse. Also per TenOfAllTrades, but I also want to emphasise what Boing! said Zebedee has said above. I don't believe that there is a big problem that needs fixing, and I think the fix would create more problems than already exist. I don't see any evidence of a lot of Admins running amuck (or even a few) and I have seen quite a few Administrators lose their tools when they have created problems. We do have a shortage of active Admins and if this gets worse it will be to the detriment of Wikipedia. I think many Administrators tend to avoid difficult issues already (and I include myself at times) and we can't afford to create a mechanism that will make this worse. Dougweller (talk) 11:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per RGTraynor and Ryan Postlethwaite. I think the current system has been working adequate. Admins that need to be removed have been getting removed. As RG said, the community has long been shown when choosing admins to not be very capable with the tendancy to band wagon jump, this will just be more of the same and will lead to people who shouldn't lose their mop being stripped. As the person above me has said, this will lead to admin avoiding difficult decisions even more so than they already do. -DJSasso (talk) 13:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per Ryan Postlethwaite. The benefits that this proposal would bring do not outweigh the problems that it is likely to create. As an admin who works in controversial areas such as arbitration enforcement, I would be much less inclined to perform my community- and ARBCOM-sanctioned duties were this proposal to be passed. The lynch mob mentality that Ryan mentioned will happen and would simply be an extension of the tag-team mentality that is already prevalent around many content areas of Wikipedia. Don't think for a second that the counterargument to this point is that those who oppose the tag-team would take up an admin's defense; these groups are only interested in putting their POV first, not in putting the encyclopedia first. If given the opportunity, I can guarantee that two opposing sides of a POV dispute would band together to desysop an admin that has impeded both sides' POV pushing. I feel that if this proposal were to pass, that too many of our best administrators would be put in a position like this. The current procedures for desysoping functions well and well enough for what Wikipedia needs right now. Ioeth (talkcontribstwinklefriendly) 14:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose mostly per TenOfAllTrades. I would have been one of the first opposers, but I wasnt aware this vote was going on until I saw a link on someone else's talk page. —Soap—16:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
SUPREME OPPOSE. This is a horrible idea. Our administrators are tasked with making unpopular decisions all the time, this concept is flawed from the inside out. We should be putting our energy into demanding FLAGGED REVISIONS, not harassing our hard working admins. JBsupreme (talk) 16:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The imapct on admins with this in place is incalcuable. Is it productive to have admins having to think about a decision, no matter how correct, subjecting them to a process like this? How many wrong decisions or actions would this wind up causing? In the end one needs to ask, is this a solution in search of a problem? I'll acknowledge that some admins are bad but the current process seems to be able to deal with this. Vegaswikian (talk) 16:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Existing processes, such as ArbCom, are perfectly effective tools for removing Sysop tools where needed. This is process creep and a needless drama magnet that will be less about effectively removing tools from sysops that are not using their tools correctly, and more about a venue to give editors a chance to gang up and bitch about admins they don't personally like. We already have enough places to do that at Wikipedia, and we don't need more. If an admin needs the tools removed, and other venues for correcting behavior of the admin have been exhausted, then there will also exist enough material for a valid arbcom case. --Jayron3219:05, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I do not necessarily oppose a procedure of this sort, but I do oppose this particular proposal. The requirements for start a poll are considerably too low, and the requirements for desysop are somewhat too high. Almost any active admin will have 10 people who do not like them, and most of us will have 10 people who do not like them sufficiently to initiate a desysop procedure. But I do not think there is any active admin who would not have support from only 20 percent of the community, and I am not sure that there would be any who would not have support from 1/3. This will result in a considerable increase in drama--there will be many nominations, and people arguing extensively about merits of individual actions and general character, and probably none of them will actually have a result of removing someone who ought to be removed. the net effect will there for an increase in the level of expressed hostility towards each other, and to no purpose. RfCs are already bad enough in this respect, which is why most people have learned to never bother commenting there. The one feature that rescues this is the requirement to review the process after 5 nominations, which will at least restrict the harm to only the first five individuals. What might I support? perhaps requiring 20 nominators, not 10, and not all of whom have interacted with the admin in the same specific issue or article, the period of discussion extended from 7 days to 14 , nobody except the nominee permitted to make more than two comments, and at least 100 (not 50) negative votes. I would also support changing and the desysop range to 50% for bureaucrat option, and 70 percent for automatic removal-- I cannot see how anyone with support of less than half the community should continue in a position of authority. What do I think would happen with the changes: we might have in the first year 3 or 4 certified cases, 1 or 2 or which would lead to removal. What would have happened if we didn't do it to these admins? Probably the same 1 or 2 would have been deadmined by arb com. then what would be the point--it will hardly save them much work. The point would be to allow the community to think it had a significant role. Is that enough reason to do this? DGG ( talk ) 19:37, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. This proposal seems to be a solution in search of a problem, and tailor-made to be used in service of personal vendettas. The purpose of this system—removing admin privileges from admins who have abused them, and the threat of such action to prevent such abuses—is already a function of ArbCom. If ArbCom isn't being used effectively for that, then perhaps ArbCom needs some fixes, or at least clarification (I'd say the latter isn't even in question; trying to figure out how to officially handle disputes is like being lost in a maze). Establishing yet another, more hasty and unbalanced, parallel process is not the answer. It just makes the system even more complicated for no real gain. — Gwalla | Talk21:01, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I'm not at all convinced that there's a need for this at this time. Ten's arguments laid out above are compelling, and for me much more persuasive than the rebuttals. I also have, as per Bearian above, huge worries that were this to be implemented, the number of admins willing and making difficult decisions would drop noticeably, with all the attendant issues that that would raise. GedUK22:03, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose This process has too many unresolved issues for me to support its implimentation. I look to the bias in canvassing, the ability for the process to be gamed by Cabals and the complete lack of sanctions within the proposal for such actions. Once this process is implimented there is no turning back , there is no way undo the damage that will be done to people who have worked hard to make wikipedia what it is. Therefore we must ensure that when we do such damage we do it in good faith. To that this or any similar proposal must be robust, it must be able to stand up to scrutiny, it must be fair to all parties, it must not do damage we cant fix. During the formulation discussions canvassing has been repeatably scrutinised, its been descibe as being one of the insuperable flaws of this process[9] and CDA has proven to be fundamentally flawed re canvassing[10] these arent comments by people opposed to the process but people who have driven its development and a recently as the day this poll commenced. Gnangarra01:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Admins working in contentious areas gather lots of angry lurkers. Implementing CDA would guarantee several unproductive drama-fests each year with the result that "normal" admins would find even more reasons to avoid reverting the hard-core POV or spam merchants. If there are any credible examples of a bad admin being retained by normal processes, those processes should be fixed. Johnuniq (talk) 03:51, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is probably the most common complaint with the proposal: that "hard-core POV or spam merchants" will gang up on the admin that shuts them down. I've never been deeply involved in blocking discussions or serious admin involvement in spam/pov situations, but I can't imagine that these nasty pov/spam people actually stick around at Wikipedia. Who comprises this nebulous group of "hard-core POV or spam merchants"? Are there any real examples of such? ...but what do you think? ~BFizz05:14, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BEANS -- I've seen disputes from editors who hold both side of extreme opinions on Scientology, Pseudo Science, Isreal, and theres many more incidents like the Mohammed cartoon, Kashmir, Balkans.... these people have been here for years ARBCOM has dealt with many issues and given many sanctions. Gnangarra05:40, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Weak Oppose I just don't see a need for another tedious process. This is just going to ramp up drama and take time away from the important things we are doing. It hasn't been demonstrated to my satisfaction that admin abuse is an issue that warrants another notification board, or !vote gathering mechanism. We should stick with the RFC as a way of gathering evidence and support for de-sysoping, and probably banning. I may change my opinion as debate further unfolds.