A couple of months ago, a respected admin got fed up and announced he was
leaving and gave us his sysop access. A few days later, he changed his mind
and returned. When he asked for his buttons back, a bureaucrat remembered
that he had been involved in some vague quarrel with some user or other and
told the editor he needed to go through a new RfA, which passed with a
margin of something like 106/0/0. I don't see how going through that
exercise helped the community, although I'm sure the editor in question was
pleased to break WP:100 on his second try.
Having a policy that once an administrator announces he or she is leaving, a
new RfA is required, would have some marginal effect on deterring "I'm
leaving" type announcements, but the benefits would be outweighed by the
significant negatives of putting the community through pointless re-RfA's,
and more importantly, of potentially deterring good people who get annoyed
or burdened for whatever reason, but then decide to return, from wanting to
come back or to become admins again. Often a person who makes a leaving
announcement and then decides to return wants to quietly resume activity
without making a big deal about being back, or maybe being teased about
having changed their mind, which I have seen happen as well. And finally,
sometimes a user thinks he or she needs to leave the site because of a
harassment situation or legal threat or the like, and again, it would be
unfair to stop such a person from coming back and picking up where he or she
left off.
So I would oppose this proposed change, but of course, there's nothing to
stop the proposer from suggesting it on-Wiki and seeing what the reaction
is.
"Newyorkbrad"
On 12/12/06, James Hare <messedrocker(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I think the intent is if they claim to be perma-leaving, and they mean it,
they wouldn't mind giving up their wares. If it's simply a Wikibreak, then
that means they recognize that they're coming back.
On 12/12/06, Guy Chapman aka JzG <guy.chapman(a)spamcop.net> wrote:
On Tue, 12 Dec 2006 15:57:40 -0500, "M Roget" <mroget(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
Can we have a rule that states that any admin who
"quits" Wikipedia to
protest this or that is automatically desysopped?
Why? "Bah! Sod this, I'm off!" can mean it (in which case there is no
urgency) or it can be a precursor to a Wikibreak to restore sanity.
Let each case be judged on its merits, in accordance with the
Clue-based principles on which the whole edifice is after all founded.
Mind you, if we auto-moderated all "I'm leaving" posts from this list,
life would probably be more pleasant :-)
Guy (JzG)
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:JzG
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