Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 02:06, 3 December 2015

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Background

The current policy, which can be viewed at WP:INACTIVITY is reproduced here for convenience: Admin accounts which have made no edits or administrative actions for at least 12 months may be desysopped. Subject to the #Lengthy inactivity consideration below, this desysopping is not to be considered permanent, or a reflection on the user's use of, or rights to, the admin tools. The admin must be contacted on their user talk page and via e-mail (if possible) one month before the request for desysopping and again several days before the desysopping goes into effect. Desysopping on inactivity grounds should be handled by English Misplaced Pages bureaucrats. The summary in the user rights log should make it clear that the desysopping is purely procedural. If necessary, the user's userpage should be edited to clarify the status — particularly if any categorization is involved. For example, the userbox {{User wikipedia/Administrator}} should be replaced with {{User wikipedia/Former administrator|inactive=yes}}. Lengthy inactivity If an editor has had at least three years of uninterrupted inactivity (no edits) between the removal of the admin tools and the re-request, regardless of the reason for removal, the editor will need to instead request through the WP:RFA process. In the case of an administrator desysopped due to inactivity, if, after the one year of inactivity which led to the desysopping due to inactivity, there is a subsequent two years of continued inactivity (no edits), then, if the editor returns after that, they will no longer be able to merely re-request the admin tools, but instead will need to request adminship through the WP:RFA process. Again, this means there is a total of at least three uninterrupted years of inactivity.

The above policy was established in 2011. Prior to that time, there were no activity requirements at all for administrators. After four-and-a-half years under this new policy, a review seems in order.

Example cases

I would like to be clear that I have no personal argument with these admins and do not mean to accuse them of acting in bad faith. These are not the only examples, just some that were easy to find and seem particularly problematic. You may ask "why not just talk to them about it?" The answer is that this is not about a problem with these particular admins, but rather a problem with our inactivity policy. This is therefore a problem only the community can fix. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:58, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Astronautics~enwiki

Astronautics~enwiki (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This user became an admin in the early days of Misplaced Pages, when they were known as "Silsor". In the time since the inactivity policy was created they have made less than a dozen edits, and only two so far this year. Haven't spoken to any other user on a talk page for six and a half years.They have almost been desysopped for inactivity three times in the four years we have had an inactivity policy. They have not used their administrative tools at all since 2011 and have not used them outside of their own userspace since 2007. Basically, they have not been an active admin for about nine years, and their account has just barely been used even for editing during the entirety of the 2010s. That's fine, people come and go all the time here and there is nothing unusual about nearly-dormant accounts that make very few edits. What is unusual is that these very, very few edits are sufficient for them to permanently retain administrative status. That seems like a flaw in the policy.

Useight

Useight (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This is perhaps an even more problematic case. The Useight account has made no edits since August 2012. However, they have an acknowledged alternate account, User:Useight's Public Sock, which edits sporadically, making just a few dozen edits in the last 24 months. The alternate account does not have admin powers. The only thing the main account has done in the last three years is a single page deletion after a three-year hiatus from doing anything at all. This has been brought up repeatedly at WP:BN, but the 'crats have no choice but to allow it as they are considered active enough, via their non-admin alternate account, to permanently retain administrative status. Again, this seems like a flaw in the policy.

Revolving Bugbear

Revolving Bugbear (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

An almost totally inactive user, has made about 20 edits in the 2010s, only two this year. Last time they spoke on their own talk page was to make a reply that seemed explicitly aimed at meeting the current minimum of one edit per year. After receiving another notice of impending desysopping for inactivity again this year, they simply archived their talk page, insuring they would remain an admin for another year. Has not commented on any other talk page of any kind or any WP-space page in over six years. Has not used admin tools in any way since January 2009. Hanging on by default.

Proposal for new minimum requirements

To be an effective administror, one is expected to be engaged with the community, remain aware of current policies, and actually use their administrative tools for the benefit of the community. It is not desirable for users who are not actively engaged in the project to have the ability to make uninformed or potentially disruptive administrative actions whenever they choose. Given the apparent weaknesses in the policy, it seems reasonable that admin activity requirements be strengthened slightly .

It is therefore proposed that the following changes be made:

• The minimum activity requirement shall now be: All administrators are expected to make at least ten edits and at least three logged admin actions every twelve months.

• And that in the "Lengthy inactivity" section the three year requirement be shortened to two years in total for requiring a new RFA.

Moving this to a separate section to be discussed seperately from the basic requirements 09:22, 29 November 2015 (UTC) *In order to prevent gaming of these requirements, admins that are only meeting the minimum requirements, or barely exceeding them for a period of three or more years may also be considered inactive and proceduraly desyopped by motion of the Arbitration Committee at their discretion.

• As with activity requirements for functionaries, sitting members of the Arbitration Committee are exempt from these requirements.

The rest of the process remains unchanged. It is believed that these requirements, while still quite low, reflect a more reasonable standard for engagement with the community than merely making one edit every twelve months to retain administrative rights, and that those who do not use their administrative tools for prolonged periods of time clearly do not have a demonstrable need for them.