--Adam in MOTalk07:27, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - There's not much I can add to TenOfAllTrade's detailed rebuttal, but I do think it's important to note what someone else said above -- Wikipedia writ large just doesn't have the appetite to appreciably consume and contemplate the substantial detail this process would require. What we'd end up with is a few die-hard users who participate in every discussion, and a slew of situational participants rushing to condemn or redeem their hated or loved administrator. Ultimately, a great power would rest in the hands of a few, with too much opportunity to game the system. Or, that's what my crystal ball suggests... //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 23:20, 5 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose TenofallTrades certainly stole everyone else's thunder with his response, but I will add that I am not convinced that this process is necessary. I would like to see evidence that the current methods of desysoping someone have failed such that this added lair of bureaucracy is required. Ultimately, I see this process as being used for one reason only: as a means to harass administrators who work in controversial areas of the project or upset a clique or group of editors. This is a divisive concept that will only encourage strife and drama. Given I see no explanation of how this proposal benefits the project or addresses a failure in the existing system, I have no choice but to oppose. Resolute02:06, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose in practice I can't think of any situations where this process wopuld have been a definate net positive to Wikipedia. Guest9999 (talk) 03:28, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: This will not work how it's intended to work. I appreciate the motivation, but the implementation leaves much to be desired, as has been more than adequately pointed out by TenOfAllTrades. As other editors, I think an adminship tenure is a much better option. Maedin\talk13:20, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose A nugget of a good idea turning into a pointed stick to poke at admins. The implication on the talk page that admin votes be discounted is a populist nightmare. RxS (talk) 03:45, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose Since when was Wikipedia a popularity contest? Existing processes are adequate and ensure that admins are afforded due process, while allowing disgruntled editors to tar and feather people who "have lost the faith of the community" will likely upset the balance in favour of problematic editors. -- samjinout05:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Even the fairest administrator will invariably garner enemies who felt they were in the right despite being in the wrong and people tend to hold grudges. De-adminship should be based on repeated failures to appropriately enforce policy (which is easily tested) rather than a popularity contest. If problematic editors can call for the heads of admins then admins will have a strong disincentive to act where they are most needed. Tarring and feathering, like this proposal, is about mob vengeance. -- samjinout18:38, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That leaves me scratching my head. I realize that there has been emotion and hyperbole on both sides of the discussion here, of course, but phrases like tarring and feathering and mob vengeance have the effect of demonizing and trivializing a large part of the community who support the proposal out of genuine concerns about how Wikipedia could be improved. As much as I understand how some opponents of the proposal have concerns about ill-considered attacks against good administrators, I'm disappointed that the phrase "very fair" would come to anyone's mind to describe these comments. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:38, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Phrases like tarring and feathering and mob vengeance have the effect of demonizing and trivializing people who employ those tactics, and nothing more. There absolutely are some editors on Wikipedia who love nothing more than putting others in a pillory, but nobody said it applies to everyone who supports this measure. KafzielComplaint Department18:49, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's a very good distinction, but then it leads to the question of why so many users who are not part of the mob, and indeed quite a few administrators, have supported the proposal. I suspect that this is exactly the point on which those who disagree are failing, mutually, to understand one another. Would it not make sense to improve the proposal so as to protect good administrators from the mob, while still keeping them accountable to the non-mob portion of the community? --Tryptofish (talk) 19:52, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That pre-supposes that you can identify who the mobs are. Unlikely at that first step. Two, it pre-supposes you can develop a system to counteract the mob effect. Unlikely as well; any system put in place to reduce the mob effect will be gamed. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:31, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Difficulty in objectively identifying bad-faith users at the first step, and risk of system gaming (by either side): Are these both serious issues? Yes, they are, I agree. Are they intrinsically insoluble, such that it is, a priori, impossible to devise thoughtful ways to deal with them? Difficult, yes, requiring thoughtful discussion before implementing, yes, but impossible, I think not. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:44, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Isn't that how the system works today? That is, protect[ing] good administrators from the mob, while still keeping them accountable to the non-mob portion of the community? -- samjinout13:53, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well there are certainly admins being desysopped on a regular basis. I wonder how many of the supporters of this proposal are bearing grudges and intend to use it in retaliation? Here's but one example of a supporter looking off-wiki for dirt on an administrator who rightly blocked them, noting that "he's got a long history, and I assume anyone will have some gaffes in that time". That's pretty much my point - admins with a long and/or active histories will build up collections of editors bearing pitchforks, even where the administrators' actions are found to be without fault (as in this case). If you believe you have been wronged then you are far more likely to retaliate than you are to support an admin who came to your aid, so the proposed witchhunts will be skewed in favour of the accuser. -- samjinout15:29, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As this poll limps towards its conclusion, I wish participants would step back from demonizing those with whom they disagree. You have shown evidence of one user, out of something like 160 supporters, and are implying that many more are painted by the same brush. Would it do any good to speculate how many opponents are administrators who are nervous because they know they have done something that could be considered wrong? And what evidence is there that good-faith members of the community will just stand idly by while a good administrator is being wronged? On the evidence of this poll, there is no shortage of users (admins and non-admins alike) who will rally to oppose an accusation (or a proposal!) that they feel is wrong. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:36, 20 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that popularity contests are skewed towards the bad faith members of the community - you know what they say about customer service: if you have a good experience you'll be lucky to tell 1 person, but if you have a bad experience you'll tell 10. The same applies here - those who mean well will be drowned out by the grudge bearers and active administrators will either have to exercise extreme caution with problematic editors or risk being unceremoniously evicted by the mobs. -- samjinout07:04, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I believe that this is best left to arbcom who have shown that they are more than willing to desysop if necessary and have done so on many occasions. Best, Mifter (talk) 23:20, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose It is not demonstrated that an extra process is necessary if an admin provably abuses heir powers. On the other hand, if the abuse is unprovable, any mob-based process is highly prone to be bad. - Altenmann >t05:39, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I came across this by chance, because a user page that I watch had a message on it. I would in principle be in favour of such a process if it was a restricted to those who had approved adminship in the first place. Without such a restriction I see that this proposed process will have two immediate detremental effects. (1) any one who wishes to remain an admin for more than a week would have to stay well clear of enforcing arbcom sanctions such as Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Macedonia Balkans warring, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Digwuren Eastern Europe, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Palestine-Israel articles#Discretionary sanctions, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Great Irish Famine, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Armenia-Azerbaijan 2 because this process just opens up a new avenue for ethnic and national fun and games (I can think of several admins who are most active in those areas who would be first to be hanged drawn a quartered by this process). Or take another example -- the admin who closed the requested move on Liancourt Rocks obviously that was a biased decision and if a request is made again to move the rocks to a new name whatever decision they make they should immediately be bought to this process -- so who's going make the decision on such moves? (2) If a person who is block by an admin is going to be allowed to express an opinion about an admin in this process, then the obvious thing for a naughty admin to do is to make sure that the block is as long as possible so that a blocked but innocent editor is not around to initiate this process, or to take part in it, if it is initiated by another editor. (If the process was to exclude blocked editors from expressing an opinon then obviously what Monty Python called Welsh defence comes into play: a rogue admin should block anyone who might convibly de-admin him/her!). -- PBS (talk) 21:38, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. I've long advocated the institution of a fair, efficient process through which the community could revoke adminship. Despite my intial optimism, I'm thoroughly convinced that this would not be such a process. —David Levy00:02, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose I also came upon this by chance. I think the current system has flaws but the proposed system has even more flaws - it would effectively politicise adminship and discourage frank and fearless operation by good faith administrators (which is at times needed). Orderinchaos02:52, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose per TenOfAllTrades excellent analysis. This proposal clearly sets up an adversarial process for re-considering adminship. Nothing necessarily wrong with that; the adversarial process is at the heart of legal proceedings in a large swathe of the world. However, if this to be the path we go down, then there has to be at least a nod in the direction of natural justice. I do not see that the necessary independent, dispassionate judgement can come at the hands of a majority, or even a supermajority vote. This is even more the case when we consider that the participants in this process will be self-selecting. The community has eleced Arbitrators expressly for the purpose of arbitrating in disputes; I see no reason that they cannot consider matters of de-adminship in light of evidence of abuse. I do not see this 'community' process as having any safeguards or making any real attempt to ensure a just and equitable outcome. --Xdamrtalk15:22, 19 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose and rather strongly at that. RfA is a deeply flawed process and establishing a parallel procedure to remove admin status will only add to these flaws. Happy to see a streamline de-admin procedure but this procedure is not it. Majority (or even super-majority) votes is no way to run these procedures — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mattinbgn (talk • contribs) 07:19, 20 March 2010
