Wikipedia:Administrators/RfC for BARC - a community desysopping process

Abbreviations
RfC: Request for Comment
BARC: Bureaucrats' Administrator Review Committee

Introduction

[...] We know that for two years now, the number of people being made admins is too low. And yet we have valid concerns that admins are overstressed, and that they don't always live up to what we hope in terms of thoughtful, kind, and welcoming conduct. I think that solutions lie precisely in these directions: make it easier to become an admin so that more people can share the burden, and easier to lose the bit when there are problems.

Jimbo Wales (2012)

In August 2012, the Community de-adminship proof of concept concluded with a clear consensus for the motion:

The current methods for removal of administrator rights are not sufficient and an additional community-driven method should be implemented.

A second, less firm consensus suggested that some form of gatekeeper should be put in place to stop frivolous complaints. This will be included by sharing the task with a group of trusted users, who are generally regarded as level-headed (Bureaucrats).

Benefits

• The lack of an effective, dedicated procedure for addressing admin behaviour is one of the reasons for the perceived failure of WP:RfA to produce sufficient candidates of the right calibre. A community-based system should help to alleviate that perception.
• Devolving simpler cases to a more community-based system would reduce the workload on the Arbitration Committee.
• A transparent system would help strengthen accountability of administrators.

Current situation

Current methods to remove adminship
Process	Does not require fresh request for adminship	Requires fresh request for adminship
Voluntary removal	For most reasons that the administrator chooses to resign their userright	If the administrator chooses to remove the userright "under a cloud", i.e. whilst their actions are under scrutiny, perhaps during an arbitration case or elsewhere. If the administrator has agreed to removal due to a successful "recall"
Inactivity	If the administrator has been completely inactive for between 1 and 3 years	If the administrator has been completely inactive for more than 3 years
For cause	N/A	If the administrator has the user-right removed. Arbcom can do this with a case, or without in certain circumstances.
Other	Technically, the stewards or bureaucrats have the ability to remove the tools in an emergency. Also, Jimbo Wales could theoretically also remove administrator access at his discretion. These situations would likely have subsequent repercussions.

Bureaucrats

1. Bureaucrats are empowered to judge consensus and add the sysop flag following a candidate's successful pass at WP:RfA.
2. Bureaucrats have the technical ability to remove the sysop flag but not the community mandate to do it except in situations outlined in the above table.
3. Bureaucrats have demonstrated a very high level of community trust, by passing an RfB, which requires an 85% level of support, despite the small number of additional tools.
4. There are 33 Bureaucrats (as of this proposal).

Sources

Note: Please do not introduce other alternative methods of admin review. If you wish to suggest significant changes or to propose a significantly different system, start your own separate RfC

Proposal for lightweight desysop process (BARC)

Note: Full Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' Administrator Review Committee/Procedures will be debated in a second phase to this discussion if consensus is reached to accept this proposal in principle.

A new group, the Bureaucrats' Administrator Review Committee (BARC) will be created, comprising bureaucrats and other editors from the community. The purpose of the group will be to accept/decline and subsequently adjudicate requests from the community for the removal of an administrator's sysop user-right. The group's deliberations should be public and separate from general community discussion. The process should be considered a formal, binding process, driven by the community but not as open a forum as the "Administrator's noticeboard".

The committee should act on behalf of the community and will comprise any five bureaucrats from the pool of active bureaucrats, on a case-by-case basis, alongside five other static community members. The community members should be appointed annually by the bureaucrats, with community consultation. There is no requirement for the community members to be administrators.

The committee will vote to decide:

1. Whether to accept case (i.e. a legitimate case exists and if it does, whether it should be referred to the Arbitration Committee).
2. Whether a temporary injunction is required for the duration of the case.
3. Whether removal of the administrator user-right is appropriate.

Bureaucrats are authorised, on consensus being reached, to remove the administrator userright.

In the event of a hung committee, the case will be referred to the Arbitration Committee. If the case involves private or off-wiki information, it will be referred to the Arbitration Committee.

An open case will be referred to by a non-descriptive numerical value. The main case page will be open to committee members and those directly involved in the case. Outside views will be kept on the associated talk page. Once deliberation has begun, the deliberation page may be only edited by the committee. Complaints about patterns of inappropriate behaviour must be brought by at least two editors. All cases must be substantiated by diffs. Temporary injunctions are possible, i.e. the use of admin tools may be procedurally forbidden or physically removed while the case is being heard.

Timeline

↓Complaint

↓BARC decision to open case

↓BARC deliberations

↓Final decision

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Timeline in days

• From the point the complaint is lodged, the administrator(s) in question are to be notified on their talk page and by email. They have 72 hours to respond. This period is designed to allow the situation to cool, therefore cases should never be opened in less than 24 hours. Emergency desysop procedures should still be handled by the Arbitration Committee.
• After 72 hours, the committee will decide whether the case should be heard or referred to the Arbitration Committee, with or without the administrator's comment. They also decide at this point if a temporary injunction is required.
• If a case is opened, it remains open for 7 days, where discussion by involved parties happens on the case page and non involved parties on the case talk page.
• At the end of the 7-day period, the case page will be closed and the committee will deliberate on a sub page for up to 24 hours. The outcome of the deliberations will be posted to the involved party's talk pages and at the Bureaucrat's and Administrator's noticeboards.

Appeals
Appeals will be heard by the Arbitration Committee as a Request for Arbitration. The Arbitration Committee may decline the request, issue a motion or hold a full case request, according to their own procedures.

Voting

Support

1. As joint-proposer. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
2. As joint-proposer. I've been advocating for a more community based desysop process for a while now, but my time on Arbcom only made my resolve stronger. Arbcom does deal with problematic administrators, but the process is cumbersome and daunting for all participants, often humiliating for all participants too. The thing I really liked about this process was that was lightweight and streamlined - designed to be as pain free as possible, for every participant, especially the subject. Clear timelines, reduced bureaucracy, a structured but transparent forum - these sorts of things are key to a process like this working. Worm^TT(talk) 06:30, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
3. I think I'm among the oldest admins still active, even if my efforts are sadly sporadic nowadays. I was a bit leery of this proposal at first, but having studied it, it seems to be taking a worthwhile step towards breaking down the "us and them" combative mentality which has arisen (going back to at least 2003). No doubt the committee will receive a number of baseless complaints, but I think that hassle will be worth it for the greater community trust it will hopefully engender. Manning (talk) 07:24, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
4. Yes, strongly. Recall is a dead loss and always has been, and should be done away with as openly misleading. Devolving stuff from arbcom is good and increasing bureaucrats' role in this way I think is worthwhile. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 07:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
5. In priciple. BethNaught (talk) 07:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
6. Strong support. There is no real way for the community to take the mop away from an admin, and we do not need our admins to be appointed for life. The only real way now for an admin to be removed is ArbCom - you can't trust them to remain open to recall once the issue is brought up to them. Too many have backed away from it at that point, and regular editors need some way of holding admins accountable. GregJackP Boomer! 07:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
7. Strongly support. As noted by User:Ihardlythinkso "...the process (removing an administrator) is so overladen with bureaucracy... Not only is it slow, but tunnel-visioned, by its very nature. Jimbo Wales was right when he said the solution is to make adminship easier to get, and easier to lose. What we have today is a painfully slow and inept system that is overall impractical to address the problem appropriately, thus the problems fester and multiply and linger in view of the seldom-and-difficult-to-use process to cleanse the WP body of undesirable admins. They win. Jimbo was right. The structure is inadequate to deal with the reality. The structure needs to be changed." Memills (talk) 07:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
8. Support, per Worm above. Cavarrone 07:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
9. Strong support. Arbcom is the only current avenue for desysoping. As we all know, those proceedings can be grueling, overbearing, humiliating and highly stressful time sinks of a process for everyone involved. At the other extreme is recall, a widely varying process that most administrators don't partake in, and anyone who does can opt-out of at anytime they choose. While a good idea, recall is simply not, in practice, an effective system for desysoping. Another, easier means to desysop problematic administrators would definitely benefit the community and the project, but I don't think desysoping should be easy. I bristle at the very thought of a community-driven sideshow to desysop someone. I was very surprised at the striking simplicity and reasonability of this proposal. There doesn't seem to be a risk of major drama, nor arbitrary witch hunts. I have nothing against Arbcom, but there's no denying the resentment, distrust and controversy can surround the committee. Crats generally don't seem to have that problem as they are probably the most trusted, competent, and least controversial members of the community—I will point out that the Arbs generally don't even get the amount of support that a crat needs to get appointed. I think this concept is about as good as it's going to get as far as desysoping goes. It would be a lighter, faster, easier, less painful process than Arbcom, and with more qualified and trusted people placed in charge of it. I support this proposal unreservedly. Swarm ^{we ♥ our hive} 07:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
10. Strong support. The current system is grossly inadequate. Bureaucrats are appointed through a very high bar for trust (higher than stewards, even); and in my view their role has always been too narrowly conceived. Since crats exercise judgement in closing RFAs, it is natural and logical that they should play a role further down the pipeline. I see that Stage 1 involves filtering out the frivolous complaints: nicely designed. Tony (talk) 07:45, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
11. Strong support in principle, but I would want to make sure that when the procedures are hardened out, they would make this process be fully fluid and truly community-based.--Jasper Deng (talk) 07:52, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
12. Strong support. Per Worm, and also: It's a necessary counterweight to admins being appointed without definite (renewable) terms. Ijon (talk) 07:55, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
13. I was just invited to comment. Had never heard of BARC before. I don't think it will help a great deal, but I don't see how it can hurt, and it looks worth a try. In principle, the community should resolve common issues, and ArbCom should be the last resort. I find it hard to believe that more Wikipedians will choose to run an RfA because there is a community desysopping procedure. It might cause people to be more relaxed about welcoming new admins. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
14. Support, worth trying it out. Almost anything would be better than the current situation. Graham87 08:09, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
15. Good admins have nothing to fear. Those learning their trade have nothing to fear, since admission of an honest mistake is a valid defence. Admins who are less than satisfactory and who transgress will get a wakeup call that may return them to the path of righteousness. Genuinely bad admins will be weeded out in a few months as this system, progresses. This has my unqualified support. I am not now, and do not ever intend to be, an admin. Fiddle Faddle 08:13, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
16. Support, sounds like a good idea of a quick process for simple cases. The complex cases should still be carried by Arbcom Alex Bakharev (talk) 08:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
17. We doubtless need something; ideally, while this committee will probably be heavily used at first, its format, structure, and remit will ensure that over a fairly short period it will settle into being a part of the community used occasionally (much as Arbcomm, which, if i recall correctly, seemed to have far more cases on at a time ten years ago). Thanks are due Kudpung and WTT for their thoughts and suggestion. Cheers, Lindsay^Hello 08:24, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
18. Support. This is a very well thought-out proposal; it has enough procedure to prevent its frivolous use, yet is not overly complicated. It also makes better use of our existing, highly-trusted bureaucrat group, whose role is currently limited to the menial task of promoting and demoting administrators and bots. In addition, I agree with just about all comments made before me. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
19. Support - I've authored my own proposals, helped on others and have been looking for a solution since I became an admin. Of all of them, this has the best blend of safety, equity, speed and flexibility. This will help increase the number of admin and reduce the impression that admin are guaranteed to be admin for life. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 09:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
20. In principle, although I'm somewhat sceptical of the ability of any panel of users to consistently decide cases in the timeframe proposed. I think it's worth a try though to see how it shakes out. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 10:06, 24 July 2015 (UTC).
21. Support This is a well thought out and much needed proposal. Sam Walton (talk) 10:10, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
22. Support, nothing here to complain about, really. The proposers have done their due diligence on this, though I should note that there should be a means to remove and replace a member of the committee who steps out of bounds in some way (i.e. participating in a case they are involved in instead of recusing). This is especially needed if admins will serve on the committee, since it would make no sense for an admin who was dragged before the committee to remain on it if he was. —Jeremy v^_^v ^Bori! 10:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
23. Support, we need something like this. It would probably slightly reduce my likelihood of opposing some of the RFAs that are marginal in my mind. I share Jasper Deng's caveat that "I would want to make sure that when the procedures are hardened out, they would make this process be fully fluid and truly community-based," and his remarks in the Discussion section. I think we should give this a try. --Stfg (talk) 10:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
24. Support: a well thought out proposal by two users I have a great deal of respect for. Process seems very simple but not lacking any substantial details and I certainly agree with the principle of promoting more admins but making it easier to demote. Everyone seems to agree that RfA is incredibly flawed and perhaps it's because the !voters don't have enough information—no-one can actually work out how a user will act when they have the mop until they have it, and most !votes (whether support or oppose) seem to be quite superficial. The solution would be to just have an easier removal system, so there's more of a feeling that people are granted adminship temporarily, or until they start causing problems. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 10:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
25. Support per noms. Widr (talk) 10:24, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
26. Support They say the devil is in the details, and I don't know if the detailed procedures will find consensus, but let's go forward and try -- the outline looks fine. Alanscottwalker (talk) 10:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
27. It's ludicrous that desysoppings have to go through Arbcom.—S Marshall T/C 11:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
28. Support Clearly a well thought out idea, that looks like it will work. Brustopher (talk) 11:37, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
29. Support Yes, there are some sub-standard decisions made by people not up to scratch, and with ANI worse than useless as a venue for coming to clear cut decisions once the peanut gallery clouds the issue, there has to be a better way. - SchroCat (talk) 11:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
30. I support, and the proposal is well thought-out and balanced. Though I have to comment, if it's lightweight... then that really says something about how cumbersome the current system is (=desysop by arbcom). Well, I knew that. As for recall, as an example, I've had a quite frustrating experience of trying to use recall against an admin who had made certain promises in their RFA, who would surely never have reached sufficient support without those promises, and who chose to renege on/wikilawyer them when they were invoked. Talk about a timesink, and they're still an admin. Yes, recall is a joke. Bishonen | talk 12:11, 24 July 2015 (UTC).
31. Support - It is long overdue that there should exist a community-based and community-initiated process for addressing long-term behavioral issues of administrators that "fly below the radar" of ARBCOM. The process should be relatively quick, it should be tempered with reasonable due process and protection from the ANI "pitchforks" mentality, the deliberative decision-making body should include non-administrators, and there should be an appeals process. Kudpung and Worm That Turned's proposal satisfies those criteria, and the details may be tweaked in the future, as necessary, based on actual experience. This is a necessary step forward. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
32. Support, well thought out process, some additional details can be ironed out in the next phase, but the basis of this proposal is sound, and it is needed. --kelapstick^(bainuu) 12:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
33. Support: this process seems very well thought out - while a number of more specific details will need to be worked out, as a framework, this proposal seems effective. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 12:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC) Changed to weak support: many of the opposes bring up good points, such as the fact that this proposal wouldn't have much more community input than ArbCom. However, I still support this stage of the RfC, as long as the second stage will make way for some major improvements. G S Palmer (talk • contribs) 12:36, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

    (Moved to Oppose) Support conditionally, as I'd need to see detailed procedures before fully supporting. In particular, I would want to see community-oriented procedures to appoint the five non-bureaucrat members (as giving 33 bureaucrats full control over a de-sysop process by choosing who votes is not community oriented) and what thresholds of successful/unsuccessful complaint you plan to set. I'd also be very interested in a restriction that only admins can bring complaints. If a legitimate complaint exists, any editor acting in good faith could find a sysop that would be willing to open a case for procedural reasons if nothing else. If a legitimate complaint does not exist, this would help limit the drama. ~ Rob^Talk 13:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

34. Support Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 13:31, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
35. Strong Support in principle; a system needs to be put in place, and this one seems well thought out and not overburdensome. This deserves serious consideration. Scr★pIron^IV 13:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
36. Support Largely per Dennis Brown. I do note some thoughtful concerns in the opposition of Nick-D, but I think the concern about frivolous complaints (which I share) can be fixed in the procedures phase, where I would recommend that multiple editors have to sign on to a complaint before it would be considered.--S Philbrick(Talk) 13:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
37. Enthusiastic Support. A community-driven desysopping process is sorely needed, and this is a great step in the right direction. The integrity of the en-wiki bureaucrats (when they don their bureacruat fezzes, anyway) is neigh unimpeachable. Yes, the proposed process is a little bit complicated, but not nearly as burdensome as Arbcom. If this actually results in a more "easy come, easy go" view of adminship on RFA, all the better. HiDrNick! 13:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
38. Support Long overdue. Arbcom can't deal with this effectively. Intothatdarkness 13:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
39. Strong support per Worm, Dennis Brown, SchroCat, and many others. We're lacking an effective forum to bring complaints about substandard admins (nether ANI nor ArbCom are effective for this) and this is looks to be a well-thought-out proposal to create one; it's worth a try. I am somewhat less concerned about the process than I am about what the criteria would be for demotion, however I trust that both will form part of this discussion and/or be decided by the community, so it is not a major concern for me. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 14:30, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
40. Support - Arbcom does a good job handling de-sysops once a case is accepted. However, Arbcom is a bit of a juggernaut and takes entirely too long to prosecute cases. The DangerousPanda case was one of the swifter cases, but still took 56 days. The arguments for crats serving on the committee are compelling. My only mild reservation is the provision for allowing crats to appoint five editors from the community at large. I think there should be an popular election process, and I think the number of admin seats should be proportional to the number of active admins in the active editor population.- MrX 14:56, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