Support new minimum requirements

1. as proposer. The loopholes in the current policy can be closed with these simple fixes. It is not desirable to have admin tools in the hands of persons who are not using them even three times a year, and not helpful to them or the project either. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:24, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
2. Certainly an improvement. BMK (talk) 00:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
3. Support but would like to see a higher standard for the minimum required activity. Atsme 00:43, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
4. Support Seems entirely fair to me and the new requirements are very easy to reach. There's a number of admins who are in a similar situation to the examples listed. While the community is appreciative of their past work, it's reasonable for us to expect a certain level of activity to help assist with the present workload. Mike V • Talk 00:58, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
5. Support. Everyking (talk) 01:49, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
6. Support Obviously some Admins are gaming the system in order to keep the bit. If you haven't been mopping for years then what's the point in having the tools? Having 43% of the 1,333 Admins active is not right. JMHamo (talk) 01:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
7. Support -- Euryalus (talk) 02:00, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
8. I think this is morally the right thing to do, so I will support. However, I'm concerned that this again misses the main issue, which is that not enough people are being made admins via RfA. The problem here is that, while there have been obvious cases of out-of-touch admins coming back and making serious errors, there have also been a lot of cases where dormant admins have come back and contributed productively with the tools – and with the dearth of newly-promoted admins in the last half-decade, reducing the number of people who can help out with the admin tools doesn't seem like the best solution. Jenks24 (talk) 02:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
9. Support the number of 1300+ Admins is used to deny active, engaged contributors the tools, yet it turns out accounts that don't do anything are a big part of that count. Legacypac (talk) 03:29, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
10. Support Too many inactive admins is a potential security hole. I admit I am very concerned about the requirement for RfA, whioch would be a major disincentive for anyone to come back. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:52, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
11. Support. And bless you, Beeblebrox! Bless you! (Also, I would absolutely support even stricter requirements, as per Atsme...) --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
12. Support. Peter James (talk) 04:29, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
13. Support. Per proposal. In fact the criteria could be even tighter. To keep saying everywhere that we have 1,300+ admins gives a totally false impression and severely negates in the minds of many users our urgent need for more active admins. Even the criteria for 'seriously' active sysps are extremely misleading. There is a distinct difference between logged admin actions and normal editing but users who never or very rarely do either cannot really be interested in hanging on to their tools.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 04:49, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
14. Support - if admins cannot commit to being active they should be desysopped (even if it's temporary, let's say for a busy semester). We need to know how many admins there are to properly keep things going and calculate if that's enough. Additionally I see a few admins involving themselves in petty issues when there are too many backlogs. Clearly some may need encouragement being more helpful. —Мандичка 😜 08:20, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
15. Support Makes sense. Then there's other issues such as admins like User:Davidcannon who do no admin function whatsoever, after gaining a token position more than 11 years ago, and only exist here to increase their edit count. Lugnuts 09:32, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
16. I support the notion that administrators must be engaged with the community and be aware of the policies--Ymblanter (talk) 12:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
17. Support per comments below Ritchie333 12:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
18. Support This seems like a reasonable minimum requirement. It would better show that they are aware of current policies and it's a bit more effort than performing one token edit so might reduce any potential gaming of the system. Sarah-Jane (talk) 14:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
19. Support 10 edits and 3 admin actions can easily be done in less than an hour, even quicker if they bs it.
20. Support: Reasonable requirement, provided that gaming of the requirements is enforced. Esquivalience 16:58, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
21. Support and would support something a bit tighter. Doug Weller (talk) 17:13, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
22. Support as a leading proponent of the existing policy, which when first proposed had considerable horrified opposition, so the final version was kept minimal. It is now very well accepted and the time is ripe to tighten it up. Johnbod (talk) 20:16, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
23. Support It's a start. Would support much more drastic proposals as well (e.g. no automatic resysop at all). Adminship should be easy to gain and easy to lose. wctaiwan (talk) 20:25, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
24. Support on the understanding that "logged admin actions" include, in the case of 'crats, logged 'crat actions. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 22:48, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
25. Support. This, and in my opinion an even stronger measure, is long overdue. Use it or lose it. If you don't use it, expect to be held to account. El C, Aaron Brenneman, BradPatrick (759 edits in ten years, no admin actions since 2007, and only given the admin bit because he worked for the WMF - which is long over), Wesley - there are a lot of paper admins out there. Time to get rid of them or make them work for the title.  — Scott • talk 23:32, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
26. Support. I supported the current minimal requirements when they were passed, and this incremental strengthening is a good idea. Anyone who can't give the project enough attention to meet these standards ought not retain admin privileges. If they return to regular activity later, they can get privileges back the usual way. RL0919 (talk) 02:48, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
27. Support – 10 edits and 3 admin actions still seems like a pretty low bar, but an improvement nonetheless. Mojoworker (talk) 06:53, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
28. Support. Definitely an improvement. APerson (talk!) 16:03, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
29. Support - and would support even higher requirements. As time goes by the rules change and wikipedia changes, current policy definitely does not guarantee that admins will stay up to date and retain sufficient competence. Also it could be argued, that people who continuously over many years do absolute minimum for preserving their advanced user rights are not exactly best suited for those rights in the first place.--Staberinde (talk) 16:37, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
30. Support Though I am not sure of the ideal level. Not meeting the annual requirements doesn't permanently desysop an admin; they can retain the bit by asking, and then making some the next year. It might even encourage some of them to become active, which is even more importntthan removing inctive ones. DGG ( talk ) 19:41, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
31. Support the principle of minimum activity requirements, although I'd be strongly opposed to the "anti-gaming" notion, since that just creates yet another star chamber. Per my comments elsewhere regarding canvassing long-dormant accounts to take part in the Arbcom elections, those making decisions ought to have enough current involvement that one can reasonably assume that they have an awareness of how things are currently done, not how things used to be done a decade ago when Misplaced Pages was a spin-off from a third-rate porn site. I wouldn't support specifically including a set number of logged admin actions in the criteria, particularly if the number is high; that rewards those who like playing Defender of the Wiki, and penalises those who try to resolve situations without resorting to the banhammer. "I declined to delete it as I could see how to save it" and "I issued a warning which was heeded so I didn't need to block" are equally valid admin actions to deletion and blocking, and probably of more value, but wouldn't be logged as such. ‑ Iridescent 19:47, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
32. Support - The activity requirement we already have is so laughably low that some of the people still allowed to be administrators boggles the mind. This isn't a problem? Nice pipe dream. I have seen out-of-touch, inactive administrators make terrible calls to the demoralization and detriment of dedicated editors. It happens, and anyone who thinks the likes of the editors mentioned above should retain their privileges indefinitely is naive. Admins should be active, and making one edit a year is not activity. This proposal is still incredibly low but it's a mild step in the right direction. We need to close the glaring loopholes that allow people to retain advanced privileges and permissions despite having left the community years ago. Why would we not want them out?? Why would we not want this?! Swarm ♠ 19:49, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
33. I support the general principle of removing de-facto inactive admins (there seems to be no good English word for Karteileichen, "corpses on file". I am not thrilled by the requirement for logged actions, but maybe we need something like this to fight the "adminship is for life" meme. I would expect that any editor who faces desysopping for lack of logged admin actions gets the chance to explain their unlogged admin actions before being desysopped. —Kusma (t·c) 20:38, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
34. Support - Remains an almost laughably low level of activity to retain reading rights to deleted material. The "paper" members of the admin corps are slowly being cleaned out so that we can determine an actual count for admins and come up with an estimate of how that fits the site's actual needs. The new requirements will accelerate the process and help make sure that administrative actions are done by those with an actual community mandate. Carrite (talk) 22:54, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
35. Support as a step in the right direction, although there will always be admins who do the bare minimum required (whatever that may be) to keep the bit. Weeding out the—I hate to put it this way, but can't think of any other—dead wood may lead to actual RfA reform. Miniapolis 23:50, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
36. Support. Otherwise, it would be fair to create a Request for Inactive Adminship process, allowing other people to collect some unused hats. Pldx1 (talk) 15:05, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
37. Support minimum requirements, oppose exceptions for functionaries and arbitrators. Gamaliel (talk) 19:45, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    I think you may have misunderstood something. I don't believe anyone has suggested an exemption for functionaries, who already have to meet their own activity standards. Sitting arbs, who get functionary powers by default, are already exempted from those requirements, and this proposal follows that example as arbs are expected to be doing arb work and are supposed to already be highly engaged with the community, but admin tools such as viewdeleted may be necessary for their work without actually doing any logged actions. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:05, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

38. Support Wp:en have one of the less restricted rule for inactive admin, and it isn't a compliment. --Nouill (talk) 00:33, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Oppose new minimum requirements

1. I feel vaguely obliged to comment on this, as a onetime example of the inactivity problem :) But I provisionally oppose this because it looks like there's a big chunk of the argument missing. You've given some examples of unusual cases of near-inactivity, but no evidence of a problem that has resulted from it. Just "seems like a flaw", and then we see a proposal warning of possible "uninformed or potentially disruptive administrative actions", but no actual examples. Of course, it's good general security practice not to have virtually unused privileged accounts floating around - but the most recent case of account compromise involved active accounts, would not have worked any differently with inactive accounts, and that's not the argument you're making anyway. There is the now-six-month-old example of the Antonio Martin incident, but that specifically didn't involve administrative actions, disruptive or otherwise. This leaves the actual proposed changes largely disconnected from any evidence supporting them. Do you in fact have evidence that a problem exists and could be solved by these changes? You seem to be making actual work in order to solve an imaginary problem. Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:08, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   I picked the examples I did because of their potential, I did not want to cause drama by "naming and shaming" actual cases of out-of-touch-barely-active-admins who come back and use their tools in unnaceptable ways, but surely a user with your level of experience, who is running for ArbCom, is aware of times when exactly that has happened? Beeblebrox (talk) 01:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   To add to what Beeblebrox just said, I think the current ArbCom election also speaks to issues of inactivity since non-admins are among the candidates. It may also be evident in the line of questioning. Atsme 02:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   Yes, I realize it's hard to give specific examples without sounding like you're calling someone out, or getting bogged down in debate over individual incidents, but I'm still not sure I follow your logic, Beeblebrox. You don't want to name examples of actual problems, so you instead cite people who haven't caused any? Sure, I can think of cases where relatively inactive or recently returned admins have made errors - but do they really make bad judgment calls at a higher rate than relatively active ones? Is the error rate really unacceptably high, or is it just that particularly salient examples stand out? I don't have a especially strong opinion about the proposal itself - two or three years, meh - but I also don't think you've really proven your case.

