Wikipedia:Administrator recall: Difference between revisions

You are invited to refine and workshop proposals to the recall process at Wikipedia:Administrator recall/Reworkshop. After the reworkshop is closed, the proposals will be voted on at an RfC.

Administrator recall is a process by which the community can require an administrator to make a re-request for adminship (RRfA) to retain their administrative privileges. It is one of several ways that adminship can be reviewed or removed.

In most cases, disputes with administrators should be resolved with the normal dispute resolution process outlined at WP:Administrators § Grievances by users ("administrator abuse"). Other methods of dispute resolution should be attempted before a recall petition is initiated.

Any extended confirmed editor may start a petition for an active^[a] administrator to make a re-request for adminship if they believe that the administrator has lost the trust of the community. The petition may not be created within twelve months of the administrator's last successful request for adminship, request for bureaucratship, or re-request for adminship, or within twelve months of the administrator being elected an administrator or elected to the Arbitration Committee. If a petition fails, another petition to recall the same administrator may not be started for six months from the date the last one was closed.

If the prior dispute resolution method customarily entails closing and/or archiving a discussion, that discussion should be either closed or archived for the instance of dispute resolution to be regarded as a valid attempt. A reasonable waiting period measured in days^[b] should follow, allowing time for a perspective to be gained on the possibility that the issue has been adequately addressed by then.^[c] Following this, an editor should start the petition only if they are able to assert with evidence that the last attempt has not adequately addressed the issue and that prior dispute resolution methods have therefore failed.

The editor who starts the petition must notify the administrator on their user talk page using the {{subst:Admin recall notice}} template. They must also post a notice to the administrator's noticeboard using the {{subst:Admin recall notice/AN}} template.

Any extended confirmed editor may add their signature to a petition, with or without reasoning. An editor can sign no more than five active petitions. Any editor may comment in a discussion section on the recall petition page. Any signature or comment may be struck based on the same criteria used during requests for adminship.

If a petition reaches the required twenty five signatures within thirty days, it should be closed. The subject is then required to make a re-request for adminship or stand as a candidate in an administrator election. The same requirement exists when a petition is closed early at the subject's request or if they agree to make a re-request for adminship; it should also be closed early if they resign their adminship. A petition that has been open for thirty days and has not gained the required number of signatures should be closed without requiring the subject to make re-request for adminship.

If a petition is opened contrary to the requirements for opening a petition for any reason that cannot be quickly and easily fixed, it may be closed by any editor other than the subject administrator. Such invalid petitions are treated as never having existed for the purposes of determining when a new petition may be initiated and do not affect the subject's status as an administrator in any way.

A valid petition is one started in good faith, which is the assumed default, whereas a petition started in bad faith is invalid, which may be determined upon an assertion of bad faith—an accusation that should be backed by substantial rationale and evidence. The following are some rules of thumb for determining whether a petition is invalid as a bad-faith petition:

• Petitions should not be closed as invalid based on editors’ impressions that they lack viability, i.e. that there is no prospect of reaching the threshold. The course of the petition stage will reveal whether the recall initiative was viable, potentially providing insights for future decisions.
• It can be assumed that a recall initiative signifies an escalation of a conflict between users, accompanied by stress on various sides and consuming significant volunteer time. This is a calculated risk. Such assertions, while probably true, are not by themselves evidence of bad faith on anyone’s part. Claiming that the administrator should not be recalled, that starting the petition was an error, that the petition is “harmful” in the sense of the aforementioned calculated risk does not help establish that the petition was started in bad faith.
• A valid petition does not become invalid when the situation arising from the recall initiative begins to be perceived as nebulously “disruptive” or “generating more heat than light”—poor conduct does not invalidate proper process. A worsening of the atmosphere during a petition and personal attacks and incivility connected to the underlying dispute should be addressed by enforcing relevant norms of behavior: There is no immunity for any of the involved parties in a recall process, and everyone is individually accountable for their behavior.
• Claiming that the petition is invalid as a bad-faith petition is a claim that the starter of the petition deliberately did so to hurt Wikipedia—a serious accusation about personal behavior which requires serious evidence, usually in the form of diffs and links. Outside of a determination that the initiator started the petition to hurt Wikipedia, petitions can not be closed as invalid because of poor behavior among involved users.

Following from the above, petitions whose sole purpose is

• harassing an administrator, such as by hounding (which should only be alleged with clear evidence, while respecting the fact that administrators are at an increased risk of coming into direct conflict with difficult users and becoming targets of harassment);
• pure retaliation on the basis of a spurious reasoning, far beyond the bounds of a resonable interpretation of facts and conventions;
• disruption through repeated similar postings that egregiously fail to meet the requirements for a valid petition;

may be considered as more likely instances of the petition starter’s bad-faith animus that should be handled in an appropriate separate venue.

This is a list of open administrator recall petitions and petitions that passed the threshhold for recall in the past 30 days so the administrator may run for Re-request for Adminship.

A list of closed recall petitions and resulting RRfAs may be found at Wikipedia:Administrator recall/Closed petitions.

An administrator seeking to retain administrative privileges must have their re-request for adminship (RRfA) transcluded to Wikipedia:Requests for adminship within thirty days of the close of a successful recall petition. If an administrator election is scheduled within those thirty days, they may stand in it instead.

A RRfA follows the same process as a request for adminship, but with lower thresholds for passing. In an RRfA, any administrator who obtains at least 60% support will retain their administrator role. If the administrator receives between 50 and 60% support, the community's consensus will be determined by the bureaucrats. If the administrator runs in an administrator election instead of initiating a re-request for adminship, they must obtain at least 55% support to retain their administrative privileges.

The bureaucrats are responsible for ensuring that an RRfA is started within a reasonable time frame. If this does not happen, they may remove the administrator privileges at their discretion. Should the administrator fail to pass an RRfA or administrator election, bureaucrats may remove their privileges.

• Wikipedia:Administrator recall/RfCs – list of RFCs that led to creation of this process (as well as ongoing and proposed RfCs for amendments)
• Wikipedia:Administrators open to recall – voluntary recall procedure adopted by some administrators
• Wikipedia:History of de-adminship proposals – history of previous attempts to create an administrator recall process
• Wikipedia:Administrator recall/Reworkshop – page to propose and refine changes to rework Administrator recall