    The DangerousPanda case was one of the swifter cases, but still took 56 days, only because DangerousPanda said that he was busy and could not participate in the case, so the deadlines were extended to accommodate his needs. Two other cases I drafted where no such problem was present were handled much more quickly: Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kiefer.Wolfowitz and Ironholds, 1 month and 1 day; Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Nightscream, 1 month and 3 days. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 15:07, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

41. (edit conflict) Support. There are technically possible ways to remove the tools as of now, and I have argued that due to the availability of such processes the community should not make RfA so difficult, but I understand that the community desires a process which, although orderly and reasonably protected from frivolous complaints, is still somewhat community-based, unlike ArbCom. I would only suggest though, that panel members have more time than 24 hours to deliberate a case. --Biblioworm 15:00, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
42. Support - Well thought out and supported, especially "lightweight, efficient yet robust community de-adminship process" per BethNaught in discussion. Also..."a more efficient and more streamlined system to address sysop issues". Buster Seven Talk 15:07, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
43. Support - This is good enough. There's no perfect solution. If we keep rejecting proposals because they aren't perfect, then we'll never accomplish anything. Gigs (talk) 15:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
44. Support - A well thought - out and presented proposal. More community - based and timely. To echo a support comment above, good mops have nothing to concern them with this proposal. However I take on board Nick D's 2nd reservation, regarding the potential competency of the non admin element. That may need some refinement. But this measure still devolves power, which imo is a net plus. Irondome (talk) 15:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

    — Ched :  ?  16:10, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

45. Support . Better than the status quo, under which admins, including incompetents and bad actors, remain in their posts for life. Coretheapple (talk) 16:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
46. Support. If a proposal along these lines is implemented, it will allow for far better management of the problems. ArbCom is overworked, they don't have much room to manage problems that are not very serious by ArbCom standards, but which to many in the community are a problem. They then end up not accepting the case, so problems are not dealt with. A new committee could intervene in such cases and come up with a remedy that doesn't necessarily have to be a desysopping. The bottom line is that ArbCom hasn't got the flexibility to adapt to deal with problems the community thinks should be solved, while a new committee specifically set up to deal with Admin related issues will likely be able to evolve over time due to community feedback and become better and better at fixing Admin related problems. Count Iblis (talk) 16:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
47. Support - Something like this has been badly needed for a long time. BMK (talk) 16:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
48. Support It's about time something like this was implemented. This will increase the amount of successful RfAs as well as removing long term admins behaving with poor conduct while misusing the tools. Winner 42 Talk to me! 16:42, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
49. Support Based on Worm that turned 's comments throughout this page. KoshVorlon We are all Kosh 16:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
50. 'Support - Easier removal of tools of abusive Administrators will lessen the stakes and hopefully soften the tone of the RFA process. Carrite (talk) 16:47, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
51. Support - For multiple reasons. I believe this process is the best alternative to what we currently have in place. The recall process is broken, not all admins participate in it and it would still ultimately require the admin to voluntarily give up their admin privileges. It would lessen Arbcom's workload and the current method is a time sink and I believe they're overworked as is. It would expand the Bureaucrat role with new responsibility which I think has seen a diminishing role over time, and they are probably one of the most trusted groups here due to the high standards required by the community at RfB. Just my two cents. —  dainomite   17:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
52. Support - Makes good sense. Long overdue. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 17:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
53. Support - in my capacity as an administrator and editor. This is not a statement of support from the WMF, and I speak only in my private capacity... -Philippe (talk) 17:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
54. Support. I don't see a major problem because there's an appeals process. If, by some reason, this ends up not working, it can always be repealed. Let's at least give this a try because this is probably the closest we've ever gotten to a solution to what just about everyone says is a huge problem. -- Tavix ^(talk) 17:45, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
55. Support Great idea. Get the ball rolling, the sooner, the better. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 17:50, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
56. Support The community makes admins, so they should also be able to unmake them. I'm surprised this isn't already on the books. RO^(talk) 17:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
57. Support in principle, but at least three important issues need to be figured out, possibly at the second stage: (i) who and how may submit proposals and how to avoid the witchhunt: (ii) how the committee is formed; (ii bis) what to do with the fact that the crats were not elected for this role - should they agree, be reconfirmed, or only new crats will be eligible or smth.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
58. Support in principle. What constitutes a "legitimate case" would need to be defined, at least broadly, before this is fully adopted. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 18:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
59. Support – Something is better than nothing, at this point. So many reform attempts have failed, so I can do nothing else than support this proposal in good faith. (see WP:ASC) RGloucester — ☎ 18:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
60. Support – The community doesn't need to be dependent on ArbCom for desysops and the explanation that we don't need a community process because "ArbCom does it when necessary" ignores the community aspect of Wikipedia. The claims of "witch hunts" have been used to shut these proposals down for years and I'm sick of seeing that too. The community should nad must have a process for desysopping administrators who have lost their trust. Kindzmarauli (talk) 18:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
61. Support Sure, it's not perfect, and it's not finished down to the last detail, but as a framework to be developed into something the community has repeatedly expressed a strong desire for, it's the best proposal I've seen. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
62. Support I like the "gate". I'd rather see community consensus, and a tie over consensus, should be no consensus. But it would be better than not having a process. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:24, 24 July 2015 (UTC).
    
63. Support This is a smart way to go about this otherwise difficult issue. New England Cop (talk) 21:37, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
64. Marginal support - Bureaucrats already have the power to de-sysop an admin. In any other real-life situation, it's not unusual that a person established in an existing position gets a new responsibility thrust upon them. They would now have the responsibility to exercise that power. However, I have doubts about the "committee of five" proposed here and about the way they are selected, likewise for the "static community members." Also, can we please dispense with the creation of more acronyms. The 1990s are calling and they want their newspeak back. --Unready (talk) 22:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
65. Support Nothing wrong with this proposal. It's long overdue, as DirtLawyer and others have noted. petrarchan47คุก 22:54, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
66. Support Long overdue. We don't need more admins, we need more QUALITY admins. The Master ---)Vote Saxon(--- 00:34, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
67. Support - While the proposed process here seems a lil quick (less than 2 weeks in total duration), Wikipedia for sure needs a process to remove problem administrators. I'm certainly willing to try this kind of a process out. Guy1890 (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
68. Support - Enthusiastically the 'lightweight process' but only partially the slightly overly bureaucratic (heh) committee approach. It seems that the same effect could be archived (with) less the requirement for consistency if it was handled more like a traditional close (perhaps only five). That could consist of a volunteers consisting of (at least) one bureaucrat (the group of whom would of course have an implicit veto on the desysop... since you can never require someone to use their tools). Anyhow, I feel that is something that can be handled in the workshop/round II/details phase. Regards, Crazynas ^t 02:06, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
69. Support as a major improvement to the status quo. Quite frankly I would support a reverse RfA style community desysoping procedure despite the obvious problems but this is at least better than having to go through a full ArbCom case for a reasonably clear cut case of admin abuse. The time limits are perhaps a little strict and it might be nice to have a way to tweak the policy without going through a full RfC again. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:41, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
70. Support; this seems like it could actually work! Provides a way to remove a bad admin without the process and bureaucracy of ArbCom, while keeping it impossible for a group of disgruntled editors to band together and remove an admin who has done nothing wrong. Admin accountability is important, and if an admin no longer the confidence of the bureaucrats, they should be removed. I recognized some of the opposers' comments about bureaucrats' not being elected for this role, but from what I have seen of them, the active ones such as Worm That Turned, Acalamari, and Xeno are some of the most level-headed editors we have here, and I would trust them with this role. StringTheory11 (t • c) 02:48, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
71. Support in principle. And per Coretheapple's, Jimbo's, Casliber's, Rich Farmbrough's, etc's comments.--Elvey^(t•c) 03:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
72. Support The proposal needs some work but we should seek a consensus that this is firstly needed, and then secondly how to properly implement it. Mkdw^talk 04:52, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
73. Support, and I don't even need to add caveats; enough eyes are on this issue site-wide that any kinks will iron out. This looks like the first sensible administration reform proposition in a long time, and could go a long way to returning WP to the originally envisioned "adminship is no big deal" system instead of our current stratified wikisociety. The productivity benefits of a lot more admins would be enormous. I'm not swayed by the "all kinds of trolls will become admins" stuff; the whole point is any bad-acting admin will be easier to get rid of. The "gatekeeping" 'Crat-and-community board should prevent this from becoming an ANI / AE type of "witchhunt by whoever is in a bad mood that day" process). I'm also not at all convinced by the "just make a new streamlined ArbCom process for this" counter-arguments. ArbCom has proven itself stubbornly resistant to any community-requested changes in how it goes about anything. If ArbCom could and would fix itself on matters like this, it would have done so years ago. And it's not even ArbCom members (that I've seen so far) saying "no, we'll do this", it's misc. editors saying it theoretically could. Too little, too late.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:07, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    PS: Actually, one caveat: I agree with jc37's suggestion in the Discussion section that fleshing out the committee with volunteers, like unto RfC closers, would be better than the 'crats appointing the non-'crat committee members. I trust that such possibilities will remain open for discussion, either before implementation, or as a solution if the currently planned way doesn't work as well as we'd like.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:15, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

74. Support - long overdue. Atsme^📞📧 11:41, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
75. Support Vast improvement over current method, and possibly the best solution I've seen to one of our long-running problems. Conifer (talk) 12:01, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
76. Support High time to give a sound proposal a chance to replace the highfalutin, time dragging, over-engineered Arbcom process. Time will tell, but only if it is given a chance. Leaky Caldron 18:20, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
77. Support This proposal changes the rules, in an area crying out for rules change. Making Admin rights 'no big deal' returns a balance sorely lacking now. If this passes and is successfully implemented, turn your attention to RfA, and change the 'minimums' to become an admin.→StaniStani 19:35, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
78. Support. I was the punching bag main author of an earlier proposal for community desysopping, and this page revives a lot of memories. But seriously, I think that this proposal, overall, is well thought-out, and that moving the proposal forward to the second stage of discussion would be beneficial for Wikipedia. I think that having the Crats play a significant role will address the concern expressed about earlier proposals, that the process would be too vulnerable to groups of disgruntled editors. Although I have come to believe that ArbCom has gotten good at dealing with these problems (in ways that it wasn't effective several years ago), I think that having a second venue would lessen the load on ArbCom (which is excessive in ways that the Crat load is not), and would be appreciated by the community. I would, however, caution that the present version does not allow enough controls for situations where the administrator being evaluated is away from Wikipedia during the process, or where that admin needs more opportunities to present evidence in defense. The timeline seems a bit too quick to me. I also think that both Salvio and Xeno make numerous excellent suggestions in the discussion sections below, and I recommend that what they say be given full consideration in developing the next draft. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:12, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
79. Support. Structured accountability is a good thing. North of Eden (talk) 00:21, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
80. Support A useful proposal so far as it goes, to make adminship less of a big deal and not a lifetime appointment when it becomes clear that the admin has not lived up to the rosy picture painted in the RFA . The devil's in the details, so the second RFC where more details emerge will be of great interest and importance. Edison (talk) 03:44, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
81. There are a couple of aspects of this proposal that I don't think are optimal, or that I don't particularly like. But if everyone opposes every proposal that doesn't 100% match their idea of perfection, nothing will ever happen. This is good enough. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
82. Support per Edison. Has its weaknesses but is a good point of departure for the next RfC on the execution. A mechanism is required so that adminiship is not a big deal. Figureofnine (talk • contribs) 18:07, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
83. Support. I agree with the people who've said that it's better to have something than nothing. Currently, there's nothing the community can do about admins who are incompetent without being actively malicious. This is much better than surveying a lynch mob at ANI or waiting months for Arbcom to render a decision. Complex cases can still be referred to Arbcom. I also like some of the arguments made here in the support section, especially about turning adminship back into "no big deal". NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 09:20, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

    Arbcom has proven more than capable of desysopping admins who are allegedly incompetent but totally unmalicious. This is not a matter of having something rather than nothing, the question here is are we prepared to give hyper active editors an advantage over people with off wiki lives and interests by having a process that lets those who are full time 7 days a week editors drive out admins they dislike? ϢereSpielChequers 09:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

84. Support It seems that only Arbcom removes admin rights. It is time that the community have their say. If an admin is not active for three years or more or have misused the tools then the desysopped admin should reapply again at WP:RFA --EurovisionNim (talk to me)(see my edits) 11:01, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Yet another go-round the same loop. ArbCom will desysop if there is evidence of misuse of tools, this is simply an invitation to witch-hunts. We have seen many examples where offsite groups have mounted co-ordinated attempts to rid themselves of admins they don't like. The number of instances where this is likely to be invoked other than through grudges, seems to me to be extremely small. Guy (Help!) 08:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Surely this is better than the current situation? ArbCom cases are long and drawn out, here cases should last a maximum of 11 days or if there is little basis for a complaint only 3. I'd hope that we would elect committees with enough sense to spot a frivolous report when presented to them. Sam Walton (talk) 08:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Arbcom does desysop, after months of discussion. Many who have been desysopped by Arbcom go on to leave the project, so we lose an editor as well as an admin. Perhaps if some of those cases had gone through this instead, they wouldn't have felt the need to leave. Worm^TT(talk) 09:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   This proposal is specifically designed with the very purpose in mind of avoiding the traditional witch hunts and kangaroo courts that ANI is, and RFC/U used to be until we got it deprecated. The community will be able to have its say on the case talk page, but there's no guarantee, any more than at Arbcom, that their rattliing of sabres will be heard. One must not make the error of assuming that this system will only treat cases of misuse of the tools; it will hopefully do something which Arbcom does 'not' do so very well: hear cases of long term patterns of behaviour unbecoming of admins that often manage to stay just under the radar but nevertheless does quite a bit of damage. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:23, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   That's one of the principal draws for me. I was threatened with sanctions at WP:AE because I dared to present some evidence that was "too told" according to rules that did not exist except in the minds of ArbCom's enforcers at AE, a brotherhood who would virtually never listen to a complaint about an admin's behavior anyway. Unless things have radically changed lately. I almost never bother any more with AE, ANI, or AN, and have little faith in these processes, after repeated, blatant administrative misconduct in them. I look forward to a means of thwarting any further WP:TAGTEAM abuse of the kind that's driven me into leaving the project for months at a time, several times just over the last year alone (and once for most of a whole year). I estimate it's cost the project over 1,000 hours of my contributions. How many admin ego-preenings is that worth, I wonder? More to the point, how many other editors, with skins thinner than mine, and less patience for jackassery, are just gone forever because of this kind of stuff? ArbCom's unwillingness to act except upon immediately-manifest problems, with very little evidence allowed, just doesn't cut it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:57, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

