On 6/21/05, Anthere anthere9@yahoo.com wrote:
I would recommand some rules I proposed more than a year ago on meta. I believe a few projects follow them as well. There are two ideas
- an editor is gone, does not edit any more ---> he will be removed
sysop status. If he needs them back, he can ask and sysop position is granted back pretty easily. But we do not pretend we have 600 sysops while only 100 are active.
Why? We've never had a problem with an editor returning from hiatus and mysteriously going nuts. This was proposed once before, and turned down very strongly, as it is a solution without a problem.
- an editor must be lightly confirmed once a year. Without making a big
mess of it. If several people question the status, it will just be removed.
This is a terrible, terrible idea, Anthere. The standards at the moment are fairly good for newish users, as a means of working out whether they are trusted enough by the community to become admin users. Anyone who edits in controversial areas, does RC patrol, or is involved in any meta issues at all invariably makes enemies on Wikipedia, with a couple of exceptions who have the patience and diplomacy of a saint (ala Jwrozenzweig or Michael Snow). If you sack an editor as an admin because they had to be voted again at the end of a year and they've made some enemies (as opposed to doing something seriously wrong), you're bound to have a lot of editors mysteriously resigning a little after one year after becoming an admin. I've said it before, and I've said it again - this is a volunteer project. If you punish good, long-term users without very good reason, they will quit. And this is a Bad Thing for the project as a whole.
-- ambi