Desysop process RfC

[The Garbage Scow]

A new RfC has begun regarding community opinions of a possible desysop process.

[Osborne]

2019: Introducing checks and balances. It's high time.
Descriptions of de-adminship systems on other projects is quite interesting. It seems enwp is the only big project without admin recall. Quite telling...

To avoid the problems of straw polls and foster discussion, editors are encouraged, but not required, to provide their opinions without bolded statements of "support" or "oppose".

Let's see who's the first to ignore the "procedure":

Strongest possible oppose ... TonyBallioni (talk) 12:44, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

While his comment sounds reasonable, the devil is in the details: his statements lack any proof of validity. Recently appointed checkuser ST47 also joins with an oppose.

Both argue, that ArbCom is a sufficient to "holding administrators to account". Recent events have proven this to be false.
Both are checkusers. While ArbCom might hold administrators to account, checkuser are only appointed by ArbCom, and NEVER held to account. In fact, ArbCom ignores blatant policy violations by checkusers, and checkusers make jokes about ArbCom, showing who is in power.
It would be unfortunate for CUs, if there was a community process that's not under their control: they might be held accountable for their actions. This explains the "strongest possible oppose", which also comes with the strongest possible COI.

[Osborne]

So far the census of commenters:
19 administrators (4 checkuser)
1 bureaucrat
14 editors

There are maybe 100x more editors, than admins on enwp, yet this RfC reached 35% more administrators, than editors. The canvassing "notifications" only went out to places frequented by administrators.
Although administrators have an inherent COI discussing their own desysop procedures, most of the comments are quite neutral, except apparent admin accountability whitewashers:

I agree. There is no evidence of a problem—what admin should have been desysopped but wasn't? ... Johnuniq (talk) 23:08, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

The "not the right form" technical blockages (discreet stonewallers):

I don't think this is a useful question without proposing an actual process ... Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:06, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

The clueless (Communication patterns inconsistent with an 18+ years old. How did he get CU?):

If policy gave Arbcom exclusive jurisdiction over certain issues, that might help to address some concerns. ... NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 19:26, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

The distinguished and reasonable sounding, who clearly has no idea, that this system works on other language wikipedias, with success:

the more I think about it, the more depressed I become at what this would likely lead to for our community. ... The end result is the bullying of other human beings, condoned in the name of accountability, targeted at sysops who have no chance of actually being desysoped. ... TonyBallioni (talk) 22:49, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Accoring to TB: Administrator accountability would be depressing, because the community is dominated by abusers of "administrator accountability"... not just an insult to the community, but a baseless speculation. Admin recall is similar to an RfA. People teaming up in that process? Happens, occasionally (ex. Greenman). Does it happen often? No. TonyBallioni, assume good faith from the community.

Administrator accountability is a policy of about 10 lines. Compare that to the infinite number of policies and guidelines governing the simple editor. If the community is dominated by abusers of policies to "bullying other human beings", how many editors are bullied day-by-day, using these rules? A lot. These issues don't come to light, because a report at ANI is more likely to backfire, than to resolve the bullying.
But we should shed a few tears only for the occasional admin, who might be attacked by his enemies, using an otherwise necessary process. That is the systemic bias of Wikipedia: preferential treatment for admins (and established editors).

[Poetlister]

Most editors do not know or even care what's going on behind the scenes. Admins of course are likely to know. So it's scarcely surprising that disproportionately many admins have participated. And of course that's why it's incredibly difficult to change the system!

[Osborne]

Most editors do not know or even care what's going on behind the scenes. Admins of course are likely to know. So it's scarcely surprising that disproportionately many admins have participated. And of course that's why it's incredibly difficult to change the system!

True.
However the recent community consultations for the proposals (Code of Conduct for example), show that discussions properly announced on multiple boards will result in significantly (and proportionately) more editors participating (I estimate more than 100). So there are editors, who care about governance, but don't track these boards on a daily basis.
In short: they need to be informed.

[Poetlister]

Most editors do not know or even care what's going on behind the scenes. Admins of course are likely to know. So it's scarcely surprising that disproportionately many admins have participated. And of course that's why it's incredibly difficult to change the system!