   It looks likely that 2015 will end with the smallest number of admin promotions on record (and three of those were re-RfAs, and one is no longer an admin). For some reason a lot of people think about relatively inactive current admins as potential liabilities and system-gamers rather than as a reserve corps of experienced editors who could return as productive contributors and who have an established record of good judgment, even if it was a relatively long time ago. In that context, making it slightly harder for weakly-engaged people to return to active editing should be based on good evidence that the change is needed. Archiving your talk page to keep your bit is arguably a little galling considering what sometimes goes on at RfA these days, but it is not, in and of itself, a problem. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:10, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   I think a bigger issue may be the fact that we think we have a larger pool of admins doing the work than what we actually have, which has been a detriment because it leaves us with a smaller number of admins who are actually active, not all being problem free. Perhaps setting minimums will serve as incentive to motivate more admins into being active and at the very least will clean the admin pool and create a more realistic number. Atsme 03:27, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   As you can probably guess, OR, I view this as somewhat of a "strawman". The real question is: why can't relatively long-term inactive Admins who intend to become active again simply apply for a re-RfA?! We've had three recent cases this year, of which your re-RfA was one, in which formerly inactive Admins reapplied for the bit in RfA's, and all three got through fairly painlessly (SarekofV with over 80%, you with about 84%, and Abecedare unanimously). So, flipping your question around, I'm not seeing the "problem" that not requiring re-RfA's is "solving" – formerly inactive Admins aren't seeming to be denied (re)access to the broom... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:13, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   I looked at these stats back in May (with graphs!) and I think someone else (probably Biblioworm?) has looked more recently: around 30-35% of admins take no logged admin actions in a given year, whether that year is 2006-7 or 2014-15. This is not a new or urgent problem. IJBall, I think you have it backwards; the burden of proof is on the person who wants to make more work for the rest of the volunteers. Even getting 119 people to type "support" on Abecedare's RfA takes time that could be spent in mainspace. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:03, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

2. Oppose. I too see this as a solution in search of a problem. Bullet three in particular seems to just be asking for wiki-drama. Asking ArbCom to take time away from resolving actual disputes to start an investigation of who seems "active enough," which is as vague a criterion as I have ever seen. This intent of this proposal, ignoring the "security risk" bit (which I simply don't view as a real issue, considering how reversible every admin action is), appears to be to get rid of admins who are out of touch with community standards. A laudable goal, yes, but this broad requirement doesn't seem to me like it would help attain that goal. @IJBall: I would be surprised to pass an RFA if I were to stop editing now and ask for the tools back again in 2019, and I received 79% support during my ArbCom bid three years ago. Once you make enough controversial decisions, people start coming out of the woodwork. NW (Talk) 04:41, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   NW, the issue is I've seen many Admins make that exact same argument (basically, the "If I applied for a re-RfA, I'd surely be defeated for my previous Admin activities making 'enemies'..." argument), but I don't think there's any data to back up the proposition. In fact, the data from 2015 seems to point in the other direction (though it's an admittedly small data set, and I haven't gone back to examine re-RfA's previous to 2015, though I suspect data going back more than a few years would probably not be applicable to current circumstances anyway...). --IJBall (contribs • talk) 04:57, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

3. As a semi-active admin myself, I feel obligated to speak up. I actually don't oppose increasing the requirement to 10 edits and 3 admin actions per year, but I have serious concerns about the tone of this proposal, particularly the third bullet on preventing "gaming."If we set the requirement at 10 edits and 3 admin actions, then that is the requirement, period. 10 productive edits and 3 productive admin actions in a year is a small but perfectly valid contribution to the encyclopedia. Someone editing at that rate is probably reading Misplaced Pages discussions and policy changes, even if they aren't participating themselves. We should encourage them to stay involved and give them a path to return, not act like their contribution isn't worth anything. The vagueness of the third bullet will allow anyone to compile a list of admins who aren't active enough to meet that person's arbitrary standard, and then bug Arbcom about desysopping them. I therefore must oppose this proposal as it is currently written. I think that it would be better to simply require "productive" edits and admin actions, or possibly edits and admin actions in certain namespaces.Full disclosure: Although I'm in no danger of being desysopped based on edits, I would have been in danger based on admin actions until, seeing this proposal, I decided to get off my butt and delete some PRODs this evening. I would no longer be desysopped under this proposal, and as I said above, I am not opposing due to the (very low) proposed edit and admin action requirements.--Danaman5 (talk) 04:52, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
4. Oppose. I understand the idea behind the proposal, but I'm uncomfortable with a few things and therefore I'm afraid I can't support this proposal. First of all, I really don't see any real problem that needs to be fixed. There seems to be two oft-cited concerns by those who support proposals such as this one: (1) Inactive accounts may be compromised; (2) Returning inactive admins may be unfamiliar with new community expectations. To address the first issue, incidents like that are actually comparatively rare. They happen, sure, but I don't think they happen quite often enough to justify tightening the requirements. My response to the second concern is similar to the one I gave for the first one. It is possible that a returning admin will make some mistakes when re-adjusting, but it would be easy to simply help the admin in question and inform them of the current manner in which things are done. I'd say that these cases are rather rare and the majority of returning admins turn out to be net positives, not disruptive and uninformed. And finally, any mistakes made with the tools are easily reversible. I don't know of a single technical action an admin could perform that is absolutely irreversible. I have observed in life that people generally inflate the importance of isolated bad cases and subsequently overreact.Secondly, I do sympathize with admins who aren't actively editing but still edit occasionally to retain the bit. They may want to keep it because they think they may return sometime in the near future, or they just might want to keep it so that they can help out occasionally whenever they find the time to do so. In particular, I very much understand why they would not want to go through RfA again. It's a unreliable mess of a process that fluctuates literally by the week or the month. At any given point in time, the very same candidate could either pass or fail depending on many factors, including (but not limited to) what group shows up, how many grudge-holders and/or opinion-motivated (e.g., one who simply disagrees with a candidate's stance on an issue concerning policy, for instance, and therefore opposes them) people participate, and how skillful the opposition is at wording their statements and perhaps exaggerating certain minor issues. They already went through this, and it's certainly understandable that they wouldn't want to do it again. (However, I'm currently the final drafting stages for the Phase II RfC for RFA2015, which is the successor the the Phase I RfC and proposes actual solutions to some of these problems. It will launch in another couple of days.) In summary, I think tightening the requirements to retain adminship would not be fixing any real, pressing issue and would cause more problems than it solves. Biblioworm 07:16, 29 November 2015 (UTC) edited @ 16:49, 29 November 2015 (UTC) (I did a few copy edits and moved a paragraph to another section.) Biblioworm 16:49, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
5. Ignoring the technical that Useight is still active in bureaucrat discussions via their alt account, I do not see anything about this proposal that improves upon the issue found in the Misplaced Pages:Village pump (policy)/Archive 122#RfC: Increasing the activity requirement for retaining administrator rights that only admin actions are logged but not inactions such as declining a deletion request, and sometimes not doing anything is better than to do something. The idea of shortening the "reconfirmation RfA needed" time seems completely pointless to me.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
6. Oppose – I see that point 3 has been removed, but I still oppose the requirement of 3 logged admin actions every 12 months. Many productive editors who happen to be admins do not perform administrative actions because they simply do not want to, are not familiar with them, or want to focus on writing articles. Policies discourage many non-administrative actions to be done by non-admins (such as closing controversial XfD discussions as keep). The 3 administrative actions requirement can also easily be gamed (e.g. creating three userspace pages and deleting them under U1). I however agree with the 10 edits per 12 months requirement. sst✈ 10:02, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
7. Oppose Lack of activity due to burnout and other priorities is to be expected – you get what you pay for. But inactivity, by itself, is not a problem requiring action. Introducing arbitrary requirements may tend to discourage rather than encouraging re-engagement. For example, consider Uncle G. He's a prodigious editor and admin when he gets involved but seems too busy elsewhere to participate much. Such people should be offered carrots rather than sticks. Andrew D. (talk) 15:19, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
8. Oppose I agree fully with sst✈. An administrator may be fully engaged with the community without technically making administrator actions. A minimum admin actions level seems only useful as a technicality for use by mendacious Wiki-lawyers. Like sst✈ however I agree with the 10 regular edits per 12 months requirement. --LukeSurl 16:13, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
9. Oppose. I find these arguments to be stronger than those of the support section. (personal note: I would rather find a way to be granting the extra tools to more editors, than removing them from qualified editors) — Ched :  ?  17:17, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
10. Oppose I edit actively but rarely use my admin tools (because I don't like drama boards and handling blocks/unblocks). I would most likely lose my admin tools if I'm forced to do 3 admin actions per year. The problems we currently have is not enough admins, so I guess this new proposal is telling editors who are active writing but not actively using their tools to lose their toolsets? And I didn't like that view at all. OhanaUnited 18:05, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

