[WikiEN-l] Admins who pretend to quit (was Re: MONGO and the ArbComm)

Tue Dec 12 21:55:05 UTC 2006

On 12/12/06, *George Herbert* george.herbert at gmail.com
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>Having WP policy be that we punish people for what they say in discussions,
>other than threats and personal attacks and the like, is a bad thing.  No,
>let me restate that more emphatically - it's a horrible, terrible idea.

>I agree with Luna; while not always necessarily desirable, it's a common and
>fairly normal human response to extreme frustration to let off steam.  It's
>not hurting us to let people do it.  It may be irritating you, but that's
>not by itself a reason to take official action over it.

It's not punishment though but housekeeping and assuming good faith by
assuming that someone actually means what they say.

If an admin account becomes inactive then it is desysopped as amatter
of course. The difference here is we would be taking people at their
word so if they say "I quit" their account's
admin permissions are removed as a matter of course. If they change
their mind and want to come back to wikipedia and
regain admin status they can go through an RFA.

If someone doesn't really mean it when they say "I quit" they
shouldn't say it and if what they're really doing is going on a
wikibreak then they should say "I'm going on a wikibreak".

Michel