Commons talk:Administrators/De-adminship/Archive 1

Preamble/Rationale

Obviously there is some feeling over this matter on a number of pages in the past while. Inactive admins can cause some issues for the work of a wiki. People may see that there are non contributing admins and this can affect their views. They may wish to contact an admin and pick someone who is not around for example.

Recently an inactive admin account on Wikipedia was hijacked and for a while spent time blocking admins (I confess I was amused though I guess if I had been blocked I might have seen it as different!). However to me Meta's admin philosophy is compelling - Sysop-hood is not a lifetime status. Get it if you need it. Keep it if people trust you. Quit it if you do not need it. Lose it if people feel they cannot trust you. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Process

I confess I am not at all sure about this aspect. I think positive affirmation of Admins as Meta does is probably too time consuming. Equally Wikibooks "advertise" de-adminship on the RfA page. This usually leads to folks misunderstanding what it is about and they start to vote or comment (I did when I saw it first). However the community may feel that some consultation should occur rather than merely delisting within the agreed parameters. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the bureaucrat's are well suited to do this, and should without any formal request just ask for desysopping at meta. -- Bryan (talk to me) 17:20, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Checkusers

In practice the policy is probably even more important for users with these rights. If other sysops are inactive either others are available for the task or the tasks will wait - CU tasks will not. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A and B

Er, what's the difference between A and B ? I think I missed it! ++Lar: t/c 18:25, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

A is admin actions only - B is admin actions & edits (at least I hope it is!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:32, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

thoughts

I like the suggestion. 5 admin stuff in 6 months, and totally disregarding the 50 / 12 months req. But it should be mentioned that admin acitivies also include editing protected pages. There are admins who are mainly doing this!

Another thought is that the 200 edits might be a little high as to when users can apply for adminship. I think we could lower it, at least to 150, so as to not having to impose hard limits on ourselves. The reason why this limit was set at all was of course to discourage total noobies; 150 edits might be OK....

Back to DE-admin.. It is important that admins get due notification if they are in the danger zone. They must be notified one month before they lose their adminship.

Fred Chess 21:51, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with a change of the 50 edits per year policy for deadminship. Barcex 06:57, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to require people to be active every 2 months or whatever, that seems forced. But I do agree something needs to be in place, people who haven't done anything in years and who aren't special cases (developers, board members, etc) do need to be gently and kindly removed. Not because there's a huge risk per se, but because it reduces clutter and makes it clearer who to go to and so forth. So I'm glad that work is being done to try to rationalise this. ++Lar: t/c 13:51, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

I wonder if a simpler, gentler way would be to just ask administrators who fall under either A or B if they're still around, and if so if they're still interested in helping out in an administrative sense? So, after 6 months of inactivity, we just leave a message on their talk asking them about it, and if there's no response within a month, just desysop? To me, this would seem to be a rather more courteous approach, and as anyone who is an administrator on commons knows, doing an RFA here isn't generally a painful process (hopefully it will always be so!) --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 15:55, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Hmmm, alright. I think that we can try SBJohnny's suggestion... it seems to be less painful, because users might not appreciate if they are deadmined because of a policy that wasn't in effect when they became admins.

I think that it would be a good time to ask 150 days after last use of an admin function. If they don't respond after 30 days, or if they respond they are ok with being deadmined, they are deadmined.

I've saved a dump of the Sysop Activity script (because it takes a while to complete) at User:Fred Chess/a. There are right now 26 admins who have >150 since last admin function used.

Fred Chess 10:43, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

This is looking good to me (& thanks for saving the dump - hadn't thought of that!). However - are we allowing a single admin action in 150 days to mean that they are "active". I'm not certain I find that reasonable - I would prefer to see say five actions? The method between Johnny & Fred looks very good though and in keeping with Commons approach. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:55, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Using the dump is certainly a lot easier, but if we're just asking people if they still need the tools, any low number will do. If we're giving them a few weeks to check in on their talk page, that will tell us what we really need to know: if someone asks an admin for something but the admin never checks their talk page, they really shouldn't be on the admin list. 150 days also shortens it to 5 (rather than 6) months anyway, so if someone appears on that log, we can easily check their user logs to see if there were a total of 5 actions in the 6 month period. I don't think it needs to be about number of actions or edits anyway: the issue is being available to help users in need. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 14:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

OK - quite happy BUT -

Scenario - missing admin has message on talk page after 150 days. Before 30 days are up they come along and make take one admin action (never know there could be a file to delete!!) and do nothing else. Would you say it should be another 150 days before they are contacted again? I would not be happy with that I think. I agree Admins should be available and this one would not be? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:05, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, if they don't respond, they will be deadmined. It doesn't matter if they make an admin action in between. But they only need to respond "yes I would like to keep being an admin" for them to keep it... / Fred Chess 15:26, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed but if they only take admin action does that mean that they will not be approached for another 150 days. I may be a little cynical but if I wished to "preserve" my admin status two deletions a year would do it? Indeed in a sense all I have to do is say "I want to still be an admin" and that will be that - I don't think that will solve any activity issues --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:48, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

(reset tabs) I'm with Fred here: it's a question of whether they respond, say "yes, I'm here, and will be available if someone needs my help". OTOH, maybe leave that message on the user talk for 2 weeks, not 30 days. If it takes 3 weeks to get a reply, they're really not "available". The 150 days is plenty of cushion for those who are just taking a break for a while and don't feel like announcing to the world that they're going on vacation (though we hope they'll take pictures, of course). And if they come back in 3 weeks and are surprised, no biggie... an RFA only takes another week, and I'm sure they'll go through with little trouble. --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 15:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

However that is a looser policy than the current which requires 50 edits per year. This idea would merely mean saying "yes I want to keep the rights". Not going to work for me or, I think, some of the others who have posted around about "inactivity". I think it should be done nicely but with a minimum activity figure over 6 months included --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:58, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually I'd support it being 50 edits + actions within 6 months, but perhaps cutting that to 25 would be better. Making the requirement be both saying "yes, I want the rights" and bringing their 6 month count to 25, 50 or whatever would be even better.... who knows, it might even re-ignite their intrest in contributing once they've fulfilled the requirement :). --SB_Johnny|^talk|_books 17:08, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

About the new proposal

The AN thread actually didn't say that the admin need to make 5 admin actions in the following month, it only required the admin to respond that he still needs the tools. Are we going to try and work with that, or didn't you like it? / Fred Chess 09:13, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

OK - for me there should be some minimum activity (there is a present but over twelve months) edits or admin actions but I'm happy to go with the majority --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately one admin required contact via mail in addition to contact via the talk page. But I am opposed to that, for the same reason as SB Johnny. So I don't know how to proceed. Do you? / Fred Chess 19:17, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that the email link should work. If someone is apparently inactive and their email DOESN'T work, that is a good reason to remove them right there. Post a notice on their talk, and wait a bit, and then remove them. If their email does work, that is in itself not a reason to keep, they have to respond saying they want it. I actually am coming around to the idea of letting inactive admins keep their status as long as they say they do want to keep it (and are otherwise in good standing), regardless of number of edits or admin actions. But I'm not too sussed if it goes differently. ++Lar: t/c 04:11, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

All in all I think I'm with Fred here, if we are relying on email to get them they are not active. I'll try and tidy the policy a bit later today when I have more time (unless anyone else does!) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:24, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Tweaked a bit, email taken out - I do feel if they do not login they are not active. Hopefully clarified an overall activity level within the six months, nearly there? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:06, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Voluntary deadminship

This needs to be mentioned if this wider policy is developed. If an admin requests removal of the bit voluntarily, under when can they be speedily reapproved and when can they have to go through the full process. I'd suggest if the former admin's activity is such that they would not have been forcibly desysopped at the time of the readminship request that it is granted speedily. Otherwise, they should go through the process like a forcibly desysopped user. Note: I bring this up as will apply to me.--Nilfanion 22:42, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

If an admin gives up his adminship voluntary due to inactivity, I see no problem with him getting it back speedily, upon his request (such as is the case with Nilfanion).

I think it is necessary to define under which circumstances this would apply. For example, Andre Engels recently resigned his sysop and b'crat bits for three different reasons. [1] Applies to him?

Furthermore, what if an admin was involved in serious disputes just before he announced that he was taking a break?

A solution might be that every request for readminship is to be posted at the COM:AN. It could then be evaluated independantly, and if there are no objections, a b'crat would restore the adminship. But if any other admin objects, then a standard RFA is required.

Fred Chess 23:55, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Just a note, "the full process" is not exactly onerous, and I would expect any existing admin who was desysopped for inactivity or voluntarily requested a break, would easily pass another RfA. But the community has already once expressed their approval, so perhaps all that is needed is the person to confirm to a bureaucrat that they have checked what has happened to policy in their absence, so they are aware of the latest practices? --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 23:58, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreeing fully with pfctdayelise & Fred - to me anyone who is a good contributor who voluntarily takes a break and hands back the tools (don't we wish others would do it) deserves respect. I would hope regaining the tools would be a simple & speedy process --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:39, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Agree with all above. Cary Bass ^demandez 12:17, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I think there may be conflicts if you parse carefully but I'll agree with all above anyway. The key point here is that admins in good standing who voluntarily take a break ought to be able to get their bit back without too much fuss. I'd favour a request to a local 'crat and nothing more. ++Lar: t/c 13:37, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• reset & thinks

So are we trying to get through a deadminship policy and then tackle re-applying or can we do re-applying (based on the above section) afterwards (I'll happily work on it)? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:42, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me the two are intertwined, for voluntary. Else what's the need of a voluntary deadminship policy  ??? ... anyone can deadmin themselves by turning up on Meta and saying "deadmin me please", with the proper crosslinks to show they are who they say they are... our policy ought to speak to what happens next, and that's about all it needs to say. If you see what I mean. Now, INvoluntary is a different kettle of fish I guess. Am I making any sense here??? My flight got me into the hotel at 1 AM last nite so it's very possible I am not. ++Lar: t/c 14:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

OK - what I thought we were do was coming up with a "de-sysoping through inactivity policy/process" (& I thought we might be nearly there - I sense Fred may want to deal with some).

I do think there should be guidance (policy?) for the re-sysopping of those of "good standing" who leave voluntarily (I kinda like to "no objections" route personally).

But do you (all - Lar after sleep!)want me to try and tie the two together? I'll have some time tomorrow I hope. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:45, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Adminship is not an honorary title. It is merely an access level and is no big deal. It can be taken away and reinstated on request. -- Cat ^chi? 19:52, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

• reset

Taking this forward. I see two different issues here

1. Removing admins who are no longer active
2. Dealing with previous admins who have relinquished the tools voluntarily and are seeking to return

Personally I do not see these as connected in a policy sense. So - I would like to complete the inactivity policy sooner rather than later? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Then

Possibly guidelines for dealing with returning users who desysopped at their own request

I think a hard and fast policy here would be wrong. "Guidelines" might be useful. If I were writing them they might go

Should a user who has been desysopped at their own request wish to become a sysop again they must first ensure that they are up to date with current policies. It would be expected that they would show some quantity of edits too. In the first instance they should approach an active 'crat to request a review of their position. The bureaucrat could decide based on the user's previous standing that the tools could be returned to them (possibly an exceptional case). Alternatively the bureaucrat could approach other active sysops and solicit their views before returning the tools. Finally the bureaucrat could direct the user to a conventional RfA

Maybe/Maybe not? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:22, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

I like it. Would be a good idea to make sure our bureaucrats are comfortable with potentially making such decisions too, though. --pfctdayelise (说什么?) 01:22, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure Fred is watching this page but you are right, it would need running past bureaucrats for sure. Personally I think it would be exceptional that a granting of rights again would take place in such a way but it would be an option. What I would like to do is clear up the deadmin thing first & then maybe put some more time/effort into this aspect of granting sysop rights --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't like it, I prefer to stick with my earlier suggestion: that all request for regained adminship are to be posted at the COM:AN. If there are no outstanding complaints against it, any bureaucrat can grant the request after 24 hours. It would: (a) give further input, (b) be better to not be forced to rely on a sole bureaucrat (who might not be active, or know the user beforehand, etc etc), (c) a safety valve against admins who have returned for wrong reasons, (d) it would inform the community about the admin's request. / Fred Chess 22:00, 18 May 2007 (UTC) edited by Fred Chess 16:37, 19 May 2007 (UTC))

As long as I have your attention, I would like to bring up Yet Another Issue. So far, when an admin is deadmined, he has been removed from commons:List of administrators (unless that is forgotten, which has happened). Sometimes users are also commented out, especially from the list of admins per date (and often deadmined admins aren't even removed from that list, nor the list of admins by language). It is probably useful to make a list of former admins, like they have on English Wikipedia, and also the reason why they were deadmined. It should be used for reference purpose. Is anyone up for starting the page Commons:Former administrators? / Fred Chess 22:15, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Some information exists on Commons:Administrators/Archive. May be format is not the best... --EugeneZelenko 14:06, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Time to put it live?

I think it is time to put this live. But maybe we should have a vote on it? -- Bryan (talk to me) 17:47, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Agreed but see Fred's talk page - off now but will look at it again tomorrow --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

You could throw in the proposal on the COM:AN, see whether everyone agrees with it. If they do, then we're set to go. If several users oppose it, then we withdraw it and rewrite it, then try again, until reasonable consensus is achieved. / Fred Chess 16:39, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Users who want to stay admin, but don't show activity

In my opinion users must show real activity to keep the sysop bit. Saying after a message on their talk page "I would like to stay admin", should not be enough. Admins should be to a reasonable amount active; not only "willing to be admin". Opinions on this? -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:35, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, it is nice to have a reasonable amount of administrative activity, but I find it difficult to measure. I am also worried that it will be hard to get consensus on it (but, please, do try). / Fred Chess 16:48, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Further discussions

• Copied from Fred Chess's talk page

Well Fred - one thing first would be good!

Can I seek your view on closing the "deadminship though inactivity" bit? In a sense the others are linked but so is anything about admins and to get one bit done would be good? I'll happily work on the "getting the tools back" one (would you prefer "policy" or "guidelines"?) & I do see your point, but I would rather it was a separate proposal. The "ex admin" one is a good idea - I'm not sure that my knowledge of Commons history is extensive enough to allow me to contribute much to it but I will happily try. Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:08, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Right, we should finish that. But how to do with email confirmation? Opinions differ. Does it hurt to send out email confirmation? Ok, probably not, so lets go with that. I've changed that part.

Secondly: Herby, is it your own invention to add that the admin must show activity after the message has been sent out? Or can you please direct me to a thread where this has been suggested? Otherwise, would it be OK to change it to "the admin will retain his adminship if he answers that he wishes to do so. If he answers otherwise, or doesn't answer at all within 4 (2?) weeks, he will lose it."?

Fred Chess 16:46, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Another thing: we'd have to make a list of users that are inactive, and whether they have been asked yet, and how long they have to answer. / Fred Chess 20:02, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

OK - email doesn't worry me much, it is not worth disagreeing about!

However, your second point... I am against allowing continuing adminship to inactive admins who merely say "I want to keep the tools". This - to me - does not make them active and if they have not edited at all they will not be up to date with the processes in the community. People who would respond like this would not have a reason to keep what are really tools for keeping Commons clean? I feel that they should actually then make five admin actions within the 30 days (meaning they are "active" in terms of this policy) - if they cannot find five files to delete they no longer know their way around Commons!

I imagine a table with user name, last admin action, talk page message sent, email sent, 6 month inactivity date, for example would work. There are quite a few admins (as well as yourself & Eugene) more than happy to look after that sort of process I think? Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:23, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if it matters regarding inactivity. An admin could just delete and restore the same page 3 times, if he is forced to. The idea of voluntary giving up the admin bit is then lost, and it is precisely the voluntary bit that I am a proponent of.

Also consider the scenario: If an inactive admin had made his last 2 deletions on January 21, then he only has to make another three deletions before June 21. And then we would have to ask him again, because the edits from January are no longer within the 150 day time frame.

Another problem is that you require five admin contribs within 150 days and I don't know how to calculate that with our current tools. Because you can actually only see when the user made his last edit (or admin action), and how long before that he made his 50th. But even if the tool was rewritten, I'd still personally prefer my suggestion of just one admin action per 150 days. It would still result in more than 25 admins today being asked.

I don't think it is that big a deal if we have a couple of inactive admins; I just want them to be aware that the community is watching their activity. And I think it is also better to start slow; this activity requirement wasn't in effect when they became admins. If we want to change the admin requirements, then there should really be consensus on the issue, not a majority poll. I actually do support your proposal, but do you think everyone does? / Fred Chess 16:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Fred Chess 16:22, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

You are making me think again!

I guess your reasoning of just returning to make 5 edits was something I had against the idea of sending an email - at least if they log in they are sort of active. That aspect I am going to think about - I'm beginning to agree with you I think. I'm going to point Bryan towards this too as I know he is interested in this. As we cannot stop them merely returning, taking five actions and then going into hibernation again why worry about it. I guess my real reservation would be what we would do if it happens again with the same inactive admin?

As to the "five actions" issue, I wondered about that. I got the activity page (yesterday), saved it as a text file, stripped the "active" ones out, marked the truly inactive (more than 150 days to any admin action) & then looked at the logs for the rest (high numbers of days to 50 admin actions). It didn't really take me any time worth speaking of and once the process starts there should be relatively few to look at. I imagine that it would not be done very often - every two months or so maybe?

As to whether people agree? Well no one has really spoken out against it (on Wikibooks it would have been argued to death by now!) and there does seem to be quite a few people who appear to see things similarly - the only way to find out in the end will be to ask. I guess I am more after getting the principle in than all the detail.

I'm emailing you my list of ones I see as candidates rather than clutter your talk page - you may well want to put the listing elsewhere. There are a couple of queries with it too.

Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:57, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

I see Fred's point. We can solve it in two ways: all admins must be reconfirmed after a year, like meta's policy, or we can just allow people who want to stay admin but don't meet the limits keep the admin bit. In order to avoid complicate matters, we should maybe just do the latter one. -- Bryan (talk to me) 16:23, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Looking for a compromise - how about trying this. They can say "I want to keep my rights" after six months. However after a further six months, not making 5 admin actions, they are then desysopped? Makes it a little more complicated to administer but maybe kinder & more acceptable (these people have been useful to Commons in the past)? Regards --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

The compromise is  Supported by me! If it is as easy as Herby says to derive five admin actions from the logs, then I also  Support that part.

