Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Adminship term length

This is a failed proposal. Consensus for its implementation was not established within a reasonable period of time. If you want to revive discussion, please use the talk page or initiate a thread at the village pump.

A request for comment to discuss changes to the policy on adminship term length Worm^TT(talk) 13:39, 9 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia has recently reached its 20th year and has changed significantly since its inception. As a consequence, many administrators were elected to a very different community, with very different norms. With a significant majority of administrators being elected over 10 years ago, I propose revisiting a perennial proposal - that of fixed adminship term length - by adding the following to the Wikipedia:Administrators policy:

Poll after 10 years

Adminship on Wikipedia is not a lifetime status and is reviewed at a fixed interval. After a period of 10 years following the closing of their last successful request, administrators must either submit a "Poll to retain adminship" to confirm they retain the confidence of the community, or request removal of their administrator user-right. The administrator should receive more than 60-65% support in the poll to retain their user-right, although some bureaucrat discretion is acceptable. Periods where the administrator have relinquished their tools will not be discounted from the admin's term length.

The poll will remain open to votes for 1 week and will be linked to a separate section of the Wikipedia:Requests for adminship page. Polls will be clerked by the bureaucrats and should be considered more lightweight than Request for Adminship with votes only including a very short statement and questions / discussion limited to the talk page. Editors who are not "extended confirmed" status or have been sanctioned by the administrator in the 3 years prior to the poll will not be eligible to vote, but may comment on the talk page, where they should declare their ineligibility.

Those individuals who do not put forward a poll by their allocated date will be considered as giving up their user-rights voluntarily, but are no longer eligible to request reinstatement of adminship at Wikipedia:Bureaucrats' Noticeboard. Instead, they may subsequently use the poll process until/unless they reach inactivity requiring a new Request for Adminship. If an individual is not successful in their poll at any point, they will be involuntarily desysoped and they are not eligible for another poll, however they may submit a fresh Request for Adminship at any time.

Initial implementation

It is noted that there is a minimum of 876 administrators eligible for poll.^{[note 1]} Acknowledging that one of the largest concerns leading to the perennial nature of term length is how to manage the volume of polls, the initial implementation will be staggered between 1 July 2021 and 31 December 2022.

At the close of this RfC, eligible administrators will be allocated a week for their poll to be put forward and will be notified of this date. Allocation will be at a rate of 15 administrators per week ordered by the oldest valid^{[note 2]} request for adminship to the newest. The administrators will be contacted for the second time to put forward their poll one week before their allocated week or their user-rights will be removed. Administrators may put in their poll earlier than their allocated date at their discretion. Wikipedia:Requests for adminship has previously managed high number of requests, for example throughout 2007 there was an average of 76 requests per month.

An hypothetical example poll can be viewed at Wikipedia:Request for comment/Adminship term length/poll example.

A rough list of admins with approximate date of their most recent RfA is found at Wikipedia:Request for comment/Adminship term length/list. Someone better with database queries / bots will be able to make a much better list if this proposal is successful.

Notes