Oppose. I don't see how it will make Admins more effective if they are always looking over their shoulders and second-guessing themselves.--Curtis Clark (talk) 02:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I've never had a problem with an administrator & so there's not much chance I'd nominate one for CDA. Having said that, if this CDA passes or fails? I won't complain eitherway. GoodDay (talk) 19:29, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. While having this method to de-sysop ones who seem to be unfitting for this "rank" seems to be a good idea, I don't think someone who would actually be prove to be incompetent would be given sysop rights. SpecB (talk) 23:23, 22 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A desysopping process would be more likely to have as its subject administrators who had lost the trust of the community in their fitness for office than administrators who were incompetent. As you say, those who can't do their job usually don't get elected. AGK01:06, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral in principle I approve of the idea of the community of editors having a greater say in who holds the reigns of power, but there are just too many doubts in my mind, raised by TenofAllTrades. And admittedly, coming from a limited perspective, while I have disagreed with only a very small number of admin calls, I have never really seen something that would make me want to recall one. I might be more open to a different plan.LonelyBeacon (talk) 03:13, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I generally feel that posting a "neutral" is pointless and I very rarely do it, but I find myself torn here. Although I wrote one of the early proposals and participated in the initial discussions, I did so only because it seemed to me this was something a lot of users wanted and it was important to get it right, not because I think we are overwhelmed with bad admins. I have since developed serious concerns that any such process can and will be abused no matter what safeguards we may try to place on it, and I for one do not wish to be party to a witch hunt. There are most certainly a few users who can't wait for this to be implemented because they hold a grudge against one or more specific admins, and the last thing we need is more drama. Also, it does seem that ArbCom has been willing to deal with more f these cases and to handle them in an expedient manner that reflects the communities will. On the other hand, it's hard to argue with the idea that the community grants adminship and should therefore be permitted to revoke it without being forced to appeal to ArbCom. So, I'm just not sure which way to swing on this. Beeblebrox (talk) 03:23, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The admins who are not fit to be admins in the eyes of the community, would never respect any CDA proposal, whether the community supported it or not. These are the admins who have contempt for the community and think interpretation of policy has nothing to do with the community at all. The community is an irritant to them once they have their bit. It is just sad that some of them are so far up the food chain that even arbcom will not touch them either. It's rotten to the core. Still, 'no big deal', and all that BS. MickMacNee (talk) 11:05, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While a community de-adminship process is needed, what is actually missing is a more formal process for enabling the community to administer any and all user sanctions, rather than just a de-adminship process. I developed a model Recall/De-adminship process a few years ago while the ArbCom RFC was active here: User:Amerique/Community_recall, but basically quit working on it after coming to the realization that what was actually needed was a viable system of "Community Arbitration," (or "ComArb!") something similar to ArbCom process with evidence, workshop and decision pages but allowing for participation of all editors in good standing in crafting all binding decisions, retaining the ArbCom as a court of appeals or for dealing with cases involving information that couldn't be discussed on wiki. The development of such a system would empower the community to take disciplinary matters into its own hands and thereby lighten ArbCom's caseload. (But I don't have the time to develop it myself so anyone interested would have to work on it if they want to see anything like this become a pragmatic possibility in the future.) Ameriquedialectics11:32, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
opposers have legitimate points, i agree with the goal of the proposal, but find it insufficient. I would recomend upping both edits and period of heavy contributing. Lynch mobs are too easily created.Weaponbb7 (talk) 19:07, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is always the rule of unintended consequences with, on paper, good ideas. I would say that at least 95% of admins are doing a great job and would have no worries. However, there are always a few bad apples that need to be held accountable and "admin for life" can be more detrimental if those few are allowed to abuse their power. I think it would be better to limit terms of admins to 2 or 3 years and can reapply after the term is up. After this time, quite a few may not want to be admins anymore, many will be reconfirmed with ease, but at least those few troublesome ones will have a much harder time getting reconfirmed. I think that is the better solution. MrMurph101 (talk) 19:17, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About term limits, that's something that appeals to me too. However, I don't see how one could apply that retroactively to administrators already sitting. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:37, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If it were up to me, the current (active) admins would start their term when this rule would go in effect. Any inactive admin, say one that hasn't done anything for 6 months to a year or more would have to reapply if they're still interested. However, this could mean a deluge of RFA's when all these terms are up so perhaps those who have been admins for less than a year will get the full term and those that have been longer than a year get a half term. MrMurph101 (talk) 19:47, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In a term limit set up, I would suggest using each admin's "anniversary" of their "ascension" as the cut off date. Those who have served the 2 or 3 (or whatever) years would lose their mop on their next anniversary. Then thy could decide whether or not to reapply. This would stagger the administrative changes throughout the year. WBardwin (talk) 06:17, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, and well said. This simple method may be the next focus of those editors concerned with the current 'admin for life' status quo. If the many-month process of this current version of Cda proved anything, it seems to me the central lesson is the simpler, the better. Jusdafax18:20, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You have, I hope, reviewed the math at WP:PEREN#Reconfirm_administrators and considered what doubling or tripling the number of candidates at RfA might do to the process? For example, I think we could reasonably expect that doubling the number of candidates would halve the time and effort that the community can put into reviewing any one of them -- unless increasing bureaucratic overhead (at the expense of writing the encyclopedia) is an acceptable, if unintentional, consequence in your mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at your link was of interest. I happen to strongly disagree with the premise and wording of that statement, and feel that should be reviewed. This is not the right place for a lengthy discussion, however, and as I suggest below, you may wish to comment further at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Administrator on 'WikiProject Administrator/Term Limits: a proposal'. I should add that the section is just getting started. Jusdafax06:55, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My own personal opinion on this is in favor, however I also recognize that this has the potential to cause a large amount of drama...enough of a potential for me to !vote neutral. As it is, Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall seems to be a less dramatic way. I will consider my opinion on this more in the coming days, and may end up leaning either way. Ks0stm(T•C•G)19:52, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