To have admins reconfirmed after a years has struck me. They have it on Swedish Wikipedia too. Problem is that Commons has almost 200 admins, while meta and sv.wiki only have around 70-80. Do we want to spend time voting for admins all the time? I am undecided if I support this idea -- it seems to work for meta and sv.wiki, but we don't know if it would work for us. So I am  Neutral to that suggestion.

According to meta:Meta:Administrators, a former admin can request his adminship back at any time. That's real cool of them. But, as I have argued before, I prefer that such requests be posted at the COM:AN.

Commons differs from meta in the following ways: (1) users often use Commons in their normal Wiki-editing, so most users would find the admin-bit handy. (2) You can do more damage as an admin on Commons than on meta.

Fred Chess 20:05, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Towards closing?

So now trying to get to a point of closing this I have changed some wording slightly reflecting comments so far. Hopefully we can move this to policy shortly. I will work on the "return from voluntary de-sysop" afterwards. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Affected sysops

As of Monday May 21 the admin activity shows the following as affected by this proposal if it were to have been policy then.

The first section plain fail on time since last admin action.

User name E +50 A +50

• Anthere 13 421 609 217
• Arniep 177 16 178 169
• Conti 46 6 295 144
• Dori 90 106 217 36
• Erin Silversmith 225 30 244 29
• Evil Monkey 102 204 323 230
• Fanghong 4 9 195 416
• GerardM 23 368 330 434
• Grm wnr 93 254 321 140
• Grön 303 25 293 34
• Jdforrester 22 347 247 426
• Jossifresco 66 213 323 111
• Neutrality 136 55 183 691
• Piom <1 330 353 194
• Ran 151 548 170 372
• Sanbec 29 200 173 61
• Shaqspeare 121 182 302 55
• Silsor 167 322 434 331
• Solipsist 18 194 235 362
• Taw 90 <1 335 242
• W.wolny 20 21 248 225
• Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason 290 243 364 209
• 竹麦éš(Searobin) 89 187 184 554

In this section those bulleted fail on 5 admin actions. Those with "?" are borderline

• Anathema 258 126 62 230
• Aoineko 49 491 157 226
• Ausir 39 289 45 434
• BrokenSegue 105 461 105 413
• Dbenbenn 224 114 321 9

Golden Wattle 14 83 69 291
?Morven 7 131 138 306
?Notafish 5 278 138 615

• Plugwash 13 510 13 676

?Rdsmith4 58 446 80 617
?Reytan <1 199 40 414

• Richie 29 342 111 273
• Thryduulf 55 61 128 359
• Tomomarusan 3 243 149 232

Golden Wattle is an odd one see User:Golden_Wattle & is not listed in Admins & User:Water_Bottle suggests they have left the project?

--Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to let you know that Golden Wattle was formerly known as AYArktos --Golden Wattle 00:10, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Poll

This proposal has been accepted by the Wikimedia Commons community. Please do not make any edits to this archive.

This poll is running until 13 June 2007 23:59 UTC

Copied from main page for clarity

Support

I support the proposal as it currently is.

 Support --Herby ^{talk thyme} 19:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 Support --Walter Siegmund (talk) 20:07, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 Support   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 20:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 Support Samulili 21:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 Support Er Komandante (messages) 22:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

 Support Golden Wattle 00:24, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support -- Túrelio 06:34, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support EugeneZelenko

 Support --MichaelMaggs 11:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support GerardM 09:20, 3 June 2007 (UTC) In this proposal it is up to the admin to react or default and de-admin by not reacting. That is a sane way of doing this.

 Support Siebrand 09:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support Yonatan ^talk 07:10, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support --THUGCHILDz 18:32, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support William Avery 21:02, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support Kjetil r 20:42, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support Fred J 09:12, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support Lcarsdata 15:06, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support Adambro 20:47, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support, any person should at least have one edit per 6 months and at least 50 edits per year. I can make 50 edits per day without effort. People who know they will be inactive for a long period of time (such as being deployed to Iraq) can voluntarily ask their adminship to be suspended for that certain period of time. -- Cat ^chi? 21:53, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support very reasonable proposal. (→zelzany - framed) 00:22, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support riana_dzasta 00:09, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

 Support Erwin85 20:23, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

I oppose the proposal as it currently is.

•  Oppose The current policy is satisfactory. Attitude of stewards is not. Changing the policy is not the solution. --Juiced lemon 10:00, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
•  Comment note this is not a general poll among Commons members... the only thing that matters is what administrators think. / Fred J 10:47, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
  • .... since when? Administrators are no different than other editors, they merely have the sysop bit. --Iamunknown 21:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
•  Oppose The current policy is fine. Wooyi 00:46, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Other

•  Comment "the proposal as it currently is" is what, exactly? "Proceed to deadmin inactive admins"?   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 20:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
  •  Comment There is no such thing as proceed to deadmin inactive admins. We did have a vague policy about inactive admins, but it was never enforced because the stewards found it to vague to act up on. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:28, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

"Inactive" means no edits in the past 6 months and fewer than 50 edits in the last year.

Is that no admin activity in the past six months and less than 50 admin actions in the last year? Or do all edits count? I don't mind the stricter version but I just wanted to ask. Samulili 21:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

•  CommentThe version of the policy currently linked to for voting says in the proposal:

"Inactive" means less than 5 admin actions in the past 6 months.

This is different to the current policy which says

"Inactive" means no edits in the past 6 months and fewer than 50 edits in the last year.

As I understand the proposal it makes no reference to recent edit activity and only to recent admin activity. --Golden Wattle 00:23, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

This seems to reflect the concern that, if tools are provided for doing the job, when they are not used for extensive periods, the need must have gone. It is no reflection on activity or involvement with the community. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:25, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

•  Comment With this proposal, a sysop would be encouraged to carry out admin actions in order to keep his admin abilities. It's not a matter of play. If you don't check the appropriateness of the admin actions, any counting is useless. I wish a new proposal which endorses the current policy, in order to implement it. --Juiced lemon 10:15, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • So write one.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 14:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
  • Of course administrators using their tools irresponsibly should have their privileges revoked. The risk that privileges are abused (by the administrator or by someone using the administrator's login details) increases with the number of users who have been granted adminship. The risk that an administrator's account is taken over and abused without detection increases as the administrator's activity decreases. Thus, the purpose of the proposal, as I understand it, is to reduce that risk before it is realized when this can be done without limiting active contributors. This proposal doesn't negate the ability to de-op users whose privileges have already been abused, but since inactivity is easier to detect automatically than questionable administrative actions, I think we have a good opportunity to prevent abuse proactively. —LX (talk, contribs) 14:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• • • LX makes a good point - we need to include the standard clause for deadminship of an active admin, ie a consensus deadmin poll. The current wording suggests the only way anyone is ever desysopped is via inactivity. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 14:32, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

•  Comment Could someone put the proposal as it currently is inside a box at the top of this page, or something? I confess I don't know exactly what variant is being voted on. Thanks! I went and looked at the page, saw a few nits and made some grammar changes, per [2] If that is the "current" proposal, I support it. But I'm not quite sure it is :) ++Lar: t/c 19:10, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

•  Comment Why we want sysop access removed from inactive administrators? As far as I know, there is no limit to the number of administrators the wiki can have, policies don't change often enough to make a sysop obsolete upon wikibreak return, and if we need active administrators to handle backlogs, new ones can be selected. While I thought 6 months was a good time frame, I think it should be extended to a 12 or 18 months, so that only the administrators that had really left the process be desysoped as a security measure only. -- ReyBrujo 20:45, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

• I guess there is a sense in which we want to remind them that they are sysops here. Quite a few pages a while back were enquiring about inactive admins and (apart from security issues) it makes the admin list less helpful than it might be. In practice if they say they want to keep the tools they can for a further six months anyway. Equally they can declare that they are going away for a while & that time won't count. If you look further up the page there is some discussion on the return to sysop status of those who have left voluntarily - I'm planning to work on that & pfctdayelise's concerns above after my holiday (unless anyone else starts it....? --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:15, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

• We have also proposed that de-admined admins, aswell as those who voluntary resign their adminship, can be re-admined by requesting adminship back on the COM:AN or asking a bureaucrat. If a bureaucrat doesn't want to readmin, only then must the admin go through the full RFA process. Is anyone against that? / Fred J 09:18, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

• My plan was to have a go at some detail on this & pick up pfctdayelise's point above when I'm back from holiday if you want some detail and no one else does it. I am basically in favour of this tho Fred --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
• I'm not against readminning via COM:AN or a bureaucrat, but fairness would dictate that the request for re-admin be placed in the same pages as the notice of inactivity deadminship or resignation, or those pages would show incorrect status.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs|supports deadminship for inactivity) 13:59, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I think request on COM:A is better idea. At least candidate could demonstrate activity (and seriousness of intentions) during voting time. And also Commons processes could be changed during absence time, so other people could provide useful input on voting page.

In such situation I'll follow to behave that way.

EugeneZelenko 14:05, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Extend time, please?

Could the timeframe for the poll please be extended by 7 days? I would like to send out a message to all admins informing them about the poll.

Fred J 19:41, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Or actually, now that I read the policy anew, maybe it won't be necessary since this new proposal is not really that drastic? / Fred J 19:46, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it's necessary, and to be honest I think it's a little bit too late to extend the poll. -- Bryan (talk to me) 20:51, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Why would you put a deadline on a poll? — Omegatron 01:21, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

It would have gone on forever otherwise.   — Jeff G. (talk|contribs) 19:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

??? Is there something wrong with that? — Omegatron 23:19, 12 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we need to drive this to resolution. Going on forever would not achieve that. ++Lar: t/c 01:18, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Because consensus is based on the number of people who showed up and voted a particular way on a particular day? — Omegatron 01:50, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

Oppose

•  Oppose - for the same reasons as English Wikipedia (Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship, Perennial proposals), and because this was decided by vote, amongst a small group of people, with a short deadline, preventing any wider input from the community. — Omegatron 20:05, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Working on putting it together

I am hereby informing everyone, that I am now working on writing and putting together the relevant material. / Fred J 12:44, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

This is an official policy. You must not add a new section according to your liking. More, it was out of scope. Therefore, I have reverted your changes. --Juiced lemon 15:41, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Well instead of reverting each other, we might as well discuss here about getting the admin bit back. I personally agree that admins who have been voluntary desysopped should get there adminship speedily back. However I'm not sure whether the AN is the ideal place for that. I would say that they just post a request on Commons:Administrators/Requests and votes, and that bureaucrats can speedily close the discussion and promote the admin after a few days, at their discretion. -- Bryan (talk to me) 19:12, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

1. This /page is for De-adminship, so it is inappropriate to comment on how to become an administrator.

2. Voluntary desysopping must not be a way to bypass this new rule regarding inactivity. This project continually advances, and inactive users are out of touch quickly: I don't want “out of touch” administrators.

--Juiced lemon 19:52, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't want you to act like that... please watch your tone. You both have valid concerns which is why we need to discuss things. The addition would be perfectly fit for this page because it would discuss how to become an administrator again if you were dysyopped. Please also do not say "I don't want" this or that... it gives a bad image. Cbrown1023 talk 20:42, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

This was discussed in the section above, please scroll up to the "comments" section, where I very straight forward asked if people were against the re-admin option, and no-one said they were. If anyone still want to discuss it even more, then OK, lets discuss it then. For example, I have no problem with Bryan's suggestion.

I would also like to inform Juiced Lemon that it is not appreciated of him that he sticks his nose everywhere it doesn't belong. There are enough admins watching this page, who -- I believe -- are more competent than him in judging what should and should not be on the page.

Fred J 21:35, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

And why do YOU put YOUR NOSE in this page? I believe you have no competence to make ANY change in it. You have no ability to assess competences of users neither. --Juiced lemon 21:58, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Please specify that this only works if they resign under good circumstance or not "under a cloud". However, I do hope you can word it better than I can. The point behind this is so that people don't just resign after accusations and then get their bit back after said accusations have died down. Cbrown1023 talk 21:48, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

That's the fine idea with them posting a request at a public place such as the COM:AN :-)

As I said on #Possibly guidelines for dealing with returning users who desysopped at their own request, we should have a 24 hour time frame, where users would mention such circumstances. After that, a bureaucrat will check if there are outstanding issues, and if there are then he should be reluctant to restore the adminship, and the user must go the long way.

Fred J 22:01, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

A “24 hour time frame, where users would mention such circumstances”. That would not concern a lot of users. You don't explain why there is such urgency to restore administrator abilities to an inactive user. --Juiced lemon 00:22, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Explanation for edit protection

Okay, I have edit protected the page. I am aware of the generally agreed on Wikipedia rule that one should not edit protect a page he is involved in editing, but this policy affects admins after all, and I do not see that Juiced's complains have validity (partly because I do not have any trust in Juiced's general behavior). If any admin thinks I am wrong (most people here are admins) you can unprotect or revert me and I will not complain. But please, I'd rather we could discuss the policy itself, so that we can move forward. Fred J 21:54, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

From the comments above, I can agree that there is consensus on what is currently written on the project page. Please note that there are more ways to determine consensus than only polls. -- Bryan (talk to me) 21:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

You are refering to obsolete comments. With this addition, the new rule about De-adminship has no more sense. That scorns the decision of 21 voters. --Juiced lemon 22:13, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm slightly uncomfortable about Fred J protecting the page. This comment would suggest to me that it might be inappropriate; no-one should be excluded from contributing to policies of importance to the whole community. Protecting the page continues to exclude users. Adambro 22:24, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I have asked for discussion; I have only seen support and no complaints; yet when I try to implement it I get reverted and must accept that because all our dear users are so valuable that they must be allowed to edit all our policies. Fine! Page unprotected.

Fred J 22:34, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

I have reverted Juiced lemon's last edit, it was pointy, and had no conensus. Cbrown1023 talk 00:13, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

The other version has no consensus, too. --Juiced lemon 00:28, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

We must stop non consensual changes of this policy. User:Fred_J is not specially authorized to make POV modifications to this page, grounds to misinterpretations of previous discussions. I request a poll regarding this issue. --Juiced lemon 00:36, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Juiced lemon' proposal

Consequences for resigning administrators

Users who have voluntary resigned their adminship for 180 days or less can get them restored in a speedy process. The best way is for the user to post a request for it on COM:AN, where everyone can see it.

Beyond 180 days, former administrators are reckoned to have lost their adminship as a result of inactivity.

Comments

Following a recent poll (ended on 13 June 2007 23:59 UTC), the policy has been updated according to the Commons talk:Administrators/De-adminship#Proposal adopted proposal.

However, User:Fred_J was insistent in adding this new section, which would obviouly impair this policy, since resignation would be an easy way to bypass the inactivity rule (based on m:Meta:Administrators).

Therefore, I wrote this new proposal, in order to prevent new admin-biased modifications. Could we also add that desysoped admins can regain their adminship according to the normal process? --Juiced lemon 08:18, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Seems ok to me. But I prefer a speedy process on the standard page Commons:Administrators/Requests and votes. The AN is already overcrowded, so it is easy to miss a section. The advantage of using R&V is that if the bureaucrats decide that the user will not speedily get his adminship back, the page can just stay there, and run its full seven days. -- Bryan (talk to me) 15:07, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Inactivity

I think, that there is a problem with User:Dbenbenn. He is Bureaucrat, Check user and Sysop, but I cannot find any activity since Oct. 8th, 2006. I've found nothing in contributions, logfiles and also no notice on his Userpage about a reason for inactivity. Because I think, that it is too dangerous, when there is an account with so much power and no control (seems so). I want, that this account has no longer the rights of Bureaucrat, Check user and Sysop . If someone knows something about this account, he may answer me here . Augiasstallputzer 09:40, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Following the acceptance of this policy change, he & others will be de-admined (as far as I know) fairly soon. Cheers --Herby ^{talk thyme} 09:46, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

I have written two pages: Commons:Administrators/Inactivity section and Commons:Administrators/De-adminship/Warning message. If the warning message is just checked for language, and the inactivity sections is piffed up a little graphically, I think we could begin. / Fred J 13:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

good stuff. We need to not remove Anthere, though. :) ++Lar: t/c 03:18, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

We need a general exemption clause for Board members and developers. pfctdayelise (说什么?) 04:40, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

I'll write into the one I'm working on? On Wikibooks it was pointed out to me that developers could give themselves the rights anyway! I agree the exemption should be there --Herby ^{talk thyme} 06:56, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, developers CAN give themselves the rights, and in emergencies, do so, but I suspect the community likes it better if they ask for them the normal way. That said, I still think they (and stewards, and board members) ought to get a waiver on inactivity... ++Lar: t/c 03:07, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure not only the community but also the devs themselves feel more comfortable to go through the normal way. Once I asked Brion for a series of deletions, then he reversely asked me if it would be okay with me he would do it using his sysop right, not from the shell and leaving no record on the log the normal users could examine.

However steward inactivity could be argued. Now on Japanese Wikipedia a vote for desysoping Suisui is ongoing, since he has been inactive for months. JAWP has such exceptions for board members, devs and stewards, but this was proposed based on an assupmtion, they might be active on other projects. It could be argued if you would like to keep such totally inactive people as your flagged users. On Japanese Wikipedia, many people seem to think it uncomfortable for now. --Aphaia 22:48, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

So, should we exempt stewards and developers or not? If necessary, they can make themselves admins here. Having them as admins here might be more to show respect and confidence, than to require them to be active. Should stewards and developers be exempt from this de-adminship policy?

I have sent out de-admin warnings to all affected admins, and sent emails to those that did not respond to the talk page notice, because the current de-adminship policy does not mention exceptions. Several of the stewards where not happy to have to sign the list because of -- I believe -- the reasons I just gave. But the only steward or developer who has not signed as of yet is user:brion VIBBER. Should he still keep the adminship, and should stewards and developers in general not have to sign the list?

