User:Tim Smith/Administrator-initiated recall

In this proposal for administrator recall, any administrator may nominate another administrator to be reconfirmed by the community at RfA.

Motivation
Adminship is granted indefinitely, and can be removed only by Jimmy Wales or by a ruling of the Arbitration Committee. Dissatisfaction with this situation has led to calls for a more community-based process, but agreement on the details has proved elusive. This proposal tries to strike a balance and avoid the defects of previous attempts, in hope of gaining a broad consensus.

Process
Currently, to become an administrator at Requests for adminship, a user either submits his/her own request (a self-nomination) or is nominated by another user. Following the nomination instructions, the nominator creates a page for the request, explains on that page why the nomination is being made, and when the nominee has accepted the nomination, the page is transcluded at RfA, where the community can support or oppose it. A bureaucrat then closes the request as successful or unsuccessful.

In this proposal, administrator recall would work the same way, but with a few differences.


 * Whereas in an ordinary RfA, the nominator explains why the nominee is suited to become an administrator, in a reconfirmation RfA, the nominator explains why the nominee is no longer suited for that position.


 * The nominator must be an administrator. This is not meant to suggest that only an admin would have the judgement to initiate the proceeding, but is simply a way to filter out frivolous requests and avoid unnecessary drama.  As with an ordinary RfA, any registered user can participate once the request goes live.


 * The nominee does not have to accept the nomination for it to proceed. However, the nominator must wait seven days after notifying the nominee of the creation of the request page before transcluding it to RfA, unless the nominee waives this requirement.  This is to allow time for cooling off and negotiation, and for the nominee to write a response to the nomination statement.


 * If the reconfirmation is closed as successful, then no action is taken and the nominee remains an administrator, but if it is closed as unsuccessful, then the closing bureaucrat requests a steward to remove adminship at Steward requests/Permissions.

Justification

 * Unlike recall proposals which appeal to a nebulous concept of "users in good standing" or invent arbitrary edit-count and months-on-the-project requirements, this proposal employs familiar, well-defined user classes. An administrator makes a reconfirmation request, and the whole community of registered users weighs in on it.  No new class of user is created.


 * Unlike recall proposals which envision entirely new venues where recall discussion would take place, with their own layout, participation requirements, closing standards, archives, etc., this proposal simply uses RfA. No new venue is needed.


 * Unlike recall proposals which contain byzantine systems of rules and contingency plans seemingly intended to foresee and forestall every possible abuse, this proposal keeps things simple and frees common sense to iron out any kinks that may arise.


 * This proposal tries to strike a balance by requiring an administrator to initiate recall, but allowing the whole community of registered users to weigh in on it. On one hand, this sets the bar for recall high enough to filter out frivolous requests.  Any administrator who used this system to vindictively or frivolously nominate other administrators to be reconfirmed, would eventually be nominated for recall themself for abuse of their position.  So to some extent, the system should be self-correcting.  On the other hand, the bar for recall is low enough that if a given admin has truly lost the trust of the community, then at least one of Wikipedia's  administrators would step forward to start a reconfirmation and recall would occur.