By way of shamelessly lobbying you, open to recall works very well for good, responsible administrators who choose to use it, but, as something that is completely voluntary, is of no effect at all for administrators who choose not to use it. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:20, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the principle of a framework for CDA, and enabling WP to be self-policing. However, I do not see here a framework for fair governance of that objective. I see points on both sides of this issue; however I do not feel comfortable with a blind approval of the proposal, nor do I feel I have a viable alternative thought through with which to conscientiously oppose it. Alvincura (talk) 22:44, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. I generally support the concept of CDA, however I don't believe this current proposal is nuanced enough to do the job. Considering TOAT's criticisms, there appears a few checks and balances that could be adopted to make this less prone to lynch-mobbing. For example. If the wider community (rather than the self-selected group that would likely bring a CDA and vote on it) really felt an admin required de-sysopping, then there should be no issues with separating nomination and voting. That is, the ten nominators should not be permitted a vote. Instead they should put their case and let the rest of the community decide. In summary, I think this is a decent place to start, but the process needs work. Rockpocket02:54, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would also add that I envisage that the admin him or herself wouldn't be permitted to !vote either (he or she would put their defense and let the community decide). The 10:1 ratio appears fair to me because it essentially removes any "lynch mob" influence from the !voting equation and, in most cases, would leave the decision up to the community independent of the individuals involved. As an admin, I would be happy for my tools to be reviewed under this scenario, because if I take out the 10 people that have a serious axe to grind yet still have a significant proportion of the community think I'm are unfit for the job, then I'm probably unfit for the job. Rockpocket20:00, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral As an admin who is happy to participate in the recall process, I'm not sure a 'formal' recall process is needed. Although, I note of the near 900 admins on the system, a bare 200 make themselves 'open to recall'. The reason I've gone 'neutral' on this, is I foresee a process that may be open to abuse; and I'm not sure there's really a problem - there have been admins who have been de-sysoped for abuse - and if it needs to be done, it probably needs to be done quickly. Kbthompson (talk) 11:02, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral - I am not against an admin recall process per se, and I have historically given support to such a process. However, I cannot ignore or dismiss many of the concerns of the opposition to this particular proposal. I'm not really concerned that good admins will loose their adminship by this process as proposed; the minimum super-majority and 50 editors support required will probably be rarely achieved, and even that is subject to bureaucrat discretion. In comparison my recall process is 10 certified editors and a tie or simple majority in support of removal, with no further discretion. The concerns I have are more the possibility of lots of unnecessary requests, the problems of RfA re-appearing and possibly getting worse with CDA, and I don't think the issue of canvassing has been fully settled. I am becoming more open to wider reform of adminship on Wikipedia, such as introducing fixed terms. Camaron · Christopher ·talk19:15, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral As the proposed policy aggrandizes new powers to the Arbitration Committee clerks and Bureaucrats; I wear both of those hats and the groups are sufficiently small that it would appear improper were I to take a persuasive position. MBisanztalk06:51, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral I can't really say that I oppose, because it does seem like a reasonable way of getting rid of th ebad ones, however it might end up being a Popularity Contest type-thing and might not turn out so well. So in the end, I just say I could care-a-less what happens. PlyPlay665 (talk) 04:45, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral I'm going to take a Churchillian stance on this issue. I believe that some admins may well abuse their privilages and use their position to bias articles, projects and other features of Wiki that are of personal interest. However, this may lead to perfectly capable and Wiki-abiding individuals (admins) being subject to removal from their position, in which thaty may well serve to help the site. Perhaps a further investigatiion is in order. I propose that installing a more efficinet security and scrunity system (perhaps a board of Wiki-security guards) would be effective in reducing abuses of privilages. Conducting a 1-month trial run is probably the best idea. My regards to the person who came up with the idea, of course. --Aubs 400 (talk) 15:27, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral ... I can't support per all the gigantic gaps in logic, reasoning and due process that TenOfAllTrades discussed at the top. On the other hand, I can't flat-out oppose since the core concept of the proposal is to follow community consensus and not leave things to ArbCom, and there was (though perhaps somewhat flawed) lengthy community discussion before this RfC began. I agree that there should be "some" (I use that loosely) way to reel in so-called rogue admins without ArbCom, yet I fervently disagree with the idea of a 'Crat closing these discussions as it effectively reduces the importance of a majority vote in ArbCom to a lone 'Crat or at best a "crat chat". As such, neutral but wanted to comment on this important matter. How about focusing on some absolutes that are entirely inappropriate that would likely lead to a CDA and define them as subject to a warning escalation system, ending in desysopping... such as use of tools to unblock oneself, perhaps? ♪daTheisen(talk)05:21, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral For many reasons. There should be a de-adminship process, and users might be able to nominate, However:
The number of users and edit count should be defined more thoroughly, 500 edits with anti-spam and 50 edits in article creations are not equal.
User involvements are necessary yet open to misuse. Also if de-adminship process not works, admin and his admin-friend group will hold grudge and will try to find a way to punish nominators somehow. Happened before and will sure happen in the future. We still have many blood feuds in wikipedia among many users.
Canvas is still a vague term and not a well defined policy itself which should be reviewed. There should be an easier way to auto-notice all involved or previously edited users in wikipedia without any user intervention for all kinds of processes about articles and people including AFD, TFD, RFA, other wiki-wide decisions etc.
We should also discuss all RFA process from start to end. Because after a while only privileged users who get along with previous admins becomes nominated and elected in RFAs. Being elected as adminship without any high-number actual content creation to wikipedia should be prohibited. Don't tell me it is, it is sure not by example case.
Also RFA process should result by number of mistakes a user had, instead number of edit count etc. Simply because many users-admins tend to delete complaints from their user talk instantly and noone bothers checking page history
There should be a permanent admin record and complaint section, where users can vote admins' record or add their negative experiences with them which admins themselves cannot delete and regularly gets reviewed by a team of selected admins.
We should review edit count policies, and strictly separate edit counts for AFD etc. discussions, SPAM related reverts, scripted edits with actual content creation or improvements. There are users with top edit counts who doesn't even create or edit content of even a ten percent of their edit counts.
There should be a higher council in wikipedia for wiki-wide cases, where users can state their opinions and inform all wiki-community about the ideas or solutions they provide. Currently wikipedia processes are no-different than real world government instutions. Kasaalan (talk) 14:45, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for this feedback. I'm especially intrigued by your suggestion about a "permanent record", sort of like a continuously-archived Wikipedia:Administrator review for every administrator. In my opinion, that's an idea that definitely merits further discussion. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:27, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's another non-starter in this best of all possible wikiworlds. Block logs are maintained as permanent record of misdeeds of the plebians, but no similar record is maintained of the misdeeds of "the most trusted members of our community". They walk away unblemished; that's the way it's designed to work. We all know of many administrators who if they weren't in office would have block logs even longer than mine. --MalleusFatuorum22:02, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I would support a permanent page documenting past issues that were supported by evidence, not something that anyone with an ax to grind can put something on though. You hear all sorts of unsubstantiated spite being tossed around and that is of no real value. Chillum(Need help? Ask me)15:33, 1 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. Even after reading all the pertaining pages, I fail to see the need for something like this. Will be fine with whatever the community decides, however. Lectonar (talk) 15:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral: There seem to be two main issues here. The first is that there is continuing disquiet amongst many members of the community that the behaviour of small number of administrators is far from ideal and that current sanctions are relatively ineffective. The second is whether or not the proposed process is the right one to deal with this perceived problem. On balance I have come to the view that the CDA procedure is too open to potential abuse, (although it is hard to tell without any actual experience), but I am not convinced that it is genuinely the greater of the two evils if the alternative is to do nothing. I found the thread "Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/RfC#Observations re Casliber's comment" particularly interesting. The test will essentially be whether or not there are ongoing complaints that the Arbcom process is failing to deal with miscreants. If nothing else, this RfC process has ensured that the issue has gained Arbcom's attention. Finally, I'd like to congratulate both Tryptofish and TenOfAllTrades for their efforts in bringing a complex and contentious issue to the attention of the community. It is a credit to them both that what turned out to be a fairly rancorous process of devising the RfC has proceeded to this point with relatively good grace. BenMacDui10:55, 14 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the number of regular contributers continue to stabilize, the admins group will gradually become the largest group in Wikipedia. They will become "the community". Sole Soul (talk) 03:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While our total number of admins is still growing, and the number of active admins recently revived slightly, we currently have 881 active admins, down from over a thousand at its peak. Without a major change at RFA I don't see admins being anything other than a dwindling minority in the foreseeable future. ϢereSpielChequers14:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The number might stabilize, but the people who make up the number won't. The number stabilizing just means that the number joining is equal to the number quitting. There will still be "new" regular contributors, and old ones will still retire. Mr.Z-man14:58, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You both have points. But generally, being an admin is directly proportional with factors like your frequency of editing, participation in discussions and the years of being a member; and inversely proportional to other factors like the number of blocks. These factors make admins like a pool of the fittests that is gradually increasing. Sole Soul (talk) 12:26, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the de-facto criteria for adminship were stable then I'd agree that the pool would gradually increase. But the expectations at RFA have been rising for some time now - once it was possible to pass with three months tenure and less than a thousand edits. Now it takes a rare candidate to succeed with less than four thousand edits and only six admins created their accounts less than a year ago, three of those are bots and one one of the others is a new account for a returning admin. ϢereSpielChequers19:39, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Addendum: I do in fact realize that his really doesn't hold true anymore. In an ideal world, it would, but in this time and place it does not. However, if as the above user indicated everyone would be admins, they would have gained community trust, been seen as competent, and it wouldn't be a problem. PLUS that will never happen (as far as I'm concerned) NativeForeignerTalk/Contribs04:07, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking that as well, and I'm sure it was raised in the early discussions. I recently discovered that the Urban Dead wiki now has a full-fledged community appointment process that includes an automatic process of comment in order for them to keep the bit. They took the good from here and ran with it.