User:Just Step Sideways/5years

Admin activity requirements, again

Premise: It is not desirable for users to maintain advanced permissions (administrator, bureaucrat, oversighter, or checkuser) that they do not use. It creates a risk for both security and drama. Security if a barely-active admin account was hacked, drama if an out-of-touch admin who hasn't used their tools in years just goes back in with guns blazing before being sure they are up to speed on what the community expects from admins. CU and OS permissions have much stricter requirements than other roles, and access is overseen by the Arbitration Committee so those need not be considered here. 'Crats are a very small group that have fairly minimal responsibilities on Wikipedia these days so the risk there is also fairly minimal.

Example cases

Every time we have one of these discussions people ask for an example. I am usually hesitant to make one because it feels like picking on a specific user when what we are trying to do is resolve a more general problem, but since someone always asks anyway I'm going to go ahad and make two.

My apologies to Ev but they are a perfect example of admin inactivity while still being active enough to retain the tools. {{rfplinks}} Ev has been around for a very long time, sixteen years. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Ev was in 2007 (newer users may find it somewhat shocking to see how easy it was back then). They were desysopped for total inactivity in 2012, and got it back for the asking in 2013. This post [1] in 2013 asking for their admin tools back was their first post in Wikipedia space in two years, and they've not made another one since. They have not used any sort of administrative tools since 2011, before they were desysopped for inactivity. They have not spoken to another user on-wiki in any way since 2014. But they make between two and ten edits each year, so they continue to be an administrator so long as they do that.

Or look at Jamesday (again, my apologies, but people always ask for examples, and since you've stopped editing you probably won't even see this anyway). They are being removed for inactivity with the February 2022 crop of inactive admins. Their RFA is again, fairly shocking by any contemporary standard. Fifteen people, eighteen years ago, almost all of whom have long since left the project, made this user an admin. Jamesday last made an action requiring admin tools in 2018. Their last one hundred contributions go back six years. Their last edit to project space was to say we don't need tighter activity requirements for admins three years ago [2].

I'd like everyone reading this to consider if that seems right to them. These users, by their own choice, haven't actually been administrators for a very long time. Our current rules let them keep their admin rights forever so long as they drop by once a year and do literally anything. I'm not suggesting they are gaming the system, or that there is anything wrong with the few edits they do make, I just find it ridiculous that proving your existence once a year is sufficient to retain administrative tools. This change is basically aligning policy with the reality that such users already are not really administrators.

Proposal

Administrators who have no logged actions using admin tools in five or more years will have their admin tools revoked. There will be a sitewide announcement of this policy change when it is approved by the community but there will be no further prior notifications to individual admins. Admins desysopped under this rule can only regain the tools via a successful RFA. This rule is intended to replace the current "five-year rule", which only applies in cases where the admin does not use tools and is totally inactive for one year.

Why no notifications?

When activity standards were first developed in 2011, it made perfect sense to notify admins about to be removed. Before that, there were no standards and every admin could expect to be an admin-for-life and come back five or ten years later and just start blocking and deleting again. We've now had standards for eleven years. If an admin doesn't know to keep up to date on them by now, they are exactly who this change is aimed at. A sitewide notice of the change and an announcement in the admin newsletter is more than enough notification without repeated emails and talk page messages.

Expected effect

The current rules normally remove 1-4 admins each month. It can reasonably be expected that, like the current five-year rule, there will be an initial slight rise in those numbers and then a new normal will be established.