requests For De-Adminship

This is an information page. It is not one of Wiki's policies or guidelines; rather, its purpose is to explain certain aspects of Wikipedia's norms, customs, technicalities, or practices. It may reflect differing levels of consensus and vetting.

Shortcuts WP:RFDA WP:DES WP:DESYS WP:FIRED

This page in a nutshell: A community-based process for removing adminship has been a perennial proposal.

As of 2024^[update], the only way for the community to directly remove an adminstrator's rights is to indefinitely ban them sitewide; also as of 2024, this power has never been exercised. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances.

Through 2003, there had been only one case where adminship was revoked.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 has gained widespread acceptance.

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 Wiki: Adminship in other languages. For a list of past desysops, see Wiki: Former administrators. For a list of restorations of adminship, see Wiki: List of resysopped users.

Revocation of adminship was previously handled:

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

A substantial number of proposals for alternative or expanded desysopping protocols have been considered by the community. In general, none have achieved a consensus to enact.

• Wiki: 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.
• Wiki: Requests for comment/Desysop Policy (2021) – February 2021
• Wiki: Requests for comment/2019 community sentiment on binding desysop procedure – October 2019
• Wiki: Administrators/RfC for binding administrator recall – August 2015
• Wiki: Administrators/RfC for BARC - a community desysopping process – July 2015.
• Wiki: Administrative Standards Commission – November 2014; proposal to appoint administrators and to remove rights
• Wiki: Administrators/RfC for an Admin Review Board – November 2014
• Wiki: Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept – September 2012
• Wiki: Request for Admin Sanctions - July 2012
• Wiki: Guide to Community de-adminship – February 2010
• Amendment of successful RFA closures – May 2009
• User:EVula/opining/RfA overhaul – January 2009
• Wiki: Removing administrator rights/Proposal – October 2008
• Wiki: Admin Accountability Alliance – December 2007
• Wiki: Community enforced administrator recall – October 2007
• Wiki: Removal of adminship – October 2007
• Wiki: Fully Uncompelled Binding Administrator Recall – September 2007
• Wiki: 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.
• Wiki: Temporary Deadminship – August 2006
• Wiki: Admin recall – a complex proposal was struck down in August 2006, but resulted in a different proposal at Wiki: Administrator recall which includes the ArbCom as a check on abuses.
• Wiki: Adminship renewal – swiftly struck down in May 2006 as a rehashing of previous proposals.
• Wiki: Requests for de-adminship/Proposal 2 – a proposal made in June 2005
• Wiki: Requests for de-adminship/Old proposal – a March 2005 proposal which closely emulated the Wiki: Requests for adminship process, and which was rejected by a margin of over 2 to 1.
• Wiki: Administrator Accountability Policy – a series of proposals from September 2004, each voted on and rejected by a margin of about 2 to 1
• Wiki: Confirmation of sysophood – an April 2004 proposal for self-initiated periodic review of admin status that generated little interest or discussion
• Wiki: 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 Wiki: Requests for adminship/The Cunctator and Wiki: Requests for adminship/Jasonr (reconfirmation).

Inactive admins

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 Wiki: Requests for adminship/Inactive1 and Wiki: Requests for adminship/Inactive2. These early proposals lacked widespread support, but an RfC running through June 2011 at Wiki: 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.

• Voluntary self-revocation of adminship can be requested at Wiki: 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, requests have been sporadic with only two in the last ten years, and it is unclear that an administrator who made themselves open to recall is bound to that promise. A list of such requests and their outcomes can be found at Wiki: Administrators open to recall/Past requests.
• An admin who is indefinitely community sitebanned will have adminship removed.
• Otherwise, adminship may only be involuntarily removed from an active administrator by the Arbitration Committee; see here for details.

• June 2006 mailing-list post by Jimbo Wales
• Wiki: Administrators
• Wiki: Administrator Review - Historical
• Wiki: Former administrators
• Wiki: Removing administrator rights for processes
• Wiki: RFA reform
• Wiki administrators open to recall
• Wiki: Standing reconfirmations