QUOTE(Rootology @ Mon 14th July 2008, 11:40am)
QUOTE(UserB @ Mon 14th July 2008, 6:22am)
There's a bigger problem with community desysopping (aka desysopping by lynch mob)
The bigger question: If everything in Wikipedia is
required (Foundation rules) to be decided by consensus, why is this one thing--removal of permissions--exempt on English Wikipedia?
All the other projects seem to run just fine with community desysop.
Not everything scales well. Ruling by general consensus works great for a team of 5. It works very poorly for a discussion with 500 people offering opinions.
In a smaller project where there are fewer admins to consider, every active user can realistically be expected to comment on every adminship or de-adminship. But on a large project , 20 highly opinionated users can show up right at the beginning of an RFA (or RF-deA) and have a disproportionate effect on the final outcome, even if they might be the only 20 people that, all things being equal, would hold that opinion. Part of it is that nobody wants to back the "losing side" and part of it is that nobody bothers doing research once it looks like the outcome of the RFA is decided. (When I see a New England Patriots-like score on an RFA, I don't even bother clicking on contributions.)
So if you wanted to get someone without a support network (or a "cabal") desysopped, all you have to do is get 20 of your wiki-friends to show up right after the RF-deA goes live. Chances are that the drive by votes will fall in line with the majority. That abuse is my issue with it and it's a problem soley due to scaling. In a small project, your 20 wiki friends is 2 wiki friends, so it doesn't have the same stigma.