User:Friday/recall

Newer thoughts

Why not just use RFC? That's what it's for. Any responsible admin should make the required adjustments, if presented with significant consensus via RFC that he needs to use the admin buttons differently. If it's so bad that there's significant consensus that he should step down, he should do so. Simple, right? Oh, and by "significant consensus" I don't just mean counting noses- there needs to be a real reason for it. Just to be clear, if someone runs around saying "I'm an admin, do what I say or I'll block you", this counts as use of the admin buttons, even if they didn't literally get pressed. Armed robbery is armed robbery even if the robber does not pull the trigger.

Older stuff

I put myself into Category:Wikipedian administrators open to recall shortly after it was created. At the time, there was some talk of different ways this could actually work. Being a somewhat new (and somewhat controversial) category, there's not much in the way of established process for dealing with these.

I can understand the criticism of those who contend that this category is nothing but troll bait. However, it could serve a useful purpose as well, and I think that if unfounded requests for recall are made, this will become clear in the ensuing discussion.

So here's my stab at a general set of considerations for admin recall. If a few editors in good standing have found that I repeatedly use poor judgment in the use of admin tools, then my standing as an admin should properly be questioned. In such a case, as part of the recall process, I would give up the admin bit and/or perhaps open an RFC on my behavior as an admin. Assuming I give up the bit, I may or may not choose to go through another RFA at some point after that.

I hadn't put much thought into people opposing the recall. I see opposes mainly as a safely valve to help make sure that there are legitimate grounds for the petition. I guess there's more than one kind of oppose - people could say "Oppose, this is a baseless complaint" or they could say "Yes there was real abuse of admin buttons here, but I oppose the recall for some other reason." I don't think that the second kind of oppose should carry much weight if the complaint is legitimate- that's what an RFC or second RFA would be for, giving many editors a change to give their opinions on my suitability for adminship.

As for 'editors in good standing', I'm not crazy about having some certain edit count limit. I'm more concerned with 'editors in bad standing' actually. What I mean by this is, if I've blocked some editor (and the block is considered legitimately warranted by others) and that editor returns from the block and starts a recall petition, this should not carry much weight. I'm tempted to say that editors I'm in a dispute with are in the same category, but this is tricky. If I were involved in a dispute where I did abuse my admin buttons, that is exactly the kind of thing recall is meant to deal with. So, obviously, we cannot have a blanket statement of "editors I'm in a dispute with don't count". Clearly, in some cases, those would be the exact editors who might legitimately ask for a recall.

The other thought I had is that I obviously cannot be considered a neutral party when it comes to me being recalled. So, I may invite some other editor to help "clerk" the proceedings. The exact role of the clerk remains to be seen. I would not object to the clerk reading consensus (similiar to admins closing an AFD) and issuing a recommended course of action based on that. Since this is voluntary, how I respond to it is ultimately up to me, but I intent to follow community consensus in this matter.

My guidelines for recall include the following:

1. The issue must concern my use of admin buttons, rather than other edits. If I become a problem editor in some way, we have other ways to deal with this. This category is about adminship. The one exception I could see would be if my editing had become a problem to the extent that my behavior was generally unbecoming an admin. An admin running around, starting and prolonging fights, and threatening to block editors for disagreement would be very bad, even if it didn't technically involve the use of admin buttons.
2. A reasonable number of editors in good standing must endorse it. I'm willing to be flexible here. My main reason for joining the category was to prevent the kind of issues I've seen previously, where some admins were seen by many as frequently doing more harm than good, yet there was no one case sufficient enough to lead to arbcom-initiated desysopping.
3. What's easily done should be easily undone and adminship shouldn't be that big a deal. However, misuse of admin tools can be a big deal, especially when dealing with blocks. On the other hand, we don't want to waste time de-sysopping and re-RFA'ing admins without good cause.
4. I reserve the right to make mistakes. A single mistake is unlikely to be proper grounds for a recall, unless it were exceptionally egregious.
5. I'm not sure I need an exact formula for who can participate (some suggest a minimum number of edits), but very new editors who suddenly show up at a recall may raise some eyebrows.
6. Recall is not meant to be the first step. I would expect that issues brought up in a recall petition would have previously been discussed elsewhere. Looking at those previously discussions is probably helpful. For example, if someone started a recall because of a block, I would look to discussion of that block on AN/I.
7. Admin recall is a balancing act. One on side is the desire for accountability, and on the other is don't feed the trolls.
8. I don't have an exact timeframe in mind, but something like 5 days (similiar to how long AFDs often run) seems like a reasonable amount of time for the issues to come out, without needlessly prolonging the discussion.
9. Admin recall should be seen as part of the dispute resolution process, for disputes involving admin conduct. It should always be viewed in that light- a way of resolving disputes to help the encyclopedia run more smoothly. It's not about ruleslawyering, scoring points, or launching a "sneak attack" on some perceived enemy. Any attempt to abuse the recall process is unlikely to produce results that are satisfactory to anyone.