Workshop page for Wikipedia:Administrator recall

At most levels of user access the decision to grant is made through community consensus. Local to the English Wikipedia, administrators and bureaucrats are selected by the community by requests for adminship, and the Arbitration Committee members by advisory elections. At Foundation level, stewards and the Board of Trustees are selected via steward's and Trustees' elections, respectivly. In all of these cases, trust is placed in the community to collectivly arrive at the correct decision.

With regards to adminstrators, they are expected to be "known and trusted member[s] of the community" before they can expect to be promoted. In some cases the behavior of the editor after being promoted may cause them to lose that trust.

For severe or acute abuse of administrator privledges, a requests for arbitration is an appropiate step. The Arbitration committee has ruled with regards to adminstrator conduct, and have revoked privledge as required. For problems that are chronic or that do not involve use of privledges, the Committe has traditionally been reticent to open a case.

For these cases, reconfirmation allows the community to discuss the candidate's continued position of trust.

Process edit

  1. The initial step is a request for comment to allow an attempt at solutions by community discussion.
  2. After at least arbitrary number Z days of discusion, any administrator may initiate a 'recall petition' on the main request for comment page.
  3. Providing that this motion is endorsed by at least arbitrary number X other administrators and arbitrary number Y, a request for reconfirmation will commence.
  4. This reconfirmation will have the structure of an existing request for promotion, and consensus will be interpreted by a bureaucrat.
  5. Arbcom shall then consider whether an administrator still enjoys the confidence of the community, and is still of net benefit to the project.
  6. If Arbcom deems the administrator to fail either of these conditions, it may certify the outcome and order the desysopping of the administrator, or impose other restrictions and remedies as it sees fit.

See also edit

Notes edit

  • Rough consensus for the parameter-free version of this policy may be established prior to implementation.
  • Arbitrary numbers X, Y, and Z are to be determined at a second stage of consensus gathering.
  • A final public dialog would then confirm this as policy.