2. Bureaucrats act based on community discussion. Not based on their own discussion (like Arbcom) - even taking into account the five community spots. This would basically just create another arbcom-lite. If you want to do that, just create a process for a cut-down desysop case with a panel of 3 active sitting arbiters with rigid submission rules. Much simpler to set up and administer - I or anyone else who works in refining process-flows (I believe at least one admin offered to do this recently) could get a draft in a day or two. Arbcom's case problem is that all types of cases are mostly handle d the same - when better up-front organisation would cut down the time needed massively. I would however support any proposal that allows crats to desysop based on clear community discussion - there is no functional reason why AN could not handle a discussion on if an administrator's actions deserve them losing their admin status. The recent 'block while involved' misuse of tools by Kww shows that. The only reason that case has gone to arbcom is that there is not a process in place for removing tools by community discussion. Give the crats the ability to desysop yes - but we already have one time-consuming and ineffective body, lets not turn the part of wikipedia's bureaucratic processess that actually works well into another. Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   To be honest, I would prefer 10 user's selected at random like jury service (although of course, it would have to be opt-in) to be a better option... Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   In this system, the Bureaucrats are not just gatekeepers, they are part of the deliberating committee. Knowing that what we see of Arbcom's work is only the tip of the iceberg, I felt that to respond to the community's perennial calls for a more efficient and more streamlined system to address sysop issues, devolving it from Arbcom but keeping it under the aegis and participation of our most respected members,would be the logical step. It's either that or increase the number of Arbcom members so that they can form a sub committee for the purpose. That would not however address the communiy's claims that Arbcom as a body is not proficient to resolve sysop problems. At the same time, the effort is to deliberately avoid am ANI type structure at all costs. It's even much harder to maintain decorum and common sense at ANI than it is at RfA.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Well I would prefer streamlining arbcom and increasing members than involving the bcrats as part of the deliberating committee. I want them to flick the switch, not get stuck in a discussion about if it should be on or off. The majority of the community's problems with desysops are about the process required, not that it is arbcom doing it. Arbcom are proficient at desysopping, given the current process to work with. Give them a better process and most problems would disappear. Personally I *still* think a decision to remove admin rights needs more community involvement, not less - which is what happens when issues are escalated to arbcom or (as above) to a new arbcom-lite. Which is why I would also support giving the crats the ability to remove admin rights given a clear consensus to do so. (It isnt inconceivable to do both) Only in death does duty end (talk) 10:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   It's certainly one suggestion for improvement and if you were to propose it, I'd give it significant thought. However, I'd probably oppose because I'd like to see Arbcom's powers devolved, having sat on it for 2 years, I am of the opinion that it is far too powerful a committee and handles a lot of stuff which would be better handled elsewhere. That's why I'm throwing my weight behind this suggestion. I will, however, challenge one point - "The majority of the community's problems with desysops are about the process required, not that it is arbcom doing it". Having spoken to a large number of people on this, there is a sentiment that Arbcom are not always up to the task due to its structure as well as it's processes. Many people have a low opinion of the committee generally, it's even mentioned in the archive of this proposal's talk page. On top of that, there is a concept that if you go into an Arbcom case, all parties generally come out worse off. The amount of work to raise an Arbcom is significant. There's all sorts of reasons that Arbcom is a less than optimal solution and a lightweight community alternative should be considered. Worm^TT(talk) 12:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Not everyone agrees ArbCom is proficient at desysopping or even admonishing admins, and redressing the problems caused by admins who cross the line. The "proficient" assessment seems to be based on nothing but the fact that they've sometimes done it. ArbCom seems much better at dumping badly needed icewater on PoV-warrior flamefests (when they stick to disputes over encyclopedia content, instead of mistaking heated policy debate as a content dispute and interfering with the community's internal self-governance).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:25, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   How would the 10-editor jury really differ from this plan, in a meaningful way, other than that in this one some of the jurors are 'crats? Bureaucrats are also editors, after all. The use of 'crats in it, from my view, is the assurance that this not just "ANI2". It's a hybrid between a court-modelled system like ArbCom and pure-jury system like ANI. Seems worth trying.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:10, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

3. While well meaning, I think that this proposal contains three serious flaws: 1) While I have a very high regard for the bureaucrats, they weren't selected for this role on their ability to investigate complaints against admins, as this has historically been the role of ArbCom - where it is a major issue considered by participants in their annual elections. Empowering the current bureaucrats with a role which has historically only been granted to popularly elected arbs and which they don't necessarily have the skills or desire to perform seems unduly risky. 2) The notion of the bureaucrats then picking (with undefined "community consultations") "five other static community members" to join them in passing judgement is even more problematic. These editors won't have passed through any formal community processes to give them a mandate to judge the conduct of people who have passed through a RfA process, and this process runs counter to how Wikipedia has historically handled selecting editors for significant positions of responsibility. 3) There doesn't seem to be any kind of process to prevent or even discourage frivolous complaints (which, for all its many faults, the labour required to lodge a RfArb does). There's a real risk that this will turn into an offshoot of ANI where grumpy editors file complaints against admins, thus creating yet more drama for few gains. I'd also prefer establishing a sub-committee of ArbCom to handle this kind of thing if the current processes aren't working given that its members are elected to handle serious complaints against admins and doing so would avoid creating another governance body. Nick-D (talk) 12:25, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   I believe that if anyone possesses the required skill set, our Bureaucrats have demonstrated, in so far as they are or have been active, more than sufficient level of tact, diplomacy, and wisdom. I am not sure that every one of our past and present Arbcom members can rise to that compliment or even have passed the stringencies of RfB.

   While it may not have been within the original remit for Bureaucrats to deal with or be involved in such matters, consensus can change, and over the years Wikipedians have demonstrated in many cases that they are able to rise to the challenge of successfully modernising and modifying our policies and procedures as the encyclopedia evolves. Most members of our pool of Bureaucrats have been with us for a very, very long time - indeed, many of them have fallen into quasi inactivity. If we wish to retain the very notion of Bureaucrats, like the anticipated increase in the flow of RfA perhps this current initiative will help build a larger team of Bureaucrats.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   I think that NickD and the other opposers raise some good points. I agree that it has weaknesses, such as reliance on "bureaucrats" and their appointees, who may not be up to the job or make poor calls. But right now the utter absence of a process needs to be rectified by something, and this is as good as any. Coretheapple (talk) 16:36, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Something needs to be done; this is something; this needs to be done... Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 16:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   My read is "Something needs to be done, and this something appears to be good enough, so this should be done for now." Doesn't imply either lack of evaluation, or denial of possible better solutions at some point, just that continuing to do nothing is not acceptable when an incremental possible improvement can be tested. Perfection is not required, and neither is absence of resistance or alternative ideas; otherwise ArbCom wouldn't exist, either, and neither would WP itself.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

4. Preliminary stance. I'd like to see the procedures involved - particulary with the idea of strongly restricting frivolous complaints. Also #2 of what Nick-D said, while I don't distrust the current Bureaucrat roster at all that looks a bit too in-groupey to me. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 13:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
5. Emphatic Oppose Another half-baked proposal. (1) We're to approve this and then figure out how it's supposed to work (see note here)? Oh hell no. Either put your cards on the table and tell us how this is going to work or don't propose the process for approval. (2) There's no outline for how "other editors of the community" will be appointed to this board except some vague process involving the community. (3) This proposal suffers from the fatal problem some other proposals have failed from: Bureaucrats have not been elected to review admin conduct, as that has been an ArbCom function...one for which we vet and elect ArbCom. Nobody has ever reviewed a bureaucrat for their suitability in reviewing admin conduct and conflict resolution. (4) This proposal puts the cart before the horse. We can keep throwing processes at the wall for years (and in fact we have). But, until we first come up with the problems we are trying to solve, every proposal is a total shot in the dark as is this one. (5) To call this a "lightweight" process is absurd. There's some vague procedure for how the five bureaucrats are to be appointed, there's what will no doubt be a nightmarish procedure for members of the community to be appointed to it, voting mechanisms which will no doubt involve clerks like we have at ArbCom, and some process for placing injunctions. To call all of this lightweight is akin to calling the RMS Queen Mary 2 a rowboat. (6) Before even considering whether this could possibly be a valid process one needs to ask this question: "What administrator who was not desysopped would have been desysopped by this process?" If you can't come up with a single example, then it becomes blatantly obvious this process has no purpose. In summary We already have a seriously broken process. We don't need another one. --Hammersoft (talk) 13:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   No process this big would ever get through a Wikipedia RfC process fully baked and I think you're naive to think otherwise. What we've spent our time doing is finding the balance of putting enough flesh on the bones that people can picture what the final solution will look like, but allowing for change to allow the community to find the right solution. Once the general solution is in place, we can firm up the different areas. Finally, as to the word "lightweight", compare it to the current options, a multiple month RfArb case, including four phases, hundreds of words of evidence, a committee which needs 2 months of elections and Jimbo to appoint. That's pretty much it. This process is designed to last a specific short period, with a group that is fairly simple to create, that's why I call it lightweight. Worm^TT(talk) 14:13, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   I'm sorry, but passing something and then figuring out the way to implement it isn't the way to do this. I'm not going to support anything for which I don't know how it's supposed to work. "Hey! I've got this great idea! I'll tell you what it is after you approve it!" Hell no. And while it might be lightweight compared to ArbCom, it is _far_ from being lightweight. This process is nothing more than ArbCom Lite. And, I ask again, "What administrator who was not desysopped would have been desysopped by this process?" --Hammersoft (talk) 14:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   I'm sorry, but all major policy proposals begin with a framework first. That's the way truly collaborative projects evolve and not by dismissing them outright before fully understanding what is involved and what the stakeholders have asked to be debated by the community. This is in fact the third in this series of debates - the previous two having received the consensus on which this one is built. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC).

   • Yeah, but now you're shifting into a process area as opposed to an abstract concept area. We can agree there needs to be something, but now you're proposing something without actually telling us what it is beyond some vague constructs. This is not how it works. When you get to the process stage, you need to flesh this out. How are you going to decide on the five bureaucrats? What if there aren't five bureaucrats willing to stand? Perhaps you don't know, but only 7 of the 33 bureaucrats have performed a rights action of any kind in the last three months. More than half of the bureaucrats have not performed a rights action in the last year. You're asking me not to dismiss the proposal before fully understanding it. Fine. I won't dismiss it. But I sure as hell am not going to vote FOR it before fully understanding it, and you've not given us anywhere near enough information to understand it. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:25, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   • That's an interesting statistic. Did you include global renames in the "rights action"? How many "rights actions" were done in total - there's not a lot for 'crats to do at the moment, half a dozen RfAs and less bots approved, plus tidying up after inactive admins. Worm^TT(talk) 16:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   If we agree that there aren't enough bureaucrat actions to go around, we can instead consider general activity, as I did here. Only about half the current bureaucrats appear to have taken 10 or more admin actions in the past year, or made 10 or more edits in the past 30 days. In my opinion that would make a case that runs to completion in a week and a half and requires the active participation of five bureaucrats throughout, for the purpose of evaluating administrative practice, a rather impractical proposition. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:41, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   If there aren't enough active 'crats right now isn't the solution obvious? Get more later.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   I suspect the reason we don't have many RfBs is that there isn't much for bureaucrats to do at the moment. I'm sure we'd start getting a load more if there was this for them to do. In fact that's a good argument against some of the oppose votes here; some have argued that we didn't elect our current crats to do this, but if most of those crats aren't likely to be involved in this then there's no issue - we'll be electing new ones knowing that BARC is something they might be involved in. Sam Walton (talk) 10:51, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   Don't answer "What administrator who was not desysopped would have been desysopped by this process?" Doing so would at very least be a WP:CIVIL issue and maybe a WP:NPA one, so any admin named in response to the question could take you to ArbCom for aspersion casting if you named them in answer to this question, and they would automatically win: The terms of the question require that it be an admin who already survived a desysopping procedure; i.e., the evidence you could present in defense of the aspersion has already been seen and rejected by ArbCom. The question is circular reasoning, and a trick-question trap. (In effect; I cast no aspersion about the intent!)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:43, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

6. How is it better to have a group of bureaucrats adjudicating desysops rather than arbitrators? I don't see how this would make any difference. Arbcom generally seems to do a good job deciding who should have the bit revoked in any case, so I don't see any point in setting up an additional committee. Gatoclass (talk) 13:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   In my experience people disagree with arbcom when they get an answer they don't like. Under the new system if you can't make your case with evidence, you can always go to a venue that is a lot closer to a public vote. Chillum 14:52, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   The first sentence seems like it boils down to "people disagree with what they disagree with", so I'm not sure what the point is. If you mean to imply that Wikipedians will not accept that with which they don't agree (or something like that - will circumvent anything that doesn't go their way, etc.), I wouldn't agree categorically. We're human, so there's some element of that (thus the WP:GAMING page), of course. But we operate all the time with decisions outside our individual control and preferred outcome. There are no policies (even the individual line-item policies that collectively make up a policy page) that have unanimous support, and probably no single editor supports every such policy point, but most of us abide by all of them (that we can remember), just like a football player plays by the rules of the league, not by what he wishes the rules were.

   "A venue that is a lot closer to a public vote" sounds suspiciously like RFA, admin recall, and community consensus generally, to a greater or lesser degree. I know you mean to make a GAMING / WP:FORUMSHOPPING point here, but I have to submit this sense you get could really be misinterpretation of signals that ArbCom is not as compatible with WP community values, processes, and expectations as it should be. I can't speak for everyone, just myself and those who've told me they quit the project over it, but some of our direct experience with ArbCom is that it will not act to restrain or even question the decision of a bad-acting admin unless it thinks the result will be popular among admins and make ArbCom look good. I've been ignoring ArbCom for a while, so maybe its membership has changed enough that it has reformed somewhat in this regard. But a lot of the damage is already done, the faith already lost. At any rate, I'm highly skeptical that BARC would entertain many desysopping requests that ArbCom had rejected, or vice versa, much less come to different conclusions, so I don't see where the 'SHOPPING concern comes from. This is a proposal for a process that will get on with it, and be more transparent, with a minimal amount of bureaucracy (which is amusing, given that it involves the bureaucrats).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   The answer to your question is in the proposal. It's been clearly outlined why this proposal is being made. Whilst it may be true that cases that are brought before Arbcom are generally successfully concluded by Arbcom, we need to look at the bigger picture, understand the hundreds of comments around the site over the years that claim that inappropriate behaviour by admins too often escapes sanction alltogether, and then take the initiative to offer the commuity a proposal that addresses their concerns. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Well you say the new committee will be used to handle "simpler cases", but surely the simpler cases can already be readily handled by arbcom. This looks to me like a system designed not to handle simpler cases, but more complex cases involving trying to establish a problematic pattern of behaviour rather than more black and white issues like, say, misuse of tools. So it's not likely to be a "lite" process at all. Secondly, this is not going to make a lick of difference to the number of successful RfAs in my view, but it may well lead to fewer people bothering to stand in the first place. And nobody has asked the bureaucrats if they want to do this. On the other hand, Arbcom arguably has enough to do without having to deal with this kind of problem, and a committee comprised at least in part of non-admins might help alleviate the "us-versus-them" mentality that exacerbates the admin/non-admin divide. Still, the proposal as presented is very vague, and certainly I have misgivings that it will be employed to harass administrators if adequate safeguards are not included. I think you are taking on a much bigger project than you imagine, and if this passes I don't envy the users who are going to have to figure out the fine details. Gatoclass (talk) 01:20, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   I agree that using Crats to make decisions is bad, but using them to judge consensus is not. This proposal does a bit of both. The decisions are at the "gate" stage. I would like to see that simplified into binary decision which weeds out "clearly frivolous/vexatious" abuse. At the close, it's just a matter of judging consensus. The community should probably give some guidance in general about that. Referring "ties" to arbcom, I would abandon - no-consensus is no-consensus. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC).
   

   Agreed, and we know how the tie-breaker would go anyway.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:46, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

7. Oppose Our current system is based on evidence, this system sounds like an invitation for a witch hunt every few days. This system looks more like an ANI discussion, well an ANI discussion can already block/ban etc an admin but it does not. This system seems vague and lacking in detail. Crats were never selected with the ability to make these choices in mind, they were selected for other reasons. I don't see what the current system offers that arbcom does not other than a reduced burden of evidence replaced with sentiment.