Fred J 14:24, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I think they're seperable, we could do one and not the other. I'm not exactly sure of the process by which one is set to be a developer. Stewards on the other hand go through a public process (I should know how public! I stood unsuccessfully last year), and get reconfirmed by the community every year. So they seem somehow different to me. I would favour exempting developers more than I would favour exempting stewards. (and Board Members more than developers... to be clear I favour exempting all three, but feel strongest about board members and least strong about stewards) ++Lar: t/c 14:59, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

I see no reason to exempt stewards at all. Board would probably be courteous to leave as they are. Developers - I guess that they will be able to do what they like anyway (if they really want/need to) --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:53, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Alright, then brion is excused, no de-adminship. I'll exempt the others in future de-adminships. / Fred J 17:11, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Why in the hell would you de-admin a developer anyway? Why would you de-admin anyone? There's no point. — Omegatron 22:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

Desysopship as a result of power abuse

Per Commons:Administrators'_noticeboard/User_problems#About_a_de-adminship_procedure, I have been bold and added a clause about removing an administrator's rights if the administrator is abusing his/her power. There is wide consensus for this addition. The only point that remains is whether there is a need for about 50% of the community to vote for removal, or about 75% to vote for removal (the numbers are, of course, approximate). At the moment, most have sustained that 50% is probably enough. As such, I have opened up a poll below. (that was Pat I think)

Note, I added some. ++Lar: t/c 17:24, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Proposal

De-adminship through a standard RfA type vote will possibly require only about 25%, about 50% of participants, or aboutt 75%. Please note that these numbers are approximate, as these are of course discussions, and note a vote, and a bureaucrat is given the normal leeway in closing the discussion.

Support "failure consensus" (a bit over 25%)

Note: If a re RfA were being run, somewhere over 25% or so would be enough to fail it, in normal circumstances. Support here means you view this process as more of a regular RfA than a de-RfA (where the sense is reversed) and what is shown is lack of clear consensus to keep.

 Oppose - bad idea. Will encourage deadminship for every single grudge someone holds against another person. Patstuart 19:52, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Support majority consensus only (about 50%)

•  SupportI have been at en.wp for a while, and when there are a lot of users, it is almost impossible to get a supermajority on anything, even the most obvious things. I almost guarantee you even the most obvious deadminship would fail there. I would say, given the easy manner in which users can seek adminship on commons, requiring only about a 50% majority is not a problem. In fact, it's rare that users have 50% vote against them in an RFA. What this says to me is that if a user manages to get over a 50% deadminship approval, after being able to garner over 80% support to begin with, this user is probably not worthy of adminship. I do not think that 50% of users will vote against someone simply in a revenge/gotcha sort of way. Also, an administrator can reapply for approval at any time if the community believes s/he has reformed his/her ways. Patstuart 17:18, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
•  Support if 50% of regular users concerned enough to comment think there's an issue, there almost certainly is. We need not make the barrier to removal insurmountably high in my view. ++Lar: t/c 17:19, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
•  Support The adminship process needs a highter majority, so a de-adminship process with simple majority cannot lead to instability (because of the hysteresis). --Juiced lemon 19:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
•  Support, adminship should be easy to gain and easy to lose. Kjetil r 21:26, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
•  Neutral -- I can live with this. / Fred J 00:11, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
•  Support I find the reasoning of Patstuart, Lar and Juiced lemon compelling. I changed my opinion from favoring the 25% option. Walter Siegmund (talk) 02:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)
•  Support It's also important that we take in to account the possibility of virtually non-Commeners coming in and supporting their friend without good, impartial judgement. Samulili 06:56, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

• Seems fairly common sense (no pun intended). We probably don't need to write that into the policy, though, as bureaucrats can usually discern such things on their own on normal RfA's. Patstuart 20:01, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Support standard RfA consensus (about 75%)

•  Support I have had thoughts of how adminship should be confirmed every one year, in the style of meta and sv.wiki. I wrote a draft at User:Fred J/Adminship confirmation about a month ago but it needs further input and probably others are more suited to write it... Anyways, I prefer having a confirmation procedure (with standard RfA rules), and then I think that these type of emergency de-sysopping should have to be supported by 75%. / Fred J 18:00, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Oppose any numerical standard

 Oppose - support in theory, though. We need to have some kind of measuring stick, or else we could have one 'crat declaring that 30% is consensus to deadmin, and another one claiming 95% isn't. Patstuart 19:53, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Comments

In an indecision case (concerning a poll for de-adminship), I suggest to extend the duration of the poll to an agreed period. This period could be renewed as many times as necessary. --Juiced lemon 19:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps extend a fixed number of times and then close as "no consensus" (which typically means leave things as is)? ++Lar: t/c 20:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

---

The requested majority is only a small part of a de-adminiship procedure. In Commons:Administrators/Requests and votes/Joymaster (de-adminship), user:Marcus Cyron stated the grievance against user:Joymaster, but he didn't give proofs, so we would believe him at his words. More, user:Joymaster had no real possibility to plead his defence. This is a questionable practice, which would not be started again. --Juiced lemon 20:56, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure why you say Marcus "didn't give proofs"... he enumerated the various admin actions that are at issue. It's true that he didn't give diffs, and I do think that in the general case diffs are a good thing. But in this case the topic has been under discussion (with many many examples of the issues) for months. I'm also not sure why you say "user:Joymaster had no real possibility to plead his defence"... there have been a lot of attempts to open communication with this user and he is still very welcome to turn up and argue the case at the RfA. I guess we could have run an RfC like they do on en:wp but we don't typically do that, at least not exactly. ++Lar: t/c 00:02, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Sysop action in the inactive clause

Which is MediaWiki namespace editing classified? Sysop action or other actions? I talked with Searobin recently and he seemed to be worried about that. --Aphaia 22:47, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd classify it as sysop because it requires the ability to edit a protected page, even if it doesn't exercise the core admin competencies of knowing when to block and unblock, delete and undelete, and move over exising pages... etc. ++Lar: t/c 00:49, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It should be, but to make sure I've asked user:Bryan who wrote the activity testing script currently used. / Fred J 19:08, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Ok Bryan said that it actually didn't include edits in the MediaWiki, but I've asked him to count those from now on too. / Fred J 19:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

So, how about editing protected pages, especially templates? Lately, I mostly do "machanic" stuff like that - adjusting templates and system messages. -- Duesentrieb ⇌ 11:49, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Picking up a slightly old discussion... I don't know if it was ever discussed elsewhere, but yeah, I would say that counts. The key is having a need for the rights and in that case it's clearly there. Rocket000(talk) 12:50, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I do not know how active Bryan is, but those ought to be counted too. I'm wondering here if we ought to just extend some good faith, if an admin who is otherwise borderline cares enough to retain privs and knows these sorts of things push them over the line nicely, let them just point to some of the protected pages, templates, mediawiki pages, whatever, that they edited or worked with that didn't get counted, rather than asking Bryan to make the script more complex. This is only for borderline cases anyway, presumably. ++Lar: t/c 14:44, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

I support that. Making a script to count the times someone editing protected pages would get pretty complicated. Checking for MediaWiki namespace edits would be easy, but not pages where protection can come and go at any time. I'm guessing cases like these would happen very rarely. As long as the borderline admins know they should speak up in these cases, I don't a script is necessary. Rocket000(talk) 06:37, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Not read it all but Vasiliev's (sp?) tool does cover media wiki edits. Equally the ones I've checked in the past I've looked at activity first - often they have not edited never mind admin action for 6 months. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 06:57, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Posslbe archiving

Guys this page is now close to 70KB. Do you mind anyone archiving early discussion s? --Aphaia 08:29, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Please do, but make sure to keep the relevant bits :) I think at least "working on putting it together" needs keeping. ++Lar: t/c 15:03, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. --Aphaia 18:04, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I reverted the recent bot archiving. The thread seems either to be dead or set in stone. You may better to summarize it and reflect to the policy page instead? --Aphaia 11:37, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Definition of Admin action

There is quite a bit unclear about the required activity for admins.

• According to Meta:Meta:Administrators, which is referred to on this project page "Inactive" means no edits in the past 6 months and less than 50 edits in the last year.
• according to this project page: "Inactive" means less than 5 admin actions in the past 6 months.
  

What is considered an Admin action for this policy? Editing a protected page? Using the Rollback function? Blocking someone? The easiest way I see is just creating and deleting a subpage in my namespace 5 times. For the record, I have over 100 edits in the last year, and check my account multiple times per week. This policy is in need of some clarification. If i have missed a page, please point it out to me. -- Chris 73 (talk) 18:22, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

The "easiest" way might be to delete the same page 5 times, yes, but that kind of defeats the spirit... with a deletion backlog that stretches back to April (as of this writing) you could easily find 5 fairly obvious deletions to close, and help the project out, instead of just qualifying with the letter of the policy as written. ++Lar: t/c 01:51, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Agree with Lar. While playing around in your userspace to meet the criteria would technically be OK, it certainly wouldn't be looked upon that well by the community. —Giggy 03:30, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

I found five overdue deletions, so i guess i am fine. I wasn't planning to redelete a page 5 times, but rather I wanted to point out that the policy nees some clarification - Chris 73 (talk) 05:01, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Two part decision

It would seem perverse if a purely numerical process was followed, because if it was so; an unpopular admin against which no wrong doing could be found could be de-sysoped, whilst a popular one with a blatant abuse of power could retain his or her powers.

Surely there needs to be two parts in coming to a decision, the first to determine if an abuse of power took place and the second to see if this warrants a de-admin. If no wrong doing took place there should not be a de-admin however strong e clamour there is for it. If wrong doing has taken place than either a fixed penalty system or a threshold of a simple majority for removal should be applied.KTo288 (talk) 09:52, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

So you're suggesting two votes, one for each part? Concurrent, or sequential? ++Lar: t/c 02:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Not really I don't see those in favour of removal voting, not guilty of wrong doing but should still be desysoped, although some will vote guilty of wrong doing but do not desysop. I guess its more work for the admins, first to glean through the evidence to decide if there is a case to answer. if there is no case to answer there should be no desysop however strong the vote for.KTo288 (talk) 14:22, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Proposal

After this incident, I think Commons and it's users may want a new process. Also that we should have been prepared for something drastic like that. Recently we had this incident too. The latest request was stopped, and instead resolved. After all I think de-adminship is the last resort and should be undertaken only if dispute resolution fails. Now my proposal would be getting in an official dispute resolution process to discuss/solve these issues before a de-adminship is considered valid. I don't think that taking an admin right away to the de-adminship page is right, nor how we should solve issues. If it's blatant abuse, then I'm sure a steward will take care of that. I have trust in this community & it's processeses. However, the site is getting bigger with more editors. As such I feel we should be prepared to manage these kind of incidents in the future. With dispute resolution, I believe we can manage these incidents much better. --Kanonkas_(talk) 15:35, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

You mean the de-op proceedings aren't the dispute resolution stage? Huh. Learn something new ever day. --ShakataGaNai ^{^_^} 18:58, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

There is/was a proposal being talked about/worked on to require that some form of dispute resolution with wide awareness be used before a deadminship is started. I'm not sure where that stands at this point. ++Lar: t/c 19:28, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I think the wording of the last section of Commons:Administrators/De-adminship seems strong enough (I have just tweaked it). We don't need anything more formal than that, do we? --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:09, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Let me try to dig up what was being floated and share it. ++Lar: t/c 19:44, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Just a note: Commons:Centralised community discussion is a drafted dispute resolution process. Comments/opinions are appreciated at the talk page. — Kanonkas // talk // CCD // 19:01, 13 June 2009 (UTC)

Checking inactivity

Is there a tool available that allows easy checking of whether an admin has met the required minimum of 5 edits in the preceding 6 months? I know of a couple of tools which show admin activity, but neither gives that information. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 17:53, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I haven't found such a tool yet, especially since actions like closing a DR as kept is an admin-only action that (as far as I know) can't be logged in any way as adminedit. Finn Rindahl (talk) 17:58, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I don't think that would count as an admin action as admin tools are not required to do it, and no-admins are in straightforward cases allowed to close DRs as keep: see COM:DR#Instructions for administrators. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:29, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Is it 5 edits or 5 actions (the latter I think). If so this should be good for what you want? (I see I'm "slipping" :)). Thanks --Herby ^{talk thyme} 18:39, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, five actions. I have edited the text to include that. Please feel free to revert if anyone disagrees. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 21:00, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

Ok, that's clarifying. Looks good, thanks, Finn Rindahl (talk) 22:03, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

@Herby: You're worried about slipping? I'm off the list! I didn't know it removes ex-admins. I see some of the top holders are gone too. Rocket000(talk) 07:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Philosophically, at least to me (and not withstanding that we want folk to help work backlogs) if someone is doing "adminly" things, that counts... that doesn't mean actually using tools. Closing a DR as keep strikes me as that sort of thing. But that's just me. ++Lar: t/c 15:50, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

I share the same view. Rocket000(talk) 07:01, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Removal of pointless section

I'm not certain the motivation behind this section, "If the admin responds to the notice as required but then fails to make five admin actions within the following six months, the rights will be removed without further notice." other than an attitude of "Well they said they were going to help, and they didn't so I'm taking their bit." What is so wrong with asking every six months, rather than requiring people to perform an admin action? I think it's perfectly reasonable to allow a user who is otherwise active, to maintain their admin bit, even if they are not using it. At least one can call on them to use it from time to time! Bastique ^{☎ appelez-moi!} 23:53, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Bastique's comments above. Basic activity requirements are prudent and I'm glad we have them, but there is no reason to make them particularly aggressive. I doubt anyone intended to policy to have a "spiteful" feel as is described above, but I can certainly see why someone would likely see them that way. The particular criteria isn't very good either: Someone who doesn't care about the careful and appropriate use of their rights could easily make five actions in five minutes just to preserve their privileges, so long as they were aware of this policy and attempting to game it. Meanwhile a more careful person who uninterested in power games will have their rights removed. This is not a good emphasis. --Gmaxwell (talk) 00:29, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

Activity

Hello,

I guess its time to make a proposal and vote about something that have been discussed for long time, and it keeps being discussed over and over again so this would be the best next step.

Currently we have a policy that says:

A administrator must perform 5 logged actions in 6 months.

I guess this was cool when the policy was created, but Commons is growing bigger and bigger and we need more active administrators that know whats going on inside Commons, a inactive administrator doesn't do that and Adminstrator is not a status, its granted because people need it when you don't need it anymore you should give the tools back.

In my personal view 5 actions is to low because it can be done in 5 minutes a day before the inactivity round is set up. (Doing Category:Copyright violations is normally good for 30 deletions)

I suggest we start a normal and good discussion about the 5 log actions every 6 months here so we can come with a better solution, my personal opinion would be:

A administrator must perform 60 logged actions in 6 months.

10 deletions every month is easy to do even when you don't have time to be here every week Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 15:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I would not disagree - someone who actually helped out to that degree would be filling the implied promise of their RfA to help out with some of the work here. However I judge that there are enough who don't seem to manage that for this to not succeed sadly. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:35, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Oppose strongly. So the Commons is "growing bigger and bigger and we need more active administrators", yet we would remove the tools from people performing 20, or 30, or 40, or 50 logged actions in 6 months? The underlying logic is non-existent; if there is more work to be done, the solution is not to remove the tools from those who don't meet some arbitrary threshold. An RFA is about determining whether a user can be trusted to use the tools appropriately, not a frequency mandate. Notions of "getting our money's worth" ("Seems like they somehow wasted our time with the RfA" @ COM:AN) are absurd. Requiring a minimal level of activity is fine to address dormant accounts, but this is a solution looking for a problem. What about admins who use view deleted (unlogged) to investigate provenience and repair information for derivatives of deleted works? Эlcobbola _talk 15:38, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  If you need to tools to only check stuff you should ask for special rights so you can view deleted content, maybe we should make a group like that for OTRS personal (browser archive rights) otherwhise you should also preform deletions, blocks, mediawiki edits because this is where we select administrators for. Raising the bar will help against people that keep administrator bits as a status Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 15:42, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  That group doesn't exist. That doesn't address the nonsensical logic of removing rights due to increased need. Who's using it as status? If a particular user is using their admin status to give (erroneously) their positions weight, then address that user. The admin flag doesn't mean one is special, or even competent in a particular area. That some users foolishly hold the misconception otherwise will not be addressed by this proposal. Эlcobbola _talk 15:59, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  I do agree to a degree with your views Эlcobbola - you are an active person on Commons. However if you check out the admin stats you would be amazed how many of our admins really do almost nothing. I guess I can only presume that they have a reason for having the rights that has nothing to do with actually using them. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:02, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  I suppose what I need is a reasonable underlying logic (and necessity) for a change. In the absence of evidence that less active admins are somehow a detriment, I see nothing here but waste. If the project is so in need of active participants (it is), why waste more time with de-sysop procedures? Why take x logged admin actions (where x is below the proposed threshold) down to zero? Why make users de-sysoped for performing, say, 40 actions in 6 months jump through hoops if they decide to become more active? Эlcobbola _talk 16:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  I understand your views and respect them As you say the project is always in need of active participants. There is no real harm in having folk have tools they do not use so it is as much a viewpoint (for me) as anything else. However I also favour folk giving up the tools if they are inactive and getting them back easily if they choose to return so it is not a trust issue for me. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 16:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Strong support On my RfA I already said that enhanced rights are associated with enhanced obligations. Two admin actions a week is not much, isn't it? Just delete two duplicates, there are always enough in queue! Those two actions a week are about ten actions a month and 60 in half a year. If one is not willing to do this small service to the community he shouldn't have enhanced rights! Regards axp_de^Hello! 17:21, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I started out on the fence about this, hence the two summaries:

• Having an inactive Admin costs us almost nothing. So why have any restrictions on activity? Why accept resignations, particularly since actually putting the resignation into effect requires a bunch of edits (three lists, the User's page, and the system list) and several times recently the user has then returned to Admin status, which has the same cost. Why not just keep them all? I also note that there are a few very active users who occasionally find Admin privileges useful, but are not active Admins -- why not keep them?.
• On the other hand, being an Admin is a privilege that should have matching commitments. If we had far fewer admins, it might be easier to recruit more active ones. 266 looks like a big number. Being one of 266 is not as big a deal as being one of 140.
  • A few stats data from here (totals adjusted for those who have not been Admins for six months):
  • 24% of our sysop edits are done by three Admins
  • The top ten Admins do more than half, and the top fifty just a shade over 90%.
  • The proposed cutoff of sixty edits would keep 136 Admins and 98.9% of the edits done in the last six months.
• So,  Strong support. I think my recruiting argument has validity. It seems to me, therefore, that the sixty number is good -- it cuts the number of Admins in half, but removes only 1.1% of the Admin action.     Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 17:41, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  Maybe even less if some of those in reach of 60 will regain motivation ;-) axp_de^Hello! 18:06, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Neutral: I agree with the spirit behind this rule, but I'm not sure if numbers can properly show one admin's activity. Sometimes, even few admin actions can be good, for example Lupo (talk · contribs) is not that heavily active in the common admin areas, but always around when the upload form needs something or there's some CSS or JavaScript error. Furthermore, edits to protected pages aren't shown in the tool that's used to find inactive admins. --The Evil IP address (talk) 18:40, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

