2009/5/21 Carcharoth carcharothwp@googlemail.com:
On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 3:07 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
2009/5/21 Jay Litwyn brewhaha@freenet.edmonton.ab.ca:
Nothing is to do here. Adminships, last time I checked, are already subject to a time-out under admins open to recall. I do not think it matters whether it's three months, twelve, or fifty months. If that's the length of your term, then it does not matter if you go into a coma due to a bad batch of homebrew: You're still an admin. The subject is whether it is ever proper to hand over accounts. Maybe it's proper to hand an account over to your wife or secretary; probably common practice. I think there are some organizational accounts around; they're clearly identified as such. I saw one that had a specific scope in botanical medicine.
The English Wikipedia has never had a policy of desysopping inactive admins whether they are open to recall or not (which far from all admins are). Adminship is for life unless the account is compromised, you do something seriously wrong or you resign. I don't know if there is a specific written policy against handing over account, but I doubt the community would accept such an action, especially for an admin account. It certainly isn't common practice. Role accounts are usually banned on sight. They used to be allowed for certain things, but went out of fashion years ago.
Not strictly true, but they are very limited in what they are used for. Mainly for contact purposes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikipedia_contact_role_accounts
I did say "usually". Also, not that that page says all those accounts should be indefinitely blocked. You aren't allowed to actually *use* a role account, but they are allowed to exist to make contacting a group easier in some cases.