Requests for comment/Removal of advanced rights

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The following request for comments is closed. Unless prohibited by local policy, consensus, or practice, there is consensus that stewards may remove other advanced rights held on the same wiki when removing administrator rights. Users wishing to resign adminship but retain other advanced rights should clearly state that in their request. --AntiCompositeNumber (talk) 20:58, 8 January 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal[edit]

When fulfilling requests made at Steward requests/Permissions to remove the administrator right, stewards, at their own discretion may also remove the following rights from the same user:

  • bureaucrat
  • checkuser
  • oversight
  • interface-admin
  • importer

Rationale[edit]

There have been several scenarios where under policy, the administrator right can be removed, but rights that are usually only given to administrators cannot be. Stewards are allowed to use discretion in cases where the local wiki does allow, for example, non-admin CheckUsers.

  • Inactivity: an administrator can be removed under an inactivity policy, but the bureaucrat right cannot be. Since the wiki has an administrator inactivity policy, AAR cannot be used to remove the bureaucrat right. However, since bureaucrats can regrant themselves administrator, the removal is pointless.
    • Many wikis have this scenario where bureaucrats or other advanced rights are not covered under the inactivity policy, and there is no requirement for said advanced rights holders to be admins.
  • For cause: the community voted to remove the administrator for cause, but did not realize that the user was also a bureaucrat. The reasons for the loss of trust extend to advanced rights.
  • Self-resignation: a user ragequits and resigns admin, but forgets they hold other rights, does not request removal of other rights, and is not heard from again.

Discussion[edit]

  • Support Support as proposer. --Rschen7754 22:24, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Less bureaucratic means better. NguoiDungKhongDinhDanh 22:46, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support * Pppery * it has begun 00:48, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support Strong support AlPaD (talk) 17:23, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Weak support "at their own discretion" seems too broad here, this should specifically be constrained by conditions where a local project allows for this mismatch and/or if the request was explicit about it only being meant for one thing. — xaosflux Talk 17:52, 12 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    Support Support in cases where there is no local community. — xaosflux Talk 07:56, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • Indeed, the idea is that a steward should be able to make a reasonable judgment in certain cases - it's not a blank check to do whatever they want. --Rschen7754 00:01, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @Rschen7754 I'm fine with that concept - just don't like the wording so much. Yes, I think that reasonable judgement could be used to best help projects - "at their own discretion" suggests that the steward's opinions could supersede other's. Also, what is the scope here, say for example I said "I'm so sick of the way things work at outreachwiki, remove my +sysop now!" -- should the steward go through and remove my access on all the other projects I have access? I don't like giving stewards extremely vague directions. — xaosflux Talk 14:04, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @Xaosflux Perhaps I don't understand @Rschen7754's proposal correctly, but I understood it as limited to whichever project is affected by the "triggering removal". In other words, if you say "remove my outreachwiki +sysop", it would allow stewards to remove your +bureaucrat at outreachwiki, but not your enwiki adminship. Personally, I think that's fair, because the trust needed for +bureaucrat is significantly higher than the trust needed for +sysop. Martin Urbanec (talk) 18:24, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @Martin Urbanec it is sort of vague, which is what caught my interest. I think the idea in general is good and ensuring that stewards can operate in the 'spirit' of requests is beneficial. From some large project as examples: eswiki - they certainly do not have a "significantly higher" bar for crats than sysops; enwiki has allowances for +checkusers that are not +sysop. I don't really like creating a framework where stewards make discretionary decisions when a community processes could be performed. I think this expansion would be best in cases where a wiki has no community. — xaosflux Talk 18:46, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      @Xaosflux Very well, but you have to realize that there isn't even a policy on global locks. Much of what stewards do (including much more consequential stuff) is not bound by formal policies, and stewards are expected to operate in this area of discretion and good judgment. --Rschen7754 03:22, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
      Sure, a steward could read that interpretation into it (just as they could literally any Wikimedia policy) but I don't think that interpretation would stand up to scrutiny, given that SRP requests are generally targeted at just the wikis specified. --Rschen7754 00:09, 14 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Yes, We want it, When admin like user rights are used as a hats, not used as intended, and Most of these rights would be disaster without admin rights(Importantly when there is no trust of community).QueerEcofeminist [they/them/their] 02:17, 13 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support We have to remove rights and other (more) advanced rights with it. Thingofme (talk) 07:39, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose. It is not possible to have a universal policy on the subject; at least, not as proposed. As an example, I mention the situation of ptwiki, where bureaucrats do not need to be sysops as well and the removal policy (reasons/procedure) of sysops is different from the bureaucrats group. Érico (talk) 01:22, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't even see how this policy would change anything on ptwiki, as stewards would defer all admin and bureaucrat removals to local bureaucrats under existing policy, since the community (unwisely IMO) allowed them to do this. --Rschen7754 01:35, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think this is meant to overwrite the local consensus. If community functions that way then Stewards are likely to be mindful of that. That being the case, I think this proposal is more for those wikis where the wording for inactivity policy isn't covering the other advanced perms. I would say the second point on rationale is unlikely scenario, but it makes sense in cases related to abuse or wikis where inactivity removal is done through discussion.--BRP ever 02:39, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    If you read the proposal again, "When fulfilling requests made at Steward requests/Permissions to remove the administrator right" -> if there are local-specific procedure, it means we are not going to fulfill SRP to remove the adminship. So as per your example ptwiki will not be hit by this. — regards, Revi 02:19, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support Makes sense--BRP ever 02:48, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support this fills up the holes with users holding bureaucrat rights. --SHB2000 (talk | contribs) 09:54, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose Oppose Way too broad to even consider it. The idea might be good, but agreeing to it in this state is out of the question.--Snævar (talk) 07:31, 22 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support --Novak Watchmen (talk) 17:44, 23 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  •  Weak support The narrative is good, but I agree with User:xaosflux that "at their own discretion" leaves too much room for interpretation. I support removing advanced rights when doing is is sensible, but such actions must be justifiable and leave a public record in the interest of transparency. ArticCynda (talk)
  • Support Support with the caveat that stewards should not remove permissions that are intended to be retained; e.g. checkuser or bureaucrat on wikis that allow non-admins to hold those permissions. – Ajraddatz (talk) 00:28, 8 July 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Strong support Strong support--Jusjih (talk) 22:02, 10 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Support - obviously a Steward should never do so should the community be intending (or evenly possibly intending) to allow that userright to exist without the admin right. Should it be inactivity based, then all of the rights given above should be pulled at the same time, unless local policy states otherwise. Nosebagbear (talk) 23:38, 23 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • A little Oppose Oppose, because IIRC there are users act Bureaucrats even after losing Administrators on ptwiki? --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 14:03, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Liuxinyu970226 It won't change anything at pt.wikipedia, because on that wiki, bureaucrats can remove both administrator and bureaucrat. On other wikis, it depends on the wiki's policies. If it allows the flag to stay, there's no way a steward would remove it. It is only a matter of the "default". As @Nosebagbear says, "obviously a Steward should never do so should the community be intending (or evenly possibly intending) to allow that userright to exist without the admin right". Best, Martin Urbanec (talk) 14:35, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
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