--~TPW(trade passing words?) TPW is the editor formerly known as otherlleft 17:03, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I have made the same comment elsewhere recently. Even the President of the United States only gets a four year term. If adminship is "no big deal", then why is it a "for life" appointment? Jusdafax17:08, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
About regularly-scheduled re-elections, there was (big surprise!) a lot of discussion of that earlier. The problem (among others) is that, with the number of administrators, it would take multiple simultaneous re-elections ongoing for several years just to get through the administrators we have now. The numbers are impractical. By the way, please note this: a reconfirmation RfA would require the administrator to get approx. 70% support, whereas CDA would require only approx. 30% support. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:12, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's certainly what's needed, but equally certainly it's not going to happen any more than this proposal is going to go anywhere. Telling that over 50% of the opposers are administrators, with only 27% supporting don't you think? --MalleusFatuorum17:15, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've actually been pleased with how many administrators have worked on and supported this proposal. I'm not making any predictions about the outcome here, but I do remember that the notorious "motion to close" was passing by a wide margin about 24 hours after it opened, but as time went on, it was rejected two-to-one. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:21, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I personally think the standard of adminship on Wikipedia is overall far too poor (unsustainably so in fact - something has to give eventually), but I don't find this statistic (as it stands) remarkable either way. If you study CDA it has clear downfalls - you either want to trial it, or you don't. Even when I supported CDA, I sat enough 'in the middle' to see that their were valid arguments both ways. Administrators are obviously less likely to want to trail something that could easily prejudice their very job: a few bad CDA's could make every admins life difficult, and the residuals (specifically from inter-admin disharmony) are too hard to prevent and manage. The Crats won't allow CDA anyway, as you know (and rightly so imo - such important things have simply got to be right). It is best to make changes to Wikpedia that no-one can so easily challenge - there are plenty of other routes towards change. Matt Lewis (talk) 19:19, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Turkeys don't vote for Thanksgiving, that's perfectly clear and what will scupper this proposal. Personally I'd be happier with fixed terms. That way at least the poor admins (of which there are far too many, just not so egregiously bad that ArbCom would be prepared to take action against them) would at least not be around for ever. --MalleusFatuorum19:25, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I favour fixed terms too (Wikpiedia has to lose this 'job for life' nonsense), and an Admin Review too. Maybe they could cross in some way. When we have a reasonable Admin structure for the first time in Wikipedia's history (Wikipedia needs to adapt as it grows if nothing else), then we could look at whether we need a singular Admin Recall or not. Likelyhood is that the current version of admin recall (rfc/u with arbs) would then actually suffice. Matt Lewis (talk) 19:53, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also in favor of creating terms (not term limits) for administrators. I haven't seen much traction on the idea, though. It seems a number of people seem to think complicating the proposal with enforced breaks or something similar will make it better. I disagree, as I think it only makes the idea more difficult to support for those who might otherwise consider it. All we need is a simple term (2 years sounds good), and a plan for transition.
It would be interesting if some admins would consider voluntary terms to begin with, much as we have the voluntary admin recall process. If some admins were to reject voluntary recall in favor of stepping down or resubmitting an RfA after a specified period of time, it might open editors up to the idea of admin terms in general. Sχeptomaniacχαιρετε18:56, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly support a fixed mandate for admins (say two years) with a minimum interval between successive mandates (say one year). Knowing that one will be a plain user at least 1/3 of the time would hopefully prevent an otherwise very human tendency of all bureuacrats, namely making rules that increase the power of bureaucrats. Then perhaps we would not need special procedures for de-adminship. Should this be a separate RfC? All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 13:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Should polls and votes of this sort really be taken seriously? What's to prevent someone from voting multiple times under their 16 or 42 different sock puppets they've been using for years. It's naive to think that doesn't go on. And it only takes a few people. Vicericecake (talk) 08:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
One way would be to randomly draw 200 (say) voters among the regular editors, urge them to vote, and count *only* their votes. One may define "regular editor" in any reasonable way (e.g. "anyone who did at least 50 edits in four out of the last six months"), as long as it does not unduly bias the sample towards admins. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 13:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No position creates so many enemies as the ArbCom membership. Yet, two incumbent members (Kiril and Coren) had the largest votes in the last election. Sole Soul (talk) 12:51, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Comment Without making a comment about THIS proposal, in Wikipedia we should always work together. As we start making more legal type provisions to desyop, we must eventually have provisions to balance them, such as block or other provisions to those who falsely accuse the admin. In essence, if you sue and lose, you have to pay all of the legal expenses for both sides. This is not the case in the USA but is the case in several countries. Let's try to work together instead of wiki-suing each other. Perhaps, require discussion with the penalty of block if there is anything but civility? Suomi Finland 2009 (talk) 16:09, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It's interesting to note that some of the voters using Support,Oppose and Neutral are saying exactly the same thing: "I support admin recall, but CDA is not the best method.", or "I support admin recall, but this CDA proposal isn't good enough". Admin might be more inclined to say it in Oppose (or Neutral) than say it in Support. Editors might be inclined to do it the other way. Rather than just tolling the votes, the main thing to extract from this RfC is whether people are saying they want to see changes or not. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:06, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If I was an admin, I would say the same thing. It does not look good if you say it flat out. AGF makes us sometimes forget human nature and social theories. Sole Soul (talk) 19:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like spinning to me. This proposal is going down in flames. And yet, we are starting to hear from those creeping from the wreckage, saying "well, it shows the community really wants change" or "a majority of non-admins supported" (not sure on that, it is fairly close right now). When this RFC closes, as it appears unsuccessfully, take some time off from it. Build an encylopedia. Get some perspective. Then, and only then, consider whether you can come up with a proposal which avoids the very real flaws. I myself might be more prone to support if there was a gatekeeper, some initial evaluation, rather than a rush to mob justice.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:12, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. The correct way to see if people want changes or not is to ask that question. Reading the tea leaves from a different tea-cup (apologies for the messy metaphor!) only leads to failed proposals. --RegentsPark (talk) 17:19, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What sounds like spinning? Reading the results? I don't support any version of CDA, but it's the end of the line for the status quo on WIkipedia as far as I'm conerned. Admin have got to the point where they routinely spout such unconsidered and rude nonsense that it's a serious danger to Wikipedia. Matt Lewis (talk) 17:35, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That may be your considered opinion (which is not particularly important), and it may very well be a consensus opinion (which would be important). Either way, survey design is already a complicated art and drawing conclusions about things that have not been the focus of the survey is never meaningful. --RegentsPark (talk) 17:41, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm afraid that you simply reinforce the case that Matt Lewis makes with your "your opinion isn't important" comment. I'd suggest that it's your opinion as an administrator that isn't important on this issue. --MalleusFatuorum17:46, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you misunderstood my point (or perhaps not). Matt said that Admin have got to the point where they routinely spout such unconsidered and rude nonsense that it's a serious danger to Wikipedia. My point is that he is entitled to his opinion (who isn't) but whether that is the general consensus or not needs to be ascertained, and this survey