 Comment Lupo is a poor example for your case -- he or she is #46 on the list with over six hundred edits.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 21:16, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

What list? He has 11,065 admin actions and is 29 on the list.[3] He's a good example of someone that doesn't really get involved in admin-stuff, but his work in the MediaWiki namespace is invaluable. Rocket000 (talk) 01:15, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Oppose, as described. Requiring _some activity_ is useful and sensible. And two actions a week isn't much for someone who is active and working on routine house cleaning but someone working at that rate could never take even a week off in the proposal here and routine house cleaning is not the only valid and important work requiring administrative access. Not all administrative actions are equal: Commons needs a wide spectrum of administrators— including people who do 100 activities in a week and people who only take one important action in a couple of months. Additionally we could expect this kind of non-trivial pure numbers requirement to encourage unnecessary or ill-considered administrative actions by people just trying to meet the requirement. Cheers. --Gmaxwell (talk) 18:54, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose -- Although I can see why one might suggest this, I don’t agree with the importance of being an active sysop. If I take myself as example, I don’t do a lot of removals (or edits in general) on Commons, yet I do use my right to view (removed) images a lot to aid on OTRS. I try to keep up with changed policies and every now and then I delete an image. Of course, I could do all this by asking another Commons Administrator, but what’s the point? I’m to no danger to the community, I’m up to date with local policies and don’t hinder others. The same thing goes for other sysops: As long as they know what they’re doing, there’s no harm in letting them keep their status, in fact I’d be flattered they consider helping us out, even if their help is limited. m:Mark W (Mwpnl) ¦ talk 18:58, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
•  strong oppose There is no need to make that policy stronger. It was created to have editing sysops, not to have sysop-bots. abf «Cabale!» 19:00, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose As per above. The 5 actions in 6 months of one user might be more useful than 1000 actions of another one. And as of River: A user's action count does not reflect on the value of their contributions to the project. Actioncountitis can be fatal. -- aka 19:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Comment We could of course do it like de.wikipedia, where every admin has a re-election page. If there are more than 25 users in 6 months asking for de-sysop, the admin needs to run through a re-election. --The Evil IP address (talk) 21:33, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  This is actually not exactly correct. The numbers are: 25 users within 1 month or 50 users within 6 months. --Leyo 07:52, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Oppose - though I can see that people will think "well he would say that, wouldn't he?", I've never found adminship activity criteria to convince people to do more work; instead, they make the sysop community more insular (and even more detached from normal editors). OTOH, a dewiki-like "call for re-election" if someone has over a number of calls for them to stop being a sysop (e.g. people think that they cannot carry out the function well, or they do not have the confidence of the community to make decisions) might work for us - instead of, rather than as well as, the activity thresholds. James F. (talk) 21:58, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose - If one admin performs 80 actions he can stay, but if two admins perform 40 operations each, both lose their status, even when there is no difference for the project. Best regards, Alpertron (talk) 22:24, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose I know I'm not the most active admin here, but I do use the tools from time to time, and taking them away from me would just mean that much more work for someone else to do. It's not like my being an admin costs Commons anything. —Angr 22:34, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

  There is a cost— there is a chance your account may be hacked, or that you'll show up after long inactivity and act without catching up on the current practices and policies, there is the risk that you'll change as a person over time and become someone other than the person that the community trusted— and act inappropriately. There is small a risk that someone will begin farming accounts and storing them for future use in manipulating the project, etc. These are _real_ costs, but they are very very low costs because they are all unlikely and all easily fixed (e.g. if your account starts acting strangely we can always desysop it after the strangeness begins). These costs are why I don't oppose deadmining people who are completely inactive for long spans of time— complete inactivity removes the question of the relative value of contributions too—, but I don't think they justify a higher bar. --Gmaxwell (talk) 23:39, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

I log in to Commons every day, often numerous times. In the last six months I have about 500 edits and about a hundred uploads, but only five admin actions. Thus according to the current policy I may be desysopped for inactivity. How would that help Commons? It would only mean (an admittedly tiny amount) more work for the rest of you. And I have occasional flurries of activity, where I perform relatively many admin actions in a short time; these would cease if I were desysopped. My view, therefore, is that even the current policy on inactivity needs to be applied with care and flexibility, and I don't see how it would help to make it even more stringent. Hesperian 00:17, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Neutral per Evil IP. Rocket000 (talk) 01:06, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose That's too high of a threshold. Commons Admins do need to maintain lives in RL, this goes for the sysops with especially busy lives in reality. -FASTILY ^(TALK) 03:21, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose, the entire inactivity policy is a waste of time and effort. --Golbez (talk) 13:12, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Its great to see all kind of people that normally are inactive here are voting oppose and the people are active that vote support. But I like the idea of Evil Ip also, maybe we could give that some thoughts. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 13:18, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

I have suffrage just like anyone else here, especially since it's my user rights that are being threatened. The inactivity policy serves only to harm the wiki by removing people who otherwise work on it and support it (Just perhaps not to your high standards, or on your schedule), and to prop up people who get their jollies by spending time and effort to remove the abilities of others. --Golbez (talk) 13:38, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Strong oppose According to admin statistics as of August 11, about half of admins fails to reach 60 log actions per 6 months. I think that can give the other admins too much workload. So raising the bar will not be efficient. I think Commons does not have enough admin to process our backlogs completely. I don't think focusing strategy is not always good for admins. – Kwj2772 (msg) 14:16, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
  • As I noted above, with data from the same source, the proposed cutoff would remove only 1.1% of the edits made in the last six months -- about the same number as one moderately active editor. So, if reducing the number makes it possible to recruit one person, it has paid off.      Jim . . . . Jameslwoodward (talk to me) 12:04, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose I review a lot of images in good adminly fashion, but most of them are OK and need no action, so I don't log many actual deletions. So the count of logged actions underreports the time I spend, which is OK if the activity threshold is low, but if it's higher and I was de-adminned as a result, I'd probably stop reviewing images altogether, not shift my participation to do more things that count as logged actions. Stan Shebs (talk) 14:35, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Comment I think proposed threshold is reasonable. However, I agree with Stan Shebs about image reviewing. Such activity may be only in editing. From other point of view I don't think that during active reviewing administrator will not encounter album cover/logo/poster. Maintaining tools other area (but should be reflected in MediaWiki name space edits, bots activity, ToolServer maintenance). --EugeneZelenko (talk) 14:57, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
  • We already count activity in the mediawiki namespace. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 15:00, 11 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose An inactive admin now does not necessarily guarentee an active admin in future and there is no need for people to be going through the handing over and getting back process. Basically, if you have them, you keep them unless you misuse them of course.--Jogging violinist (talk) 07:15, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

First and only edit by this user on Foundation wikis - just for info. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 07:36, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Oppose Desysop for inactivity is not intended to force users to work, only to remove adminship from users who really ceased any activity on Commons, i.e. no longer a part of the Commons community. Personally I much more concerned about "active" admins like the topic starter, who could perform these 60 admin actions (i.e. to flush 60 files away) in two minutes. Trycatch (talk) 10:44, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

  I can stop working if you want that, the backlogs will be sky high within two months. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 11:12, 12 August 2010 (UTC)

•  Oppose No thanks, Multichill (talk) 15:45, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
• Strongly oppose. Administrators need to be trusted people, not active. And I fear, as already expressed, whether a tendency to quickly make actions to meet requirement, whether users having the community trust but not performing a lot of sysop actions will lost the bit and so won't be able to perform themselves actions when needed. --Dereckson (talk) 16:02, 12 August 2010 (UTC)
• Rather oppose. Removing someone does not make someone else more active I fear. If current admins are not active enough, either more admins are needed or motivations/support should be given for current admins to be more active Anthere (talk)
• Oppose: Admins should not be required to be active in the specific locations where tool use is frequent. If tool-use can be avoided, for instance, by talking with a user instead of blocking them, that's by far better, and the admin should not be punished for that. Further - forgive me if I'm a bit behind changes here - but I believe adminship still uniquely comes with several tools useful to heavy contributors - move, delete, and the like are all very useful for dealing with your own uploading mistakes - and we should not make it harder on such people to use these tools, when they're otherwise doing excellent work for Commons. Above, we see another example: Someone who uses the non-logged ability to see older revisions to help with OTRS. Adam Cuerden (talk) 06:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose So, I'm a better admin if I delete more? --Magnus Manske (talk) 06:30, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

no you could also go on a bocking, protection, or user rights rampage just dont move anything Gnangarra 07:42, 13 August 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose. Speaking for myself: I'm a very active contributor to the Commons, including a lot of grunt work adding categories to photos (besides having over 20,000 uploads). I don't use my admin capabilities often, but I find it very convenient to have them when I need them, rather than have to round up someone else to take care of things I can do for myself. I see nothing in my actions to make me less trusted just because I don't spend a lot of time on activities that specifically require these tools. It costs the community nothing to let me continue to have these capabilities. Also, some of the admin capabilities I most use are not counted as "actions": moving files, renaming categories via delinker, viewing deleted files to clarify situations, etc. - Jmabel ! talk 06:47, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Comment 5 is too low, but 60 is too high. What about a middle ground? FunkMonk (talk) 07:02, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose invited to comment though I was already watching this discussion but saw no reason to comment until then. Defining activity by admin actions/use of tools is flawed, closure of DRs, discussions, rejecting of speedy tags, or editing protected templates dont register with the current activity counters as an admin action unless its requires a deletion, protection or block but they are still performing actions as admins. Gnangarra 07:38, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Comment Move to snowball fail? No point expressing my opinion, the outcome is obvious! Get back to work people ;-). --99of9 (talk) 07:49, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Comment One question: are there subject, where admins have voting rights and non-admins not? It seems not correct to keep admin rights just for voting and there a bottom participation should be wishfull. --Havang(nl) (talk) 08:49, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Question No matter what outcome: the number of required logged actions in 6 months: 5, 20, 50, 69.75 : will it change anything fundamentally ? I don't think so. --Foroa (talk) 08:58, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
• I have serious doubts wether 'limiting' the group by raising the bar of activity is really useful here. I think the current activity requirements are good enough. TheDJ (talk) 10:05, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose Some admins are always going to be more active than others, we can't and shouldn't try to alter that. The admins experienced with dealing with, for example, the Category:Media without a source queue should be better able to make the delete/no delete call than an admin who is merely there to get his delete count up (and therefore liable to delete incorrectly). Some activity criterion is sensible, but make it too high and the quality of the decisions may be degraded. The easy queues such as Category:Copyright violations do not provide enough material unless the really active admins let the others do it. The existing level is fine (as it removes the truly inactive - as in 0 activity), if we need more admin activity get more admins.--Nilfanion (talk) 10:30, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose A way to force Admins to do something? To force people is never a good way. I don't have 60 actions in a half year. But I have (more than 5) actions. All what I do (mostly deleting) are actions, other admins don't need to do. We don't need only very active Administrators, we need some different kinds of SysOps with different views and different habbits. A one-class Admin would be dangerous. Marcus Cyron (talk) 13:01, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose. Not get real effect on admin activity. Geagea (talk) 14:39, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
• Consensus seems to be obvious. We should consider possible alternatives or turn down this proposal. Best regards. – Kwj2772 (msg) 15:04, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose. If people don't abuse their rights it doesn't matter if they have an admin flag and don't use these abilities that much. Silver Spoon (talk) 15:47, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose Seems like an arbitrary increase in activity requirements to me. Commons hardly has excess admins. Steven Walling 17:55, 13 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose Less active admins still help to lessen the load for more active admins. There is no cost to keep less active admins, so why do it? Royalbroil 12:15, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose Even a single admin action in a year will take the load off other admins, and therefore is useful. Misuse of admin tools should be dealt with, but I don't think it is necessary to pre-emptively take away admin rights. To require a minimum level of activity is fine, if only to verify that the admin is still active at all. --rimshot^talk 13:30, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Support At the beginning I felt indifferent regarding this issue but after the canvassing (see below) I feel it is justified to give some minimal counter weight: I consider myself as an admin who has a low activity profile. This was already known during my admin candidacy and hasn't changed since then. Nevertheless, I've no problems to reach the suggested minimal level. However, my support is somewhat weak as I know several admins who are actively participating at Commons and who would be possibly have difficulties in meeting this goal (at least by keeping their current activity profile). I think that it is good to have a minimal threshold of activity but that threshold should be low enough such that all seriously participating admins should be able to meet it without diverting from their routine. It shouldn't come to the point that admin actions are performed just for incrementing the counter. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:48, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

  After reading your arguments I don't know why you support the request beside your "need for justification". -- A9 (talk) 08:44, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Yeah I think the consensus is pretty clear above here and I guess we need to work out a new proposal. But I hate the fact that this is canvassed. [4] Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 19:53, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

You hate this fact, of course. You seems to prefer proposals in some hidden dark corners like this sub page so that there are no other votes than yours and the one of your steady ... well, I just had a inner force to do something again this back room party ;-) -- A9 (talk) 20:02, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

This is not a backroom party it has been announced. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 20:09, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes, but you still hate this fact, right? ;) -- A9 (talk) 20:14, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

You know what I hate, I hate it that you are a sock that only use this account for this canvassing action. You are to weak to use your own account to do so, I hate it that people act like that, and I do not have any respect for you. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 20:21, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

You know nothing. -- A9 (talk) 20:34, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

We know that you are active in two projects, Commons and de-wp, with a total of 150 contributions so far of which the majority is due to this canvassing. Such a profile is frowned upon at Commons. --AFBorchert (talk) 21:58, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

To be even more precise: He did 151 edits in total, 84 on commons, of which 76 had been canvassing notes, that's more than 50% of total edits! Reliability? 0%! axp_de^Hello! 18:46, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

• ( Disclosure: I only found out about this discussion through investigating a completely unrelated thread on the AN.) In short:  Oppose because the current policy isn't broken.
  • In long: the admin activity counter on the Toolserver only counts a very limited set of admin actions that can be done. The counter is set up to emphasise high quantity of that set. In reality, there are other actions that are of high quality that are not counted by the tool and/or not ranked very highly on quantity. For example, I mostly hang around the (un)deletion requests and CFD, and those processes involve honouring or rejecting requests based on consensus. Each rejection will not be counted in the counter while each acceptance does; this favours that admins accept those requests just to mess up and revert themselves to get their counts up based on thisS policy proposal. While that is obviously not condoned in this community, quantity should never be placed above quality. Quality contributions may not amass very much on any activity counter because they do not involve (or involve very little) corrections.
  • Besides quantity versus quality, this policy makes little sense in terms of the amount of real life that every human user has to face every day. Some admins have lesser amounts of real life to deal with on a daily basis and therefore can delete more copyvios than those who have more on their plates. However, admins must also be careful performing such deletions because there is always a risk of deleting something legitimate out of hoards of files, causing a dislike between admins and regular users if not dealt with correctly. That brings me back to quality versus quantity.
  • However, the most important reason that I am speaking very strongly against this policy proposal is that any sort of activity counting is subjective. Currently, every admin works in different areas of Commons by nature. Because of that and the real life situations I presented above, every user will have a different idea of what "active" means. Trying to construct a one-size-fits-all definition of "active" is simply infeasible and has the potential of inflaming prospective and current admins alike. The status quo does a pretty good job of keeping this community mellow. --O (谈 • висчвын) 02:54, 15 August 2010 (GMT)
• I'm quite annoyed at incivil comments from the topic starter. Those comments are insults to "active" opposing administrators. I demand Abigor make public apology and retract your comments. – Kwj2772 (msg) 04:27, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I do not see anything incivil about [5] its the truth, most people voting oppose are inactive and came here after a canvassing action, I can make a vote go down also if I contact all people that would lose the adminbit if this policy makes it. Your second diff is the truth also [6] I didn't do almost anything for 2 days, we have almost 100 copyright violations, 100 speedy deletions waiting, there where 30 duplicates when I stopped, there are now 400. This is two days... so I need to say sorry for saying the truth? Don't think so. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 08:36, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Some of the admins here were "canvassed", but not all, likewise some are active by any reasonable definition - and that's ignoring the issue with the tool limitations- the implication that all the opposes came from "inactive" admins is plain wrong.

I would say: If you think there is a problem with the current admin pool, clearly define the problem and establish evidence for that. Then work out a proposal that actually addresses the issues. Going straight in with a proposal, and not much discussion, to change the "activity" threshold (to a high level wasn't going to do anything except wind people up I'm afraid.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:00, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

It is obvious this will not succeed but Abigor has nothing to apologise about in my view. An awful lot of Commons admins are inactive with tasks that require the tools. It was this way when I arrived here and it will be this way when I leave I'm sure. Saying that sort of thing should not offend anyone. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, I don't see need for apology either.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:26, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I still think the second comment is a threat to commuity. Comment like "without me the backlog will go to infinity" is undesirable. – Kwj2772 (msg) 11:32, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

There are times I could have said that without my work we would have been flooded with out of scope pages. It is sort of true and sort of not but it is the same as Abigor's statement. The sad thing is that so many admins do so little. There are folk here who I find are admins whose names I do not recognise - I find that sad. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 11:52, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Kwj2772: I do not think that Abigor's statement was a threat or sounded like a threat. It is a fact that few admins execute the major work in the area of speedy deletions. From the admin action count statistics of the last 6 months we can see that 4 admins had more than 10.000 admin actions and 30 more than 1.000. And I guess that in some specialized fields (like deleting duplicates) we have very few admins processing them regularly such that a reduced participation of one of these admins causes the backlog significantly to grow. Given this, Abigor's statement sounds to me more like an appeal for other admins to help out than a threat. --AFBorchert (talk) 12:12, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Yes - AFBorchert puts it better than I did. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:18, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

As a call for help it missed the target, simple language is the best way to get the message across. There is reason to look at the de-admin process due to inactivity, the current process takes at least 7 months and as such I've put forward a proposal which encompasses an shorter time frame before tools can be removed Gnangarra 14:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Not a threat, just a little hyperbole. A language issue, perhaps. Rocket000 (talk) 11:40, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Proposal

1. If an admin account has been dormant(no edits) for a continual period of 90 days then at the descretion of a bureaucrat the admin tools may be removed. Restoration of the tools can occur at the descretion of a bureaucrat during the following of 6 months.
2. If no admins actions have been logged within the preceeding 90 day then at the descretion of a bureaucrat the editor can be asked to re-apply for confirmation of the tools via COM:ADMIN
3. If less than 10 admins actions have been logged in the preceeding 6 months then at the descretion of a Bureaucrat the admin tools can be removed and reconfirmation sort.
4. If 6 months has elapsed after the removal of admin tools then the editor must seek confirmation of the community via COM:ADMIN.