    I also dislike drama boards and have completely sworn off (un)blocking. So what? There are other things to do with the tools. I would most likely lose my admin tools if I'm forced to do 3 admin actions per year. And nothing of value would be lost, by the sound of it.  — Scott • talk 11:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    @OhanaUnited: more constructively, Category:Candidates for speedy deletion fills up pretty quickly every few days, as does WP:RPP...always good to check those two spots for helping out.Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    @Scott: and @Casliber: I do need other user rights that comes as a bundle of admin tools for my outreach activities. For example, I need (and grant) account creator for Art and Feminism in Toronto. Also, I need account creator and the ability to see speedy-deleted articles for education program. Bean counters wouldn't see these actions because a lot of them are unlogged yet these unlogged actions improve and benefit Misplaced Pages. And until all of the userrights are unbundled, I would see this proposal as a net-negative to the project because I am definitely not the only person who do tasks that are not considered as "admin actions". And besides, what is considered "admin actions"? It is vague and nobody outlined what is considered to be admin actions and what is not. OhanaUnited 19:01, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    That then is an argument for unbundling. I am a proponent of unbundling - if you have no need for these tools, the standards for them should not prevent you from using the outreach tools. Until that happens, however, you can make the token effort it would require to meet the extremely low standards of this proposal. Cas' suggestions above would allow you to do that in minutes.  — Scott • talk 20:07, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    This RfC is about inactive admins and not about unbundling. My above comments reflect what was presented in the proposal. OhanaUnited 02:20, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    What your comments above reflect is that you are unwilling to put in the pathetically tiny amount of work it would take to meet the requirements of the proposal (as noted by Cas), and prefer instead to throw a wrench into this reform effort. In that sense, you are a stereotypical example of one of this project's most common failings.  — Scott • talk 11:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    I have demonstrated that a lot of the actions which require admin toolsets are unlogged. Now whether that's considered to be doing "pathetically tiny amount of work" is precisely why I also opposed the gaming clause below because it can be gamed by people like you. OhanaUnited 18:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    "People like you", hey? I was on a break from this site for the first six months of this year. The logs tell me that in the five months since then, I've used admin tools 270 times outside of my own user space. That works out to a rate of about 650 uses a year without even yet involving myself in any of the backlogs. Whatever it is that you're trying to imply, you've failed. Spectacularly.  — Scott • talk 19:18, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    Ahh, perhaps tensions are running a bit high, but it appears to me that what OhanaUnited was referring to was those who don't value (or perhaps understand the value of?) unlogged admin actions. That the "gaming clause" is a problem because of that type of attitude. Your referring to the logs in response *appears* to support his claim? He's not "implying" anything, in my opinion, he's stating it fairly clearly. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 00:04, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

    Hey, could we perhaps get a little more niceness in the room? User:Scott, I mean you mate. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 23:51, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

    Apparently not. - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 02:04, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

11. Oppose Seems a nice solution in search of an actual problem. If one might show where having these particular cases are actually detrimental to the project then I might see a use - but absent such proof, this seems like one more set of rules which solve nothing in particular and do it very well. (G&S reference). Collect (talk) 18:43, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
12. Oppose Editors with the Administrator WP:UAL not doing administrator things have never been a problem. Putting some stupid requirement so once a year an editor can click "delete" (or whatever ya'll do) three times on CSD U1s will not improve the encyclopedia. NE Ent 23:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
13. Oppose - A solution in search of a problem. Take away the admin of problem editors, sure, but don't take it away if someone goes away a while.DreamGuy (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
14. Oppose Like several others already, I find that there doesn't seem to be any statement of a problem here that this proposal would solve. That makes this seem like a proposal to pointlessly raise some sort of bar for the sake of "doing something". Anomie⚔ 02:00, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    I have stated a problem below. Simply put, is it fair that somebody can keep the bit despite no evidence of keeping up to date with policy but somebody with far more recent experience and edits cannot, because standards have risen at RfA? And even if you think it is, is it worth the "unfair!" drama that erupts on AN/ANI anyway? Ritchie333 10:39, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    If your problem is standards at RfA, you'd be better served by trying to fix that directly than by arguing on an unrelated topic like this that has no connection to RfA standards. Anomie⚔ 13:28, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    Hah! We have tried that again and again and again, but nothing ever happens because people always turn up to say "no, I like things the way they are". Ritchie333 14:44, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    "Doing the right thing didn't work in the past, so I'm going to do the wrong thing instead" isn't a very good argument. Anomie⚔ 21:52, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

