On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Alec Conroy wrote:
But does desysopping really have to be a punishment? Can't it just be a change in job title? A request, from the project, that an individual step back from the stressful job of managing inter-user conflict and devote all their efforts to encyclopedia work?
Is it possible a desysopping could be as simple as "We think you could be more useful to the team as an editor than an administrator?"
Whatever you call it doesn't change what it is; they had permission before, and now don't.
Taking away privileges of someone because they "participated in conflict" when their participation consists of being attacked or of reporting attacks is wrong.
And telling them that it's for their benefit is a transparent lie. You haven't really done an evaluation fo all sources of stress in that person's life and come to an informed decision that removing them would produce less stress. You're just making an excuse for something you want to do because you want to cut down on complaints about abuse, rather than cutting down on abuse.