• point 1 while it doesnt address the need for admins to be active, this does addresses security of the tools relatively quickly, this significantly shortens the time frame for removing tools from inactive admin accounts as it reduces 6 months to 3 months, removes the additiona 30 day email response time, yet can be just as quickly reversed during the next 6 months.
  Point 2 addresses active users who arent using the tools, where the person has curtailed their admin activity it encourages them to reconsider if they need the tools.
  Point 3 is the big stick that the crat can swing when necessary, but still allows descretion for the group of admins that are active on smaller projects and only use the tools to effectively address cross wiki problems or for admins with where off wiki events prevented activity.
  Point 4 is the safety net, but still recognised that after 6 months since the loss of tools and minimum of 9 months of inactivity editors should re-aquaint themselves with policies before seeking the tools. Gnangarra 14:13, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

• Interesting proposal. Currently Commons 'crats cannot remove rights I think. Certainly I favour easy return of rights if folk give them up because they are occupied/away whatever. I think the suggestion is sound all in all (& fairly easy for folk to understand...) :). I'd  Support this. Thanks for the thoughts --Herby ^{talk thyme} 14:22, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
• I like this one, its plain and clear but I would rather see the at the descretion of a bureaucrat be removed and make every user do the request on Meta. Mainly because Crat's don't have the right to remove sysop and every user on Commons should be allouwed to make the request on meta otherwhise there will be only a few users left that can do it. Huib talk ^{Abigor @ meta} 14:49, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

I understand point, but crats are already trusted to decide the community consensus with rfa this is just an extension of that trust and within the already defined scope of COM:CRAT#Community_role. Additionaly Commons:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Sysop is there for others to bring issues to the attention of crats and they already have the mailing list to recieve sensative personal details. It also diffuse associated drama and potential abuse especially as point 2 and 3 are directed at active contributors. Gnangarra 15:46, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

• I strongly oppose the 90 days delay. What would be the advantage compared to 6 months?
  I'm opposed to the rest of the proposal, as it doesn't solve the concerns expressed in the previous proposal: how this is going to create more admin activity? What's the point to have strange procedures remove tools to currently inactive admins, having received community trust? --Dereckson (talk) 16:49, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Weak oppose The proposal's ok, but I just realized I'm happy with our current policy. Simple and clear-cut (no "descretion" to cloud things up). Rocket000 (talk)
• Again, admin activity is subjective. My three-paragraph comment above also applies to this proposal.  Oppose: the status quo is currently not broken, and changing that will break the mellowness. --O (谈 • висчвын) 22:23, 18 August 2010 (GMT)
•  CommentTo build up a rule is not easy. If the proposal lead to a qurrel better we suspend the discussion for some time.--Fanghong (talk) 01:11, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose This is starting to feel like an effort to make some change— any change— through simply wearing people out. I'd certainly be willing to entertain a change, given a reasonable justification, but I don't think that getting there by giving a endless series of unjustified/weakly justified proposals until people get tired of saying no is a great plan. Can we get a good statement of whats currently broken before someone starts another one of these sections? --Gmaxwell (talk) 00:40, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose I'm satisfied with the current policy. Don't change just because of the change. Silver Spoon (talk) 18:33, 13 September 2010 (UTC)
•  Oppose as with Greg, though this appears dead for now. James F. (talk) 23:25, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Request for voluntary retirement of adminship

I, Havang(nl), request for voluntary retirement of adminship. --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:28, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Local 'crats can't desysop, but you can make your request here on meta. Rocket000 (talk) 20:35, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

OKE, thanks. --Havang(nl) (talk) 20:37, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Clause to explain the situation of resigned admins.

I think it would alleviate the confusion if situation of resigned admins are properly addressed here. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 03:03, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Remove email criteria for inactivity deadminship?

At the moment the policy requires inactive admins to be notified both on their talk page and by email. For most users a message on their talk page will send an email. The trouble is, as a closing bureaucrat, we have no way of telling whether emails were sent. My suggestion is that we just drop the email requirement. I think a talk page notification should be enough for admins who want to continue. --99of9 (talk) 12:04, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I agree although I would just say I was always against the requirement. If you are at all active reading your talk page is not that demanding... --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:13, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Nevertheless, as the current inactivity run is still covered by the policy which requires both sending an e-mail and leaving a message on the talk page, I am going to e-mail all the admins listed there later today (about 20:00 UTC). odder (talk) 15:26, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Luxo, TheDJ, DieBuche, Kameraad Pjotr, The Evil IP address, ChrisiPK, etc. -- so many great admins. Sad to see this. --Trycatch (talk) 15:50, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I so agree :( --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:58, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Agree. AFAIK, minor edits do not trigger e-mail notification (at least it was the case some time ago), so the edit on the talk page should be not minor. --Trycatch (talk) 15:50, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks like they do trigger a notification, as some of the admins informed have already responded without the need to send an e-mail. Anyway, I sent an additional e-mail to all admins listed (except Myself488, who has his e-mail turned off) and some of them have already responded as well. odder (talk) 18:52, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Great, thanks odder. --99of9 (talk) 22:36, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

@odder. I've just tried to do a minor edit on my talk page from different account. I didn't get the e-mail notification. --Trycatch (talk) 11:44, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Well then, it's good I sent them e-mails anyway :-) odder (talk) 23:05, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

 Oppose dropping email requirement. For most users a message on their talk page will send an email. The trouble is, as a closing bureaucrat, we have no way of telling whether emails were sent. "Most" users yes - but not all, and AFAIK there's no way to know whether a user has email notification turned on or not. In addition, direct personal email may be more effective in getting a response than another notification from the generic Wikimedia Mail address. As for verifying email sending: if an admin or bureaucrat says they have, that's good enough, isn't it? For a process done every six months, I see no reason to skip a step that might just encourage an admin or two back into contributing. Rd232 (talk) 22:42, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

 Support If you're (a bit) active, you don't need an email to be notified about this. A message on your talk page should be enough. Trijnstel_talk 23:12, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

This rationale is fallacious, as it leads to say let's avoid to notify too much, he's already inactive, let the admin stays inactive, which is in contradiction with the policy asking to the administrator if he has an intent to become active again. --Dereckson (talk) 14:31, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

Strongly against. I agree with Rd232, a mail is more effective than a talk page notification. --Dereckson (talk) 14:31, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

page's Header template and undocumented parameters

I need help solving a problem an editor of this page already solved. The Header template is not producing a proper rendering for my essays, mainly in that the first or only shortcut fails to appear on the screen, apparently because I need an undocumented valueless parameter named after an abbreviation of the page title, which implies that I need to add the abbreviated title somewhere else also, and I don't know where that is. This affects my new pages, Commons:Personality rights and Commons:Nonphotographs, video, and inaccuracies. On the other hand, I've seen a proper display with Commons:Administrators/De-adminship, which has the parameter "Lang-DESYSOP" (without quote marks, an equals sign, or a value), and Commons:Photographs of identifiable people, which has the parameter "Lang-PhotoOfPeople" (likewise without quote marks, an equals sign, or a value). I checked the documentation but it says nothing on point. I asked at the template's talk page, at the template doc's talk page, and at the help desk to no avail and of the editor who did it for Commons:Administrators/De-adminship to no avail (the editor seems to have been inactive since last year) and the editor who did it for Commons:Photographs of identifiable people to no avail because that editor is on a wikibreak of indefinite length. How should I get the proper rendering? Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:42, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

When you call the template the way you have, with the first argument named and subsequent arguments unnamed (e.g. {{Header|lang=en|COM:PERSONALITYRIGHTS|COM:PERSONALITY|COM:RIGHTOFPUBLICITY}}), I believe the parser interprets the first unnamed argument value as also specifying a language links template (which overrides the first, named one). Try not naming the language links argument, e.g. {{Header|en|COM:PERSONALITYRIGHTS|COM:PERSONALITY|COM:RIGHTOFPUBLICITY}}, or explicitly indicating all argument names and positions, e.g. {{Header|lang=en|2=COM:PERSONALITYRIGHTS|3=COM:PERSONALITY|4=COM:RIGHTOFPUBLICITY}}. And I think you want to replace "en" here with something like "PERSONALITYRIGHTS/lang", where {{PERSONALITYRIGHTS/lang}} looks like {{FoP-New Zealand/lang}} (to pick one example from Category:Language link templates). But I haven't set up anything like this, so I could be wrong. --Avenue (talk) 03:12, 9 December 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. What worked was explicitly naming parameters (which is a better style within templates anyway) (probably I had done what other templates perhaps did and didn't understand that naming was preferred) and emptying the "lang" parameter's value. I did not try to create a Lang Links template, as that seemed too complicated for the purpose, and maybe the instructions for that kinbd of template are not very clear. Thanks again. Nick Levinson (talk) 18:56, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

Prolongation of inactivity period

In the recent debate about commons the problem of poor participation and the harsh inactivity criteria came up. On en wiki you loose your admin rights after one year of inactivity only temporarily. If you become active again within the next 24 months you can get back them without reelection. On de wiki you loose them after one year without any logged activity and not only no admin activity. Therefore I would like to propose a moderate loosening of the criteria:

"Warning about de-sysop if the admin has performed less than 5 admin actions within the last twelve months. To keep admin rights the admin has to perform 5 admin actions within 90 days after that notifiaction and may be so courteous to put a notice about the activity on her talkpage or on this page. The notification should be repeated 30 days and 7 days before the deadline."

I think particularly the extension of the warning period to 90 days is necessary because people are not that active and can easily miss the 30 day warning. I also think we should get rid of the procedure that you have to sign on the page and then later do the edits because that just makes the procedure more complicated. Comments? --Cwbm (commons) (talk) 16:06, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. This policy has caused us to lose some valuable admins. I would support both increasing the grace period from 30 days to 90 days and increasing the sample time to 12 months. Kaldari (talk) 04:24, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Who have we lost that subsequently returned to active editing? Are they interested in returning to adminship? --99of9 (talk) 06:58, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

A personal testimony here: I was informed that I was going to lose adminship in AUGUST, a period in which I might not even have Internet access. I logged in and attempted leaving a message against de-adminship, but for whatever reason the message did not get through (I guess I was on a flaky connection).

I think that 30 days is far too low, if only not everybody has continuous Internet access. David.Monniaux (talk) 16:10, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I'd support an inceased warning period of two months with a repetive warning after one month without activity, for everything else I see no need to change. --Denniss (talk) 20:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I do not believe there is any urgent need to change the procedure, though the Nick case being discussed at COM:BN shows that clarification is required so that the procedure is applied consistently. 5 admin actions is pretty trivial as a requirement. If an admin is going to remain out of contact for months at a time, then they should put up a wikibreak notice, email an active admin to explain what is going on before vanishing or decide to retire for a longish period (which might be wise if you are having medical treatment or are very busy at work)—in which case un-retiring is a different process. Frankly the worst that can happen to an admin here is that they are asked to run a confirmation RFA, and RFAs should not be a traumatic or harassing process for anyone, least of all an admin with a successful past track record. There is much to be said for ensuring that being a sysop does not become a weird sinecure, and running trivial reconfirmation RFAs for long term volunteer admins every so many years would do an awful lot to demonstrate accountability; especially when we compare processes with other projects that do rather a worse job in this area of governance... --Fæ (talk) 12:19, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

@Fæ: as you can see from my RfA, it's not going to be trivial and my successful past track record looks like it's worthless and means nothing. I managed to pick up one Oppose vote before I'd actually finished writing it and had it ready for transclusion. Nick (talk) 18:49, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't sweat it, RFAs on Commons turn out a whole lot nicer than on en.wp. --Fæ (talk) 19:18, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The tools arent meant to be a big deal why not just limit it to; for inactivity ... desysop if last contribution was more than 6 months ago, sysop can be reinstated if requested within the following 12 months. requested removal... if a person requests own desysop for noncontroversial reasons, sysop can be reinstated if requested within the following 12 months and leave the crats some wriggle room for commonsense.. Gnangarra 13:54, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd be in favour of adopting an enwiki style policy where admins are only desysopped after one year's complete inactivity. Keeps the admins happy, means more people with advanced userrights who can perform admin tasks, helps increase participation etc. Acather96 (talk) 12:42, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Notification of change to policy wording

Since nobody else is going to do it, and the thread was archived today, per the instruction from Dschwen I have changed the policy to reflect new bureaucrat instruction, that is to say, any user who was previously an administrator will now need to pass a new RfA and may not apply for a bureaucrat to restore their permission. The full discussion can be found at Commons:Bureaucrats'_noticeboard/Archive_2#Sysop_bit_2. Nick (talk) 23:26, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, it seems that my statement of opinion on how a potential change should look like, if we intended to change the policy, was understood as an instruction to just change the policy. :-/ --Dschwen (talk) 23:48, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dschwen: that wasn't a statement of opinion though, it was a comment on how you will work as a bureaucrat, you specifically stated "So RFAs for everybody" which means you've changed the policy. I'm simply ensuring the policy now reflects stated practice. Nick (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I cannot change policy on my own my just willing it. And I have not meant this to be a statemen of how I will work in the future. I have meant that I would see this as the only viable option if a policy change is desired. I'd be happy to stick to the current practices. Take away from this what you think is right (like maybe undoing your change). I'll have to excuse myself now. Flaky internet here. --Dschwen (talk) 00:30, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dschwen: I've reverted the change. I must ask, as I have yet to receive satisfactory answers from you to several of my questions, when you describe current practice, is that the current practice of you and other bureaucrats returning sysop rights to users they know personally and refusing requests from those they don't know ?

I've just gone through the entire archive of the Bureaucrat Noticeboard and there's gross inconsistency and an element of luck in getting permissions restored, it basically depends on who answered the request; I can only see one or possibly two requests other than my own where a former administrator was forced to go through the RfA process, the vast majority were approved with no discussion and no concern from any of the bureaucrats about why the permission was removed.

This isn't really a policy is it ? Nick (talk) 01:11, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

I haven't said that you should not get the flag. But I don't want to be the one handling that case because I cannot make an informed decision. If you think there is a component of luck involved I don't quite see how. Any other crat could have chosen to accept that responsibility if they felt they had a better basis for making this decision. I must say from seeing the way you are handling this whole thing I'm not regretting having chosen not to restore the bit. You could have started and finished an RFA by now and then have raised this point in a structured manner on the VP or as an RfC, but you choose to drag this into a pointy dreams instead. --Dschwen (talk) 01:20, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

@Dschwen: , I think pointy dreams are your area, if I may quote, "Personally User:INeverCry's opinion would be enough for me to tip the scale. But seeing that people are getting out their big spoons to stir up the next tea cup tempest I'm not feeling particularly motivated to hand out bits...". I'm asking you to return my permission and in doing so, to be treated as almost every other returning administrator has been. I don't understand why you feel that's such an unreasonable request. Nick (talk) 01:39, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Dschwen, drop the attitude. Nick has asked to be re-sysopped in the same way that User:MichaelMaggs asked for the bit back. In Michael's case you decided unilaterally to give Michael the bit back, but not in Nick's case. That Nick is bringing this hypocrisy to light is no excuse for you as a crat, whom is supposed to display high standards of decorum on this project, to needlessly attack Nick. russavia (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Having read through this thread, feel we are definitely right in keeping our existing policy of expecting those who lose admin rights through inactivity to go through a new RFA. In particular, I would feel less than comfortable, now, if Nick were to be given sysop rights back at the discretion of a 'crat.--MichaelMaggs (talk) 18:14, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

@MichaelMaggs: You were given sysop rights back at the discretion of a 'crat. odder (talk) 20:33, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

So, User:MichaelMaggs, are you willing now to go through another RfA, given that User:Dschwen gave you your admin bit via the same type of request that User:Nick has made. What's good for the goose, and all that, right? russavia (talk) 20:38, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

@User:Russavia Is this meant as a hypothetical opinion testing question, or do you actually think it is necessary/helpful for the project? To me it would be waste of time given that he stood for a re-RfB within about a month of his re-sysop. --99of9 (talk) 09:56, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

By way of cross reference, I'm adding a link here to a relevant comment by User:99of9 on Dschwen's talk page. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:40, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@MichaelMaggs: I'm really interested to hear your explanation on why retirement makes a difference and should be treated differently (this is a genuine interest, not just me being contrary). This is something that's important but it is not discussed in policy anywhere, it is a part of policy that is missing and that needs to be rectified. I'm past caring about how it impacts me personally, and far more concerned about how you (and other bureaucrats) propose preventing abuse of the retirement process to avoid de-adminship sanctions, and I'm as interested in the justification that exists for giving bureaucrats discretion to re-sysop against the wording of this policy. We know that Dschwen would have ignored this policy "Personally User:INeverCry's opinion would be enough for me to tip the scale. But seeing that people are getting out their big spoons to stir up the next tea cup tempest I'm not feeling particularly motivated to hand out bits..." so should the policy exist at all if it's only going to be ignored.

I strongly believe there needs to be one consistent policy, you either allow all administrators to ask for their sysop permissions to be returned by asking a bureaucrat or you force all former administrators to undergo a reconfirmation RfA. The argument that retirement is different from inactivity I find to be a poor argument, policies change, laws change, accepted norms change, it doesn't matter why you've been away from the project, you either have to accept that everybody who has been away can still knows enough to perform the duties of an administrator, or you accept nobody who has been away knows enough to perform those duties. Either way, there should be no bureaucrat discretion involved, and if there is to remain some element of bureaucrat discretion, it should be informed discretion, simple requests of the sort you and I made shouldn't be sufficient, there should be a need to demonstrate applicable knowledge.

