[WikiEN-l] Removal of adminship...

[John Lee]

On 10/7/07, Kwan Ting Chan <ktc at ktchan.info> wrote:
>
> > >> So you're basically saying: The community is good enough to be called
> upon
> > >> to express their trust initially, but they can never express a change
> of
> > >> heart regarding that trust? Sounds weird.
> > >>
> > >>
> > > It's not a concept without precedent.  Lots of US judicial positions
> > > work that way, for instance.
> > >
> > The status quo in US politics may not be the *gold standard* we'd want
> > to model Wikipedia after.
>
> Not being able to easily fire a judge (in this example) is actually a
> quite common thing. The concept is that it goes towards the whole
> judicial independence thing where a judge don't have to worry about
> being fired for a correct but unpopular decision with the politician
> etc. i.e. Not making decision based on popular-ism, but rather whether
> the decision is right or not.
>
> One can use the same line of argument regarding adminship. Namely that
> an admin shouldn't have to worry about axe-grinders when carrying out a
> decision.


Tenure of high-ranking judges is quite common around the world; not so for
lower-ranking judges. A magistrate can easily be removed from office, but
not a Law Lord (or has the UK already switched to a Supreme Court system?).

Actually perhaps we should follow this model; make two tiers of admins, one
subject to getting their mop taken away, the other immune. If we want to
follow the US system, we could make only the first tier electable; the
second would be appointable from the first tier, and appointed by some sort
of committee. I foresee more than a few logistical problems with this,
though; I'm just throwing this out for discussion.

Johnleemk