[WikiEN-l] Dangerous factionalism (Was: Re: SlimVirgin and CheckUser leaks)

[Chris Howie]

On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 3:24 PM, Alec Conroy <alecmconroy at gmail.com> wrote:
> Perhaps we would want to invoke the status of Former Admin or Retired
> Admin or Honorably-Discharged Admin.
>
> It just occurs to me that desysoppings should be de-stigmatized,
> insofar as possible.  (perhaps that's not very far).  Speaking totally
> in the abstract,  there are going to be lots of very valued
> contributors who make it pass RFA but who, it turns out, don't do so
> well at the admin job.
>
> In general, a desysopping is often interpreted as "You screwed up
> badly, repeatedly.  We're very mad at you, and we're taking your tools
> away".
>
> But maybe there's room for "Good work.  You got a lot done.   We
> appreciate it.  It's probably best for the project if you let the rest
> of us take it from here".

But it's up to the community to decide that this is the case to begin
with... and then wouldn't the community just know this to be the fact,
without require some sort of special status?  The only value such a
status would have as far as I can tell would be to inform new users
that so-and-so former-admin did a good job.  And I would expect that
if somebody new read so far to know that they were a previous admin,
they would also know the surrounding circumstances.

-- 
Chris Howie
http://www.chrishowie.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Crazycomputers