Not really in response to Michael - I'm genuinely interested to know how many former administrators would have taken up the option of declaring retirement, giving them the option of dropping in and out of the project without having to undergo an RfA everytime they're not making administrative actions for the 180 days and whether this would increase the number of administrators we have available. As bizarre as this sounds, it might not be a bad idea to allow administrators to take holidays before they burnout and lose interest. Nick (talk) 21:04, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

This whole episode strikes me as bizarre. Retirement is, by definition, inactivity. Restoration of admin rights for MichaelMaggs without a new RfA was improper. That seems the genuine issue for discussion, not whether Nick should be required to stand for another RfA (indeed s/he should). Эlcobbola _talk 20:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

+1. And note that the 'crat bit of User:MichaelMaggs is restored by a new RfB where three of us clearly explained why we are not comfortable to support now. I'm sure User:MichaelMaggs would have go for an RfA too if he get any oppose on COM:BN. For Nick's case he can clearly see me and Fae opposed. I didn't understand his concern now. @Nick: Do you want an amendment here? Just make a proposal. Do you want to become an admin. Leave these drama boards (courtesy to some other active users here), do some useful stuff, and come back with a fresh RfA. Do you want an autopsy on all "admin bit restored without fresh RfAs" cases? Sorry; it is unnecessary. We need to learn from our mistakes; but no need to go back and try to fix the history if not much benefits. Best lucks. Jee 02:41, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Jee, I would appreciate a diff to exactly what you assert I opposed. According to my memory, I did not oppose Nick's RFA, since withdrawn and deleted. Fæ (talk) 11:36, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I meant our opinion in this discussion; not that RfA which vanished before I come out of my sleep. Jee 11:52, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Let me try and tease out the three questions that seem to be getting rather mixed up here, and then give my answers to them. I'm responding not only to the comments above but also to this question from Nick on my talk page.

1. What actually is the current practice and policy?
2. Have recent crat decisions been compliant with practice and policy?
3. Are there reasons for changing practice and policy?

Answers:

1. It has been the practice for many years that a crat has discretion to give the bit back to an ex-admin whose return is considered by the crat to be entirely non-contentious. In practice, that means that the crat needs to be familiar with the previous behaviour and contributions of the admin, to be aware that he/she voluntarily retired in good standing, and to take the view that an RFA would be pointless in the circumstances. On the other hand, that discretion is excluded where the bit has been involuntarily removed for inactivity: written policy states that Administrators who have lost admin rights through inactivity but who expect to become active again may re-apply through the regular process.
2. Yes, I believe they have. Nick's request was declined according to the written policy terms, while mine was accepted on the basis of longstanding practice which - up until now at least - no-one has found at all problematic. For Nick, several crats in fact went rather beyond written policy by indicating that they would not object if anyone wanted to use discretion to return the bit, but nobody did.
3. Until Nick raised concerns here, our practice and policy seem to have worked pretty well, and I for one see no great merit in removing this minimal discretion from the crats and in forcing everyone to go through an RFA no matter how needless. We should be, and indeed are, able to function well with a certain amount of trust. The distinction between 'voluntarily retired in good standing' and 'bit involuntarily removed for inactivity' makes good sense as the latter implies that the admin has by their lack of engagement with the project over an extended period effectively abrogated the voluntary community role expected of them: see Commons:Administrators. However, as an entirely separate point, I do think that that the discretionary practice should be formally incorporated into the written policy so that crat actions are totally transparent to all.

--MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:30, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@MichaelMaggs: so by not returning my permission, you're suggesting my return is contentious. If that isn't the case I can't see how you or any other bureaucrat can continue to not return my permission. Dschwen has confirmed he was happy to ignore that policy (hence my suggestion he may wish to undergo a reconfirmation RfB).

I've also repeatedly pointed out that retirement is not advertised to every administrator and not giving users the opportunity to retire is grossly unfair and wholly inappropriate.

You're also failing to take into account the fact retirement can be used to escape sanctions in a way that inactivity cannot, and your argument that retirement is fine and dandy doesn't hold up to proper scrutiny, does it.

In light of all these concerns, I await you returning my permissions forthwith. Nick (talk) 11:42, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Sorry, Nick, I don't think that your comments there correspond at all what to I said above. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:47, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

To expand a bit more: a judgement on contentiousness is not needed in your case, as according to written policy crats cannot give you the bit back after removal for inactivity. When you say 'retirement is not advertised', did you perhaps overlook the written policy statement I referred to? Retirement cannot be used to escape sanctions given that the crat needs to be aware that the ex-admin voluntarily retired in good standing. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:56, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@MichaelMaggs: but I wasn't told I could retire, allowing the avoidance of an RfA. That isn't written down anywhere, it's an unwritten but clearly accepted norm here. If I had known about the retirement policy, it's clearly something that I could have used and then there would be no alternative but to return my permissions per the precedent you have affirmed with your avoidance of a reconfirmation RfA. There is, other than the announcement of retirement, absolutely no difference between your case, my case and that of countless administrators who have become inactive.

I don't see how bureaucrats now have any alternative but to ensure the policy is changed, to ensure that all inactive administrators are informed that they can retire to avoid the written policy as it currently stands and to return permissions to every former administrator who lost their permission due to inactivity. This is a fundamental issue of consistence and fairness now. Nick (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Nick, I didn't get what are you trying to achieve here. Note that your contributions here seems far less than an average user here. Do you have no confidence that you can pass an RfA now?

"In light of all these concerns, I await you returning my permissions forthwith." Could you point to me a policy that compelled 'crats to return your permissions on request? Jee 12:03, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@Jkadavoor: this is about administrators making use of an unwritten, little known custom to avoid reconfirmation RfA. If I had retired instead of becoming inactive, I would now be an administrator once more. If this unwritten but accepted norm is to continue to be used, it needs to be made known to every user and every administrator, and those who didn't know about it should not be disadvantaged because they didn't know about it. Nick (talk) 12:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

IMHO, an admin become a non-admin should not be reappointed to whatever reason without a new RfA unless it was quite accidental (as in case of INeverCry). I had told that several times in that previous BN discussion. If every inactive ex-admins should be reappointed when they start one edit, what is the purpose of that removal? Coming back of a retired for some RL matter may be different; but how the new community (yes; the community is rapidly changing here as many retirements and so many newcomers) understand his early contributions? The most important concern for me is that how this newly rejoined admin understand the "good and very useful users" who are not familiar to him/her as they are joined/active after his/her retirement? Chances that this so called old but new admin act rude to them. This is just like an employee who take long leave get promoted and started to rule another one who worked all his life there but joined one month after him. ;( Jee 12:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

"If I had retired instead of becoming inactive, I would now be an administrator once more." I think this is an incorrect assertion. As I detailed in my reply to you over at User talk:Dschwen, returns from long absences are certainly not automatically re-sysopped, and your comparison with MichaelMaggs is comparing apples to oranges. --99of9 (talk) 13:01, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

@99of9: please point out returning administrators who have not been given their permissions back upon request, breaking them down into retirees and inactive groups. Nick (talk) 13:22, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Anyone is welcome to make a list, and that might be interesting, but with only a handful of recent data, it can not prove your assertion. --99of9 (talk) 14:10, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I too am interested in our crats providing this breakdown as requested by Nick above. russavia (talk) 13:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

User:MichaelMaggs, in your assertions above that crat actions have been within policy (which they have not) you also state that perhaps discretionary practice should be written into policy to make it transparent. You have basically contradicted yourself here, it doesn't take a whole lot of logic to work that out. Also, can you explain why you, in a most non-transparent way, requested the return of the admin bit privately, instead of publicly at COM:BN? russavia (talk) 13:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

There is no contradiction. Recent crat decisions been compliant with longstanding practice and policy, but I think it would now be sensible to document that discretionary practice on the policy page. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:49, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Being in compliance with so-called practice does not necessarily mean it is in compliance with policy. But, Michael, I am especially interested to ask you why you asked for the admin bit to be given back to you in private, rather than in public where all could see it, and potentially comment on it? russavia (talk) 13:54, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm happy to repeat that I requested my bit back in compliance with longstanding practice. Bear in mind that 'written-down policy' regulates only a very small fraction of the interactions people have here, day in and day out. Written-down policy does not and can never regulate everything, and if you are arguing that "it's not in a written-down policy, therefore it is wrong", then I beg to disagree. As I said, I do think that that the discretionary practice should be formally incorporated into the written policy. But I seem to be going round in circles here, and probably there is little point in my re-stating what I think is actually pretty clear. I hope you will excuse me if I leave it at that. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:11, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I hate to nag, MichaelMaggs but how did you know about this long standing practice and why am I and countless other former administrators being penalised for not knowing about this long standing practice ? I'm also curious why you did not ask the community on whether a reconfirmation RfA would be necessary as you pledged to do when you retired, because I'm seeing a few people here who might have asked you to undergo one (not that I think one is now necessary in light of your recent RfB but I hope you understand what I'm getting at). Nick (talk) 14:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• I restored Nick's edit per clear consensus here. Let's move on. Jee 14:04, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Jee, a bold move, but I have reverted as I see no consensus whatsoever to that effect here. Indeed, nobody has yet even formally put that up as a proposal for a policy change. I would recommend, to the contrary, that we document current practice. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:17, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

No problem; my attempt was to end this drama and move on as we can do better things here. Jee 14:19, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I am in full agreement with you on that! --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:21, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

This needs proper discussion Michael. I doubt most of the community are aware what the current practice actually is for requesting the return of sysop permissions and there's certainly not unanimous support for it. I do think at the very least the community should be asked if they want the current practice to continue, if there's not support for the "reconfirmation RFA for all" option. Nick (talk) 14:23, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• I think circumstances of removing status should be taken in account. If person gave up rights voluntarily, this action show his care and respect for project. Loss due inactivity doesn't demonstrate such qualities. Time interval between right removal and restoration request should be taken in account too. From other side life is life and it's impossible to reduce it to simgle rules which will cover all nuances. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:38, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• A very thoughtful comment. Jee 15:44, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

• Eugene, circumstances shouldn't matter at all. Whilst I appreciate why you are making the comments you just have, they are very misguided. What is the difference between someone who is experiencing health problems and hands in the tools voluntarily, and someone who has a heart-attack and becomes inactive due to that? Are we saying that those who have heart attacks and lose the bit through inactivity are inconsiderate and disrespectful? But yes, life is life, but it is entirely possible to reduce it to a single rule to cover all nuances -- that being, all advanced permissions which are lost for whatever reason can only be regained by going through community processes again -- the time limit that this would be required for is something that the community should decide (not crats) -- I suggest 12 months. russavia (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2014 (UTC)
  • I don't think that heart attacks will not allow to get a chance to give up right in half of year. Anyway it's good idea to keep away from conflicts associated with administrator activity in such medical conditions. Time limit may be good idea, I could suggest straw poll to choose it. --EugeneZelenko (talk) 15:32, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
• @EugeneZelenko: I don't entirely disgaree, but having (and keeping) this retirement option and all the benefits that go with it quiet, so quiet that very few people know about it isn't exactly showing care and respect for the project. If this was a widely known, well publicised and widely accepted part of the de-adminship policy, I certainly wouldn't have any cause for complaint and not as many people here would have cause for complaint either. Nick (talk) 15:54, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Deadminship of indeffed accounts?

We have a policy that inactive accounts (fewer than 5 admin actions on Commons in the past 6 months) are de-adminned.

There is a recognised principle in computer security that an inactive account should not be left with elevated privileges. (Inactive accounts are at increased risk of any compromise to access them going unnoticed.)

If we can reasonably predict that an account will become inactive, should the inactivity principle be invoked before the 6 months have elapsed? I see this as primarily a housekeeping move, rather than any judgemental issue and I deliberately make no comment on actions needed to recover rights. Conditions that would fall under this might include:

• Indef blocking
• Death
• Retirement from the project
  • A self-imposed indef block might be seen as such?
• Pre-announced temporary retirement from the project (this at least could justify restoration on request without RfA)
• A WMF global ban (This is not a Commons vs. WMF issue. An account that is assumed to be inaccessible just shouldn't have elevated privileges for security reasons, whatever the politics between projects.)

Your thoughts?

Note that although this is precipitated by INeverCry's recent actions it's not specifically relevant to them, merely tidying an administrative loophole. I'll be raising a formal desysop request for them later, over their fitness (unless anyone else gets to it before I do). Andy Dingley (talk) 14:43, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the security principle and that it should apply to Commons admins/'crats. -- Colin (talk) 15:08, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

There's no precedent for the first three issues, but for people temporarily retiring, previous precedent has always been that administrator and bureaucrat privileges are restored on request, unless the user wishes to go through a procedural RfA/RfB request, to gauge community consensus. The WMF issue would probably be worth agreeing to once and for all, I'd agree that user rights should be removed in the event of a WMF Global Ban, in part, to ensure a banned user doesn't appear in the list of administrators and isn't contacted by a user requiring assistance. User rights would be restored if the ban is rescinded, and it would then be up to the community to decide whether to force a desysop request/re-confirmation RfA.
I would suggest any administrator subject to an indefinite block should be the subject of a re-confirmation RfA at the very least, provided the block is correct and not in error etc. Permanent retirement and Death should be automatic desysop criteria and retired administrators should have their user talk pages redirected to an AN noticeboard so that users requiring assistance aren't left trying to contact someone who hasn't edited in months or years. Nick (talk) 15:10, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

The redirect suggestion is confusing. If I go to a person's talk page, I expect to get there. There are other ways to make it clear to people that someone isn't going to reply. Also, the talk page is still used for posting deletion notices, etc. -- Colin (talk) 15:16, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Deletion information notices are equally useless if the editor is retired, but there's the possibility the issues could be resolved by someone who isn't. They should be posted elsewhere, duplicate them if absolutely necessary. I'm sure if you don't want to redirect the user talk page for retired administrators, we can come up with a template (with translations) which explain the options available to a user needing assistance. Nick (talk) 15:34, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

• Death: Desysop immediately as the user can't ever use the admin tools again. Until the user has been desysopped, there is a risk that the account will be compromised and that hackers will gain access to advanced permissions, and there's no point in waiting for half a year.

Retirement: It's never possible to know whether the retirement is temporary or permanent. The user may claim that it is permanent only to return one month later. Better leave the admin bit or at least allow the user to go through the COM:BN procedure if returning within six months.

Indef blocking: If the user has blocked himself (e.g. Saibo, INeverCry), then treat as retirement. If blocked by someone else, then we probably have an ideal situation for a desysop discussion or immediate emergency desysop, unless the blocking admin is at fault.

WMF global ban: If the account is locked, then the user can't use the sysop tools anyway. As the global ban is not based on any Commons policies, it should not have any effect on whether the user retains or loses sysop tools under Commons policies. In this case, there is no security risk as no one can access the account. --Stefan4 (talk) 11:36, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Honestly I do not think this is necessary. It is not like we have such problems every day. It is trivial to resign on meta. If someone wants to surrender their tools that is the proper channel. People can retire and come back mind you. I'd find it in poor taste to put "death" into policy. If the resignation was not under controversial circumstances (and not too long ago) we would be lenient. INeverCry's case for instance would not qualify to that because it is clearly controversial. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 12:14, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I am here at the invitation of Nick, because of my concern regarding inconsistency in how admins that rage-quit are being dealt with. If an admin blocking themselves is to be treated as retirement, there are currently two very similar cases that couldn't be dealt with more inconsistently. Magog The Ogre blocked themselves (twice indefinitely and once for 2 months) as part of a rage-quit involving the attempted extortion of another admin (you block this user, or I block you!), blocking them because they refused, and the unilateral tripling of the block of a user. INeverCry blocked themselves indefinitely after blocking three other users/admins after accusing them of sock-puppetry. The issue is essentially the same, both admins blocked the people they hate and then blocked themselves forever. In the case of Magog The Ogre, it was decided to let them wait out their reduced self-block and then deal with de-adminship "if it's really needed" when they come back (which sounds to me like a free pass). In the case of INeverCry, de-adminship was initiated almost immediately. There has to be consistency. Fry1989 ^eh? 19:06, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Fry, the Magog incident arrived because of you. So you are certainly not the right person to ask for a punishment against Magog's behaviour. On the other hand, INeverCry incident arrived because of Russavia, who is banned from all Wikimedia. Just in case you have had memory issues. Regards, Yann (talk) 21:39, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

@Yann: It doesn't matter. They abused their tools and that's quite clear, but they get to sit out their self-block and decide for themselves whether or not they will come back. INeverCry isn't getting the same choice. BE CONSISTENT is what I'm saying. If an admin rage-quits and blocks other admins, find a consistent practice. Fry1989 ^eh? 01:49, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

• Other users might have a different opinion but I've always thought of "indefinite block" as meaning "until further notice" rather than "forever-more".

• If an admin is blocked by another admin for legitimate reasons, then we have to question whether we trust the blocked admin with extra tools and a de-sysop is appropriate. However, self-blocking does not involve trust issues, just an admin wanting to force themselves to take a timeout and it should not be a reason for de-sysop. Rather, de-sysop should be based on inappropriate actions that may have led to a self-block.
• A confirmed death should be handled sensitively i.e. there is no harm in waiting a month or two to allow other users to pay their respects.
• "Retirement", temporary or permanent should involve the admin themselves requesting de-sysop rather than a formal !vote, and if they retire without a cloud, then they should be able to have the tools restored on request, unless they have been gone for more than a year (in which case they should convince the burocrats that they are up to date with relevant policy changes).
• A global ban? It depends on how they were banned. If it is a properly conducted community ban, then de-sysop should be automatic. If it is an WMF office ban, then there should be a formal de-sysop !vote on Commons but there has to be a Commons policy-based rationale rather than "WMF-office have banned them". If and when, office bans start involving stewards in the decision-making process, then an automatic de-sysop is appropriate. The reason for this is that I believe in transparency but there are going to be situations where the reason for a ban cannot be made public. Stewards are our openly-elected representatives who have identified themselves to the WMF, and are therefore well-placed to participate with The Office in the decision to ban a user. That said I believe that such a ban should be an absolute last resort, and I would prefer bans to be made by the community.

On a side note, there is also the issue of the very low bar set for activity. I think a higher level is needed, if only to prompt less active human admins to do a little bit more to retain the tools. The bar should be raised from 5 to 50 admin actions over six months, which is not a very difficult thing to do. I also think the requirement should be expanded to include at least 25 of the 50 actions being carried out in the first three months of the six month period, to reduce the trend of inactive admins suddenly carrying out 50 actions in the week before the semi-annual review takes place. Green Giant (talk) 05:27, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

To clarify again, this proposal is not aimed at any "punitive" removal of admin privileges. It is simply intended, for matters of better IT security from general principles, to reduce having elevated privileges on dormant accounts, where there is a reasonable chance of predicting a dormant account without waiting six months for it. As such, there is no reason (within this principle) why a lot of these rights can't be pulled early and restored easily and uncontroversially, if the account stops being dormant. This is not about whether an admin (a person) deserves the privilege, it's about not leaving the privilege available on an account (an account) that no-one is paying full attention to.

Issues about "Who should have admin privileges taken away" are right outside this proposal.