   I am amazed at how quickly the first 40 supports arrived here after this was opened to the public at large. May I ask what exactly you are all supporting because it seems to me that all of the meat of the proposal is yet to be established. What has been presented here is so lacking in detail that any number of systems could be spawned from it. This would establish crats as one of the most powerful authorities on Wikipedia and we have not even made it clear what form that authority will take other than leaving most of it up to them. Has anyone asked the crats if they even want this job? Chillum 14:40, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   For my part, I'm supporting a leaner alternative to dealing with desysop cases, that has greater community input but isn't an ANI-style free-for-all. Like everyone else, I see that some key details haven't been fleshed out yet. But this has been a cautious, step-wise process with open involvement the whole way, so there is no reason to suspect that it would suddenly be hijacked into StupidLand at the end. (If it is, we'll just scrap it.) I'm not supporting some Obama-campaign-style promise of "Change". You and several other opposers seem to think that no one has given any thought to this, and are just voting for "something different". Maybe someone is, but I don't think most of us are. Proposals for any kind of reformative alterations regarding the admin system usually die very rapidly. This one has earned buy-in. I say that as someone watching this evolve, not helping craft it; I have no vested interest more than any other J. Random Editor, albeit I'm one dissatisfied with ArbCom's handling of some things, historically at least (but a big thumbs up for ArbCom on doing what its real "job" is, as in cases like WP:ARBAA2).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:33, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

8. Oppose. Definately not, we shouldn't be voting on anything until the proposal has been firmly thrashed out and discussed. Feels like votes for lynching all over again. If this proceeds. I think crats would all need to be reconfirmed to confirm that the community trusts them to desysop users. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:04, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   If we did that, then we would likely have another problem to deal with: we would not have any crats remaining, since all or almost all of them would likely be demoted. --Biblioworm 15:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

   Exactly, because this is not what they were selected for. The whole choice to use crats in my opinion is killing what otherwise would be a step in the right direction. Chillum 15:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

9. Oppose we really don't need a "ArbCom2" to have another level of bureaucracy. What's wrong with the present system? That has not been demonstrated. Why yet another governing body? Why does there have to be 5 bureaucrats, and what happens if there are not 5 standing that are worth voting for? The reason for a lack of administrators is that RfA is terribly broken, and this does nothing to fix this; in fact it could put people off trying, especially if there becomes a mob mentality after the latest block of Eric Corbett. Will encourage grudges and pushes for desysops for unpopular actions that may well need to be done. --Jules (Mrjulesd) 15:19, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
10. Hmm, being in this column puts me in some rather questionable company, doesn't it? Kudos to Kudpung for taking the time to come up with ideas, and I support the concept of some kind of misconduct committee separate from Arbcom—or a more general RFC committee with the powers to issue binding closures to RFCs, coupled with a revival of WP:RFC/U. I definitely don't support giving powers of this nature to the 'crats; this would be taking powers away from people who can be voted out, and giving them instead to people who are appointed for life. Wikipedia's governance structure is dysfunctional and corrupt as it is; the last thing it needs is its own House of Lords added to the mix. – iridescent 15:21, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

    Excellent point about ArbCom vs. Bureaucrats in the former being able to be voted out and the latter not. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:54, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

11. Oppose - For many of the reasons already stated - no need for an ArbCom2, bureaucrats have not been elected to do this. Also, more time should be allotted, given that this process is theoretically meant to deal with situations that are less urgent than an ArbCom case. It;s kind of silly that an admin can go on vacation for a week, come back and find that ArbCom2 is already most of the way through the process of desopping them without them having an opportunity to participate. Rlendog (talk) 16:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
12. Oppose Basically per Rlendog and others. Bureaucrats were not selected for their abilities to investigate and judge. You do realize that if this goes through, RfBs will take on immense drama and be very hard to pass--Wehwalt (talk) 17:15, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
13. Oppose Appreciate the concerns of the two primary drafters of this but I'm not seeing a problem with our admin corps that means another panel is needed to avoid arbcom. How many admins have fouled up enough we need a streamlined desysop process? Speaking from personal experience, one need not even have evidence submitted against them at arbcom to lose their admin tools.-MONGO 17:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
14. Oppose Concur with the reservations noted here, especially that of Chillum. Gamaliel (talk) 18:11, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
15. Oppose (moved from Support). I believe I've misunderstood this RfC. It reads like a general endorsement of the idea that we should build a method to desysop, and that this barebones system could act as a foundation for future discussions. These discussions have started to take shape as if we're actually approving a process that is not fully created yet, and I'm not at all okay with that. In particular, there seems to be nothing in this process whatsoever that protects good admins from harassment through this process. Allowing any two editors, with no requirements, to launch an ArbCom-lite inquiry is not wise. Providing admins with only 72 hours to respond to a complaint is not sufficient and easily gamed; just wait for an admin to go on vacation, and they'll be unable to respond to a complaint before discussion and possibly deliberations start. I appreciate the sentiment behind this RfC and support a consensus-based desysop process, but the proposed process is a recipe for the persistent harassment and eventual burnout of admins. If this RfC is intended as an actual approval of a process, it needs to be much more fleshed out before anyone should support it. ~ Rob^Talk 18:39, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
16. Oppose: Too uneven a standard, too subject to personalities and the vagaries of who joins a particular discussion, the time of day it starts and myriad other factors. Deysopping needs an even set of standards that are as objectively applied as possible, not mob rule. --Drmargi (talk) 19:30, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
17. Emphatic oppose Hammersoft and iridescent have this right. While I appreciate that the proposers are trying to find a way to navigate a long-standing contentious issue, I think this is trying to solve too many problems at once and as a result is internally inconsistent with its stated aims. It's intended to be "lightweight" but introduces a vast amount of new process and organization to choose the committee. The bureaucrats were not chosen for this task and are not as directly accountable to the community as arbitrators are, yet this is presented as a more community-forward process than Arbcom. It's designed to be "Arbcom lite" - presumably for issues that are less serious or urgent than those that would trigger a case request - yet it's also significantly faster. (As long as we're introducing new obligations to existing user groups, shall all admins commit to never going out of town or having real-life obligations that prevent pursuing a volunteer hobby for more than eleven days?)

    Most critically, this proposal falls victim to a common problem with "Big Ideas" here and elsewhere: there is no evidence provided that a) a problem actually exists, b) this proposal would be a useful and effective way to solve the problem, and c) it would not simply displace the problem somewhere else. The fact that people frequently complain about admin abuse and cite that possibility in their RfA opposes is not evidence that a "lightweight deadminship" process is needed; it's only evidence that this is a socially acceptable direction in which to vent some steam. Without an answer to Hammersoft's question 6, at minimum, there's nothing to be done here. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

18. Oppose: Unless there is a problem with ArbCom handling grievances with administrators, I don't see a benefit. Yes, currently RfA voters are afraid to promote anyone save for the perfect candidate. But "desysopping is so hard" is pretty much a myth, used to push the RfA candidacy bar higher and higher. The community is relatively better at giving adminship than taking it; absolutely, it fails at it. Esquivalience ^t 20:01, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
19. Oppose as currently worded. As per my comment below I can't support this wording, however I'm not against the idea of a community recall process and I have some suggestions. All that said, thinking that this will solve RFA is crazy. This process either stands on its own two feet as a recall mechanism or not. RFA fixes should be about RFA not recall. Also Salvio is making some very pertinent points. If the BARC is using the same standard as ArbCom what is the point--Cailil ^talk 21:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
20. Oppose. We need more admins, which means, partially, that we need more people willing to step up to the plate; to that end, adminship needs to be less stressful (as this proposal says.) The idea that being constantly subject to a rapid-fire desysoping process could make it less stressful is silly; this would make everything an admin does feel more politicized, and would make people less willing to step into the role. I don't agree with the idea that it could make RFA less stressful (by making granting adminship less of a final decision); at this point the culture of RFA is well-entrenched, and beyond that, the reluctance to promote an admin comes more, in my opinion, from a vicious cycle where having few admins increases the impact each admin has. This wouldn't make the people who are reluctant to promote anything but a perfect admin back down; they would just oppose everyone who is anything less than perfect in RFA, then immediately turn around and try to pull down any admin who is less than perfect using this process -- effectively turning the stress of RFA into something admins are subject to constantly and making people less willing to subject themselves to it. Beyond that, the core issue is that (as others have said above), aside from the lack of admins and the difficulty of getting anyone to put themselves forward at RFA, there's no evidence that this is trying to solve an issue that actually exists -- those admins who do abuse their position actually end up desysoped by RFAr very quickly, and while that can take a while, RFAr is not shy about removing people immediately pending a final decision if they continue to cause problems. If this is just about making adminship less stressful or attract more people to RFA, its ability to achieve those goals doesn't seem, to me, to be remotely credible. --Aquillion (talk) 23:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

    I agree completely, and would add that there's a real risk that the proposed arrangements here will grind down experienced and competent admins and cause them to stop using the tools. Nick-D (talk) 23:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

    You keep making this claim but the only admins who need to be afraid of this dedicated admin review committee are those who know themselves to be flying just below the radar or those who are using their admin status in order to pursue indadmissible goals and are naïve enough to think they won't be caught out sooner or later, and those who might wish to become admins in order to exploit adminship for purposes that policy does not condone. Although it is not directly the aim of BARC, it might well in fact lead to a lowering of the bar to adminship - this is what the comuunity has been demanding for a very long time, and if it involves Bureaucrats and keeps the peanut gallery out f the process, then it is hard to envisage any other system that would. Bureaucrats are held to the highest standards of integrity on the English Wikipedia and having their flag removed for cause is exceedingly rare while the Arbitration Commitee has had many crises even including leaks of its mailing list and members being disqualified or resigning under a cloud. All this can be documented but it is not the immediate purpose of this debate - anyone doubting it however is free to do their own reseach, which might in fact be preferable to dismissing a proposal likethis out of hand. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 01:02, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    Actually, I don't think that I've "made this claim" before, and given that you keep making the same points yourself here it's not a great criticism to make of other people... The problem is that this process will make it too easy for disgruntled editors to make complaints against admins they think have wronged them, with those admins then needing to defend themselves to a formal body which would be a significant escalation from the current AN/ANI processes. I think that I'm a good admin (seven years and counting with only one or two decisions overturned), but I can see myself being hauled in front of this body a few times a year by people who are upset that I imposed some kind of sanction which affected them and either want to get back at me or try to vindicate their conduct. If this process worked well, I'd be given the thumbs up each time but it would add to the burden of being an admin and make me more reluctant to use the tools. If the process was problematic (which is quite likely given the problems I outlined above) then it would be a mess. Nick-D (talk) 02:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    Mildly, one reason why bureaucrats as a body have less controversies than Arbcom is because bureaucrats have fewer controversial tasks. if the community assigns additional controversial tasks to bureaucrats, it is likely to see a proportionate increase in what might be perceived as bureaucrat-related controversies. -- Euryalus (talk) 02:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    those who know themselves to be flying just below the radar, those who are using their admin status in order to pursue indadmissible goals... I think comments like these highlight a critical issue here. They imply the existence of a class of admins who are aware that their administrative practice is inappropriate in some way but continue to behave as they wish because they can get away with it. The proposal is a way to ferret these people out, get the bad apples out of the barrel before they spoil the bunch. But looking at any of the recent Arbcom cases related to use of admin tools does not really uphold that model: even the two current ones are both examples of good-faith differences of opinion, wherever you stand on how much scope there is to enact those differences and how best to respond when confronted with disagreement. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:53, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    I find your RfA vicious cycle scenario implausible mostly, and suspect that the predictions of Kudpung, et al., are correct. But let's say you're right: The "RfA cabal" becomes even more resistant to new admins being admitted, and then go on a pogrom of persecution of "imperfect" admins (and BARC for whatever reason goes along with it), compounding the admin crisis to a critical mass. So what? All that would do is force WP to matriculate to next stage in the organizational lifecycle (one that is long overdue, frankly), and totally reform how the site is administered. (I was an adult when the Berlin Wall suddenly came down, and the USSR just sort of stopped one day, so such changes neither frighten nor surprise me.) I think the odds of this happening are very low (as a result of this plan, I mean; it's inevitable in the longer run that we'll have to shift to a competence-based meritocracy, like the free software community, instead of a system based on a popularity contest revolving around a faith-and-politics-based notion of total "trust").

    The present arrangement discourages competent, experienced editors, infused with the Wikipedia community's values, from seeking adminship for many reasons, but "RfA is unfriendly" is hardly chief among them. The entire thing is a drama factory, and it is one because it's almost impossible to take the tools back unless an admin's transgressions are extreme not just unbecoming, so every aspect of the system grossly overreacts to compensate. I don't buy this whole "reluctance to use the tools because admins are afraid of being desysopped because of frivolous complaints" theory. If the complaints are frivolous, they should fail. If they don't, then the system is broken, so we'd need to fix it, not be very, very quiet and let it remain broken. If someone constantly fears being desysopped, that's a double-bad sign, since it indicates a concern principally for loss of power, and a self-assessment that one has been crossing the line and will get caught more easily.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:05, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

21. Oppose, this system would pull admins away from higher-drama areas like AE and AFD because of the fear of being desysopped due to a dispute regarding the outcome of their decisions. Admins need to be held accountable, but this system is ripe for abuse by anyone that may feel slighted by an admin's closure of a discussion. Arbcom is more than capable of handling egregious administrator abuse, as evidenced by their record on desysoppings. The procedure may be slower, but it's done deliberately and without the influence of a "witch hunt". Nakon 01:06, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
22. The current bureaucrats were elected to assess consensus at RfA, not investigate and decide on whether to desysop administrators for cause. I would suggest that, for this process to be completely above-board and legitimate, it would require a reconfirmation of all bureaucrats to ensure the community is happy for them to perform this role, that wasn't in their mandate when they were elected. I prefer the more deliberative process that comes with ArbCom proceedings, and do not like the sound of this 'lite' process that I can see devolving into a request for lynching. While the argument "one can just appeal to ArbCom" is true, the result of this 'lite' process would be hugely prejudicial, which is unfair. Being an administrator is a big deal, whether the community wants to acknowledge it or not, and this potential lynching process without the diligence that an RfAr has sitting in the back of their mind will likely steer administrators away from taking action in controversial areas. I cannot see that as a good thing. Daniel (talk) 01:36, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
23. Oppose – The intentions here are good, but this is the wrong solution: redundant to ArbCom (with no real benefit to the redundancies save for the promise that the "wait times" would be reduced from 1 month to two weeks), and seems designed as a "make works" project for Bureacrats (who, instead, should probably be allowed to slide completely into history). As is discussed elsewhere, the RfA process is broken, but this isn't the solution – the likely solution is to sub-divide and specialize the various Admin tasks (i.e. "unbundle the bit") into more specialized usergroups (probably with fixed terms) rendering the "Admin" a very small and specialized group like Bureacrats are now. I will note that I don't join some of the other opposes in their belief that the current proposal will lead to "witch hunts" – a significant portion of the current problem with the position of Admin is this desire to insulate them from direct community accountability. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 01:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    That's one of the big problems with this RFC. "Direct community accountability" is not possible to quantify and will always be the loudest "group of people" who show up to a dispute. This dispute could be organized on- or off-wiki and railroad an otherwise good admin just because they decided rightfully against some high-profile editor, or some contentious subject (gamergate, politics, etc.). The politics that would be involved in the "dispute" phase are enough for me to oppose this RFC.

    Please don't get me wrong, I definitely agree that Admins need to be responsible. However, there are zero protections in place in this proposal for an admin that may make an unpopular decision and be hounded by off-wiki participants that may have "aged" accounts here. Arbcom is more than equipped to handle these disputes, and has shown that they are more than willing to do so should an issue arise to the level that would warrant bit removal. Nakon 05:06, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    Wouldn't you just have to look at their contribs to see they were meatpuppets? If three editors show up to rail on someone at once, but have all been inactive for a year ...  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:04, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    Nobody is disputing the fact that once a case is brought, Arbcom will do its job. The problem is getting an issue to the door of the committee in the first place. Many editors are intimidated by the extraordinary bureaucracy surrounding Arbcom, even I get lost in it. Many editors feel intimidated by admins - in my early days on Wikipedia I was badly bullied by a pair of team-tagging teenage admins. I didn't have the foggiest idea how to deal with it and I still wouldn't if I hadn't made it my business to find out how such people get elected to adminship. They were finally desysoped some years later anyway, or slunk off into retirement, but it shouldn't have taken that long and I'd rather not thnk about how many other editors they had lost for us. BARC would have taken the case and it would have been settled in ten days. BARC is specifically designed to avoid the railroading of the kind that goes on among the sabre-rattling egos of the loudest groups of high-profile editors who show up, and the Arbcom slownes of a court of common law. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:02, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    If the problem is getting an issue to the door of the committee in the first place, then it would be more productive to try and solve that particular aspect, rather than creating another bureaucratic process which covers fewer cases, affords fewer protections to administrators dragged before it and is less democratic than ArbCom. Not to mention that you're asking people to vote on a proposal which is so half-baked that it doesn't even spell out what standards will be employed by BARC to determine whether to desysop an administrator, which, in my opinion, is among the most important things to flesh out before submitting a proposal to the community. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 10:40, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

24. Oppose There's really no need for this extra bureaucracy to carry out the desysop function. The real solution is simple: a community discussion takes place at AN/I, after which an uninvolved administrator can determine the consensus, close the thread, and ask a crat to carry out the desysop if required. Rcsprinter¹²³ (shout) @ 17:25, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    That is, in fact, pretty much exactly the way I think the process should go. (Though maybe just requiring a uninvolved Crat, as opposed to Admin, to close and potentially carry out the desysop.) But we don't need a second "panel" solution – we already have ArbCom for that. And I don't buy the notion that a "cabal" could successfully fool the community at AN/I to desysop on nothing more than a "grudge" – the AN/I crowd isn't that dumb or gullible. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:43, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

    Yes, that sounds like a good, simple solution. Does anyone know how many de-sysyops have actually occurred on ANI in, let's say, the past five years? - MrX 18:49, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

25. Oppose. We do not need the second arbcom. Ruslik_Zero 18:43, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
26. Oppose This doesn't seem to be lightweight as it seems too similar to arbcom. There would be some kind of election process to pick the non-bureaucrat members and then the deliberations of the 10-man committee seem likely to be similar to those of arbcom with the taking of evidence, clerks, &c. A truly lightweight process would be for a bureaucrat to desysop an admin if there were good cause. That's the way that ordinary editors get treated by admins, who block them as an individual action. Per WP:SAUCE, admins should be subject to the same rough justice. Andrew D. (talk) 21:15, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
27. Oppose. Aside from the obvious issue that Arbcom as a group of people elected for fixed terms are more of a community based way to desysop admins. This misses two fundamentals, it doesn't create any extra offences that could lead to admins being desysoped who would not have been dealt with by arbcom, and it telescopes the time process to the exclusion of people who have more to their lives than Wikipedia. In some cases this might enable people to use this to attack an admin who has just done a controversial block. But other times the speed and intensity of the process would favour a hyper active admin over a less active editor who would get a fairer hearing from arbcom. ϢereSpielChequers 23:39, 25 July 2015 (UTC)
28. Oppose. There is a good idea in here struggling to get out, but it is encapsulated in a shell and will suffocate and die there. The problem is that there is no community in this "community" process - there is an association of five seemingly self-selected bureaucrats who seem to have a mandate to stack the committee with their friends. There is no "bill of rights" here, for example shielding admins from consideration of their activities and statements in environments that have nothing to do with Wikipedia. And the effect of this process is multiplied by a fear factor - humiliate one admin, and ten others will toe whatever line the bureaucrats are trying to lay down. So I definitely cannot support it in this form. I *would*, however, support the selection of a random jury from the total pool of edits (i.e. weighted for frequent contributors), with bureaucrats acting in an advisory capacity, and I could tolerate a veto process if enough crowned heads of whatever variety get together to deny de-adminning the person under discussion. I'm more concerned about their ability to drum out who they want than to give clemency. Wnt (talk) 18:11, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
29. Oppose. I see no attempt to protect admins who make controversial decisions. I'm not sure how to do this.... There are also some specific problems that need to be dealt with:
    1. If this is to be considered a "community" process, the panels must be chosen by the community, not by bureaucrats. (The suggestion of having the panel chosen at random, by number of edits, has some merit, although the panel also has to consist of uninvolved editors.)
    2. The timeline is much too fast; both to give the scapegoat admin time to respond, and to give the panel time to discuss.

