Dan Grey wrote:
Haven't people made attempts at formulating a policy for de-sysopping before now, and been shot down in flames?
Particularly by those who see such a response as an act of self-preservation.
Admins, by and large, behave perfectly well. I would hope that the community is selecting those who are trustworthy to be admins, and that peer-pressure from the responsible majority will keep the odd rouge in line.
I presume you mean "rogue". :-)
I agree that most do behave perfectly well, and the same can be said about most contributors.
Choosing trustworthy admins is just a pseudo-democratic crap-shoot. Most of us don't participate in the voting; we have more useful things to do. The only functioning standard is the ability to get votes in an "election" that is only attended by people interested in elections, and thus reflecting the POVs of that group. The person who quietly and without controversy continues to work and build in his own special area is probably not represented. I would like to see more objective criteria for candidacy as sysops. These could cover time spent, number of edits, number of original contributions, social skills, etc. Unless a person meets these criteria, he would not be eligible to receive votes.
Peer pressure will work well in most cases, but there will still be problem sysops. Notably these are individuals who do a tremendous amount of good work, but whose good works are often offset by an inability to muster the social skills such as patience needed to deal with others holding a different opinion.
Ec