I would agree your concern that 5 actions in 6 months is a very low bar, but that too is outside this proposal. Andy Dingley (talk) 09:25, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

different approach

Although the above could be interpreted as consensus (9 support, 1 oppose, 6 neutral), from the amount of votes and matter of comments I'd rather conclude that the proposal, even being acceptable, is not the desirable solution to the problem.

So, ignoring all previous points I like to bring up another aspect:

Why has a notice to be put on the admins talk page to remind him that he is an admin and is perhaps expected to do some admin work?
Why can the inactive admin, by doing a single signature, get away for free for another six months?

I certainly argued against it at the time and I fully agree with you. I've always said that the tools are for people who are in some senses active. If I recall correctly the inactive ones even get an email... I guess a posting on their page the first time is ok but after that I'm not at all sure. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:47, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I would like to request comments on the following proposal:

---

As with the policy for administrator access on Meta, inactive Commons administrators (including those holding bureaucrat, checkuser and oversighter privileges) will have their rights removed. An "inactive admin" is one who has made no admin actions on Commons in the past 6 months or has made fewer than 510 admin actions on Commons in the past 612 months. An "admin action" for this purpose is an action requiring use of the admin tools and which is logged as such according to the adminstats tool. Inactive admins per above definition can get their rights removed.

However if an admin places a message on the administrators' noticeboard stating that they will be away for a reasonable period and giving an intended return date, then no action should be taken over inactivity until two months after that date.

De-adminship process as a result of inactivity

1. A notice must be placed on the inactive admin's talk page linking to this policy and explaining that admin rights may be lost. An email should also be sent. If the admin has indicated by means of a Babel box that he/she cannot understand English, the message and email should be in a language the admin does understand.
2. If there is no response from the admin requesting retention of rights as required by the notice within 30 days, the rights will be removed.
3. If the admin responds to the notice as required but then fails to make five admin actions within the period of six months starting at the time of the notice, the rights will be removed without further notice.

---

This change likely affects both those who don't use the tools at all and those who use them occasionally only on own ends, i.e. those who perhaps not really care about admin work for the project, while still keeping requirements rather low for semiactive admins. Please comment. Thank you. --Krd 09:26, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

I would support this. My only change would be that not all admin activity is recorded by the tool I think. So editing protected pages, media wiki type edits are not recorded? There are folk who work in those areas and are very valuable. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 10:49, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

This is still in because it's the status-quo and wasn't touched in previous proposals either. I'd also be fine with changing this to "any action that requires admin rights", but perhaps this should be discussed separately. --Krd 11:04, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Commons is notoriously poor at policy making. For me this issue would need solving at the same time as the overall inactivity policy. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:03, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposed change to the minimum activity requirement

Currently, the minimum activity required for an admin (including bureaucrats, checkusers and oversighters) is 5 "admin actions" over six months, i.e. an average of less than one action a month, which is an extremely low requirement. Following from the section above, I propose that the minimum requirement should be increased to 60 "admin actions" over six months, to make it an average of 10 actions per month. This isn't particularly challenging because it is quite possible to perform 60 actions in a day. Even if this only results in less active admins having to do a little bit more, I think this would result in a net positive for the project. With the current requirement, some less active admins log in just before the review period and carry out 5 actions in order to avoid being classed as inactive. Whilst it is good to see a surge of activity, I propose that the requirement should be expanded so that at least 30 of the minimum 60 actions should have been carried out in the first three months of the six month period, to spread out the surge. If these changes are adopted, I propose that they should become effective from the start of the next six month review period i.e. from September 2015. Green Giant (talk) 19:39, 21 July 2015 (UTC)

Please can you spell out what "net positive" you expect? And why your particular solution is the best way of achieving these positives? I fear you have jumped straight into a !vote situation without time to mature your proposal in discussion. [It also might help to link previous discussions, which I know were very vigorous, but I can't find at the moment.] --99of9 (talk) 01:36, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

The net positive would be that those users with fewer admin actions, who log 5 actions just to keep above the minimum, might be prompted to log an extra 55 and for example help ease the strain at Deletion Requests. At any given time, there may be as many as 5,000 files needing attention but not enough admins to attend to them. I noted that at the last activity review, there was a little surge with DR's being closed by admins who hadn't been very active for a few months. At this particular point, we've lost Fastily and INC, and Jim is away until August, so the DR backlog is steadily growing (just under 6,000 files at the moment). A couple of weeks ago I recall there were about 10,000 files in the Deletion Requests, which fell to 4,000 after I mass deleted 6,000 in one DR. In the last week I've been busy on other wikis, looking at "Copy to Commons" categories, and haven't done many closures but it seemed to me that the DR backlog is growing. It isn't just DR's but the whole admin backlog, which at the time of the review seemed to shrink a bit more than usual. I appreciate that many admins do other things but I would have thought that one of the major reasons for being an admin is to help with the backlog. As for the format, you can't please all of the nerds all of the time. If there wasn't a vote subsection, someone else would have questioned why there wasn't such a subsection. Previous discussions have been difficult to find but I have based this proposal on some recent and not-so-recent comments e.g. the last part of the section above, a short section on my talk page, a comment you made at the bureaucrat noticeboard a couple of months ago, a few comments here and there at the Village Pump (which are a pain to find). Mostly it was because I felt that a discussion needed to be started, even if it is unlikely to be adopted in its current form. From the comments below I think most people who oppose are not opposed to the general idea of encouraging more admin activity. There are other ways to improve deletion requests in particular (which I will propose later) but this seemed a good place to begin. Green Giant (talk) 12:31, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Poll

•  Support Such a change is a long overdue. Thanks a lot for making this proposal. Yann (talk) 19:46, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Goes without saying I support this. I do think it should be different for Bureaucrats though. There isn't as much for them to do so naturally they should have more time. Reguyla (talk) 20:45, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support A more reasonable level, not for an active admin. Andy Dingley (talk) 21:08, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Thibaut120094 (talk) 21:20, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose Like everything except the 30 in the first three months part. Hedwig in Washington is inactive for months every now and than because he is busy IRL but we don't want to miss him as an admin do we? Natuur12 (talk) 22:29, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support in principle, though Natuur12 above makes a good point. -- Tuválkin ✉ ✇ 23:21, 21 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose I don't necessarily oppose expanded activity requirements, but "all edits," not just "admin actions," should be the measurement. As long as an admin is (minimally) active on the Commons in general, there is no good reason whatsoever to remove the sysop flag. "Admin actions" is a poor indicator; if I were to close 100 DRs in six months (which is above average participation in DR closures) with a 50/50 keep/delete ratio, I would fall below the proposed threshold. If we're going to change the policy, change it properly. Эlcobbola _talk 00:29, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose as proposed. I don't think the idea a bad one per se, but we need to remember that we are all volunteers and not paid. We don't have a upper limit of admins we can have on Commons, so there's no need to fire them if they active below average. The only problem I see is this: Newbie wants assistance from admin in her/his language, looks in the admin/language list and asks the first one on the list who's not active much. No reaction - newbie frustated - potentially a good user lost. 60 edits / 6 months and all edits counted seems the better way to go. My two cents. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 02:50, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose I am quite happy with present rules. Taivo (talk) 07:36, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose If there is anything to change, remove the notification / 30 days grace time. --Krd 08:50, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Weak support per Natuur12. Indeed, there needs to be a change, but natuur12 makes sense. Jianhui67 ^{talk★contribs} 09:09, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose - there is a need for understanding absences and not using those as an issue against an editor/admin - such as Natuur's comment about Hedwig... unexplained absence or inactivity could be a condition imho, but not punitively... I agree with others about activity in general as an indicator of presence, rather than any specific number of type of actions. JarrahTree (talk) 10:41, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support --Steinsplitter (talk) 11:45, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose -- aka 12:37, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Alan ^(talk) 18:39, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose Generally agree that current threshold is too low but disagree with some proposed details. As others, I am not warming up to the three-month split, as it halves the length of the evaluation period in all but name. Proposed admin action levels are also a bit high. Not for someone who contributes regularly a and regularly performs admin tasks, but certainly for someone whose interest shifts from time to time. My main activity is category work, not something that generates much admin specific actions usually. My main reason for rfa was to make me self-sufficient in categorising, I.e. not add to the backlogs thanks to the ability to delete useless/empty/misnamed cats and such on my own. IMO adminships like mine should remain a real possibility for trusted users, and potential admins of my type should not be pushed off with overly steep admin action requirements. New admins should not be pressured to close RFDs they don't feel confident about just to fill a quota, just to be allowed to keep accumulating admin experience. Adminship costs nothing, and it's a thankless job we do for free. As long as a user remains trustworthy to the community, it should be easy for them to remain admins. Admins with little admin specific a actions to their name are not a burden. Backlog reduction has options other than tightening admins' leashes. I'm afk right now but will propose my ideas when I return in August-possibly earlier. --Pitke (talk) 21:34, 22 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose 60 admin action is a bit outrageous, being active should suffice e.g. 100 edits over six month Mardetanha ^talk 00:10, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose. I prefer suggestions that encourage admins to do admin work instead of suggesting to higher the minimum activity requirement. For example to give official barnstar for every X admin edits. And l

ets all remember, we can not count the whole real admin activities. -- Geagea (talk) 00:36, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose per my comment below. ColonialGrid (talk) 04:53, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose -- Commons needs more admins, not less. FunkMonk (talk) 05:17, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose I don't want more fastily's like admin. --PierreSelim (talk) 03:47, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose I have no idea how many "admin actions" I take, and while I suspect that I meet the threshold, if I don't then I certainly have no interest in doing certain specific admin-only tasks just to meet a threshold. I probably answer more help desk questions than anyone else. I'm sure there are many other users in a similar position, doing a lot of good work only a little of which requires these particular tools. Do you really want to take away a perfectly good admin's privileges just because most of the work they do here doesn't require admin tools? I certainly don't. - Jmabel ! talk 05:50, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

 Comment Jmabel: As far as I understand it, a more or less dead admin account needs or should have X edits in Y time or whatever. That's what I get out of it, throwing active admins out on the street through a closed window doesn't make sense at all. Unless you're selling windows that is. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 06:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

 Comment @Hedwig in Washington: : The criterion about "admin actions" could take away the account of someone who is quite active taking photos and uploading them, categorizing content, answering questions, etc. They just happen to be doing work that could technically be done by a non-admin. Indeed, if they were not currently an admin, they'd be a good candidate to be an admin. - Jmabel ! talk 16:20, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Oppose While it is good to encourage administrators to be more active, I think this proposal may do more harm than good. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:41, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose as Эlcobbola --Oursana (talk) 15:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose as some of us have lives outside of commons. Ryan Kaldari (WMF) (talk) 00:29, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Comments

• Re Эlcobbola _talk's proposal above, I'm against it. Such a change, to measure editor actions rather than admin actions, would presumably require rather more of them. If an editor has time to make those many more actions, why would they not have time to do some admin tasks too? If they have no intention of using the admin features at all, then why have them? Andy Dingley (talk) 01:13, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

• It depends what you are hoping to achieve. Are you trying to weed out "dormant accounts" for computer security as you discussed in the section above? If so, then I wonder whether you consider mine to be a dormant account? I have made 31 admin actions in the last six months. In the same time I have made thousands of edits, and run a bot making about a hundred thousand. "Why would [I] not have time to do some admin tasks too?" you ask... well maybe I could, but maybe I just do what I feel is useful, necessary, and interesting at each point in time. Does that make me a dormant computer security risk? --99of9 (talk) 01:53, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

• The point about dormancy for security reasons is about accounts that aren't being watched. So that if you're logging into it regularly, let alone editing, that removes the problem. The point above is also about cases where imminent dormancy can reasonably be predicted, before it happens, which is a different situation again.

This point is about accounts that may be active as editors (or may not be active at all), but aren't using their admin privileges. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:22, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

• I don't think this proposal will sole the issue. If we raise the threshold, people will try again to pass that. What we need is change of attitude. It is concerning if people have no more interest in this project still prefer to keep their admin flag. (This may an example. Otherwise I may miss something.) People should either resign or the community ask them to resign. Jee 02:28, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

Jee, my hope is that having a higher threshold might spur some admins to do more actions and others to review whether they need the admin tools. If this is all that happens as a result of this proposal, then I'll be happy with that. Green Giant (talk) 12:31, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

For me, Commons:Administrators/De-adminship looks rather humorous. We can deflag an admin or crat only if he is below activity threshold or he abuse his power. We can't touch them even if 99.99% of the community don't want them? It is funny they can access highly important crat list, deleted contents, etc. by maintaining a few edits per year. Jee 12:55, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

One reason to want to keep the admin hat is because of the increased status it gives in content-related arguments. "We should do this", 'No, we should do that, and I'm an admin so I'm right', "But that's a crazy thing to do!", 'I'm an admin. If you still do this, I will block you'. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:18, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

• Per the above comments about absences, there is provision for this on the project page i.e. "if an admin places a message on the administrators' noticeboard stating that they will be away for a period and giving an intended return date, then no action should be taken over inactivity until two months after that date." That's not an unreasonable thing to ask someone to do. Green Giant (talk) 12:31, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I had something to do with that phrasing... (& indeed the whole policy). I've always found it bizarre that folk get adminship cos they are active and the community respects that and then they get less and less and less active and there is virtually nothing that can be done about it.

More generally - it was hell to get it through last time and I doubt it will be that different now. Strangely (...) inactive folk suddenly take an interest in a project when their precious trophies - sorry, rights - are under threat.

And no matter how carefully worded there will be folk who ensure that the just do the minimum require which I find quite insulting to the community that trusted them in the first place. Plus ca change etc --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:11, 22 July 2015 (UTC)

I personally prefer that every admin should be willing to step down if the community think so. I will maintain a recall page if I ever become an admin and will step down if at least 10 people having license review/admin right ask me to step down. Jee 12:11, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Comment @Green Giant: I oppose this primarily because your proposal, while appearing simple, is too complex. You essentially aim to change both the time period which we measure activity, and the required actions, but have framed it in a way where only the actions are changed. By requiring a set amount of edits in six months, but stipulating that half need to be in the first three months, you are essentially advocating a move to desysoping after three months. This is fine, however, it leaves the ludicrous situation where an admin could be inactive for 95 days, then make 1000 admin actions in the next 90 odd days, but still - through the technicalities introduced by your convoluted proposal - have their admin bit removed. How would this be a benefit to Commons? Sure, it could be argued that we wouldn't desysop said admin, but in that case the 30 actions in the first three months is completely meaningless and should not be part of the proposal. And I haven't even gotten into the problems about warning admins that they are falling below the 30 edits in the first three months. As this proposal seems to be heading towards no consensus (in part because of the oddities I am describing) I suggest you split it into two separate sequential proposals. The first to determine in what time frame an admins actions be measured, six months or three; and a second proposal which determines how many actions or edits admins will be required to make. ColonialGrid (talk) 04:53, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
• If edits to pages in the MediaWiki namespace or to protected pages aren't counted, I will likely loose the admin bit sooner or later. This is nothing I am afraid of, though. -- Rillke^(q?) 22:27, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Alternative proposal

Like all the best storybook villains, when Plan A is taking a nosedive, it is good to have a Plan B. My alternative proposal is that we should consider adopting a modified version of the Meta removal criteria. Rather than the current five admin actions over six months, perhaps a minimum of:

1. ten actions over six months, or
2. ten actions or ten edits over six months, or
3. ten actions and ten edits over six months, or
4. any combination that adds up to twenty actions/edits overall e.g. from twenty actions and zero edits, through to zero actions and twenty edits; or
5. any combination that adds up to twenty actions/edits overall with a minimum of ten actions, or
6. any combination that adds up to twenty actions/edits overall with a minimum of ten edits
7. any other combination that someone else suggests

For anyone who wishes to review the origins of the policy, the earliest discussions about inactivity appear to be from the admin noticeboard archive, which then continued into the archives of this talk page. Let me also emphasise that my goal is not to remove inactive admins but to encourage a little bit more usage of the tools by those entrusted with them, so any and all ideas are welcome. Green Giant (talk) 11:35, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

Apologies to Steiny and Herby, who've already indicated their support before I've added three other possibilities. Green Giant (talk) 12:28, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

#3: ten actions and ten edits over six months

•  Support this shouldn't be to hard. --Steinsplitter (talk) 11:42, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support I'll happily support this however I'll happily put money on the fact that some of our (to me) inactive admins will see this as highly onerous. Let's face it the average working commons admin will do this in about 5 minutes (and thank goodness we have some like that). --Herby ^{talk thyme} 12:16, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support IMO, there is a very low requirement. Yann (talk) 13:05, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Create ten empty pages in own userspace and delete them afterwards. ;) --Krd 13:31, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

While I am sure (??) that this is humour it is just as likely that some creative and inactive admin will think this a good idea... --Herby ^{talk thyme} 13:36, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

The policy is good to go, but won't solve any problem. --Krd 13:45, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