    If those matters were dealt with, it would be a parellel Arbcom, which would be unnecessary, but not actively harmful to Wikipedia. 09:12, 27 July 2015 (UTC)— Arthur Rubin (talk)

30. I do not like the change of the traditional bureaucrat role inherent in this proposal. If they have a role in this process (other than judging consensus), they will inject their own opinions. We did not elect bureaucrats for politics. I am open for a community-based de-adminship system, but this suggestion will be at best a parallel and less legitimate Arbcom. —Kusma (t·c) 14:18, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
31. Oppose. I'd be OK with bureaucrats judging consensus in de-adminship discussions (effectively reverse RfAs) as on Commons. But I do not think we should start sitting in judgment over administators. WJBscribe (talk) 10:49, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
32. Oppose My decade of experience in Wikipedia leads me to believe that the formality of an Arbcom case is a feature, not a bug. Wikipedia is not the same as it was 10 years ago; the project is much bigger and much more fractured into groups of editors. This leads to an increase in in the potential of interpersonal and intergroup friction which can result in actions taken to reduce the effectiveness of others by ad hominem or other "political" attacks. I fear that having an easier desysopping route will cause more harm by ennobling trolling and political activism than the good it may engender through easier removal of admins who truly need to take a break. So whereas I may have supported this 10 years ago, there really wasn't a need for it 10 years ago. Now, I fear its (clearly unintended) harm more than the good it may cause. I commend and thank the proposers for taking the time and energy to address the issues of RfA, even though I feel that this particular iteration has the potential for more long-term harm than good. -- Avi (talk) 15:19, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
33. Oppose I cant see this is really that big an issue that cant be handled by our current process. MilborneOne (talk) 16:20, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Neutral

1. Neutral. I am having trouble dealing with the current combination of the claims that this is just an RfC to see if we want to have a community desysoping process with the details to be worked out in a second RfC and detailed descriptions about what the desysoping process will look like, so I am going to withhold my !vote until I see a specific proposal in the second stage. I am going to make a prediction: I predict that we will not be able to reach a consensus on those details, based on the failure of all previous attempts to resolve this problem. If that happens, I am going to write up a recommendation to Arbcom that they carefully study what various parts of the community have said here and consider how they can meet the needs that we have identified. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:57, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

   That recommendation sounds like a good idea Guy and if this fails at stage two I'd support your suggestion--Cailil ^talk 18:38, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

   There have been successful precedents for this set-up, e.g. breaking the impasse in the "not truth" was done via a multi-step RFC. By getting prior approval to start drafting a more detailed proposal, you invite the community to get constructively involved in the drafting of those more detailed proposals, so they get more ownership of that entire process. A necessarily imperfect proposal that cannot be made better which on careful analysis would be a lot better than not adapting it, would get the benefit of the doubt and be adopted, while if such a proposal were put forward in an RFC out of the blue, it would have no chance of passing. Count Iblis (talk) 15:55, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

2. Neutral. I can't vote for something when it's not clear what I'm voting for. I support it in principle but I'd really need more information. I wouldn't want to see some sort of popularity contest where a admin is removed because they simply pissed off a group of editors in fulfilling their role and I wouldn't want to see a admin remain because they made alot of friends. Removal should be limited to abuse. We should take alot of care in developing any system. -Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 04:04, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

• Assuming this process can be accepted in principle, there are a number of procedures that would be up for debate in a second phase of this RfC. In my head that would be things like final timescales, potential situations where this process could not be used, recusals and quora, what threshold would be a "legitimate" case, appointment processes and so on. The important thing here is to look at the big picture - a lightweight, transparent, community based desysop process. Worm^TT(talk) 06:49, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
• A concern I have is that the appointment of the community members of the committee by bureaucrats rather than community election would, in that sense, make it less of a community body than the Arbitration Committee. Also, I'm wondering exactly how, in each case, bureaucrats will be selected. I'm also concerned that the power of this committee is not well-defined: is it answerable to arbcom? What happens if the community is displeased with one or more committee members? On a somewhat related note, does the Arbitration Committee intend to consider this a "dispute resolution method of last resort" like it currently does for AN/I? If yes, then if an administrator has engaged in conduct that not only warrants desysopping but site blocks or bans, does this mean that the Arbitration Committee and BARC will have to run simultaneous cases? Finally, a bit of bikeshedding, but why exactly five each of bureaucrats and non-bureaucrats?--Jasper Deng (talk) 07:28, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  I'd expect that it would effectively be a community election and we can debate how best to do that. My thoughts that something like secure poll or even formal election would lead to election fatigue. It's all about the balance. The rest of the questions are good, certainly. Worm^TT(talk) 07:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Answering in no particular order... The 5:5 was my idea. I wanted to ensure there was a proper community involvement, size is based on my experience on arbcom, also to give the community a strong say. It's up for debate in the next phase. As is how the bureaucrats are selected on a the case by case basis, I just imagined first come first served. Terms are 1 year, therefore displeasure should only last a finite time. I'd expect Arbcom to take this as a "dispute resolution" with respect to admins, but it's really up to them. Finally "answerable to arbcom"... I don't see why it would be - any more than say, MedCom is. If an Arbcom case is being opened, I'd expect that to be a reason that this is rejected. Worm^TT(talk) 07:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  I see no need for any committee. Let the 'crats judge consensus as they do for RfA. For the "gate" stage, weeding out frivolous/vexatious de-sysop requests, if it's not clearly frivolous/vexatious (or incompetent) it should be allowed to run. Frivolous/vexatious litigants will get a chunk of WP:BOOMERANG, to discourage them. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:06, 27 July 2015 (UTC).
  

• "Bureaucrats are authorised, upon consensus being reached, to physically enact the removal of tools." This sentence is a bit awkward ("physically"??) especially as Bureaucrats cannot actually remove an admin flag. They need to submit a request to stewards at meta. --99of9 (talk) 07:30, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes they can remove the administrator user right. --ceradon (talk • contribs) 07:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, we can. I have done many times for inactive admins. I thought I tidied the sentence, I'll drop the word "physically". Worm^TT(talk) 07:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Well I learn something every day around here! On Commons we cannot (I'm a crat there). Strange that we have different settings. Thanks for the grammar fix. --99of9 (talk) 08:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Same on Wikidata, where I am a crat. Really big projects usually can decide via RfC whether local crats can remove the flag. I would say for Commons stewards would do the job pretty efficiently.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:28, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• There is great value in having a lightweight, efficient yet robust community de-adminship process. In detailed discussions, I think we need to address the time scale (allowing lengthier deliberations would be better) and appointment process in particular, and make sure the process is wikilaywer-proof. However this is an excellent proposal; I would urge everyone not to nitpick too much at this stage since there will be a follow up RfC. BethNaught (talk) 07:34, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
• The committee should be at least 51% non-admin, non-bureaucrats. GregJackP Boomer! 07:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  I tend to agree with your sentiment here, although I would only go so far as to say that the non-bureaucrat contingent should have, say, at least 2 seats reserved for non-admins. In any case I don't think this concern is fatal to the proposal (you see that I have supported it above) but I just think this point needs to be made. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:37, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Probably best for discussion in the next phase, but I am concerned with the difficulty in finding a significant number of non-admin, non-bureaucrat users with sufficient trust from the community to perform this role and who are also willing to do so. Worm^TT(talk) 11:57, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• The proposal says that the committee should be "comprised of any 5 bureaucrats from the pool of active bureaucrats on a per case basis alongside 5 other static community members. The community members on the committee should be appointed annually by the bureaucrats, with community consultation." If I'm reading this right, and please correct me if this isn't what you meant, but does this mean that any 5 bureaucrats will be appointed to a case, but the same 5 community members will be part of every case? Sam Walton (talk) 07:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, that's what I was aiming for. Worm^TT(talk) 07:54, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  When you say "community members" are you limiting that to non-admin editors? If not, it should be IMO. GregJackP Boomer! 16:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Will there also be a community Bureaucrats' Administrator Review Committee member removal process? —Xezbeth (talk) 07:44, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Plerase see the introduction. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:48, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Interested in knowing what would count as "consensus for removal" here - it looks a bit "free for all" to me right now. The possibility of any community-driven deadminship process being abused/misused for petty grievances or outright bad faith requests is a major reason why previous proposals have failed. Some concerns about whether assessing tool misuse is a radical new job that is at odds with the normal bureaucrat responsibilities. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:37, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  My thoughts were that it would effectively be a vote of those on the committee, but a vote with visible comments, so that they can effect other votes. Similar to how Arbcom does it's "proposed decisions". Worm^TT(talk) 09:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Regarding appeals to arbcom, what would be the grounds for the appeal to be successful? Are arbcom there to simply judge whether consensus was reached correctly, or a full case from scratch like it is now, or somewhere in between - "yeah a mistake (or two) were made and there's legitimate complaint, but we think a telling off would suffice, so we'll overturn a desysop decision"? -- KTC (talk) 08:45, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  That's a good question. I would expect Arbcom to overturn based on additional information, possibly private. Perhaps if there was evidence that the case wasn't fair, for whatever reason. I'd be surprised if Arbcom would overturn a a case that was handled reasonably. Worm^TT(talk) 09:08, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• "An open case will be referred to by a non-descriptive numerical value." Why? If each case concerns only one administrator, then surely it would make more sense to name it according to the same scheme as RFA, for example "ExampleAdmin" for a first case, or "ExampleAdmin 2" for a second case, rather than just a simple number. — This, that and the other (talk) 09:37, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  It's one of the most stupid arguments that we seemed to have on almost every case on Arbcom. The non-descriptive numerical value stops any future accusations of "scarlet letters", or marks against persons real name, allows for better vanishing and privacy. The fact is, this is never going to be a pleasant process and little things like that will make it slightly less unpleasant. Worm^TT(talk) 10:03, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) We elect our bureaucrats on an open, transparent process where we subject them to a greater inquisition and hold them to a far higher level of integrity than the Arbitration Committee candidates. In actual theory, if not in practice and policy, a group of Bureaucrats should be able to trump the Arbcom, and not vice versa. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Indeed. Only one arbitrator since 2009 has managed to top 85% support, and that wasn't me ;) Worm^TT(talk) 11:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  My RfB in 2007 enjoyed 98% support, with only 3 people opposing. In the 2008 ArbCom elections, I had 67% support, with 127 people opposing, at the time I withdrew (i.e. only just enough to be appointed to the committee had that been the final result). It is regrettably a fallacy to think that the high percentage support required to pass RfB would be reflected were a bureaucrat to seek the community's endorsement to fulfil a different tole. WJBscribe (talk) 14:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• so what do we do when this doesn't increase the numbers passing RFA?©Geni (talk) 10:52, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Increasing numbers passing at RfA isn't the sole purpose to this proposal, just one hopeful benefit. Whether or not the numbers are increased, future arguments that RfA should be difficult to pass as it's hard to remove the userright should be reduced. Worm^TT(talk) 11:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  The main purpose of this proposal is to demonstrate that while adminship is for life (at least for the time being), its tenure in the face of a streamlined desysoping process is one that admins will hopefully treat with more respect. Once the new committee has shown that it does what it says on the tin, the community will introduce more homogenised and hopefully less stringent criteria on which they base their votes at RfA. At the moment we have RfA participants demanding FA, 20,000 edits, a raft of DYK, and 100s of AfD which along with the need for some of them to deliberatekty turn RfA into a drama is what is keeping otherwise perfectly qualified candiates away. That said, it's nevertheless unlikely that over the next five years RfA will be back to dozens per month rather than the two dozen per year at present. I started drafting this proposal three years ago, given a chance over the next three we can them come back to your question if necessary. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 12:29, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Doing this to fix RFA is pointless. RFA needs to be solved at RFA not with desysoping rules. Thinking that this will work is crystal ball gazing.
  That said I'm not against this in principle. But there are a few problems with the proposal. One thing that needs to be clear is that there *are* times when a sysop needs to be stern and the process must outline that there's a difference between a sysop chewing out someone who deserves it and them abusing their "position" and being a jerk. On top of this a few thoughts on reading this:

1. Crats should be allowed only suspend sysops bits on consensus but must refer to ArbCom for approval of that decision (not for an RFAR). In all likelihood this will only happen in a few select circumstances so adding that layer of check and balance wont hurt anyone.
2. It has to be editors in "good standing" who can file this kind of complaint and moreover I'm not sure that two is an appropriate number, this is an overturn of community consensus, two people is very low for that. However I am conflicted about this, because one person should theoretically be enough if the evidence is strong enough. Also maybe there should be clear sanctions for clearly disruptive complaints (like there are at WP:AE)?
3. Like RFAR other avenues of dispute resolution must have been attempted and ignored by the sysop before going here. We can't have a situation where disgruntled sockmaster goes straight to BARC. I know no action would be taken but it's a waste of time. And as we all grow-up we don't have the infinite time that some people seem to have to dedicate to pointless disputes.

