QUOTE(Lar @ Mon 14th July 2008, 2:44am)
QUOTE(LaraLove @ Fri 11th July 2008, 7:29pm)
QUOTE(that one guy @ Fri 11th July 2008, 7:21pm)
Yes, but slim and friends are going to argue they're not open to recall all the way to the bank.
What are the chances of getting a steward to act on community consensus, to set a precedent for desysop outside of ArbCom or AOR? Lar?
ArbCom is the process for the removal of sysops on en:wp. There is no other process. AOR is voluntary and non binding (although we have seen that sysops who go against their word tend to be treated rather harshly in the court of public opinion...) and stewards will not enforce it.
Anything else I could speak of would be hypothetical.
What about a "process" of politely asking an admin on their own talk pages to resign. I'd think once a couple hundred do that, the admin would assume that community consensus is against their continued adminship, and resign.
The community grants adminship. Via petition to an admin, they should be able to take it away. Give an admin a chance to resign, and if they don't present a petition that gives an arbitrator ample reason to believe that community consensus (a substantial majority, not a clique) is against that person continuing as an admin.
Arbcom should have nothing to do with it up front. They didn't grant the adminship in the first place. They arbitrate community conflicts that disrupt the progress of wikipedia and aren't being resolved through regular community discussion.
This is also in-line with requiring admins to re-apply for admin via RFA at reasonable intervals. Lifetime privilege leads to abuse, godkings, and admins with a litany of abuses of power like JzG, Gerard, Jajyg, and Slim. This is a concept that even the English realised was in the best interests of its "community" after a group of abused, bullied, and exploited ancestors of Wikipedians told King George to take his tea and "fuck off". Gandhi's approach would be more advisable in this instance, lol.