15. Oppose - Per above, another unnecessary complication. Problematic administrators are those that actively push the envelope of community consensus, not the ones who occasionally make a mistake upon returning from inactivity. This kind of proposal sends the wrong message to inactive admins: if you do not continuously participate in admin actions, you are not welcome here. And what if this proposal ends up being counterproductive? I notice one of the support votes suggests that admins could meet the minimum activity requirements "even quicker if they bs it." If this proposal encourages inactive sysops to "bs" a few admin actions annually in order to retain the bit, it will create more problems than it solves. Altamel (talk) 17:22, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
16. Oppose I agree with many above that there doesn't appear to be a problem. There is not even a clear rational for the previous policy or the need for any policy at all. --I am One of Many (talk) 19:42, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
17. Oppose An admin making one admin action a year, if done correctly, is one less admin action that needs to be taken by the more active admins. The current desysop for complete inactivity, although not stopping any actual observed problem, guards against a lost password being discovered by a vandal. One could argue for all bits (including autoconfirm) being lost after a year of inactivity. This only eliminates admins unwilling to game the system. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
18. I've been specifically called out as a "paper admin" by User:Scott, so can I please be included in the first section with the other shout-outs, just for fun? I mean, I made token edits and all. Appalling attempts at levity aside, I oppose this change. I'm not seeing a list of "bad" administrative actions resulting from people being "out of step". Has this evidence been provided somewhere? Similarly, there are claims that the number of existing admins is somehow a barrier to getting new ones... is there evidence of that? I don't mean linking to diff where someone says "1300 already, no need for new ones", I mean somehow showing that the same person isn't going to say "693 admins, no need for new ones." Where is the demonstrated problem this is meant to solve? - Aaron Brenneman (talk) 03:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
19. Oppose Clearly, this is a solution in search of a problem. There is no evidence of a correlation between frequency of use of admin tools and familiarity with policies and guidelines. If an admin uses the tools properly from time to time, that improves the encyclopedia and reduces the workload on others, even if she does not spend 16 hours a day acting as an administrator like someone with no job and no social life. Edison (talk) 03:54, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
20. Oppose as a net negative. Further reduces the pool of admins, and closes off the possibility of an admin returning when their time and inclination permits (we are after all all volunteers), with the requirement for a fresh RfA having an unknown deterrent effect; on the other side, uninformed or otherwise unwise admin actions by rusty admins can always be fixed (I should know), and active admins make mistakes, too (again, I should know). Moreover, as I have said before at WT:RFA, some admin actions are not logged, notably editing fully protected pages (for example, fixing errors on the Main Page); closing discussions without deleting anything and staving off the need for a block are also important parts of the job, in my opinion. Requiring logged actions rests on a skewed view of adminship, and even just imposing a minimum editing requirement would have more of a negative effect than a positive, so far as I can see. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:20, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
21. Cards on the table, I am inactive admin. That said I'm not seeing a problem that I am causing. I honestly have no problem meeting these minimums but I don't know what "gaming" means and I don't see a reason to deop me just because I've become more busy of late and have less time to donate. So Oppose. BrokenSegue 04:26, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. Click here and delete something tagged legitimately as A7 - it'll take you 30 seconds maximum, like this. Ritchie333 10:12, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

22. Oppose. I feel kind of weird commenting on this RFC, like I'm not supposed to or something, but I'm going to comment. I don't mind being used as an example on the top - I know I'm an edge case - but I don't think I'm a "problematic" case. Sure, people have asked about me from time to time on WP:BN, but I wouldn't characterize that as a "problem." Anyway, on a more general level, here are my thoughts. Admins making uninformed or outdated decisions is not good. But I don't believe that is happening much. There are probably a few instances here and there where someone came out of the blue and did something wrong, and I, like Beeblebrox, don't know if it's a good idea to name them personally, but I seriously doubt there are many cases that occurred because of our current policy but would not have occurred under this policy. I can also understand the school of thought that the 1,000+ admins number being used can give an over-inflated sense on the number of admins actively working on the project. But to that end, we also have numbers for active admins (based on various criteria), so it's not like we don't have a good handle on the "real" number. Everyone here is a volunteer. Everyone does what they can when they can. But, if we must have a minimum criteria, I would be more comfortable with a minimum number of edits than a minimum number of admin actions. If a person were to suddenly make ten rapid edits, and all of them were, in the worst case scenario, horribly bad, that can be rectified by undoing the edits and, if necessary, reprimanding the editor. If a person, however, were to suddenly make three rapid admin actions, and all of them were horribly bad, they could've cost Misplaced Pages three potentially valuable editors (who became disgruntled from being badly blocked, etc). If we're concerned about admins making uniformed and outdated admin actions, I don't think the correct response is to make people who haven't done them in some period of time suddenly need to make X number of them. I think the result could be hastily-done admin actions, which would increase the odds of error. I just don't see creating a bar of 10 edits and 3 admin actions (or 100 edits and 30 admin actions, or what-have-you) being beneficial to the project. Useight's Public Sock (talk) 05:03, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

    I maybe could have phrased it better. "Problematic" may not be the right word, but it is certainly unusual. I for one welcome your comments and thank you for making them, we need to hear all sides here in order to make an informed decision. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

23. oppose per BrokenSegue. Ed  02:32, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
24. Oppose.  This proposal ignores the extraordinarily unlikely yet still theoretically possible situation where an administrator does wish to remain one, but literally does not feel a need to make the minimum number of edits and administrative actions within the specified time interval. Why not instead have a rule that in such circumstances the administrator will be contacted and, in order to remain an administrator, must actively indicate so; if the request is ignored, then his administratorship will be revoked.
    Richard27182 (talk) 11:08, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

    We pretty much have that rule already, in that an admin can simply remove their name from the list at WP:INACTIVE before the date of removal and thus retain their tools for another year. And they can do that year after year after year if they wish and remain an admin forever without ever doing anything but removing their name from that list once a year. I would again suggest that anyone who doubts how many admins there are that make afew edits a year but have not done admin work for a period of years simply look for themselves at either the aforementione list or Misplaced Pages:List of administrators/Inactive. Just pick ten names at random and see what you find. There's tons of them, creating the illusion that we have way more admins than we actually do. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:15, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

    Quite. We should be aiming to make the true state of affairs easy to find and simple to grasp, rather than requiring people to dig through pages of obscure statistics just to know how many admins we really have.  — Scott • talk 18:25, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Discussion of new minimum requirements

I'm not sure why the activity requirements shouldn't be at least as stringent as those for CU and OS. Doug Weller (talk) 21:45, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Two resons: CU and OS can involve access to people's personal information and are therefore more dangerous than admin tools alone, but really its more about that it took years to have any requirements at all for admins and I'm afraid if this tries to overreach in increasing the requirements it will fail. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:54, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