is not designed to do that. I'm not sure why you bring up my being an administrator because this is a fairly obvious element of survey design and is not an 'admin opinion' (whatever that might be). --RegentsPark (talk) 18:01, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's useful, thanks. That's me at no. 4 btw - my attempt at a paragraph has bamboozled the script! (needless to say I'm not an admin). I'll duplicate my signature. Matt Lewis (talk) 20:07, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Nakon! I've taken the liberty of putting a link to your script at the top of this page, since it is of high importance. Best, Jusdafax09:23, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is propaganda, premised on the view that admin opposes are a sort of "turkeys not voting for Christmas" thing. Opposes (from admin and non-admin) are generally based on reasoned arguments, notably a) that the process is dangerously flawed, b) that better alternatives for such a process exist, c) that the need for such a process is vastly exaggerated, since Arbcom mostly does well enough. To which I add (others seem less to have picked this point up) that the process of development of this CDA proposal, in sidelining the discussion and other options arising from the Administrator Recall RFC, is a perfect example of how a very small group of editors can set an agenda. Rd232talk14:46, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I doubt myself, Malleus and Tryptofish have anything in common (ie three people in this discussion alone). CDA was a railroaded to some degree - but most people sat and watched it happen. I no longer support any form of CDA, but I can still see that some admin are treating the support for this proposal with contempt. For voting for a Community de- Adminship?? C'mon. That kind of arrogant and OTT attitude will only help bring about the invitable. Change. Whatever that change turns out to be, Wikipedia is creaking (warping, frankly) for the need of it. Matt Lewis (talk) 21:15, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
After reviewing the pros, cons, and discussion of this proposal, I have organized my thoughts about a parallel, though unrelated, proposal that attempts to accomplish some of the same positive outcomes of this proposal while avoiding some of its pitfalls, via fixed terms for adminship. My ideas can be found at User:B Fizz/Admin for X years. Please feel free to copy its content to somewhere more appropriate, to discuss it here or on its corresponding talk page, or to print it out and burn it, as you see fit. In any event, I would appreciate your feedback. ...but what do you think? ~BFizz22:48, 25 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Something needs to change, and to pacify those who are so worried about "drama" I'd be prepared to consider a fixed admin term of two years or so as an alternative to the inevitable battle that will result if this proposal is railroaded by the incumbent administrators. --MalleusFatuorum01:01, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nakon's script shows the split between admins and non-admins, though the gap seems to be closing slightly -- non-admin support is up 3% to 54% from when I !voted, while admin support is up 5% to 24% in the same period. CRGreathouse (t | c) 03:06, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, obviously a lot of people don't care for this idea too much. I hardly think it's the best thing since the bread and the slicing and all of the wonderful sandwiches that followed, but I also think that it's basically okay, that we need something along these lines, and that this is as close as we've gotten, which does count for something. Apparently roughly 3 of 4 admins are opposing this proposal, and while there are certainly valid reasons to do so, I think the "ArbCom is doing fine with de-adminship" argument (which is quite prevalent) is problematic and gets right to the heart of the debate. There's a valid point to that argument, particularly since I happen to think that ArbCom is getting better about desysoping admins who lose "community" support. But for many editors (mainly non-admins) that just is not good enough. Right or wrong, this fact cannot be wished away—many good editors feel we need a communal mechanism to recall admins who are effing up. For admins to oppose this CDA idea and say "ArbCom is doing fine with that desysop thing" is frankly a bit tone deaf, irrespective of whether it is "right" or not. It's quite easy when one is an administrator to say, "no, what we've got now is okey dokey," because admins do not as a rule deal with the kind of situations that non-admins deal with, including: unjustified (or at least questionable) blocks, sometimes gratuitous warnings about behavior regardless of experience level, a general sense that their views might count for less than that of another editor with whom they disagree simply because said editor is an administrator, etc. It's difficult for administrators (and I speak from at least some experience here) to remember what it's like to not be an admin, and to not have what is undoubtedly a bit of a magic cloak (for lack of a better term) protecting you from "attacks" by other editors, but also from your own screwups. The inability—and in a way it's somewhat unavoidable and not entirely anyone's "fault"—of admins to identify directly and viscerally with the concerns of non-administrators with respect to the issue of lack of accountability for admins is a serious problem, and unfortunately it does generate ill-will and regularly exacerbates any number of individual incidents. I also think it's why a lot of the opposition to this proposal from admins, while generally well reasoned and in perfectly good faith, is inevitably going to sound like self-serving, I-don't-hear-your-concerns justification for the status quo to the many editors who find the status quo unacceptable. That's not necessarily fair, but it's also not at all an invalid way to feel about the discussion if you're a non-admin who has been concerned with this issue for months or even years.. --Bigtimepeace | talk | contribs07:53, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin who voted no, I would say this: I would be minded to support if there was a clear showing of a problem this could cure, and if there was a gatekeeper, such as, say, a committee of crats, who would have to certify evidence of misconduct before a CDA vote could commence, and who would also oversee the process and its fairness (such as the timing of the vote, allowing the defense on the same page as the vote, etc.).--Wehwalt (talk) 13:19, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Which is to somewhat miss the point I think, at least under the present system where all of the bureaucrats and all of the ArbCom members are administrators. --MalleusFatuorum15:29, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I did a random unscientific sample of editors who voted "oppose" and found 100% of them were administrators. Isn't there some sort of conflict of interest. Who wouldn't want privileges for life. It is like asking a dictator whether he would like to hold free and fair democratic elections. Wapondaponda (talk) 15:24, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe it's because administrators understand just how bad of an idea this is? Their experience in working in the filthy trenches where they volunteer their time almost certainly has an impact on their opinion of this proposal. Conflict of interest? I think not. Is an administrator stripped of any right to have any say on anything having to do with administratorship? Come on. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:23, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Its good to know that some non-admins oppose the CDA. Still the majority of votes, 55% are from admins, which still says a lot. As for volunteering in the filthy trenches, aren't all wikipedians volunteers. Surely, aren't most of wikipedias 3 million articles written and edited by ordinary wikipedians. Don't ordinary wikipedians revert vandalism or report vandals. I think administrators should have a say, but we know by the very nature of this proposal, which in essence involves removing some power from administrators and giving it to the community, what the default opinion is — Preceding unsigned comment added by Muntuwandi (talk • contribs)
The filthy trenches I was referring to are places where non-administrators can not tread; blocks, page protections, deletions, etc. This proposal doesn't remove any "power" from administrators. The notion that administrators have some special "power" is utterly false. They have and do work at the behest of the community, working within guidelines and policies. They can't just do whatever the hell they want. That kind of power does not exist for anyone, even Jimbo. Attempting to color this poll as some kind of class warfare is improper. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:04, 26 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The trouble with "random, unscientific polls" is that they are random and unscientific. They lead to dangerously incorrect conclusions. As it happens, I !voted "Oppose" and I'm not an admin - so for sure your conclusion is incorrect. Furthermore, you didn't do the opposite test - suppose that close to 100% of the "Support" votes were also admins - wouldn't that completely overturn your 'iffy' conclusions? Where is your control data? Perhaps you should look at some other polls - perhaps Admins vote to support the status quo in almost every similar poll? Bottom line: I don't know whether you're right or wrong - and neither do you - so either do a proper test (which on such a small sample really requires you count all of them) or forget this unsupported presumption of bias. SteveBaker (talk) 03:11, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why all the emotion? The scientific method depends on random sampling, but that's clearly not possible in this case. Those most likely to be aware of or to care about this discussion are administrators, those with most to lose. Those of us who aren't administrators know there's no way they're going to vote for Christmas. --MalleusFatuorum03:33, 27 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There was a bug in the API where users without a registration date would have the current time returned as their registration date. It appears this bug was fixed very recently to show 1970 (unix timestamp "0") as the registration date. I have updated the script and it is now pulling the correct registration date. Nakon01:26, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Malleus, correlation and causation are not the same thing. When you say administrators have the "most to lose" (like another seven days out of my life, which I'm not sure I would bother to do again), you are correct in a way. However, would you agree that it's also true that admins who are active in general have displayed general concern fot the working of the encyclopedia over an extended period of time? Would you agree that admins in general tend to have greater than average exposure to the various facets of what this sausage factory actually does? Are admins as a group equal to or greater in experience than the "average" or "median" editor, and relatively comparable to the sizable corps of long-tenured non-admins in terms of experience? 