So in short can't support as currently worded but not against it in principle--Cailil ^talk 12:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• This would be a big change in the bureaucrat role - something not envisaged when we originally were RfB candidates. If this proposal were to pass, I think I would feel the need to seek reconfirmation from the community. I don't know how other bureaucrats feel about this. WJBscribe (talk) 14:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• So for clarity, you don't feel that a consensus at this RfC (which by all projections is going to be much better attended in the end then a typical RfB) is not, in-itself, a mandate that you (as Bureaucrats) have the trust of the community for this role. Put another way, if we're going to trust 'crats, why wouldn't you think that doesn't include you? Regards, Crazynas ^t 15:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Do we keep statistics on the percentage of oppose comments by admins, compared with the percentage of support comments by admins? We should.- MrX 15:00, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• My question is: what standards will BARC use to determine whether to desysop an administrator? I ask because, in my opinion, the main problem with our current procedures is that they ony allow us to desysop administrators who have been misconducting themselves, while nothing can be done about admins who the community no longer trust to have the tools. If BARC is going to use the same standards used by ArbCom, then I don't really see any reason to have it, but various reasons not to: a. the community members are not elected by the community, unlike arbitrators; b. 'crats were never appointed to evaluate the conduct of administrators; c. in my opinion, this process gives far too little time to administrators to defend themselves and for the community/BARC to discuss the issue; and, d. having had experience with ArbCom cases, I can foretell that the deadlines indicated will turn out to be nothing but wishful thinking. Yes, ArbCom cases last far too long, but part of the reason they do is to give the opportunity to everyone, who wants to have a say, to express their opinion (not to mention that sifting through evidence to prepare a draft decision is a time-consuming effort) and discussion of difficult cases often takes days especially because editors live in different time zones. If, on the other hand, it's anticipated that BARC will be desysopping administrators who have lost the trust of the community, then I don't see why we can't have a community discussion closed by a 'crat or a panel of 'crats evaluating consensus (which would be my preference). Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 15:02, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• It is part of our job to make decisions that are going to be unpopular with some people, if you do your job in a neutral fashion you will eventually annoy a lot of people. One of my big concerns with these sorts of proposals is that desysoping will move from being based on actual misconduct and instead be allowed to be achieved through sufficient sour grapes. Chillum 15:05, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Well, all admins were appointed because, at the time, the community trusted them; as far as I'm concerned, that trust should continue to be present for an admin to keep his tools, so that if he ever lost it, for whatever reason, there should be a process for the community to yank his tools. Admins should serve at the community's pleasure, in my opinion. I agree that there needs to be a way to prevent admins from being defrocked simply because a groups of editors didn't like that they were upholding this site's policies, but I don't think that strong enough an argument to say that the community should not be able to desysop admins. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 16:46, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• This is one reason that Crat involvement makes sense, as Crats have generally been expected to, and have traditionally lived up to, the idea of being calm and apolitical. The same requirements for previous Crat duties apply here, so I'm not against reconfirm but don't think it is absolutely required as they've already passed an average 85% acceptance to become Crat to start with. I can't see that the threshold for removing the admin bit would be different here than at Arb, misuse of tools or gross misconduct that removes the trust. Complicated long term patterns of behavior still belong at Arb, as do emergencies, so this is handling pretty clear cases in about 1/6th of the time, AND instilling faith that an admin can be removed by the community in two places, paving the way for the brass ring: easier to become admin, easier to lose admin. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:56, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• So, basically, BARC would desysop in the same cases ArbCom desysop now, except it would not deal with long-term patterns of behavior and emergencies. Coupled with the problems I have mentioned above, what would the advantage(s) be? That this process would be quicker? The same result can be obtained changing the rules at ArbCom. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:09, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

It probably could, in theory, but ArbCom won't let the community change ArbCom's rules. So, there's that. Then there's the assumption that (if Dennis is right) the criteria would be about the same, and (your part) the two bodies would come to the same conclusion all the time; this seems highly dubious to me. That's based on direct experience as well as observation of ArbCom's lack of willingness to even look at issues brought to it, much less respond to clarification requests, etc. At least with the membership the committee had in the timeframe I'm thinking of, the stubbornness and self-satisfied sense of infallibility were palpable, as was the desire to not be seen to be contradicting an AE "enforcer" admin in any way. Iblis's point below, that ArbCom's membership reduction the point where its workload is maxed means the community has to do something to fill the gap, is also salient.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:37, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

If BARC end up applying the same standards ArbCom do, then it stands to reason that they'll end up desysopping admins in roughly the same cases ArbCom currently do. There may be differences, of course, because, for instance, the determination of what qualifies as a pattern of misuse is not entirely objective, but I don't foresee there'll be many differences.

Concerning your other point that ArbCom is unwiling to look at issues brought before it, well, I disagree with that. I remember the issue you had with one particular AE enforcer and, well, your complaint first led to a compromise solution (one which I proposed and which you accepted by saying [t]hat will completely resolve this issue, without any further question, in the most equitable way). And, in addition to that, it was one of the reasons that led ArbCom to start a review of their own rules concerning discretionary sanctions and, in the end, we ended up amending and clarifying the relevant policy, after a lengthy consultation with all interested parties.

Don't get me wrong, as I've said, I think that the current system could and should be improved. The problem is that, however you look at it, this proposal does not constitute an improvement. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 12:20, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

But that settlement was not honored. It also took about a year to get heard at all, after numerous run-arounds and refusals, a non-admin third party stepping in and bringing the case for us, and one of the Arbs trying to act as prosecutor the whole time instead of judge. Seriously broken. I've never approached ArbCom or AE again as far as I can recall, other than to ask for clarification about the extent of ARBAA2's application. [Trim – took this matter to user talk.] Re: The proposal being not an improvement – Most places I've lived have multiple court systems and law enforcement agencies, by way of analogy, and it seems to work out okay. ArbCom is swamped. An experiment by which the community hands some workload to another, specific-task body seems reasonable to try. Maybe it will fail. If it does, oh well, at least we tried, and will probably learn something constructive. I also expressed concerns about the 'Crat appointments (which you raised below), and it already looks like the plan is shifting away from that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:09, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The improvement is that it is community driven. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:13, 27 July 2015 (UTC).

You are quite wrong there. BARC would be even less community driven than ArbCom. Arbitrators, at least, are elected by the community for a 2-year term (or a 1-year term, in certain cases). BARC would be composed of five crats volunteering on a case-by-case basis and by five community members appointed by the crats. It honestly boggles my mind that this process is described as more community driven than ArbCom... Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 01:42, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

The BARC involvement is primarily to judge consensus. The make-up of BARC and even if it's needed at all can be refined. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:03, 27 July 2015 (UTC).

The BARC involvement is primarily to judge consensus of the members of the committee. The proposal states that [t]he committee will vote to decide [... w]hether removal of the administrator user-right is appropriate. Nowhere does the proposal mention consensus of anyone other than the members of the committee. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 14:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

• When Jimbo started Wikipedia, there was no ArbCom, there were no special BLP rules, and RFA amounted to little more than asking Jimbo if you could have access to the tools. This system gradually evolved due to the current system. So, what is more important is to ask whether the proposed new system is flexible enough to adapt to fine tune itself in response to community feedback to become better. Now, the ArbCom system doesn't work well in this respect, i.m.o. a strategic mistake was made some years ago when the decision was made to make it smaller. You now have a chronically overworked system. Instead, if ArbCom had been expanded and only a fraction of the Arbs would be assigned to a case (so, even active Arbs would not vote on a case unless they were working in that particular case), then you would have had a far more flexible system that would be able to handle also the Admin related issues better. The larger picture is that precisely because ArbCom's limit is reached, the community feedback then leads to a new system for the Admin related issues. Count Iblis (talk) 17:04, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Serious question here: How is this, in any way, different that ArbCom?! So, basically, we'll have ArbCom for "abuse of the tools" cases, and this BARC for "this Admin is a git to the no0bs, and has gots to go!!" From what I understand, though, ArbCom can actually take the latter cases (it's just that such cases almost never get to ArbCom's desk directly...). But this process looks to me to be almost as bureaucratic as ArbCom. So, really, what's the advantage here? --IJBall (contribs • talk) 18:12, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• @IJBall: take a look at my rationale in the support section. I wrote my observations on why I think this is better than Arbcom. But it's really pretty simple in that it's a streamlined, simpler, lightweight process in comparison, and the people placed in charge of it are implicitly more trusted and less controversial in the eyes of the community. I definitely don't think this would be as bureaucratic as Arbcom, or at least the idea is that it wouldn't be. Swarm ^{we ♥ our hive} 05:16, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• Since some of my concerns parallel IJBall's above, I outlined on the talk page a table comparing this process to the existing ArbCom procedures. Does it look lightweight or community driven? Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:19, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• This is another humbug move aimed at papering over the core issues to do with governance at Wikipedia. One of the core issues is the length of time for which administrators are appointed. To date they have all been appointed for life. As a result the divide between admins and non-admins is steadily widening, and some of our more grandiose administrators are increasingly behaving as though they are some form of royalty. Admins should be appointed for a finite period, say three years, and then expected to work at the front line like everyone else for at least a reasonable period before having another stint as an administrator. I'm surprised at you Worm, putting your imprimatur on a move that seems designed merely to further distract attention from the real issues. --Epipelagic (talk) 23:57, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• I agree that finite Admin terms (as well as minimum activity levels for keeping the bit) needs to be part of the solution. Well that, or "unbundling the tools" for specialized activities such as "Vandal fighter", "article mover", "AfD supervisor", etc. which would essentially render the current "Admin" position moot or leave it at a reduced role like 'Crats currently are (which I'm increasingly coming to the conclusion is the real solution). Or both. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:14, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• Absolutely. But the terms under which admins operate is now wholly under the control of the admins themselves, and a move towards an equitable system is no longer possible. Discussions like this are futile. --Epipelagic (talk) 00:48, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• The irony is, Epipelagic, that this proposal was drafted specifically to offer a solution based on the demands expressed in the hundreds of very negative comments that you and others have been making for years about the quality of admins, the perceived lack of control over them, and other attempts to find admin candidates of a calibre you might accept, and strangely, efforts to retain the participation of users who might feel abused by admin actions.

If it is your ultimate desire to see a Wikipedia without any form of governance whatsoever, well, I'm afraid that is most unlkely to happen. Contrary to the statement you make above therefore, one would have expected you to welcome the BARC proposal with open arms. Unless they are breaching acceptable bounds of behaviour, our most prolific content providers also have nothing to fear from admins, ANI, Arbcom, or ultimately BARC or a future iteration of it. Indeed, they should also highly appreciate having a better class of sysops around to defend their interests. If you have a personal grievance, perhaps you could let the community know how often you have been the object of unfair santions applied by admins, otherwise what you are claiming here appears to be simply another in a long series of criticisms in the manner of your custom.

In the absence of you cogently explaining therefore, what you feel the real issues to be without the peculation, and in the absence of making some concrete suggestions as to what it is you would really like to see, your argument is probably not particularly effective. Organised critique and suggestions for alternatives (such as for example this proposal) are far more welcome and productive than the heckling from the sidelines, and even if they don't always reach a consensus, please have some respect for the fact that some editors are working hard in the background to address these issues for you, and try stepping back from making innuendos aimed at named individual admins and/or bureaucrats who are making these efforts on your behalf - they don' deserve it.. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 02:45, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• The irony is, Kudpung, that the only redress you have ever proposed are attempts to mask the underlying diseased state of the admin system by patching it with band-aids. You always counter criticism with the pretence that you are "working hard in the background to address these issues" when in fact you do not address the core issues at all, but only dysfunctional symptoms that might detract from admin power. I have never seen you acknowledge even one of the core issues (several of which are mentioned in the three posts that immediately precede your post above, but I doubt you even noticed they were there). These issues and possible solutions have been spelt out for you with utmost clarity on many occasions. It is disingenuous for you to suggest that they be set out yet again when you know very well that your somewhat abusive practice is to then wp:deny them any recognition apart from claiming they are "heckling from the sidelines". No amount of these Alice in Wonderland pretences that you are making these efforts on my behalf alters in any way the real issues underlying the admin system, and this latest band-aid will not make the real problems go away.

As for your absurd claim that I have the "ultimate desire to see a Wikipedia without any form of governance whatsoever", the truth is diametrically opposite. I have consistently argued for some sort of order to be brought into the governance itself, which currently has no guiding constitution or mission statement, and is characterised by loose cannon actions against content builders. Admins are are largely given free reign to act at their individual whim. Unless it has happened recently (I no longer monitor the absurdities of this supposed "governance") no admin in the history of Wikipedia has been desopped for insulting behaviour towards content builders. It is largely an administrative anarchy, an anarchy for which you are one of the most prominent enablers.

I do acknowledge however that the battle (if there ever was one) for an equitable admin system and a fair deal for content builders has been well and truly lost. The admins and their entourages now wholly control the terms under which they operate, so further discussion is futile. --Epipelagic (talk) 21:14, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• The precise purpose of this is to put control of admin removal fairly and squarely in community hands.
• Admins should not be expected to do "just admin stuff" or even mostly "admin stuff". I certainly didn't.
• A fixed term like 3 or 5 years is not a wholly bad idea, and it might even get support if it were proposed in an RFC.
• I don't think admins have "entourages" - but I may be wrong.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:21, 27 July 2015 (UTC).

• Issues like this have never operated "fairly and squarely in community hands" in the past, and I don't believe it is going to start happening now. This is, after all, just a modified version of what already happens, or doesn't happen. We could try it an see. Maybe it will surprise and develop into a "fair and square" process. But see Salvio's comment above. Either way, it does not address the fundamental flaws in the admin system, and as such becomes yet another Kudpung attempt to prop up the existing system in such a manner that the core issues can continue to be ignored.
• No one suggested admins were expected to do "just admin stuff".
• Finite terms have been proposed in RfCs before, and have been shot down by admins and their entourages. This also always happens when any of the other core issues are presented in RfCs.
• I was using "entourage" as a loose term for admin wanabees and habitutees of the admin notice boards. You perhaps fit into that group yourself. --Epipelagic (talk) 01:58, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

We could deal with a lot of issues by imposing fixed terms for admins (say, three years) and splitting arbcom into two panels to speed the outcomes of cases etc. Not sure why we need more complicated solutions when simpler ones haven't been tried. -- Euryalus (talk) 01:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Not to change the subject, but fixed terms for administrators are a bad idea, especially given the level of admin-work backlogs we have now. And for different reasons, splitting ArbCom into panels for its case work is something I always opposed also, for reasons we can discuss on another page if desired. I can't agree that either of these is a simpler solution to whatever problems we have, nor in fact a solution at all. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

A few points

If we're turning bureacrats into the admin watchdogs, I can understand that. Given that the user-right has of late has seemed to change focus that somewhat makes sense. But no, please no, to a "committee of any kind. No "yearly durations" etc. Besides that, what's the point of having 5 community members input if they're appointed by the bureaucrats anyway? And what if one or more need to recuse for various reasons?

This should be done the same way we choose closers for contentious discussions. Ask for volunteers on a case-by-case basis.

Also, this should reflect the current processes done by arbcom. For example, bureaucrats should be able to advise or admonish as well - giving other options than just "mop or no mop" helps take this more into "preventative, not punitive".

All that aside, I'd rather see this as a "reverse RfA". If bureaucrats are ready to accept this responsibility (in the past when I polled them, they were dead set against it), then I would re-write WP:RRA to remove the arbcom section, and replace with a sort of policy defined "crat chat".

But the community - not representatives thereof - needs to be able to be directly involved. The bureaucrats are already our representatives, let's not add another layer as well, please. - jc37 13:27, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• I would think that if the committee of Crats and Editors decided the problem was singular but didn't want to deysop, they could issue an admonishment in the final ruling. You don't need to formally declare that "right" in the policy, that is a matter of procedure. We already can admonish at ANI, for example. Your previous community desysop proposal only allowed for desysop, mine allowed for other actions, we learned that the community was really only interested in the desysop portion back during that period. And it would be ANY 5 Crats, so they could recuse as could the community members. That doesn't need codifying, as existing policy (and in particular WP:COMMONSENSE and the spirit behind WP:INVOLVED) applies. I would also note that complicated cases would still be pushed to Arb. This fills the space between "emergency" and "highly complicated". It simply adds a community driven option. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 14:21, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

This is so far away from what crats were selected for it makes me wonder why they were even chosen. It would make for more sense for arbitrary members of the community to be selected than it would to use them. This seems like you just picked an existing group of people and taped this task to the side. Chillum 15:09, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Consensus can change according to the needs of Wikipedia to evolve and modernise itself, and if it goes in favour of adding this task to the Bureacrats remit, no one can force the bureaucrats to carry it out. There may well be however, a new flux of Bureacrats who would readily accept the extended role. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 15:30, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

One consideration is that the Crats no longer do renames, so their tasks are greatly reduced, making them less relevant here. Because their approval requirement is higher than admin OR arbs, there is already built in trust. Because they already determine consensus on admins, they have the familiarity. We obviously trust them with the tools to add/remove, they are the only ones that have them, not even Arbs can do that without that bit. Because only half the panel is Crats, they don't have control. Crats are the logical choice, and none are forced to participate, just as no admin is forced to close AFDs or use page protection, or even block. Personally, I would like to see non-admin make up most or all of the balance of the panels. In short, I just see it as the best idea out there, and I've been working the idea with others (independent of Kudpung) for a few years. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• There's a huge difference in what we've asked bureaucrats to do and what we are proposing for them to do. Bureaucrats are elected to grant adminship to editors on determination of consensus at WP:RFA. That skill set does not involve dispute resolution, evidence analysis, or mediation. Yet, this proposal effectively asks them to take on these additional roles without the community ever having a chance to vet them for those purposes. Asking them to get involved in dispute resolution is asking your mechanic to be your dentist. Sure, both work with tools. Sure, both work with high tech stuff. Sure, both have specialized training. But, "trust" isn't enough to qualify someone for something. Just because we trust someone doesn't mean that person has the skill set they need. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Has anyone asked the bureaucrats if they are willing to serve in this capacity? Similarly, has anyone asked ArbCom if they are willing to go along with this? --Hammersoft (talk) 17:22, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Speaking strictly for me and not for ArbCom, if the community approved this proposal, my feeling is that ArbCom would be bound by it. There is precedent for something like this, after all. Salvio ^{Let's talk about it!} 17:38, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