•  Support I'd also support a higher bar, of say 50 actions or 100 constructive edits, but won't open a new option. I see no reason to remove the bit from active users, even if they aren't really using the admin rights (it's the community trust that of an admin that counts, not really how much they use the rights in my mind), but I fail to see why users who don't make a meaningful constructive contribution to Commons need the admin bit. ColonialGrid (talk) 13:52, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Neutral the difference to the current policy seems so insignificant to me that I think it is hardly worth a !vote (and yet I'm commenting :-). What is the problem we are trying to solve with this? Squeezing 4 more admin actions out of a mostly inactive admin? What do we gain by removing the bit? What is the point of an inactivity de-admin policy anyways? Why not just ask people if they want to hang on to their bit and remove it if they answer no or don't answer within n months (use a maintenance cat to track this)? --Dschwen (talk) 14:22, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Neutral I'm with Dschwen on this one. Maintaining a "leader board" of active edits doesn't have any bearing on the validity or benefit of those edits. I think it would be better to reach out to inactives one-on-one and see if we can reinspire some of them. Maybe a nice cup of tea to put on their pages with a "long time no see" message? Ellin Beltz (talk) 14:46, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support fine with me Mardetanha ^talk 16:16, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Natuur12 (talk) 16:51, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support Fine with me. BUT both Dschwen and Ellin Beltz have good points. Still, a reasonable rule to de-sysop should be established. We can't just have rules to make peeps admin and not how/when/why to remove the bit. It's a good start and we have a procedure we can/have to follow. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 03:05, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Neutral per Dschwen and Ellin Beltz above. Walter Siegmund (talk) 16:43, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Neutral I'd support at least this much and would (as above) support more. But this is a move in the right direction and so I wouldn't oppose it. Andy Dingley (talk) 17:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Oppose but very weak, I think the number its being raised to is insignificant and wont necessarily have the desired impact on backlogs, though this also needs to be balanced against the impact of causing people to perform actions when they may not be fully upto date with any shifts in policy. Maybe its time to rethink the why behind setting limits which I understood was to stop dormant accounts holding the tools, consider how else we can improve the processing of backlogs. Gnangarra 07:41, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Neutral This limit is indeed not very high, however I'm more with Dschwen and Ellin Beltz on that topic. Reinspiring people seems more important than removing tools to me. --PierreSelim (talk) 12:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Support I consider this to be the minimum raise able to get consent and falling below this Minimum should result in auto de-admin. I'd like to have 30-50 admin actions (excluding own userspace and those sneaky Open Proxy IP blocks) for this but no automatic de-admin if one fails to comply and still above the proposed 10+10 Minimum which should result in a de-admin procedure/vote (you may call it a re-election). --Denniss (talk) 19:34, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
•  Neutral I don't see the value to this change, it's such small difference with the current policy. So per per Dschwen, Ellin Beltz and Walter Siegmund --PierreSelim (talk) 11:01, 1 August 2015 (UTC)
•  Support --Rschen7754 19:37, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
•  Support I think it's strict enough. We are volunteers and most of us have a life without Commons. Admins who fail the small hurdle should be ping/emailed. Maybe we can motivate a few to continue. --Hedwig in Washington ^(mail?) 01:45, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
•  Neutral I would support any more conciliatory approach, pinging, where effort is made to communicate with the inactive or low action individuals to clarify whether real life has got in the way or not JarrahTree (talk) 08:00, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Does this needs to be a policy

I am unsure if this is needed. We can deal with such problems as needed. If someone makes only 5 or 10 actions in 6 months consistently for years, should they keep their access? I think a quantity isn't that important. Addressing the overall problem of removing access from those who aren't using it is a better angle. Neither current policy nor the proposal addresses this. -- とある白い猫 ^ちぃ？ 22:32, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Procedure when an admin is going to be away for a period

A potential change to the policy is being discussed at Commons:Bureaucrats' noticeboard#Voluntary suspension of adminship. Please contribute there. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:56, 20 January 2017 (UTC)

There doesn't seem much interest in discussing our policy of allowing admins to be away for a period, and I'm going to be bold and make the suggested change: "away for a period" --> "away for a period of not more than 12 months". Nobody has objected to the suggestion and I think it should not be contentious. Of course it can still be discussed if anyone feels the need to. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:38, 25 January 2017 (UTC)

Edits to protected pages should be considered administrative actions

It's the second time (IIRC) I've been notified of an impending de-adminship since this policy was set in place, while I've been a consistently active contributor to the project throughout the 10 years I've been an editor here. Not only I feel slightly insulted by having to provide a proof of work to a project where I'm volunteering my time, but I believe it makes no sense to disregard one of the legitimate uses of the administrative privileges (i.e. editing protected pages) as a valid criterion for such proof of work.

I thus propose that edits to protected pages should be counted as valid administrative actions in the context of this policy. --Waldir ^talk 11:38, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

ps - the previous thread (above) is relevant as well -- I may be missing other actions requiring admin status that aren't considered at the moment by the policy, and would absolutely add all of them to my proposal. Pinging @Herbythyme: . --Waldir ^talk 11:44, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Waldir, how many (rough guess sufficient) protected pages edits did you perform in 2015? --Krd 11:53, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

It isn't hard to make 5 logged actions in 6 months. I  Oppose protected pages should be counted as valid administrative actions. --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:37, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

While I agree it is not hard to make 5 admin actions (in 5 minutes!) it is mad to not take into account editing protected pages. Admins are the only people who can do that so of course it is an admin action. --Herby ^{talk thyme} 15:18, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

@Herby: Not answering your main point, it should also be noted that users with the editinterface user right (such as global interface editors or local ones on a few different projects) also have that ability. odder (talk) 08:38, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Krd, I really can't tell, since most of my edits are categorization or file description edits, and I tend to use HotCat and Cat-a-lot for the former when I can -- essentially, the protection status of the pages rarely, if ever, gets exposed to me. The best guess I could make is multiplying the total of edits I made last year by Common's overall proportion of protected pages to unprotected pages, but I can't see how such a guess could be useful. --Waldir ^talk 07:09, 20 April 2016 (UTC)

•  Support this proposal, I see no harm in applying this proposal, and not applying this would be unfair for admins regularly editing protected pages such as COM:CDC (which is protected to prevent abuse from non-admins) and does deletion or any other admin actions rarely. Oh, if 5 logged actions is easy to circumvent (just make a page within your userspace and delete it 3 times and restore 2 times), circumventing this is easy too. Just make a page within your userspace, fully protect it (one admin action), edit it (don't use null edits) 3 times (three admin actions), and delete it (one admin action). 1+3+1=5. --★ Poké⁹⁵ 03:19, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

2017

Rekindling this discussion after yet another de-adminship "threat" (to be sure, this is nothing personal against Odder, who is merely performing the role of the messenger). This whole process feels unwarranted, unappreciative, and verging on abusive. And to make matters worse, I got the message less than a week after having performed a series of edit protected requests (out of several more I did throughout the last few months, not to mention having a pretty much unbroken edit activity record). The only reason I don't resign out of protest is that this unpleasant action (punching in the "time card" and pledging to satisfy activity criteria that are clearly incomplete) is at least predictably spaced out in time, whereas the alternative --e.g. hitting walls when attempting to edit protected pages-- could happen more frequently and unpredictably.

Raising the issue here, despite the instructions in the policy page, doesn't seem to be an effective way to propose a change in the policy. Is there anything else I can do other than engage in an extended and time-consuming RFC process? This policy, albeit surely well-intentioned, feels completely backwards for a project like this. Have we forgotten that this movement is built on volunteer (i.e. self-motivated) work? --Waldir ^talk 15:49, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

@Waldir: It is really so hard to make 5 *logged* admin actions is 6 months? Seriously? BTW: I *love* the current system, and i think 5 admin actions are too less, it should be 100 admin actions in 6 months. Best :-) --Steinsplitter (talk) 12:04, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

It's not hard, but that's not the point I'm making: my objection is to having a system that forces people to perform a set of predetermined tasks, in a project whose success is entirely owed to being intrinsically motivated. This kind of controlling systems, which subtly (but fundamentally) robs people of autonomy, recognition and trust, has been thoroughly demonstrated in psychological research to erode intrinsic motivation even below the initial baseline that led the persons to engage with projects in the first place.

The main issue is not that it is unpleasant for those subject to the control system (those who happen not to conform to the policy's expectations of "valuable" work, that is), but that the actual effects are contrary to the very goals of the project: we end up demotivating and/or losing people who are actually doing valuable work in the project, and could be helpful should they need to use the administrative tools, and instead we're concentrating that work they could have done themselves, into a smaller set of people tasked with performing these duties in a regular basis.

If only we had a way to measure real usage of administrative tools (including editing of protected pages, accessing deleted content to engage with users who contest the deletions, etc.) then I could agree that once a person spends a long period of time not using those tools, it wouldn't make much of a difference to remove their access to them; but even though we all agree we don't have the means to accurately measure the usage of such tools, we choose to impose artificial constraints on volunteer contributors, rather than accept the slight inconvenience of a longer list of administrators? I just don't see how the latter makes more sense than the former. --Waldir ^talk 12:39, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@Waldir: , this all is right. Now please open COM:DR and close 5 requests. Choose any 5, some of them are very simple. This lasts less than 10 minutes. Or if you don't like it, open Category:Candidates for speedy deletion and delete 5 copyright violations. This lasts less than minute. I'm sure you wrote these messages more than 10 minutes. Taivo (talk) 09:15, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Once again, I agree with you 100% that those are easy tasks to perform -- I'm not contesting that. But implicit in this requirement to perform those tasks is the notion that the work I already do willingly for the project --including the work done using administrative access, such as editing protected pages in response to edit requests, or as part of some other task-- doesn't count; instead I must do something else, that is more convenient to measure. Regardless of how hard it is to comply, do you honestly feel it is right choice to shift the burden to the contributors rather than the verification process? --Waldir ^talk 09:57, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

You were right is the burden was any. It isn't. --Krd 10:12, 22 February 2017 (UTC)

Proposal on de-adminship for cause

A proposal has been made to amend this policy. See Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Proposal on de-adminship for cause. MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:30, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Proposal to increase the minimum requirements of activity for the administrators

Hello, I made a proposal at Commons:Village pump/Proposals#Proposal to increase the minimum requirements of activity for the administrators.

Regards, Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 13:56, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

• Just for the record the proposal was not accepted and is archivied there. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 05:36, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

"some consensus for removal"

De-adminship requests that are opened without prior discussion leading to some consensus for removal may be closed by a bureaucrat as inadmissible.

Per community consensus a 50% majority consensus is required for de-adminship. This line however increases that to an unspecified supermajority. This was added by Patstuart in 2007. The edit summary says "see talk" but I find no consensus for this particular line in the archive.

In my opinion we should more clearly define "some consensus for removal". - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 15:54, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

What is your suggestion? --Krd 15:56, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

@Krd: I'm not sure. One way might be "three different autopatrolled users have to agree a de-adminship request should be started and if the last de-adminship request for the admin in question was less than 2 months ago at least two new supporters are required". Details may need to be adjusted. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 16:01, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Adjusting that: "three autopatrolled users have to agree a de-adminship request should be started and if there has been a previous de-adminship request for the admin in question at least one new (autopatrolled) supporter who didn't vote "remove" on the last request is required". This makes it harder to game the system. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 16:12, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, I also distinguish between supporting a request and supporting an actual de-adminship. One should be able to support the request, simply to evaluate community support for the admin in question. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 16:20, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

I think with such policy we'd have 200 de-admin requests the day after implementation. Three is way too few, I could imagine nothing below ten. But it's still difficult to keep the soft criteria mandatory: Talking to the admin in question, allowing him to reflect his potential problems, resolving the problem without ending up in de-admin. This is more important than actual vote count in the (pre) discussion, which isn't a vote anyway. --Krd 16:40, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

Adjusting again:

To start a de-adminship request, three users have to agree to starting that request. These users must:

*be autopatrolled (also includes patrollers, admins, LR, etc, not autoconfirmed)

• not have voted "oppose" on the request for adminship
• not have voted "remove" on any previous request for de-adminship for the admin in question update again

I don't believe there will be 200 de-admin requests, but even if you believe that, that could be solved by adding that there can be no more than three de-adminship requests running at the same time. This will only happen once anyway because the next de-adminship for the same admin needs fresh supporters.

Currently crats decide the outcome of a de-adminship (judge) but also who is allowed to start such a request in the first place (executive) and the "law" is written without consensus by some user named Patstuart who doesn't even seem to be around anymore. It all pretends to have a separation of powers, but it obviously doesn't. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 18:25, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

These are not realistic criteria, as per Krd above. Something like at least 10 votes support and not more than 30% oppose might be OK. Regards, Yann (talk) 04:21, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Asking for 70% support makes no sense, that reduces the de-adminship request to a formality because that only requires 50%. The requirements to start a request should by definition be below 50% or else the de-adminship request will be redundant. You say my suggested criteria are "not realistic". Why exactly? If you read them well, you'll see they might trigger some de-adminship requests once when they are implemented (which we should be able to handle), but no continuous stream of de-adminship requests. To translate the criteria into something easier to read: an admin has to piss off three autopatrolled users whom they haven't pissed off before. Fæ and Jcb for example? Fæ wouldn't count towards the three autopatrolled users because he voted "Remove" on one of the de-adminship requests. If anything, I'd be worried these requirements make it too hard to start a request. Reducing the number of three users to two may be more sensible.

The perfect test would actually be: "are you willing to bet $100 on the desysop failing?". If you're not, the request should be allowed to proceed. But this isn't easy to capture in words for a policy.

Another update, users must:

• be autopatrolled (also includes patrollers, admins, LR, etc, not autoconfirmed)
• not have voted "oppose" on the request for adminship less than 1 year ago
• not have voted "remove" on any previous request for de-adminship for the admin in question less than 1 year ago

Added "less than 1 year ago" because I think the previous conditions actually made it too hard to initiate a de-adminship request. Further finetuning is probably still needed, but I'm trying to devise something that takes the decision out of the hands of the crats (they already judge the outcome of the request, they don't need this) while preventing small groups with a grudge from spamming de-adminship requests. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 06:13, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Your proposal is a fail from the start. Please read what consensus means. The opinion of 3 users, even if they are long-standing contributors, is not consensus. Regards, Yann (talk) 06:56, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

That's why you should let go of the idea that consensus should be required to even start a request. Consensus is required for the request to succeed, thus it should not be required to start the request. If it is, the request is completely pointless. Proven by the fact 10 out of 15 de-adminship requests were nothing but a formality for what was inevitable. I tried to create the proposal in a way that would avoid requests from small groups of users with a grudge and angry newbies. I'm pretty much done with this. If the system refuses to change, sooner or later, it will be changed. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 13:29, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Sorry, but no. I am open about the level needed to define a consensus, but opening de-adminship requests without a consensus is totally out of question. It would be opening the pandora box for more hostility without any benefit to the project. Regards, Yann (talk) 13:39, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

I've already opened Pandora's box. If a small group of users holding a grudge actually wants to have a futile de-adminship request once a year, you better just let them have it. In the case we have now, Jcb, it would be better for everyone, Jcb included, to have a de-adminship request. If that request results in sufficient support for Jcb, it gives him a mandate. Starting a request has to be possible with less than consensus. Exactly how that'll be determined could be discussed, with a small number of trusted users, a larger number that can also include newbies, excluding users who recently voted on a de-adminship for that admin, some percentage (like 30%) of a vote, a fixed number, whatever. But if you require a consensus for a request, just skip the request altogether. - Alexis Jazz ^{ping plz} 14:48, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Yes, you have tried to open the box, and it looks bad on you. But you still do not understand. The discussion potentially leading to a de-adminship is not a vote. It is a discussion which should show if a formal vote is needed or not. That is called a consensus. Regards, Yann (talk) 15:37, 6 September 2018 (UTC)

Copyright violation

Can an admin be nominated for de-adminship if the repeatedly upload copyright violations after being informed of the copyright problems associated with their uploads?--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 21:06, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

I'd say seeking blocking, perhaps a partial one, would make more sense. Having or not having the admin flag doesn't affect the ability to upload. whym (talk) 11:58, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Admin actions

I defined admin actions as "admin logs and Mediawiki edits". I wonder what other things constitute admin actions. Is editing a fully-protected page considered an admin action, for example? 4nn1l2 (talk) 09:42, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

It would be highly impractical to count protected pages edits outside mediawiki namespace, because it's nearly impossible to find all of them by usual means. --Krd 11:14, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

No. 1989 (talk) 20:46, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

clarification regarding mediawiki namespace edits

Hello. Per current practice edits in the mediawiki namespace are considered as admin actions, but sadly often are forgotten to count correctly during inactivity reviews. To make this explicit, I'd like to suggest to change:

An "admin action" for this purpose is an action requiring use of the admin tools and which is logged as such according to the adminstats tool.

into:

An "admin action" for this purpose is an action requiring use of the admin tools, including edits to the mediawiki namespace. Data taken from the adminstats tool may be incomplete.

Please comment. --Krd 09:49, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

• OK. Christian Ferrer ^(talk) 10:24, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
• I disagree with this change. Admins who are not using the toolset should not be admins. If someone wants to edit the MediaWiki namespace, one could simply apply for interface adminship instead. 1989 (talk) 20:40, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

  @1989: No one on this project has successfully applied for IA without already being an Admin.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 15:20, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

  @Jeff G.: From this and this, that's far from the truth. 1989 (talk) 00:00, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  @1989: Point taken. Maybe I should have applied.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:32, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

  • A counter point would be that the IA rights are an overkill if someone intends to edit messages and pages like MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist (which I think is more closely associated with the admin responsibilities than the interface-admin) only, not scripts and stylesheets. whym (talk) 13:29, 6 April 2021 (UTC)
• OK. 4nn1l2 (talk) 14:28, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose as 1989. We're not looking for whether someone has been active, or else we'd include the content spaces too. We're looking at a need to have the admin tools permission.

Also if this is to depend on a particular namespace, it should make it clear that this is only that namespace, not its associated Talk: space. Andy Dingley (talk) 15:37, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

• Hi, I wouldn't count "mediawiki namespace edits" as admin actions, since we have a specific right for these. Regards, Yann (talk) 20:23, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

  Which right do you mean? --Krd 06:15, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

• Note that interface admins can also edit .js and .css pages that are not in their userspace. Regular admins can only edit a subset of the MediaWiki namespace. pandakekok9 06:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)
•  Oppose, we need more Admin actions demonstrably counted by the adminstats tool, not fewer.   — Jeff G. ツ _{please ping or talk to me} 12:32, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Oppose as utterly pointless - As Yann correctly points out we have IA for that. Solution looking for a problem. –Davey2010^Talk 20:39, 1 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Support Of course we want active admins but I do not think that it does any harm if someone does not use the tool a lot for some time. So if the change makes it easier then fine with me. I really doubt that we will have many cases where someone keep the admin status for a long time only because of edits in the MediaWiki name space. --MGA73 (talk) 14:19, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Support per current practice. This is not simply a question of giving IA instead of regular admin privileges as the IA right grants other significant rights that are not included in the set of admin privileges. And I do not see a point in counting a particular kind of admin action differently than other admin actions per this policy. --AFBorchert (talk) 22:02, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Support Platonides (talk) 23:23, 4 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Support Seems sensible as Mediawiki edits can be a valid part of admin work (fixing broken scripts, etc.). Nosferattus (talk) 20:12, 6 July 2021 (UTC)
•  Weak oppose per MAG73, It will case some inactive sysop editing MediaWiki namespace to keep their sysop flag. (^･ｪ･^) (talk) 00:36, 9 July 2021 (UTC)
  • You could technically keep fiddling with whitespaces in MediaWiki:Sidebar without doing any work, perhaps, but it will stand out and will inevitably be questioned. I think it's a matter of explicitly forbidding such token edits or relying on common sense (not to do such completely pointless things). whym (talk) 13:49, 11 July 2021 (UTC)