'Cause then what you're saying sounds to me an awful lot like a sample of experienced editors is concerned about the implications of a proposal that is not fully thought-out and could do harm if implemented. You conflate a wish to accept proper scrutiny with a desire to avoid any scrutiny, but that is just a supposition. Citation needed. Franamax (talk) 04:35, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal name - who came up with "Community de-adminship" - a truly horrible phrase, what happened to Plain English ? Our other proposals are phrased as polite considerations, i.e. "Request..." (RfA, RfC), so starting with "R - -" seems consistent. While this seeks the opposite of granting adminship, and the obvious opposite of "for" is "against" (rather than neologism of "de-"), "Request against adminship (RAA)" would imply objecting to an editor yet to be made an admin. Instead, this seeks the removal/revoking of admin flag already granted - so why not "RRA" ("Request removal adminship ", or "Request revoking adminship" if one prefers) ? David RubenTalk00:56, 28 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal has failed. Plain and simple. That should be the end of it. I am concerned that I am now reading a lot of rhetoric that casts the failed poll as Stage 1; and apparently Stage 2 is figuring out how, and how much, to fiddle around the edges of the proposal, in order to produce something that can be rationalised as having enough support and little enough opposition to jam it through anyhow. Hesperian11:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think CDA will get enough votes to 'pass', but this RfC isn't about ignoring people just because they don't get to 70-odd percent in a poll. My forecast is that it on closure CDA will actually be ahead, but not enough to pass. This is a 'Request for comments', and a number of people have said similar things regarding future changes in the Support, Oppose and Neutral polls. We are here to listen to the comments, and as many people should have their say as possible.
Regarding 'fiddling' with the CDA proposal - unfortunately it was rather incomplete, so nobody can stop anyone from doing that. I suggest we wait for the 28 days to elapse and then decide whether it will be worth trying to improve CDA, or whether to look at other matters (and there is enough will for that without any doubt at all). My vote is to move on to 'fixed admin terms' and a workable 'review' system. For me, CDA is papering over the cracks, and mix of the paste will never be quite right. Matt Lewis (talk) 11:39, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There is already a discussion on fixed admin terms at User:B Fizz/Admin for X years, but the subject is a perennial and I'm not convinced that the proposal there currently deals with enough of the past objections to have much chance of achieving consensus. As for continuing with this RFC, some of the opposes are because of particular concerns about this proposal, so if you can address those concerns without losing some of the support it would be reasonable to come back with a revised proposal. But my reading of it is that there isn't a potential compromise that would get consensus support. Alternatively why not try and test the existing RFC & arbcom processes? I see some real anger and resentment in the support section, but I wonder how much of that is from cases where Arbcom has decided not to desysop an admin or even declined to take the case, and how much from incidents where no-one has filed an RFC, or even where no-one has complained to the admin concerned. My impression is that it isn't Arbcom, but I'd be interested in some stats on this, perhaps someone could do a survey of the supporters to find out what stages of the process they have used, at what stage they think the current process fails, and at what stage they have seen it fail? ϢereSpielChequers12:47, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You raise some interesting points. It should be readily possible to determine what supporters have been involved in RfCs, and then from there what RfCs were related to administrator behavior. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, but I think it would take some sort of survey to determine how many had got no further than complaining to an admin on their talkpage, or even had a grievance against an admin but not gone as far as to complain. I think we also need to know how many support this because they have experience that leads them to be dissatisfied with the current desysopping process, and how many because in principle they prefer a direct community based system as opposed to an indirect system whereby the community elect Arbcom and Arbcom desysop when necessary. I have a theory that the oppose !voters are more likely to have voted in Arbcom elections than the support voters, and that of those who have voted both in this poll and the Arbcom elections the Opposers in this election are more likely to have seen candidates they support actually succeed in the arbcom elections (though I'm something of an exception as I think the candidates I supported last time didn't fare that well). But I don't think the community should simply ignore the fact that almost half the participants in this RFC wanted to completely replace our current desyopping process with a radically different one. Though I'm uncertain at present whether what we need to do is encourage those who want change to file RFCs against admins they disapprove of, try to reform the current desyopping process or !vote or stand in the next arbcom elections. ϢereSpielChequers15:25, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of interesting theories to consider there. These sorts of questions may possibly be answered by careful analysis of this RfC. I've started to do some of that work, as nobody else has apparently. It will take some time to distill the comments here into something more quantitative. I really, really, really wish that this RfC hadn't been set up as a poll on the overall concept, but more like a traditional RfC. It would have made this step so much easier. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:55, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As to projections that this will clear 50%; a week ago the percent of support (not including neutrals) was 45.9%, with 19 votes needed to get to 50/50. Right now, it's 46.9%, with 19 votes needed to get to 50/50. The approach to 50/50 is asymptotic. In the last 7 days, the support has held between 45% and 48%. So a week has gone by, and effectively nothing has changed. Meanwhile, participation in the poll has tapered off. Today's seen a slight bump up in voters, but not significant. We're 10 days into this poll. That pattern is set. The die is cast. This proposal as it stands has failed. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:46, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A sizeable amount of people are Opposing (and voting Neutral for) this specific CDA proposal, but not CDA in general. I don't think any form of CDA can work, but certainly over 50% of the voters in this RfC (as it stands) would accept some form of CDA. With that in mind, anyone calling this RfC "dead in the water", or denying the right for the CDA proposal to adapt to criticisms of it, is ultimately just winding up the great many supporters of CDA. Is that a clever thing to do? No - it is clearly foolish. Impatience to remove these kind of motions (similar to starting them), and Wikipedia, really do not go well together. Matt Lewis (talk) 20:03, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The vote (in terms of just counting names in Support and Oppose) is still pretty close, and will run for another 3 weeks. I don't want to see CDA happen (Id rather 'fixed terms' and some form of 'admin review') - but if this RfC suddenly reaches the wider community, things could change drastically within a single day. To ignore that is just illogical (if people prefer that to "foolish"). Really - who knows what will happen? Matt Lewis (talk) 20:40, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Suddenly reaches the wider community? What? There's already been more than 350 unique contributors to this page. It's been posted all over the project. Everybody who was involved in the draft RfC knows about this RfC. The idea there would be a sudden shift in support is statistically highly unlikely. Regardless, the characterization of the outcome of this poll, regardless of who is saying it, is not based on any evidence yet produced. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:51, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hesperian commented above that there is supposedly some plan to "jam it through anyhow." I want to say, loudly and clearly, that I have, and am aware of, no such plan. It dismays me to see some editors trying, day after day, to spin this proposal as something that has been snow-rejected by an overwhelming majority of the community. I conjecture that, with emotions unfortunately running high, some opponents are concerned that such a jam-it-through plan is underfoot, and are trying to prevent it by exaggerating the direness of the situation. So, please, hear me again: no one is going to try to claim that the community has approved a proposal that does not have consensus! But, to use Hammersoft's numbers just above, the 45-48% of the community who are supporting deserve to be heard too, and they are saying that the opponents' claim that the status quo is entirely satisfactory does not have consensus either. My best guess, looking ahead, is that there will be, after the month of this RfC ends, nothing enacted from here, but rather, further work by interested editors. I'd guess that some editors are going to work on some kind of fixed term/reconfirmation system, and I'll predict that it will fail. I'm pretty sure that I and some others will look very carefully at the comments, and not just the numbers, here, including those that are still to come, and come up with a significantly changed version of this proposal, which would have to be put, again, before the community from scratch in order to be adopted as policy. Between now and then, it might be more productive to stop trying to spin the !vote, stop trying to question the motives of those with whom one disagrees, stop trying to argue that this or that sub-group of the community should not "count", and, instead, think about how to constructively improve the status quo, if one is interested in doing so. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:53, 4 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My point stands that there has been a powerful shift in rhetoric. Why bother saying "certainly over 50% of the voters in this RfC (as it stands) would accept some form of CDA" if not "in order to produce something that can be rationalised as having enough support and little enough opposition to jam it through anyhow"?