• Comment - We don't need admins who are out-of-touch with the community and it appears to me that a min. requirement of "...ten edits and at least three logged admin actions every twelve months" is rather lenient considering the work load. I suppose it would also depend on whether they are active editors in other areas of WP, such as content creation, editing articles, reviewing GAs and FAs, helping out at various noticeboards, closing RfCs, etc. Is there a reason for setting the minimum requirement so low? Atsme 00:38, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Because it is so incredibly low right now that I did not want to ramp it up too high too fast. Currently one edit of any kind, once a year, is all it takes. If you look at the third example I just added above, that admin kept his bits by replying to the message on their talk page telling them they would be desysopped for inactivity. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:38, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Beeblebrox, thank you for your astuteness and attention to this matter. I never imagined the requirement had been so low. Atsme 01:57, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• Comment This is a good baseline but before I can give it unqualified support, it should have an "out" for admins who, for whatever reason, want to keep the bit but not maintain the minimum level of activity: Leave a note in a centralized location saying "please do not desysop me." That request would be good for a year, at which time the procedural-desysopping process would start over and they would have to either meet the minimum requirements or make another request, which would extend the deadline another year. I'm flexible on the "for year" part, but it needs to be for at least 6 months. I am okay with allowing the arbitration committee to step in and demand "just cause" if someone keeps doing this over and over and over without some obvious reason. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs) 00:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Even with these changes, they would be able to go completely inactive, no edits or anything, for nearly two years and all they would have to do is ask at WP:BN at 1 year, 364 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes and they would still get their tools right back. This is really an incremental change when you look at it that way. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:35, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• Why do we need an exception for ArbCom members? — Earwig  04:44, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I seriously doubt any sitting arb would fail the edit requirement, but some arbs have been known to more or less put down their admin tools while on the committee, yet obviously they are still very, very engaged witht eh community and should be very aware fo current policies. Beeblebrox (talk) 08:28, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• No comment yet on this proposal, but to provide a little more background: a different proposal to increase activity requirements of administrators was discussed extensively just a few months ago, and the consensus was to maintain the status quo. The proposal was more strict, requiring 10 admin actions per year (as opposed to only 3 actions + 10 edits per year for this proposal), and most of the opposition agreed that forcing inactive admins to meet a quota to retain the bit can have adverse affects on the quality of those actions performed. Mz7 (talk) 05:01, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I actually became aware of that just after I finished drafting this. I'm am hoping this proposal presents a slightly stronger case for increasing the requirements by demonstrating more clearly that they are currently far too lax. As for the quality of their admin actions, they are also not making a quality contribution to administrative work if they don't actually ever user use the tools. The general philosphy reflected in the requirements for functionaries is that you should only have advanced tools if you use them, not just because you want them. This much lower standard would apply that logic to admins as well. Using your tools six times in two years is hardly a hardship, you could stumble across that many reasons in that period of time by just reading articles, let alone looking at any of the various noticeboards where users request admn actions. Beeblebrox (talk) 09:48, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• The problem I see with this RfC, and it's not the first one, is that the supporters seem to be agreeing with the general principle, while the opposers are against specific implementations of it. The problem I see of keeping inactive admins around is for me it sends out a big message to the community that "RfA is unfair", and the standards for having the tools are lower for people who simply had the good fortune to be around earlier. I wonder if it would be worth looking at the "oppose" votes for the 2011 RfC which passed, and seeing if the arguments are present anywhere here. Ritchie333 12:31, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
• Has someone put a message on the Village Pump where the most recent discussion linked by Mz7 took place? That discussion had over 75 participants, and we should make sure they know about this new discussion.--Danaman5 (talk) 17:43, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

 Done Mz7 (talk) 20:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• Comment: I find the concept that "not using the tools" equates to being unqualified (out of touch, not being aware of current practices, not trusted by the community, oblivious to WP:UPDATE, or whatever version you choose) to be at odds with WP:AGF - but that's just me. — Ched :  ?  19:19, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't see how that is. There is not a general assumption of bad faith here. There may be a very, very small number of admins who really are only editing once a year for the sole purpose of retaining their admin tools even though they have no plans to ever use them again, but for the most part what I see here is people who are really former admins already in all but name. They have lost interest in admin work, possibly in being active in any capacity here, and most probably wouldn't care that much if their tools were removed, but they still make an edit every once in a while. We have lots of such accounts that have been here for ages yet have very low recent edit counts. There's nothing odd about that, many if not most people will eventually wander off to some new hobby if they feel they've pretty much done all they can here and it doesn't interest them the way it used to. And yet our current policy allows such persons to have access to administrative positions even when they haven't done administrative work in more than five years if they just make one or more edits every year. I can't imagine any other organization where anyone would think that reasonable. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know, and maybe it's just me. There's times where I just am not particularly active on wiki - and often times I'm not interested in doing "admin" chores. But if I drop in to read an article, and I see something that should be done - unless I've shown myself to be incompetent for the task - why should I not be able to do it? Misplaced Pages is not an "organization", at least not in the conventional sense. This is a web-site; and one that often bemoans the lack of administrative assistance. It's tough enough to pass a RfA in today's climate - and now we're going to move the goal-posts as to what is "required"? No Beebs - just no. We should be handing out the tools more readily - and if someone is misusing the tools - THEN remove them. I don't recall my post from the 2011 RfC, but I likely opposed it - idk. I just think it's a slippery-slope. 1 year, 1 edit, 1 action, 6 months, 10 edits - 20 edits. It ends up being a clique of the 20 most active admins. who run the site. Sorry - but I am opposed to this. — Ched :  ?  22:20, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

You said it yourself above: "...I did not want to ramp it up too high too fast". It's not something I support. — Ched :  ?  22:22, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• Nowhere near stringent enough. Should be at least one admin action per month averaged out across the year.  — Scott • talk 23:34, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Even if you're right, it's a step in the right direction; and if we try to take bigger steps, the attempt is less likely to pass. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:54, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
    • You need to recalibrate. The requirement in this proposal is incredibly small and we should be setting our sights higher. Occasionally the community is able to prove itself not completely dysfunctional and accept a degree of change that doesn't require an electron microscope to observe. Aim high and try again lower if it doesn't work the first time.  — Scott • talk 11:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
• Question for Beeblebrox - how did you choose the particular thresholds suggested here? How many existing admins fall short of the thresholds? It'd be interesting to see how many fell short, say, a year ago, and how many of that subset (if any) have since returned to higher activity. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:20, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Through basically random happenstance I found myself looking at Misplaced Pages:List of administrators/Inactive, which lists all admins who have not edited in the last three months. As of this writing there are 240 names on that list. I also looked at the master list of all admins and saw that there were a lot of people on there that didn't really seem to be active in admin work either.

So, I began poking around and what I found was that, as in the examples above, many of them actually stopped being admins a long time ago, but retained their tools due to the very low standards we have for doing so. I do not have those statistics, but based on the random sampling I made of the inactive list I would guess that maybe half of the 240 on the list would no longer qualify to be admins if this were to pass and their editing pattern remained the same over the next year. I'd be delighted if instead they picked their tools back up and pitched in at least a little bit.

If these requirements do pass, I think it would certainly be best to mass-message every single current admin and let them know about this immediately, so that they have a full years time to become aware of it and decide if they care or not. I expect that many of them probably don't care. The inactive list is actually quite deceptive because of how many names on are users who have not taken a single admin action in five years or more. I encourage everyone to look for themselves, just pick say, ten names off that list and I bet you will find three or four that have not actually done admin work for a period of years.

As for exaclty how I came up with the specific requirements, I came up with a figure I thought was reasonable, then cut in half. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Still not following. You'd be delighted if they pitched in, but you also want to desysop them because you think they make too many mistakes?

In the case of the arbcom mass message proposal, we (including me) didn't ask the right questions about quantifying the effects. That should be a warning sign that we should start being a lot more careful about looking at the numbers rather than relying on guesswork and "what sounds reasonable". Everyone looking at a semi-random ten examples is the wrong way to do this; one person looking at all current admins is the right way to do this. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The goal here is for us to only have admins who actually do some admin work once in a while, instead of the vastly over-inflated list we have now with dozens, if not hundreds, of users who have admin tools but by their own choice have not used them in years. It would only take a bout one hour a year to easily meet these requirements by simply plowing through some CSD noms. Even if they skipped a year and got desysopped, they could just ask for their tools before another year has passed and still get them, and then have a full year after that to do that one hour of admn work. That does not seem like an undue hardship, and doing it may encourage them to re-engage and be active again. That is obviously a preferable outcome, but if a user can't be bothered to meet such a remarkably low threshold, why should they retain access to these powerful tools? It's not doing anyone any good, and there is a potential for serious harm.

