This is a proposal for a community-based procedure for desysopping problem administrators. Dmcdevit has given Matt57 permission to change this proposal as he wants to. If you want to edit it, please move it forward, not backward.
Here are the basic reasons why a system like this is needed:
Procedure:
In order to keep the RfA's as few as possible:
The current method that has evolved for desysopping problem admins is apparently taking the admin in question through arbitration, or, theoretically, some kind emergency action by Jimbo/a steward/a developer. Even in the latter case, it appears the case would possibly be brought before the Arbitration Committee to have the emergency measures reviewed and confirmed, amended, or rescinded accordingly. We only need to be concerned with the first type, since again, the latter is not an issue of long term abuse but of necessity (or if it is, it ought to be reviewed further). This route is generally trusted by the community; however, there are reasons to want a community-based decision process. First is, of course, community involvement is good. Arbitration is cumbersome and time-consuming, conservative, generally prolongs even the clear-cut cases, and sometimes as a barrier intimidates valid cases from being brought, especially ones of judgment and not necessarily due to an immediate high-level stimulus. Therefore, there ought to be a good way for sensible desysoppings due to bad judgment to happen based on the wishes of the community.
This is a perennial proposal, and one that has major problems that prevent most editors, admins especially, from getting on board. Principally, there are legitimate concerns that long-term, generally good admins might not pass community review, but not because they aren't valuable admins. Perhaps one has made enemies among a bloc of edit warriors for making decisions that are good for Wikipedia. Surely, many if not most admins have caused dislike by people on the receiving end of their tools, whether rightly or wrongly. Some have even suggested that a large-sized chunk of our admin population might be taken out with a purely RFA-like reaffirmation process. We need a way to give the community a procedure for desysopping, while creating a check for frivolous results. This is essentially the proposed process: first, a complaint is brought in a new dispute resolution forum, an RFC-style discussion led by evidence and then only carried on if the evidence meets a minimum threshold level of certification (after active discussion), where a successful certification is followed by an RFA-style discussion seeking community consensus for reaffirmation taking into account both the evidence and subsequent discussion, once a bureaucrat fails to find consensus for retention of adminship, the Arbitration Committee must consent to the desysopping (as a check against the fear of lynch-mob mentality, or just plain rashness).
This process will be a more viable method against habitual misusers of adminship, but also those who have demonstrated the community can no longer place its trust in their judgment. Typically, no administrator will be desysopped for actions that don't relate to use of admin tools; thus, even admins who have been found by the Arbitration Committee to be uncivil or to have edit warred or to have been otherwise disruptive, have faced targeted sanctions or warnings, but not removal or adminship. However, when it becomes clear that such administrators, even for habitual incivility or edit warring but still particularly for repeated misuse of adminship tools and demonstrable bad judgment, have lost the trust of the community and would fail a reaffirmation hearing, this process would be useful. If the community decides it is appropriate, this method could conceivably also be adapted to review long-inactive administrators, whose judgment may be called into question by their unfamiliarity with community norms.