Over the past several months, there have been an alarming number of administrators resigning or becoming inactive for various reasons: stress, lack of faith in the project, community outrage over a particular action, etc. At the same time, Requests for Adminship (RfA) appears to have adopted higher standards, resulting in fewer admins passing the bar, and fewer editors nominating themselves for adminship. The recent study for WP:RfA Review showed that admin activity levels in August of 2008 were at their lowest point for the previous 12 months, only 60.73% compared to the 69.94% level in August 2007.[1]
On the other hand, the community needs an easier way to handle problematic administrator behavior. Currently, there are limited ways to deal with this: "dramafests" at the Incidents Noticeboard or Requests for comment, emergency desysoppings by a steward in very rare and extreme cases, or a drawn-out process through the Arbitration Committee (ArbCom). The ArbCom is intended to be a last resort for problematic situations, and rightly so; cases take a long time to finish and absorb a great deal of editors' time. By the time the case finishes some months later, whatever the problem was in the first place has usually become a moot point, and the remedy is usually of the form "Admin X is admonished." As a result, administrators are regarded by many editors as "above the law," and a breach is forming which is counter-productive to the project's goals and foundations; this is also a likely cause for the increase in standards at RfA.
To resolve both of these problems, this proposal is presented to the community to both provide a means to lower standards at Requests for Adminship, and improve the means through which administrators can be held accountable for their actions. Currently, a total of 184 administrators have voluntarily listed themselves at Category:Wikipedia administrators open to recall, an optional process through which administrators may specify terms for editors to request the removal of their admin rights. However, these methods vary and do not involve everyone; this proposal would standardize that process, and be available for any administrator. This process is intended to be open to the active community, not overly time consuming, and easily accessible; however, to prevent unfair and abusive "pile-ons", certain precautions have been taken to assure that this process cannot be abused.