True.
However the recent community consultations for the proposals (Code of Conduct for example), show that discussions properly announced on multiple boards will result in significantly (and proportionately) more editors participating (I estimate more than 100). So there are editors, who care about governance, but don't track these boards on a daily basis.
In short: they need to be informed.

Indeed. That's precisely why community discussions are rarely representative. Whatever the benefits or disadvantages of crowdsourcing, the essential agreement is a large crowd.

[Bezdomni]

The "not the right form" technical blockages (discreet stonewallers):

I don't think this is a useful question without proposing an actual process ... Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:06, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

I'd thought about suggesting that after 1 year of tenure all sysops be subject to random dice-roll 6-month desysoppings, which can only be overridden by a 70% vote at an emergency meeting of the village krew of gossipy mechanics. After 2 years of tenure, the random desysoppings are indefinite, pending similar grease roots "save the Arbs" movements to restart the old-timers' clocks.

[Osborne]

Jbh's draft: User:Jbhunley/Essays/Binding_community_recall (T-H-L)

I'm still not totally sure I understand how people square this terrible horrible broken system that could never work That nearly everyone uses but somehow haven't found a problem with. It all comes off a bit like an American trying to tell a Canadian how awful their socialized medicine is. GMG talk 17:37, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

It is a symptom of our broken and unresponsive system that an attempt to subject administrators to exactly the same consensus based process that governs the entire remainder of the project is somehow construed as an attempt to justify bullying. That is the language of a privileged class afraid of losing their privilege, who view normalcy as an attack, and who would much rather be subjected to even the spectacle of spectacles, because at the end of the day they're still being judged by a different standard than everyone else. Were it the same standard, we wouldn't be having this discussion. GMG talk 12:12, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Honorable mention:

Needs either a requirement that the admin's use of the administrative tools has either deliberately or repeatedly violated some policy, as judged by (crats|arbcom), ...

I mean, if your standard for a community recall is that it not be a community recall, then I think we're at an impasse. GMG talk 21:34, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

[Osborne]

https://genderdesk.wordpress.com/2019/1 ... countable/

tipped-scales-of-justice.jpg

[The Garbage Scow]

https://genderdesk.wordpress.com/2019/1 ... countable/

tipped-scales-of-justice.jpg

Good post, couldn't have said it better myself.

I wish Pudeo or someone participating in that RfC would share it to the Village Pump or other general places so more people would comment. Either that or someone should hadd one of those collapsible banners to people's pages, like they do for RfA.

[Poetlister]

The "not the right form" technical blockages (discreet stonewallers):

I don't think this is a useful question without proposing an actual process ... Seraphimblade Talk to me 19:06, 18 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, if Seraphimblade says something, that's very helpful. We know that the exact converse is likely to be correct.

[rhindle]

The best thing to do IMO is to give term limits to admins. I would say 5 years(some might say that's too generous) and they have the option to request another term. There would still be accountability to arbcom and the community but that has proven to not always work. Fram was not considered to be admin material but w/o all that summer drama he would still be chugging along, not ever changing. With a term limit, the community can review these actions without the extra drama. How many other admins would not survive another RfA?

[Midsize Jake]

Fram was not considered to be admin material but w/o all that summer drama he would still be chugging along, not ever changing. With a term limit, the community can review these actions without the extra drama. How many other admins would not survive another RfA?

As I recall, the theory is that the term limit would, in itself, compel admins to be more civil, less abusive, more willing to adhere to established policy, less likely to focus on particular users they (perhaps justifiably) dislike, and so on. But even if that's a valid theory, it only works if the admin in question actually wants to keep adminning after the term is over - not all of them will, presumably. And some of those "lame duck" admins might start changing their behavior (probably for the worse, assuming that's even possible) when the end of their term is approaching.