@Hammersoft: WJBscribe and Worm That Turned have commented already. There is also a notice on the bureaucrat's noticeboard. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:41, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• That's different than asking the bureaucrats if they would want to do it. And, it's cart before the horse again. This should have been asked of bureaucrats first, before making the proposal. --Hammersoft (talk) 17:59, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  My understanding is that this is fixable. Crats not willing to do it will not do it, and we can also take this job into account when electing new crats.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:43, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Without re-electing all the bureaucrats, it isn't fixable. We also have precious few active bureaucrats (as in, doing things bureaucrat). And, the last bureaucrat elected to the position was elected 1.5 years ago. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:51, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  We do not need ALL crats to agree, we need SOME of them to agree. And if there is demand for new crats I am sure there will be more candidates. The general perception now is that we have sufficient manpower there.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:53, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• This proposal requires five bureaucrats to sit the panel. There might not be five bureaucrats active and willing to do this. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:58, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, I agree that this might be a problem, but I think this is a sortable problem. First, I see some crats who supported the proposal. Second, on stage two we can decide that all newly elected bureaucrats will have sitting on the panel as one of their tasks, and delay the implementation until a required amount have been elected. To me, this is approximately the same issue as if what happens if we do not have enough number of successful arbcom candidates.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:02, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• Unless I'm missing something, we've had only one bureaucrat vote in support. Further, not one bureaucrat currently holding the position has been elected bureaucrat based on their abilities vis-a-vis dispute resolution. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:13, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, you are right, there is only one at the moment. Let us see what happens.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:26, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I suspect that the proposers have greatly underestimated the additional workload, and stress, they're asking the crats to take on here. Nick-D (talk) 23:18, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

That, forgive me for saying so, is one of the most sweeping and inappropriate statements I have ever heard from an active fellow admin on Wikipedia - because of the unbelievable presumtion of having 'underestimated' (one of the major contributors to this proposal is a bureacrat), and because there just happens to be a current RfC about the actual low level of perticipation in Wikipedia as a whole on the part of the majority of those having the Bureacrat flag. I'm really sorry about this Nick, but in view of your other comments on this RfC, even if I have been repeating myself, it finally needed to be said. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 10:28 am, Today (UTC+7)

Sorry, but I think that you have greatly underestimated the likely workload and level of stress the proposed process would involve given that it's basically a simplified alternate version of ArbCom, which from my conversations with arbs is often a pretty labour intensive and draining place to work. I'm not sure why you're so defensive about my comment, and I'm sure that this proposal is a good faith attempt to solve what's a frequently-identified problem. I don't intend to be rude, but I don't see how this is an inappropriate opinion for me to voice, and I really doubt that it's one of the worst things you've ever seen an admin say (if so, why are we talking about new processes to handle problems with admins?). You are moving into hectoring people who disagree with you, which isn't helping the discussion of this proposal. Nick-D (talk) 04:31, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I concur, re: tone. Kudpung, that was a really hyperbolic overreaction, and it doesn't help the proposal. Adding new information, arguments, questions, sure, but "you're wrong and how dare you disagree" messages aren't productive.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:11, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

• can someone please explain how [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?limit=50&tagfilter=&title=Special%3AContributions&contribs=user&target=Kudpung&namespace=3&tagfilter=&year=2015&month=-1 this isn't canvassing? Spartaz ^Humbug! 21:17, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

  I guess canvassing is invitation of users who are expected to have a favorable opinion on the proposal. I am not sure about all users, but I am pretty sure Kudpung could not have any idea how I could vote and what arguments I could bring. I think this is just an attempt to enhance participation.--Ymblanter (talk) 21:20, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

It really depends on how the list of users was generated. Chillum 21:32, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

All I know is that I wasn't on it... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 23:00, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

I got pinged. I think it's because I commented in the 2012 discussion that this is partially based on. Gigs (talk) 23:33, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

• I think it might be difficult to wrangle five bureaucrats who are willing to be highly available to sit on an ad-hoc committee for ten days and agree it's not the role we were selected for. And though it should not be seen as an endorsement of the proposal, I've made a #Suggestion: Preserve the role of the bureaucrat below. –xeno^talk 18:25, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

@Kudpung: how was the list of users generated? Chillum 00:43, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

What if ...

Note: I suggest moving this to the Talk page. (Once there, I intend to comment...) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 17:19, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm supporting this because I see it offering at least steps toward a solution to real problems with our current governance, and they do not appear to come at any real costs; if the process the proposal would create turns into a waste of time, we just scrap it.

The current adminship system and everything surrounding it has become a virtual "reality TV" show, a culture of narcissistic personality and drummed up tension, where ArbCom is a big, invasive production that drags on like an entire season of high-emotion but pointless gladiatorial combat. It's the Wiki Hunger Games. If even a fraction of the following came about (without some terrible cost, of course) it would be a massive improvement:

• What if people just WP:DGAF about it much any more?
• What if all you needed to do at RfA was be sure that the candidate knew the basics, wasn't a flaming jackass, and wasn't some PoV nut, without vetting them for sainthood, because they'd be easy to unseat if they turned out to be douchebags?
• What if people unsuited to the tools weren't drawn to it so much, because it was highly unlikely to be a long-term appointment if you weren't genuinely competent and balanced?
• What if it, by adminship returning to a janitorial role instead of Member of the Imperial Senate role, a more forgiving attitude developed, and people desysopped once for a bonehead move could, 6 months or a year later, get the tools back and do better, reducing both the current "reluctance to use the tools" factor, and treatment of adminship as a once-in-a-lifetime power opportunity?
• What if this worked well and convinced everyone that the entire "absolute trust" model had been silly all along, so more tools were unbundled the way template-editor has been?
• What if we again had an admin bloom and all these crushing backlogs were cleared up, so editor community approval levels of and real trust in the admin pool went up, because it was no longer a dwindling number of beleaguered unsung heroes bobbing in stagnant water with a not-dwindling number of bad apples, but instead a quickly winnowed pool of lots of competent, project-minded Wikipedians?
• What if it became such a non-big deal that it was business as usual for most serious editors to become admins, and to just be admins for a while to do that kind of work, then not be admins and focus on content for a year, then be admins again, etc., editing in practical roles as need be, instead of trying to become wizards and win the hi score in a social roleplaying game?
• What if WP's reputation as a bureaucratic morass dissipated, and we had another editor bloom?
• And a dozen more "what if?" shifts away from the current dysfunction.

Editors like me run screaming away from adminship because it's devolved into a perceptually high-stakes struggle for social capital and ladder climbing, a construct of stratified class instead of work to get done. The present fact that it's really, really difficult to take the tools back from bad-acting admins unless their transgressions are tremendous has resulted in a psychodrama circus. Every RfA is imbued with ten times the signifcance is should have for the voters, while for candidates it's like being accepted for knighthood or not, instead of just trusted with a mop. The resulting difficulty of ever getting tools back if you lose them has produced an adversarial divide, and an admins-for-admins brotherhood against lowly editor concern. It's turned ArbCom into a ritualized combat media event instead of a simple what-the-evidence-shows process. And led to histrionic types realizing they can use this to their advantage to increase the stress levels of admins who won't let them get away with things. And inured ArbCom and the community to admin abuses that are real and should be addressed, as if desysopping is just too cruel and unusual a punishment to consider.

It all strongly discourages most editors from wanting to be admins, while it attracts too many people who see adminship as a form of personal validation, or who thrive on being in charge and passing judgement. There's always been an element of that, but it seems to dominate now. We're also accepting new admins who are questionably competent but seem spotless (mostly just because they haven't been around long enough to have stepped on any toes), while rejecting candidates who really do know what they are doing – the ones who've been around long enough, been active enough, and been willing to involve themselves in controversy enough to have made some mistakes to learn from, and to have detractors as well as fans because debate and compromise instead of capitulation piss some people off. It's so stupid and self-defeating: The community, at RfA, quite literally disqualifies them because of their qualifications, then pulls its collective hair out at the lack of good admins, and the lack of admins at all, and the lack of their willingness to do the hard stuff. Cf. Self-fulfilling prophecy.

Even a few incremental shifts away from this nonsense, toward a competence- not politics-based community self-administration environment, with rational expectations, would be wonderful.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:08, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Suggestion: Preserve the role of the bureaucrat

Inspired after reading through Jc37 and others comments #A few points above, with certain aspects from the un-presented changes I recently made to this (potentially flawed) community de-adminship model, I agree that bureaucrats were put in place, primarily, to judge consensus and not users. My view on the appropriate role of the bureaucrat in a "bureaucrats' administrator review committee", if the community desires and enacts such a process, would be that they:

• 1) oversee a monthly or quarterly selection - based on community comment and consensus - of eligible community members (including administrators or bureaucrats) who would be put into
• 2) a pool of users willing and available to serve on ad-hoc committees that would be formed anew in each fresh request by randomly selecting 12 eligible editors, (with alternates randomly selected ahead of time in case of recusal or unavailability),
• 3) determine whether there is community consensus that the complaint merits the convening of a committee and if so, forms a fresh committee [fulfill community desire for "Gatekeeping"]
• 3) with uninvolved bureaucrats acting as a facilitators to maintain decorum, assist the committee with procedural questions, etc. (but not standing in judgment),
• 4) the committee reviews and works through the request as suggested in the proposal above
• 5) [However the timeframes should be longer! And the administrator in question should be able to schedule the request - within reason. Even the Arbitration Committee gives the administrator or user in question some time (in consideration of the fact that real life trumps volunteer life) to respond to the concerns before they move forwarded] and finally,
• 6) participate in a bureaucrat chat to determine the consensus formed by the committee (no one bureaucrat making the decision; bureaucrats are judging the consensus of the committee and not the user in question),
• 7) close the bureaucrat chat (if the consensus formed in the bureaucrat chat is not obvious, a bureaucrat who did not participate in the chat) and enact the consensus decision.

Alternatively, if the "fresh committee" on each new request is too radical a change, the bureaucrats should simply oversee the process to select the year's committee (individual bureaucrats could stand to serve on the the committee, of course) and then only act as facilitators and with a bureaucrat chat on conclusion to determine the consensus formed by the committee in any given request. In this alternate form, the committee would decide whether the complaint moved into the review stage. –xeno^talk 18:18, 25 July 2015 (UTC) Disclosure: Current bureaucrat; this suggestion should not be taken as an endorsement of the proposal

Given that the one oppose argument that's held weight with me is that crats were chosen to judge consensus not to judge admins I really like the idea of crats being the ones to judge consensus...es? for forming committees and cases rather than the ones to actually form half the committee. I'd like to suggest that the 5:5 crat/user split be something re-discussed in the next phase of this proposal; it's evidently the main point of contention here. Sam Walton (talk) 18:40, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

+1  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:38, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm still at "just say no" to committees. (This should be a "committee of the whole" just like RfA is.)

But setting that aside for a moment, another way to phrase what you seem to be proposing: A group of volunteers to approve opening discussion on the complaint/issue. Then those same volunteers discuss the issue. Then a "crat chat" to determine if those same volunteers come to consensus.

Sounds a little too potentially "in crowd" and can lead to "groupthink" amongst other things, I think. committees just lend themselves to problems here. (That, and in looking at it this way, it does appear to look like an attempt to re-create arbcom, as others have noted above.)

This, of course, leaves off "arbcom review", though of course at any time someone could potentially petition arbcom for a motion or a full case (and yes, it should not be so difficult to petition arbcom for a motion - you have to ask for a case and if they decide they don't need whole case, then they may do a motion. I think that's backwards as to how it should work, but that's off topic here : )

Anyway, based upon many discussions, I think most agree that the steps to a desysop process is:

• A.) One or more editors propose discussing. (those concerned)
• B.) One or more editors "approve/endorse" that discussion on desysopping may be appropriate. ("gatekeepers" to prevent wasting community's time - usually a certain number of admins)
• C.) Discussion by editors (to try to come to consensus)
• D.) Consensus determined by one or more editors (usually one or more bureaucrats)
• E.) Consensus determination oversight or review by other editors (usually arbcom - though this can potentially be active or passive)

Now who those editors are at each step varies by proposal. I think the most "neutral" is 3 admins as gatekeepers (some want more, some want less); community-of-the-whole discusses (no smoke filled rooms or star chambers) - and they have at least the options available that arbcom has in such discussions: advise, admonish, support, oppose, neutral; bureaucrats close (and nod to keeping "decorum"); and arbcom reviews as appropriate.

ymmv, of course  : ) - jc37 11:11, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

This makes pretty much sense to me. If we could take this to stage two and then determine the details it would be great.--Ymblanter (talk) 11:33, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

In this form, it wouldn't be so much a committee, but a jury (either random or static). You wrote "ask for volunteers on a case-by-case basis"; I think it would just be too chaotic to source volunteers in the thick of a request so those eligible to serve would be pre-vetted ahead of time by the community and then randomly chosen to hear the request. The way you lay it out ("committee of the whole") sounds very similar to the proposal I prepared using EVula's model as a base. –xeno^talk 11:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

In any of the proposals I've seen, those discussing desysopping an admin can very well be described as a "jury". That said, let's stay away from courtroom terms and try to stay with terms in our consensus model. Again, preventative, not punitive.

"...those eligible to serve would be pre-vetted ahead of time by the community" (My comments referred to closers, so I'm presuming that's what you're speaking of here : ) - I would define that "pre-vetted" group as "bureacrats". If you want to come up with some random lottery for bureaucrat closers, I'm happy to look at it. It could be used for RfA too, if wanted, I would guess. But otherwise, I'm fine with the current system of how we ask for closers of contentious discussion. That seems to work well enough. And I'd like to think that there will be very few desysop discussions needed, so another reason to not want/need a standing group just waiting by.

As for evula's proposal and your mod of it, nod, those, plus most every other proposal I've seen look roughly like this, the argument usually stems from the details - too much of this, too little of that. I picked as middle as I could and still follow current policy in writing up WP:RRA, but I suppose it would be simple enough to remove the arbcom factor and just "vaguewave" to their oversight review, if that's a concern. - jc37 17:02, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

We are back to some of the oldest flaws in these various alternatives to Arbcom. If on the one hand we have a spontaneously forming unelected committee we have a highly gameable situation at best a lynch mob at worst a raid by 4chan or worse. On the other hand if we elect a committee it begs the question how does this differ from Arbcom and how do we decide which applies? ϢereSpielChequers 19:10, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Limit the election to normal editors, not admins. You can require that they resign if they get the bit while serving. The problem is that admins are the ones supposedly policing the action of admins - and there is no recourse for the normal editor. GregJackP Boomer! 20:46, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Lynch mobs vs power to the people is one of the main reasons these never happen. the lynch mob side has to accept a process that has the potential to be gamed at the very least (due to the very real concern about socking, meat puppetry, and off site canvassing) while the "power to the lowly editors" group doesn't want to allow any admins involved in any step of the process.

Thanks for so clearly illustrating that point : )

at the end of the day, the admins feel that (among other things), to stop adminship from becoming too political, to allow them to use the mop appropriately even on tough calls, there has to be a buffer from "pitchforks". Hence why "at least" 3 admins would need to endorse starting the discussion (other editors would be welcome to as well, of course). If the "power to the people" side doesn't allow for that, we'll never see one of these gain consensus... And from my experience, admins are a VERY diverse bunch. If you can't find 3 admins to support starting such a discussion, you likely have no grounds to begin with. - jc37 22:12, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

While pitchforks are a concern, we deal with these at AfD all the time, by annotating !votes from users with few or no previous edits, for example. If there were concerns that editors who had been correctly reprimanded or blocked were extracting vengeance, it should be easy to document. When all is said and done, if RfDesys is as well visited as RfA you would need a lot of abusive editors to maliciously swing the result.

Having said that I do recall abusive RfCU's that, while they achieved nothing, sowed the weeds and tares of future disruption.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:38, 27 July 2015 (UTC).

I think that's all entirely reasonable, xeno, except I wouldn't, probably, want to see a "grand jury" phase and a second selection of "jurors"; I think this would be as processy/bureaucratic and time-consuming as "full metal RFARB". In response to a later comment, I for one have no objection at all to admins being in the pool that can serve on the committees; admins are editors, too. Barring them from the committees would worsen the "us vs. them" stratification. They should not be able to make up a large percentage of any committee though (there's probably a way to figure out what the admin-to-non-admin ratio is among currently active editors that month, and have the membership commensurate in proportion, rounded normally, but permitting a minimum of 1 admin). Not seeing any evidence of the mob-will-bolt theory; what I see above is a lot of support from random editors, and opposes mostly from Arbs and admins. I don't buy the logic in the "oppose because it's a committee" stance, when sticking with the status quo is sticking with ... a committee, and one that has proven (in my view and experience) ineffective at dealing with the issue (not because of the individuals that presently compose it, but by the way it's organized and chartered, and behaves as an entity). The alternative to some kind of committee is just the mob-rule of another ANI-like free-for-all noticeboard (or maybe just ANI itself). I'm skeptical of the "give the accused admin all they time they say they need" reasoning. Admins generally don't extend this courtesy to whomever they're going to block or otherwise sanction (which is great if they're blocking a troll or vandal or disruptive SPA, but not so great if they're about to make a spectacular WP:INVOLVED screwup). ANI doesn't extend that courtesy to anyone else, either, and will happily convict someone in their absence. ArbCom seems to be so "take your time" about it (but only toward admins, so far as I've noticed), largely just because it's slow and processy by nature. But, some more time might be reasonable. It doesn't serve our interests to set up [another] railroading process, for anyone. Railroading of non-admins doesn't mean "doing it back" will be productive! Anyway, kudos to xeno for correctly nailing down the formerly nebulous concern so many had, and what to do about it. This is a solid "make it better" side proposal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:37, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

Timeline

I understand that the plan here is to make a "go or no-go" decision on the overall concept and then, if the decision is "go," to work out the details in a phase two. But I feel compelled to point out right now that an expectation to complete deliberations within 24 hours, among a group of 10 people who may be from different time zones around the world, is simply not possible. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:09, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

A fair point, but not necessarily true. Requests for de-sysop might very well be clear cut "consensus to de-sysop" or "no-consensus to de-sysop" (I hope there would not be "Not yet" conclusions") the vast majority of the time. Moreover if it works how RfA works then the decision can be extended if necessary, in the event that something needs to be looked at more carefully. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:30, 27 July 2015 (UTC).