As for the arbcom message proposal, I'm afraid now I'm not following. I don't know what that is or was and what it has to do with this discussion. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:24, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for gaming clause

In order to prevent gaming of these requirements, admins that are only meeting the minimum requirements, barely exceeding them, are making all of their edit or logged actions in userspace only, or otherwise appear in the opinion of the full Arbitration Committee to be deliberately gaming the requirements for a period of three or more years may also be considered inactive and procedurally desyopped by motion of the Arbitration Committee at their discretion.

Support gaming clause

1. Support as proposer. I wish I didn't see a need for this, but I believe we do need it for a very small number of cases. Any admin who is making the exact necessary number of edits or logged acrions and nothing more for not one but three entire years... well let's just say I find it hard to believe they would be doing it for any other reason. For example, they could just make a ten pointless edits to three sandbox pages in their own userspace, then delete those pages, and technically meet the requirements while doing no actual useful admin work at all. They would have to be doing that not once, not twice, but for three years in a row before this clause would even allow arbcom to act, and even then they would have to put it to a vote. It is my sincere belief and hope that this clause would be invoked only very, very rarely. Beeblebrox (talk) 09:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
2. Support - this will result in two likely scenarios. 1) The admin says "it's a fair cop, I haven't been on enough" 2) The admin throws a hissy fit, showing the desysop is therefore probably a good thing. Ritchie333 12:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
3. Support - per nom. Lugnuts 12:50, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
4. Support - good idea.
5. Support - I see no justification in maintaining admin status if one has no intention of being active. A quick review of the following helps illustrate how badly we need active admins, . Why accept the tools if you aren't going to use them? There are 235 admins listed as inactive, WP:List_of_administrators/Inactive. We have a total of 1,333 admin accounts, and only 568 of them are active (as of 2015-11-28). That alone speaks volumes. Atsme 16:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   Just to state hard facts here, I'd like to point out that if you changed that definition of activity to 30 admin actions in 2 months (rather than 30 edits in 2 months), then only about 250 are active. I did a large amount of research on this a month or two ago, in the early stages of my RfA reform project. Biblioworm 16:53, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

   This isn't about a slump or some time off, it's about admins who haven't done admin work in a matter of years being able to start blocking and deleting again without taking the time to make sure they still know what they are doing first, and also the tiny minority who seem to be holding on to their tools just to hold on to them, not because they have any intention of ever using them to help the project. For reference, the functionaries are required to make at `least five logged actions every three months, including at least one requested by a member fo the community. That last bit seems to be there to prevent gaming, functionaries are expected to be responding to community requests, not just going their own way ond not communicating with anyone. While CU/OS obviously have more potential for real-world damage, I think the same principle applies here. You shouldn't just have admin tools because someday several years from now you may use them one more time, but because you are actually an admin and use your tools for the benefit of the project at least occaisionally. That is what you were elected to do after all. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

6. If an admin is deliberately trying to keep adminship by making pointless edits without declaring a semi-wikibreak, then they are probably here to make their resumé shine. Esquivalience 16:56, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
7. Support - per nom. Johnbod (talk) 20:22, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
8. Support - anyone gaming the system needs to be dealt with, and I think that ArbCom is the best judge here. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 03:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Oppose gaming clause

1. . I feel this has a chilling effect on the whole issue. It also implies, "we've set these minimum parameters...but actually if you do just enough ....that's not enough.", and makes the whole enforcement look arbitrary. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 11:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
2. Strong oppose. If ArbCom desysops an admins who is technically meeting the activity requirements, we send the following message: "Well, technically the activity requirements are , but even though you've actually done nothing wrong and are meeting the requirements we still have the discretion to desysop you if we personally think you still haven't done enough." How much abuse might this be open to? And we don't need to get ArbCom involved in more things; they already have enough on their hands and I think we could actually give some of their current tasks to other groups. Secondly, I think it's assuming bad faith to accuse a previously dedicated, productive community member of "gaming the system". (I already explained why some admins might just edit to keep their tools.) Imagine that you're an admin who is editing to retain your tools because you feel that you might have the time to help out more someday (and you definitely don't want to go through RfA again). One day, you log on find that you have been desysopped by ArbCom under accusations of "gaming the system", as if you were some notorious abusive admin or something. Would you be encouraged to continue editing? Probably not. Therefore, this system would cause all sorts of drama, waste more time, create more work for ArbCom, and perhaps also cause the loss of a few good-faith editors who just wanted to help. Biblioworm 16:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC) edited @ 19:09, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
3. Oppose. I haven't made up my mind on the main proposal but conditional on it passing, I would strongly oppose bringing the Arbitration Committee into its enforcement. ArbCom is supposed to be a court of last resort for intractable disputes, as well as handling matters involving private data. They also already have the power to desysop abusive admins, including ones with low activity. If someone gaming the system actually caused a problem, ArbCom would deal with it as things now stand. This new power would be abitrary, as Cas Liber says, and IMO at risk of requirement inflation. BethNaught (talk) 17:00, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
4. Opposing here per my comments above.--Danaman5 (talk) 17:16, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
5. Oppose A procedural nonsense. If you have a limit then stick to it; don't start second-guessing it. Andrew D. (talk) 18:24, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
6. Oppose as even less utile than the first parts proposed. Once one adds "almost" cases, it is like giving a policeman the right to issue speeding tickets to folks who are likely to speed. Collect (talk) 18:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
7. Oppose The person who responds to desysopping notifications by dinking around in their userspace is doing the same thing you're doing when you purge the house of clutter but can't bring yourself to get rid of the disused camping equipment in the back of the closet, or when you ship boxes of unread books through three moves. We should consider it a good thing if someone has a little psychological resistance to entirely disengaging with a hobby they previously enjoyed but currently don't have time for/interest in. This is a waste of time, an unnecessary extension of power, and an invitation to tattletales and wikilawyers to pester people who have done nothing wrong and still might do some good. Opabinia regalis (talk) 18:53, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
8. Oppose The few cases this would apply to aren't worth the complexity. wctaiwan (talk) 20:26, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
9. Oppose per Casliber, and also because involving the ArbCom in anything is sure to end badly. Everyking (talk) 20:59, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
10. Oppose. When it comes to procedural desysops, everything needs to be unambiguous, with no discretion required (or permitted) of the steward or bureaucrat who's doing the desysop. Desysops for insufficient inactivity should be done only because the person in question performed fewer actions than was required by the inactivity policy. Don't get Arbcom involved, because that makes these situations into non-procedural desysops; they become behavioral desysops, and we already have processes for behavioral problems; if someone's passing the minimum number of actions, regardless of the extent to which they pass the minimum, the only reasons for desysop should be self-request, misbehavior leading to an Arbcom case, and housekeeping issues such as Misplaced Pages:Deceased Wikipedians. And by "misbehavior", I mean outright problematic actions. If I retire and then come back to make a few edits like archiving my talk page and deleting a few deletion-worthy pages, that's not misbehavior; it's simply minimal editing, and as long as I don't perform some outright bad actions on-wiki, I shouldn't be taken to Arbcom. Nyttend (talk) 22:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
11. Oppose - I support the increased activity requirements, but this should all be a formuiaic activity - you fail the requirements you lose the bit; you come and ask for it back and you get it. Specifically involving Arbcom in borderline cases is a recipe for argumentation and drama out of proportion to the return. -- Euryalus (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
12. Oppose - Makes it sound bad. If admins are admins they should,'t have to reapply if something comes up and they are gone a while.DreamGuy (talk) 01:48, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

