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Wikipedia:History of de-adminship proposals

"WP:RFDA" redirects here. For Redirects for discussion archives, see Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log.
For the current procedure to recall administrators, see Wikipedia:Administrator recall.

Administrator status may be revoked (a desysopping or de-adminning) by the Arbitration Committee, either pursuant to a case or under its expedited procedures. The community may not directly remove admin status, but may recall an administrator, compelling them to undergo reconfirmation if they wish to remain an admin. In addition, some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances.

A few rarer means of desysop exist as well: The community may desysop an admin as a de jure consequence of a siteban, but as of 2024 has yet to do so. Desysop powers are also vested in the Wikimedia Foundation office (last use 2019), MediaWiki developers (last for-cause use 2005), and, in emergency cases, Wikimedia stewards. Historically, Jimbo Wales had this power as well.

Through 2003, there had been only one case where adminship was revoked. 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.

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 gained widespread acceptance until recall in 2024.

Many users have voluntarily relinquished adminship, and historically there were cases where adminship was suspended temporarily to enforce a cooling-off period in conflicts between admins. Some nominally 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, or are subject to bureaucrat discretion, depending on the timing of the resignation.

With very rare, explicitly noted exceptions, users are free to reapply at WP:RFA at any time. Some desysops by the Arbitration Committee have also included a right of appeal to the Committee. Prior to May 2023 there was also a right of appeal to Jimbo Wales.

For information about how de-adminship is handled on other projects, see Wikipedia:Adminship in other languages. For a list of past desysops, see Wikipedia:Former administrators. For a list of restorations of adminship, see Wikipedia:List of resysopped users.

Current methods of requesting de-adminship

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Inactive admins

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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. 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, and in April 2022 a further condition of making at least 100 edits in five years was approved, to be effective from January 2023 and resulting in an unusually large number of de-admins in that month.

Former processes

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Revocation of adminship was previously handled:

  1. On the mailing list.
  2. On the village pump.
  3. At Wikipedia:Requests for review of administrative actions
  4. By Jimbo Wales.

Proposed processes

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A substantial number of proposals for alternative or expanded desysopping protocols have been considered by the community.

See also

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