IMO, the whole question of "which admins would survive another RfA" is probably unanswerable without stating the conditions under which "reconfirmation RfAs" would be imposed, it seems to me. Let's say they were to just drop everything and announce that on Jan. 1, 2020, RfAs will be held for all current admins who have been on the job for more than three years, 20 RfAs per week until they've all been voted up or down - if the voter pool were to be consistent the whole time, my guess would be that at least 200 of those would fail because the admin is essentially inactive, and about 30-ish of them would fail for other (mostly behavioral) reasons. But the voter pool wouldn't be consistent, because people would get really tired of it after a few weeks. You might have as many as 200 or more users participating initially, but after a few months, that number would probably drop down to less than 50, and by the end, hardly anybody would be doing it. So that's a "fairness issue" right there.

I understand why they don't want to allow for recall votes by petition, since that could conceivably be gamed or "brigaded," but it would still probably make the most sense in the current climate. I think they've also discussed setting up an Ombudsman Commission of some kind, that would theoretically nominate certain admins for reconfirmation in an unbiased/objective way when they generate too much drama, but who could they trust among themselves to be a member of something like that? (I guess some people might say "how about Newyorkbrad," but I doubt they'd even be able to agree on him.)

[Osborne]

The best thing to do IMO is to give term limits to admins. I would say 5 years(some might say that's too generous) and they have the option to request another term.

That would solve the problem of de-admining for inactivity, at least. The trick of one admin actions would not suffice. Neither requesting admin bit back a week after removed for inactivity... How many admins did that...
I would say 3 years, however. A lot of admins stop being active after a few years.

Also note, that term limits is not an equivalent for community desysop. It would suggest for a few admins, that it's free reign for N years, or that the last year matters only: one has to prepare for "election"...
Term limits and community recall together would avoid Jake's concerns.

Related: There was a proposal for term limits for different elevated roles / privileges in the first round of the community conversations. Buros, CUs, etc., but not admins as I remember. I can't find it now.

[rhindle]

<great points by Jake>

If we started at 1/1/20 I would say that the first year, active admins of 10+ years have to reapply to continue being an admin. The second year those at 5+ years to try to prevent too many possible Re-RfA's at one time. Yes, there is the issue of lame ducks and those who just don't care but there may be more watching those admins to make sure there is no funny business. One way to mitigate could be to have them reapply the first six months of the 5th year(or last year of term) if they want a chance to continue and if they do not get another term and have to wait a year to try again.

[Poetlister]

Some sites, such as ENWS, have annual reconfirmations. But of course they are generally small sites with relatively few admins, and you're lucky if a dozen votes are cast.

[Osborne]

Low-activity, old-fashioned admin Stifle (T-C-L) vouches for the ArbCom process:

The current ArbCom-based process is satisfactory, has shown that it works, is not subject to revenge-based or heat-of-the-moment nominations, and is not broken.

Apparently, he missed the whole debacle everybody was talking about in the last 4 months.

[Vigilant]

Low-activity, old-fashioned admin Stifle (T-C-L) vouches for the ArbCom process:

The current ArbCom-based process is satisfactory, has shown that it works, is not subject to revenge-based or heat-of-the-moment nominations, and is not broken.

Apparently, he missed the whole debacle everybody was talking about in the last 4 months.

Fram would like a word...

[Poetlister]

Low-activity, old-fashioned admin Stifle (T-C-L) vouches for the ArbCom process:

The current ArbCom-based process is satisfactory, has shown that it works, is not subject to revenge-based or heat-of-the-moment nominations, and is not broken.

Apparently, he missed the whole debacle everybody was talking about in the last 4 months.

Yes, in my experience of him he's a traditional "everything is OK, nothing to see, move along please" kind of guy. Can we get him to come here? It might make for some interesting discussions.

[Zoloft]

Low-activity, old-fashioned admin Stifle (T-C-L) vouches for the ArbCom process:

The current ArbCom-based process is satisfactory, has shown that it works, is not subject to revenge-based or heat-of-the-moment nominations, and is not broken.

Apparently, he missed the whole debacle everybody was talking about in the last 4 months.

Yes, in my experience of him he's a traditional "everything is OK, nothing to see, move along please" kind of guy. Can we get him to come here? It might make for some interesting discussions.

We have enough Colonel Blimps. We need a few more firebrands.