On 9/30/05, Marco Chiesa chiesa.marco@gmail.com wrote:
We had recently a debate on this topic on it.wiki and we rejected the idea of confirm votation for sysops on the basis that there would be always one reconfirm elecion going on (current election duration is 2 weeks on itwiki). Anyway, I suppose reasons why sysop wouldn't be recofirmed could be inactivity (not a critical problem in the short term IMHO) or abuse of sysop powers (which should be dealt ASAP).
The only real reason to desysop someone permanently is if they're abusing the power, go crazy (This happened on EN wiktionary a few weeks ago), or being fools. Inactive admins will not harm the project, unless they suddenly come back and assume the rules have not changed in the six months they were gone. I've heard people saying it's a security problem, but I think the more visible admins are more likely to be security reasons.
Additionally, we are using a *plain text* password authentication system. Passwords are encrypted in the database, but if someone intercepts the login packets when an admin is logging in, they have the password. Hacking our system is pretty trivial at the moment. Additionally, there are always viruses and trojans that include keyloggers, which someone could use to gain the password. But, once you get an admin with a keylogger, all security for his account is completely gone, even with an encrypted login form.
And, in the cases of a rogue or hacked admin, it really doesn't take that much effort to get a steward, or in the absence of one, a developer, to desysop them. If their account was hacked, when they return they can explain the situation, fix any keyloggers, etc, change their password, and get the adminship back. If they had a password stealing trojan, they should be taught a crash course on avoiding viruses. I can help with the latter if it's ever needed and they speak english, I'm a virus helper on an IRC network. If they cannot keep their account from being compromised more then once or twice, then de-adminship should be considered, as they are a security risk.
I really think that on the EN wiki, de-adminship should be *much* easier. If there was a process to easily get rid of admins that are harming the system, then people wouldn't make adminship such a big deal. We really need more admins, and nobody is helping by making rediculous oppose votes, like "Has less then 999999999999 edits". Of course, even with such a process in place, we would still have very few admins removed....unless there was a sudden influx of bad admins.