    DreamGuy, did you mean to leave this comment here? It sounds like you oppose increasing the minimum requirements; you don't sound like you're addressing the gaming clause either way. Nyttend (talk) 02:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

13. I don't think its gaming the system to make the minimum or just above the minimum number of edits required to remain an admin. (Though of course, we should be able to trust that admins who are not regularly active will either keep up with policy, or be very cautious and catch up on relevant policy before taking admin actions in a particular area). Also, impossibly vague. Monty₈₄₅ 03:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
14. Oppose this part on the grounds that the original proposal failed to define or elaborate what is considered "logged admin action". Is giving out rollback considered logged admin action? What about adding a student to the course (which according to user access level can only be done by admin and education program staff)? And how about an admin utilizing account creator rights to create 6+ accounts at an edit-a-thon (they don't need a separate account creator flag because admins inherit this tool)? If you don't list out what counts and what doesn't count, then don't talk about "gaming" the system because different criteria would conclude differently whether an admin is barely exceeding the minimum requirements. OhanaUnited 02:17, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
15. Oppose Bureaucratic mind fucking. "You met the stated requirements, but you did so with impure motivation." Triumph of the thought police. Edison (talk) 04:01, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
16. Cards on the table, I am inactive admin. That said I'm not seeing a problem that I am causing. I honestly have no problem meeting these minimums but I don't know what "gaming" means and I don't see a reason to deop me just because I've become more busy of late and have less time to donate. So Oppose BrokenSegue 04:22, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
17. Oppose. We either have criteria or we don't. If the edits need to be spread out in some fashion rather than bunched up right at the deadline, or if they need to be in the mainspace rather than userspace, etc., that should be spelled out in the criteria rather than a vague "you met the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the law, so you're being desysopped anyway" kind of thing. Useight's Public Sock (talk) 05:11, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
18. Oppose. Not opposed to this in principle, but I think evidence is needed that this would solve a particular problem before justifying the drama and workload for the Committee, which has enough problems with active editors. Gamaliel (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
19. Oppose Instead just set the standard higher, eg exclude own userspace. The edits and actions should benefit Misplaced Pages or its readers in someway. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 22:27, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
20. Oppose very, very vague. Ed  02:32, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Discussion of gaming clause

As you can see I have moved this to a separate section for a separate discussion. I realize now that this is kind of a separate issue and probably should have had a separate discussion from the beginning. I apologies for not doing so until now. (I also reworded it slightly to make the intent more clear, this is not intended to obligate arbcom to go on witch hunts, but to give them the tools necessary to desysop those who may be gaming the requiremets, a permission they apparently do not currently have. As there is no other mechanism for admin removal this seems the only way to stop gaming of the requirements.)Beeblebrox (talk) 09:27, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It's intersting to me to see how some users are bending over backwards to say there is nothing wrong with gaming the requirements, or that doing only the absolute minum necessay, even with the current laughably low standards, is gaming at all. I mean sure, you do it once, maybe it was on off year and you were busy. But remaining an admin when you've been making one or two edits (and no admin actions of any kind) a year for three years? Five years? Longer? Beeblebrox (talk) 21:38, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree. It's one thing to be relatively inactive and making a few edits here and there, but it's a completely different issue when those few edits are solely to userspace in an apparent bid to retain sysop status. If a user isn't planning on contributing to the encyclopedia, then what's the point of keeping the bit? clpo13_(talk) 22:12, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Please specify how much it costs to continue providing the admin status to someone who barely meets the annual requirements, and please explain how it harms the project. Are there a limited number of admin bits to be awarded, so that if someone maintains the status with minimal edits, some highly qualified applicant is prevented from being granted the bit? What is the problem that this solves? Edison (talk) 04:12, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

The problem of out-of-touch admins who haven't been active years, some of whom were appointed back in the "cowboy" era and areout of touch with current norms, being able to come back after a three, five or even nine year hiatus and just start blocking, deleting, etc. It's not some vague mystery, it has happened many times and resulted in much drama and arbcom desysoppings as opposed to simple, no-harm-no-foul inactivity desysopings. That's the point here, to make out "list of admins" reflect who actually is an admin and to reduce drama and chaos. Beeblebrox (talk) 07:20, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I'd be very interested in any statistics and links. It seems to be a pretty bold statement, but I'm willing to listen and reconsider. (note: I'm not interested in the current situation - I'm well aware of that). — Ched :  ?  11:08, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I know I'm being a pain about data and evidence, but you haven't proven this part of your case either, Beeblebrox. This is basically the base rate fallacy. Inactive admins do sometimes make errors, but what you need to show us is evidence that they're more likely to make errors than more-active admins. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:00, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I have come across plenty of errors made by rlatively inactive admins because they were out of touch. At the time, I never thought it woul be a subject for discussion, so I did not catalogue them. Beeblebrox pokes a round a lot just as I do, and it can't be coincidence that we often come to the same conclusions. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 22:01, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

OK - then it shouldn't be a problem to list some examples. Before I can support this - I (personally) need to see the "problems" this "solution" is going to resolve. I (and others) have stated what problems we see if passed. Some vague "there have been problems in the past" doesn't cut it for me. Perhaps I'm cynical, or perhaps the years of "you need to provided a WP:V verifiable WP:RS reliable source for that" has colored my views. Just point me somewhere - I don't mind reading, researching, and evaluating on my own. (but the "discovery" of having to go through 5 Gig of pages isn't going to get me there - so something a bit more specific than wp:former administrators please.) If you are truly serious about needing this to improve the wiki - just show me. I often come to the same conclusion as both you (Kudpung) and Beeblebox - but only after I read through it and make up my own mind. — Ched :  ?  05:25, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Frankly - I see more of a problem with some of the current admins. that are around far too much, and consider their own unilateral judgement to be superior to the spirit of what the foundation of this project intended. — Ched :  ?  05:31, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

That's another, seperate issue that has been brought up many times, and many solutions have been proposed. Unfortunately ther ehas never been a consensus on what to do about it. Same with RFA itself, although the current RFC on that shows signs of instituting at least some incremental changes. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:30, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Another way forward? Networking?

The essence of this sits uneasily with part of me. Misplaced Pages is made up of volunteers, which are not in endless supply. At some point these editors were held in high enough regard to pass RfA. Maybe rather than setting up a wall, reaching out is another option. Some tasks (such as speedy-deleting nonsense pages, author requests, or expired BLP PRODs are uncontroversial enough to be easily done by smartphone. I have found myself doing a few when sitting on a bus or waiting for one or whatever. What if we had a communique of some sort that we emailed or notified all admins of backlogs (instead of waiting for someone to browse the Admin Noticeboard). Anyone think something like this is a good idea? It might be that some low-active folks are happy to help out in this way. post below if you think this idea is worth pursuing. (am adding this to this RfC as another way of exploring admin inactivity.) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:01, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe...

1. I mean sure, I'd rather see an admin actually do admin work at least a few times a year, but I'm not at all sure this is a solution that would be particularly effective. If you are making 1-10 edits a year and haven't used your admin tools yet in the 2010s, what are the chances you are going to sign up to get alerts encouraging you to help out with backlogs? (I'm assuming this would be opt-in only?) Beeblebrox (talk) 21:28, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

   I was thinking of spamming initially. And if it means any one of them resumes any sort of active activity then it might be a good thing. The backlogs are a bit of a pain....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:22, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

No thanks

References

1. Misplaced Pages:Village pump (proposals)/suspend sysop rights of inactive admins, June 2011

• Misplaced Pages requests for comment