What this RfC was actually about is in fact highly ambiguous. Yes, there was a link to a specific proposal. But on the one hand, the actual proposal at the top of this page, written in bold face, says "The community is being asked whether a proposal for community-based removal of administrator privileges, called Community de-Adminship (CDA) should be implemented as policy on the English Wikipedia." By any reading of that sentence, this RfC was about whether people would accept some form of CDA. And it has failed. Hesperian00:13, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Resolute, in (currently) opposed #176 also did a fine job of showing serious failings in the presentation of this proposal. "I would like to see evidence that the current methods of desysoping someone have failed such that this added lair of bureaucracy is required" and "no explanation of how this proposal benefits the project". The only reason based in any analysis that I can find that this proposal moved forward was the first two numbered items near the top of this page, at here. It referenced an earlier RfC where the only concept that saw even a simple majority of acceptance was some form of CDA. But, this was flawed analysis. Before the Fall 2009 RfC went live, the status quo was listed as of five possible options. By the end of that RfC, it was one of 14 possible options. This creates a fractured consensus. Concluding consensus from that RfC that the status quo is unacceptable is faulty logic. This parable by Kim Bruning does an excellent job of detailing why this sort of analysis is flawed. I've yet to see any solid basis on which to base the idea that CDA is needed or wanted by the community. I see plenty of conslusion drawing based on the various comments above, but no actual presentation of analysis to support such conclusions. Just lots of opinion. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:49, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The reasoning there is muddled. As I said above, it would be a good idea to think constructively about improving the status quo, if one is interested in doing so, but, obviously, not everyone is interested. The "fractured consensus" concocted above fails to acknowledge that the poll on the status quo did not ask editors to rate it relative to 13 other options, but rather to express "support" or "oppose" for it, in its own right. And with just under half of the respondents on this page supporting CDA, there is hardly anything like a consensus of satisfaction with the way things are now. And here we see, for the umpteenth time, repetition of the discredited canard that the proponents of CDA refused to show evidence of how it would be used beneficially. Just saying something over and over does not make it true. Proponents have refused (with a few very unfortunate exceptions) to name names of specific administrators, but we have not in any way failed to describe the kinds of administrative behavior for which CDA is intended. We can disagree as to whether such behavior exists, and as to the best way to deal with it if it does, but please do not misrepresent what others have said. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:54, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Saying over and over again how this CDA proposal RFC shows the community is against the status quo doesn't make it so either. Your opinion is just that. As to the prior RfC, it was not an up/down vote. Hell, even one of the supporters of CDA had it as their second choice. Kim Bruning's analogy applies. Misrepresent what others have said? I don't think so. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:29, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course not, since (let me save you the time) I'm a certified idiot. I therefore also declare your opinions as not having a shred of truth either. Are we making progress yet? :) Come on Tryp, please. You've drawn conclusions several times about the voting body here, doing so without actually citing any analysis. That's what I'm getting at. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:09, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What do you mean by saying that "obviously, not everyone is interested" in thinking constructively about improving the status quo? The good faith assumption would seem to be that everyone participating in the discussion is interested in this. Christopher Parham(talk)19:24, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's fair or accurate to suggest that there are people here who would reject improvements simply to preserve the status quo. Certainly I've seen no evidence of this. A fruitful collaborative environment is unlikely to exist if you believe that your collaborators aren't interested in making improvements. Christopher Parham(talk)19:53, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure what you mean, as you're the one making an assertion about the interests of other editors. I've stated what I view to be the good faith assumption in that regard. I also believe that an assumption of good faith is the only plausible road to an outcome that actually produces improvements. Christopher Parham(talk)20:01, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It means I'm listening, with great interest, and in good faith, for ideas from everyone in this discussion. I thought that was obvious. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:21, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"As I said above, it would be a good idea to think constructively about improving the status quo, if one is interested in doing so, but, obviously, not everyone is interested." I'm not sure I would label it as being disinterested in improving the status quo (as contradictory as that is), but rather questioning whether the status quo actually requires updating. For my part, as noted, I question the need for this process as it has not been demonstrated that current methods for removing an administrator are failing. The first step in changing the status quo is to demonstrate the need for it to change. The FAQ for this proposal contains rather nebulous and poorly defined statements that leave me to wonder if this aspect of the issue was ever seriously considered. i.e.: this process potentially acting as a "beneficial deterrent". While this is perhaps true, it equally likely, and completely unstated, that this process will also serve as a harmful deterrent for the exact same reason: some admins who are active in the more contentious areas of the project will find themselves subject to this process as a means of harrassment and may decide it just isn't worth it. As well intentioned as your motives are, I am not convinced this proposal is a benefit to the project. Certainly some of the comments above from some of the usual suspects at ANI has left me with the expectation that this process will serve mainly to further entrench the bitter divisions that exist in some areas of the project. In one case I can already see the gang mentality coupled with a victim complex emerging. And that, alas, is all that is necessary for this process to be abused. Lacking hard data explaining why this process is necessary, it becomes very difficult to support the drama pit this has the potential to become. Resolute23:56, 8 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In case it was unclear, when I said that "the reasoning there is muddled", by "there" I meant the comment directly above mine. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes it is, I agree. (That does not mean that anyone is going to try to argue that 158 is greater than 178, but rather, that there are various opinions that deserve to be considered.) --Tryptofish (talk) 00:19, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What it does mean is that we have a problem. We have to find a way of removing problem Admins without compromising the vast majority Admins. who do a good job. Easier said than done! - Ret.Prof (talk) 00:49, 9 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you can't get hundreds of Wikipedians to agree on what time it is, how are they going to agree on doing something fundamental to improve Wikipedia -- and if they can't, Wikipedia is going to die a slow, incremental, gradual death. It reminds me of Usenet ten years ago.
After observing Wikipedia since 2004, I have to say, it's headed south.
Yahoogroups with public archives used to come up high in Google searches, then Google made an adjustment.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