If the administrator's conduct is at the "he deleted the main page and replaced it with a picture of himself kicking a puppy" level, then you are right; six votes, a majority, will come in within the 24 hours, and that will be the end of it. But in a more complex case, in which the committee actually needs to deliberate rather than just vote, a 24-hour deadline is not realistic and the result will either be artificially truncated discussion, routinely ignored deadlines, or both.

Unlike some other issues with the proposed process, this particular concern is easily resolved: simply change the target length for deliberations to a maximum of three days instead of one. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:41, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

The length of all WP:CRATCHATs is documented at Wikipedia:Bureaucrat discussion#Previous bureaucrat discussions. The shortest was 3 hours, and the longest was 134 hours. I work out the average duration to be about 37.5 hours. That's actually pretty good given the issues NYB points out above, but it seems to me that BARC deliberation are likely to be more complex and therefore need longer. WJBscribe (talk) 16:47, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

WP:CANVAS has been violated; poll is tainted

Some users above in the "A few points" section were curious how Kudpung generated the list of messages that were sent out to various users (see this, messages with "Community desysoping RfC"). There appear to be two sources;

1. Wikipedia:RfA reform (continued)#Participants task force members working on RfA reform.
2. Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept#Proposals

There are a few exceptions; Jimbo Wales, Lingzhi, Second Quantization, Useight. Those four do not appear from either of the above two sources. Jimbo is self explanatory. Lingzhi is on the list because they requested to be notified [1] and had a hand in copy editing the proposal [2]. I do not have an explanation for the other two, other than Useight which might be because he is a bureaucrat, though not all bureaucrats were messaged.

There is a serious problem here with both source locations:

1. Quoting the header of Wikipedia:RfA_reform_(continued)#Participants; "Joining here assumes you are already firmly in favour of reform". Of the people listed there, 15 were not contacted via the mass message. Of those 15, 11 are inactive. Only one of the 28 that were contacted are inactive. I.e., a significant portion of the messages sent were sent based on the user's having a predisposition to voting "firmly in favour of reform". Yes, I know de-adminship is not RfA, but they are inextricably tied together. This is not a neutral pool.
2. The second group contains supporters and opposers from the noted source. This seems fair, but isn't. That group voted 48 to 12 in favor of "an additional community-driven method" to de-sysop. Thus, that pool of people who were notified is 80% tilted in favor of a mechanism for the community to desysop. This, too, is hardly a neutral pool.

And how have the people who have been contacted voted? Of the 81 that were contacted, 27 have voted. Not surprisingly, 24 of the 27 have voted support, with 2 oppose and 1 neutral. 4 others from the contact list have commented but not voted. 23 of the "Yes" votes came in within the first 24 hours of this RfC going live, flooding the RfC with support votes. This flooding further taints the fairness of the process.

I want to note, for the record, I do not ascribe malice towards Kudpung in his selection of people for his mass mailing. I've found no evidence to suggest he was intentionally trying to stack the vote. There is nothing in the order of messages, or in the gap between messages and posting at WP:CENT (~3/4ths of messages were sent before posting there, the last 1/4th after), or in the timing of the notification placed at WT:RFA to suggest that he was intentionally doing something to subvert the process here. Rather, I believe this was an innocent mistake, and he believed he was following the letter of WP:CANVAS. Nevertheless, the outcome is the same regardless of intent; the poll is tainted.

Summary: This process, if it were allowed to be approved, would dramatically change the fabric of how business is conducted here. To allow for this change to happen when the poll is so tainted would be highly inappropriate. We need a consensus building process that is neutral from the get go, and this isn't it. I recommend shutting down this poll, allow a cooling off period of at least a few months, and come back to the table via notification only and simultaneously to WP:CENT, WP:BN, WP:AN, WT:RFA and WT:AC/N. --Hammersoft (talk) 19:55, 27 July 2015 (UTC)

• As usual, so many bureaucratic hurdles get put in front of proposals, making any and all such proposals impossible to get through. This intransigence is getting so tiresome. RGloucester — ☎ 22:33, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
• So notify the users that you think should have been notified and let's move forward. In fact, why hasn't someone already posted a site-wide notice?- MrX
• For the second group, WP:CANVASS specifically lists "Editors who have participated in previous discussions on the same topic (or closely related topics)" as a valid group to notify of a discussion. The pool doesn't have to be neutral to comply with policy; it has to be no more non-neutral than the total site's population. If 80% supported reform in the last RfC, that represents a consensus, not a non-neutral pool (assuming that canvassing was not a concern there). The first group is more problematic. Inviting users who are in favor of reform to a proposal for reform could cause unintentional vote-stacking. A site-wide notice on this issue is probably wise regardless of any unintended canvassing, and it would address the concerns. ~ Rob^Talk 00:25, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• No, it wouldn't. The poll has already been polluted. If you come to a vote where the big majority is voting to support, your tendency is going to be with the winning side, not the losing. This poll's done. This isn't bureaucratic intransigence RGloucester. It's the reality of when a poll gets polluted by (even if unintentional) canvassing. This should not have happened. Fixing it isn't possible, and there's no pressing emergency that says we have to go with this, no pressing emergency says we can't shelve this for a few months and do it right the next time. Or, would you rather have a process with a permanent asterisk next to it? --Hammersoft (talk) 01:08, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• The number of users that were members of the first group, were not members of the second group, were notified, and voted is likely small enough that this has no significant effect on the poll. I can check those numbers if you'd like me to. ~ Rob^Talk 01:46, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Rob, the vast majority of people who will be directly affected by this have not been notified directly. It seems absurd that it is acceptable to notify people who've previously shown themselves to be in favour of a proposal, without requiring that the individuals who are directly affected be notified. That is just...so wrong. Risker (talk) 01:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• It is obvious what should have been done: a Mass Message to all administrators and bureaucrats, as well as posting on various noticeboards. After all, the 'crats are getting the work and the admins are getting the policy imposed on them. The overwhelming majority of people who will be affected by this proposal have not been informed of it. Risker (talk) 01:51, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• You definitely have legitimate concerns that not enough people have been informed. The solution is a neutral post to WP:AN, which I certainly would be in support of. I'm running the numbers on how many people in the first group actually voted in support or against this RfC, to see how that potentially non-neutral group affected things. ~ Rob^Talk 02:01, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

No, this is far to significant to just be posted on a noticeboard that the vast majority of administrators do not watch, with good reason. Since this affects them directly and personally (that is, it can be used to change their personal status on Wikipedia), they need to be notified personally and directly by a post to their talk page. Noticeboards do not cut it when you are developing something that targets a specific group of easily identifiable people. Risker (talk) 02:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• Among the entire first group (minus those who also contributed in the previous RfC), five editors have supported this RfC so far. I did not check which of them received a notification, so five is a maximum as far as how the inclusion of the first group affected this process. That clearly does not affect the overall results of the votes, and it's not large enough to influence future voters one way or another. Make of that what you will; I've stated my thoughts on whether the second group was an appropriate pool to notify above. ~ Rob^Talk 02:10, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Rob, where are you getting your numbers from, and why are they so radically different from those that Hammersoft has posted at the top of this section? Risker (talk) 02:18, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• His numbers include both pools he listed taken together, mine only included those who are in the first pool AND not in the second. As I mentioned above, I disagree that notifying the members of a previous related discussion is canvassing, so I was interested in the numbers after you remove the notifications that seemed appropriate to me. My numbers represent those that were not involved in the previous RfC, but were listed on the RFA reform page. After manually finding that list of users, I used the edit history on this page to see who supported. ~ Rob^Talk 02:22, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• Regarding notice - Kudpung posted this discussion for listing on Template:Centralized discussion at 04:23 (UTC) on 24 July 2015 [3]. That notice is currently transcluded on over 3,000 user talk pages and Wikipedia discussion forums, including all subpages of the WP:Administrators noticeboard and WP:Village Pump: [4]. While I would encourage any one of the discussion participants to utilize the Wikipedia Mass Messaging Service to notify (neutrally, of course) all active administrators (which I believe includes all bureaucrats) and all active registered editors, saying that Kudpung has not made good-faith efforts to notify the larger community of this pending proposal is factually incorrect. I did not receive a personalized notice of this RfC, but saw it listed as one of the "centralized discussion" in the transcluded infobox on another editor's user page. If someone is going to take it upon themselves to notify all active admins via MMS, I strongly encourage you to notify all active editors; this proposal concerns the entire Wikipedia community, not just 600 or so "active" administrators and bureaucrats. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:38, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

  All sysops should be informed of this discussion, as it will directly affect their bits. Would someone be willing to contact the admins that would be affected by this discussion? Nakon 03:43, 28 July 2015 (UTC)]

  All users should be be informed. It involves everyone.- MrX 04:06, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

  Yes, but it directly affects sysops. Someone needs to contact all sysops via registered email or talk page so they are made aware of this discussion. Nakon 04:11, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

  Actually, it will only affect the tiny minority of sysops who are every brought before the committee. There is a centralized discussion notice posted on AN and ANI, both of which are both admin notice boards. Also, there's already disproportionately high representation from the admin corp on this page.- MrX 11:50, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• Actually, it will affect every administrator, as this will have an effect on how they conduct their business. This issue has been raised before, in multiple proposals. It would be interesting to see a poll conducted with respondents being administrators to the question of whether this process would have a negative effect on their administrative functions. How many administrators would be afraid to tread where things get nasty, knowing that it would only take a couple of miscreants to drag them before the drumhead? --Hammersoft (talk) 12:52, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• It's my understanding that this is just an rfc to see if we should have another rfc etc. If that's the case then the breathless tone of this thread is a bit overblown.• Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:30, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, indeed, sir. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:45, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, it is clearly tainted. However, there is no harm provided that this RfC is repeated before an RfC on any specific proposal is started. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 04:36, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

• • I think repeating this precise rfc is a bit mindless wikilawyering. This one has no material consequences. I am expressing my thoughts politely• Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:43, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
    • I'd debate that: there is an absence of important and relevant factual information in this document, which I think has been deliberately left out. For example...how hard is it really to get bad admins desysopped using the current process? The record shows that Arbcom has used multiple methods of desysopping people, ranging from out-of-the-blue desysops for identified socking, through persuading people to give up their tools voluntarily, through removing the tools either through a motion or a case, or desysop until a case is answered within a given time. It is actually not difficult to have a problem admin separated from his or her tools when there is evidence of inappropriate use, or evidence of violation of significant policies (e.g., desysopping because of repeated copyvios or BLP violations). Where is that stated anywhere in the proposal?

      More importantly, it also completely glosses over the fact that more than half of the 'crats are barely active at all on this project (there are quite a few who seem to stop by long enough to get their annual edit in and then disappear again), that more than half of all 'crats got the bit in 2004 and many have not used their crat hat in years, and that there has only ever been one 'crat who had his bit removed by Arbcom? The only way to separate a 'crat from his bit is to somehow hope that he misses his annual edit. Notice how that isn't mentioned in the proposal either. Risker (talk) 05:04, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

      • Well, perhaps not this specific RfC; but (although I !voted "oppose"), this RfC only supports ONE RfC on a specific proposal; if it fails (after being properly adverised), it does not justify any more RfCs without further discussion. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 05:13, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
      • Risker, can I ask, what "factual" evidence would you like to see for "how hard is to get bad admins desysopped using current processes?" I'm afraid all I have is anecdotal evidence, but there is a significant portion of the community who believes it should be difficult to pass RfA because it is difficult to remove the sysop right, that was a strong finding from RFA2011. The perception that it is hard is as important as the actual difficulty. Now, since the "current methods" are "start an arbcom case" and an arbcom case has its own issues, I would say the current methods *are* insufficient, and that is covered in the RfA. You are right, however, that there are separate issues with bureaucratship, I am likely to focus on that in the future. Worm^TT(talk) 07:26, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
      • Indeed, this proposal doesn't just "gloss over" the relative inactivity of the current bureaucrats as a group; one of the proposers explicitly says this current proposal has nothing to do with bureaucrat activity issues. I also note that Risker says "separate a 'crat from his bit", about which others here would know better than I would, but see below. Opabinia regalis (talk) 16:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
        • Looking at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats#Current bureaucrats, to the best of my knowledge every current 'crat is male. Make of that what you will. – iridescent 17:05, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
• Comment: Just noting here that I can't answer the questions about notifications as I don't know the answers and Kudpung is unavailable at the moment (I've spoken to him offline, he won't be around for a few more days - zero access to internet). Worm^TT(talk) 07:18, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
  • No comment as to whether this proposal breached canvassing or not, but I hope some of its supporters see the humour in one of the authors of a proposal to deny all admins the right to say they "won't be around for a few more days - zero access to internet" saying he "won't be around for a few more days - zero access to internet"? ϢereSpielChequers 10:03, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Actually, I raised that point, that we have to be able to allow a delay, in a comment for the previous version. My understanding is that this would be handled in the Procedures, not the Policy. We have had a number of people game the system quite recently by using the "I'm away from internet" at Arb, admin and not, so handling it on a case by case basis (ie: a procedure) does make the most sense. I would also note that the COMMUNITY would have a hand in the Procedures for this, unlike Arb. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:50, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
• The main thing I'm concerned about here is that the initial proposal seems very vulnerable to corruption from the top. If there are three bureaucrats who have gotten together some kind of a plan to do what they want with Wikipedia, whether it be banning some kind of content or renting it out to a reputation management firm, they will have little trouble getting on the committee of five, and then directing it to do whatever they will, including choosing 'community' members of their choice. They can then ban any admin who doesn't toe their line. So my main concern here is that we have to have a way to fix this vulnerability, and not be told that the first vote settled that part the moment it was piled up. If we have a genuine chance to fix these details and a full, fair vote on the final text, then I wouldn't worry as much about this step. Wnt (talk) 10:07, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
  • To the above I would add that whenever someone says something like "we have to have a way to fix this vulnerability" there is an inevitable response claiming that the vulnerability in question is unlikely. That's not how you secure a system. You don't wait until something happens then react. Instead you anticipate potential problems and do your best to design a system that is not vulnerable. As Wnt correctly points out, there is money to be made by subverting Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:03, 28 July 2015 (UTC)
    • Although I do have some other serious reservations about this proposal, I don't think this particular concern raises a likely scenario nor, perhaps more importantly, one to which any other proposed process wouldn't be equally subject. If needed, the prospect of a poor or ill-motivated decision's being appealed to the Arbitration Committee or the community as a whole could provide a needed safety valve. (If this sub-discussion is to continue, it should probably be given its own section, as it doesn't seem related to the concern about notifications.) Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:38, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Gender gaps and bureaucrats

I believe it is the case that we have no current bureaucrats who publicly self-identify as female. (I would welcome being proven wrong.) Although it's better if holders of advanced permissions are roughly representative of the editing community, we probably all agree that the traditional bureaucrat tasks have little to do with gender.

However, under the terms of this proposal (excluding Xeno's suggested modification), we have bureaucrats being asked to make judgments about user behavior. Several recent Arbcom cases have been heavily influenced by matters related to gender and to the demographics of Wikipedia. It is undoubtedly the case that what kind of behavior gets interpreted as problematic is influenced by gender dynamics. There is a reasonable argument that the current makeup of Arbcom - one self-identified woman out of fifteen - creates some blind spots. Is it really a good idea to create another behavior review committee that is (almost?) entirely male?

Yes, the response could be "some women should run for bureaucrat then". But if 85-90% support is necessary for the right to do mostly very uncontroversial tasks, surely it's obvious this would be harder to reach if this proposal were enacted. Opabinia regalis (talk) 16:55, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

If memory serves, Secretlondon identifies as female. I guess one fix for this issue would be that if the proposal of tightening activity limits for bureaucrats causes a sharp reduction in the bureaucrat corps, one could try to track down suitable new RfB candidates. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 17:03, 28 July 2015 (UTC)