Wikipedia talk:Administrator recall (2006 proposal)/Archive 1

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Rationales for requirements/limiting abuse or maliciousness

• 25 threshold: most normal RfCs seem to get around/at most about 25 people signing on in support of a given outside view; this number was based on that.
• criteria for certification for users: The 300 500 edit and 5 months' experience is deliberate, and to eliminate frivolous certification or nomination by bogus usernames.
• Those combined: Serve to weed out the proverbial "crap" as some might say from nominations and certifications.
• Six months wait for new admins: Deliberately shorter than the nine months for seasoned admins--to give new admins time to establish a track record. The shorter time frame is because if an admin hypothetically would be a problem, it would hopefully be apparently fairly swiftly.
• Nine months' delay for renom: Intended to curb frivolous filing. It would be stupid for an open window of nominations, as that would be ripe for abuse.

Summary: Basically, the combination of all these requirements are designed to screen out all sorts of ill-intent. There is no restriction on any user filing for DR, RfC, or ArbCom right now. This new simplified process (that can be used both by regular editors AND admins) requires basically you be in good standing, have a fairly solid track record, and have been around for nearly half a year. On top of that, you need 25 other people of equally good standing to agree to even accept consideration of the recall. After that, it still needs to go to the community for final review and oversight based on the admins' track record, history, and career. All these combined to me balance out this as a good proposal for policy. In summary, there is no reason anyone's track record should be excluded from public review and oversight by the community at wide. rootology (T) 23:44, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Changed it from 300 to 500 edits. rootology (T) 00:26, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Intent

My intent in proposing this policy is simple--to introduce an extremely simple (I tried to make the process as "stupidly basic" as possible) and hard to abuse system of peer review and oversight of people with administrative access. As it presently is, barring extraordinary and public abuse of their priviledges as an admin, it is extremely unlikely for anyone to be de-sysoped--for all intents and purposes, the simple act of passing an RfA is a lifetime appointment with little practical oversight and/or possible repercussions for misbehavior under current systems.

Notice how the certification process works: it's basically just RfC certification, but with an extra requirement on who can certify. The RfA recall vote is literally a forced RfA, where a support vote is an endorsement of desysoping. I have no ill will towards any admin, and this process and tool is for administrators as well as editors. Think about it: you need 1 filer, and 25 certifiers to justify that the community needs to reassess an administrator's standing, and the filer also has to state his reasons, justification, and evidence (to which the admin can reply). Then it goes to general community review a second time, and things such as WP:SNOW are specifically forbidden and disallowed from this proposed process--to at all times give the admin being recalled the benefit of the doubt.

Overview of protections in place for admins in this policy

Some of these are explicit in the wording of the policy; some are simply common sense based on how this is all structured.

1. No admin can be recalled more than once every nine months. Nine months is a very long time.

2. A total of twenty six tenured, contributing members of Wikipedia are required to certify that the admin should be subject to a recall.

2a. By virtue of requiring 26 tenured people and then a majority to determine by community concensus whether a desysoping should occur, the admin is protected from frivilous filings and being gamed by people that may not like him.

2b. The system itself protects admins from frivilous filings--if I dislike someone and want to stick it to them, and file a garbage claim to have them recalled--it will get shut out by the community if not in the certification phase but then in the RfA phase. Filing a bogus claim now has protected the person I dislike for a substantial amount of time. While the possibility of uncertified "garbage" filings hanging over ones' head every nine months may be an issue, it would be foolish of "enemies" to do something that silly. They'd only be protecting their "targets" in the long run.

2c. Puppets--as mentioned below, it's highly unlikely that sock or meat puppets will ever have a real impact on this policy for railroading someone. Why? 26 users, each with 5 months experience. 26 users x 500 edits = 13,000 total edits. Therefore, no Recall filing will be certified without the backing of 26 users in "good standing", each of them with 5 months experience minimum, and a combined total history of 13,000+ edits between them.

3. The admin then does get subjected to a recall RfA; however, aside from a bar on any early closing, it is functionally the same as an RfA, where the admin and others can address any and all points.

4. Filers must give the admin 24 hours notice before filing, with the basis and evidence they plan to file with, to allow the admin time to formulate a response.

5. The recalled admin gets two distinct oppurtunities to demonstrate why he should stay an admin; during certification and during the RfA.

Wikification

I wikified the entire Policy proposal last night by section, to make it easier for others to edit and contribute. rootology (T) 16:45, 11 August 2006 (UTC)