Throughout the history of the project, there has been a convention that adminship may be removed involuntarily only in cases of clear abuse. Users have proposed a variety of processes to ensure that admins have the continued support of the community, but none has gained widespread acceptance. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances; see Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall.
Through 2003, there had been only one case where adminship was revoked.[citation needed] Since 2004, the Arbitration Committee has dealt with cases involving abuse of adminship, both through review of de-adminships imposed in emergencies and through removal of adminship as a remedy in an arbitration proceeding.
There have also been cases where users have voluntarily relinquished adminship, and there have been cases where adminship has been suspended temporarily to enforce a cooling-off period in conflicts between admins. Throughout the history of the project, some purportedly voluntary de-adminships have taken place in the presence of a growing consensus that adminship may not be appropriate for the affected user. The Arbitration Committee has taken the view that users voluntarily resigning their adminship in such a circumstance may not automatically request it back and must go through the regular processes.
Unless otherwise mentioned, users are free to reapply at WP:RFA at any time. Those users desysopped by the Arbitration Committee may also appeal to that Committee.
For information about how de-adminship is handled on other projects, see Wikipedia:Adminship in other languages.
Cases[edit]
Several users have been de-sysopped for various reasons. Some administrators have resigned or lost their rights after a long period of inactivity. They are listed at Wikipedia:Former administrators.
Former processes[edit]
As noted in the cases above, revocation of adminship was previously handled:
- On the mailing list.
- On the village pump.
- At Wikipedia:Requests for review of administrative actions
Proposed processes[edit]
A substantial number of proposals for alternative or expanded desysopping protocols have been considered by the community. In general, none has achieved a consensus to enact.
- Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adminship term length - March 2021; While not strictly a de-adminship proposal, the proposal provided a process by which an administrator might be removed after ten years. Did not achieve consensus.
- Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Desysop Policy (2021) – February 2021
- Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2019 community sentiment on binding desysop procedure – October 2019
- Wikipedia:Administrators/RfC for binding administrator recall – August 2015
- Wikipedia:Administrators/RfC for BARC - a community desysopping process – July 2015.
- Wikipedia:Administrative Standards Commission – November 2014; proposal to appoint administrators and to remove rights
- Wikipedia:Administrators/RfC for an Admin Review Board – November 2014
- Wikipedia:Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept – September 2012
- Wikipedia:Guide to Community de-adminship – February 2010
- Amendment of successful RFA closures – May 2009
- User:EVula/opining/RfA overhaul – January 2009
- Wikipedia:Removing administrator rights/Proposal – October 2008
- Wikipedia:Admin Accountability Alliance – December 2007
- Wikipedia:Community enforced administrator recall – October 2007
- Wikipedia:Removal of adminship – October 2007
- Wikipedia:Fully Uncompelled Binding Administrator Recall – September 2007
- Wikipedia:Ostracism – a short lived proposal in September 2006 that five admins could demand another admin be forced to go through a new Request for Adminship to keep their status. After a lot of criticism on its talk page, it was made historical within three weeks.
- Wikipedia:Temporary Deadminship – August 2006
- Wikipedia:Admin recall – a complex proposal was struck down in August 2006, but resulted in a different proposal at Wikipedia:Administrator recall which includes the ArbCom as a check on abuses.
- Wikipedia:Adminship renewal – swiftly struck down in May 2006 as a rehashing of previous proposals.
- Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Proposal 2 – a proposal made in June 2005
- Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship/Old proposal – a March 2005 proposal which closely emulated the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship process, and which was rejected by a margin of over 2 to 1.
- Wikipedia:Administrator Accountability Policy – a series of proposals from September 2004, each voted on and rejected by a margin of about 2 to 1
- Wikipedia:Confirmation of sysophood – an April 2004 proposal for self-initiated periodic review of admin status that generated little interest or discussion
- Wikipedia:Quickpolls – during its short run in 2004, quickpolls were used to address admin disputes. Many of these were retaliatory listings.
- WP:RFA – occasionally, requests for revocation of adminship have been made here, but all have either been removed out of hand or voted down. Examples of historical interest are at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/The Cunctator and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jasonr (reconfirmation).
Inactive admins[edit]
There have also been a number of policy proposals to revoke adminship from user accounts of people who no longer participate in the project, for example Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Inactive1 and Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Inactive2. These early proposals lacked widespread support, but an RfC running through June 2011 at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/suspend sysop rights of inactive admins decided on removal of adminship after a year of total inactivity, recoverable at any time upon request. In December 2012, the requirement to undergo a renewal RfA was imposed on former admins who have been inactive for more than three years, at Wikipedia talk:Administrators/Archive 13#Restoration of the tools (proposal). A set of proposals to increase the minimum activity requirements was rejected in December 2015. In March 2018, the standard of inactivity requiring a new RfA was modified to include disuse of admin tools for five years.
Current methods of requesting de-adminship[edit]
- Voluntary self-revocation of adminship can be requested at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' noticeboard.
- Some admins have added their names to Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, stating their intent that if a certain quantity of users ask for them to be recalled, the administrator may choose to resign voluntarily, or to engage in a discussion of such resignation. However, no such request has been made since 2012. A list of such requests and their outcomes can be found at Wikipedia:Administrators open to recall/Past requests.
- Otherwise, adminship may only be involuntarily removed from an active administrator by the Arbitration Committee; see here for details.