Alphax wrote:
Indeed; at present, it takes the intervention of a steward (which I've always thought of as being comparable to a Herculean effort) for someone to have admin priveleges removed; even so, it must be at the request of said admin, or the result of an RfAr, or something equally vile.
If you think it's too hard to get a steward to desysop someone, you could always become a steward yourself. The process of becoming a steward is reasonably democratic. Just state your platform and try to get elected.
Of course stewards aren't the real problem, before the introduction of stewards there were a few instances where I was responsible for such things. An admin violated policy, everyone got angry, I had my finger on the desysop button and I was encouraging the community to make a decision, but there was no consensus. Then as now, many people thought that revoking admin privileges was something you just don't do, except in some unspecified case of extreme behaviour, like deleting the main page or something. There was a lack of direction, few people seemed to believe in the importance of discipline. Frustrated, I later argued that all rules pertaining to the conduct of sysops were just guidelines, to be broken at will, because there was no method for enforcing those rules.
I've long thought that the best way to deal with community apathy is by passionate leadership. I had hoped that the arbcom would fill this role, and I guess they have been improving over time in this respect. That doesn't mean other members of the community can't fulfill a similar role in a less legalistic environment -- by climbing the ladder of technical power, by proposing policies and enforcing them, and by inspiring other users to join them in lobbying developers and the Board for changes which are in their interests.
This is of course the exact opposite to the position of Michael Turley and Erik, who believe that the problem is in the existence of a power structure, rather than the solution. Some Wikipedians believe that all our problems can be traced to a deviation from anarchy, and that the solution lies in denigrating would-be leaders by calling them "janitors" or "bureaucrats". I respectfully disagree with this philosophy, I put my hope in enlightened democratic leadership rather than the mob.
Some people complain that those in power are a cabal, rather than an accountable and democratic body. I'd prefer it if they'd use a more accurate word (despots?), but besides that, it will remain a perfectly valid criticism for as long as there is no easy way for the community to remove them from power.
-- Tim Starling