Jimmy-
When should developers act to revoke sysop status? I
would say
"Almost never" although I'm willing to listen to counter-arguments.
I don't really care if I have less work, but my personal opinion on the
matter is that protecting pages is one of the most radical things to do in
a wiki. Nobody who does not belong to the trusted group of sysops will be
able to make additions to the page during the period of protections, and
this enforces a class distinction that I am not very comfortable with. I
think it should be avoided.
As I have also pointed out, I am not comfortable with the frequent
antagonism towards newbies who make mistakes, and this is even more
problematic if it is combined with sysop actions. In 172's case, the
policy could be interpreted both ways -- that you are not really involved
in an edit war if you just express a strong opinion on the talk page
before protecting the page, or that you are in fact involved by doing so.
My interpretation is a matter of record, and I have now edited the policy
to favor my interpretation -- this is of course open to discussion.
You endorsed the previous similar actions in the case of User:Kils, so it
seemed logical to enforce the policy as I interpreted it. If, however, you
do not want me to do this and want to handle all complaints about sysop
status yourself except in cases of major vandalism that requires immediate
action, then I will gladly forward such complaints to you. I'm sure the 1
person bottleneck will bite us in the ass sooner or later, though.
Regards,
Erik