Re the theory that making it easier to get rid of admins could be a solution to the decline in their active numbers. This is one of those perennial theories that often sidetracks any attempt at WT:RFA to reform the process; But has at least once failed to get consensus for change - not least because many of its proponents seem unaware of how easy desysopping can now be and are therefore hazy as to how much easier they want it to be. I like counterintuitive theories, and the idea that to get more admins you should get rid of some of us and put the rest under greater stress is IMHO counterintuitive. But I see the following flaws. 1 Concerns about the difficulty of desysopping admins long predate the RFA drought that we've been in for the last couple of years. 2 It may have been true in the past that desysopping was difficult and always traumatic for the community, but the reality of the last few months is that whilst some desysoppings are highprofile and dramatic, others are almost discrete and are only noticed by those who watch Arbcom or those like me who keep an eye on the total number of admins. I suspect that perceptions of the difficulty of desysopping are based on the highprofile and contested cases, not the barely noticed ones. Any theory to explain the RFA drought needs to account for the phenomenon of standards inflation at RFA, and explain why those arbitrary expectations have continued to rise whilst desysopping has if anything become easier. I've approached a number of possible candidates in the last few months, several have declined to run either because the standards are so arbitrary or because they don't want to be treated the way they've seen others treated at RFA. As for the idea that we should move to "Hi, I noticed that you speedy-deleted some files that do not appear to meet the CSD criteria; your SysOp staus has been removed _while we discuss it_". I've done over 4,000 speedy deletions, and very probably there are more mistakes amongst them that I know about, but if someone thinks I've deleted something in error I'd expect a first approach along the lines of "would you mind having another look at [[deleted article]], I don't see how it was an attack page". Maybe I've made a mistake, maybe so much has been oversighted that it no longer looks like an attack page, maybe there are words involved that have very different meanings to a Yank and a Brit. But a desysop first and ask questions later strategy would in my view generate far more drama than would be justified by the results. WereSpielChequers