Meta:Requests for adminship/Nemo bis (removal)/Bureaucrat discussion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it.

This page is intended for bureaucrats to discuss. If you are not one, please use the comments section if you want to comment.

I am opening this based on the statement at the top of Meta:Requests for adminship that "Requests may be extended, or put on hold by bureaucrats, pending decision or finding of consensus & also per discussion with other bureaucrats."

Statement

Requests for de-adminship have been a bizarre event over the years, bizarre in that Meta does not have a policy for community de-adminship other than inactivity as mentioned in Meta:Administrators/Removal. In spite of that fact, we've had two removal discussions in the past. The first being Ausir [2008] (removal of checkuser) and the second and the last one being Innv in 2010. In both cases the community unanimously voted for removal of rights which brought little or no doubts on how the outcome should be.

Nemo_bis' RfDA is the first RfDA in which there's no unanimity for the removal of rights, and absent a policy for community de-adminship (which I would suggest the Meta-Wiki community to develop) and the variety of arguments presented in this RfDA makes me think that the right way to go is to actually weight the arguments, comments and the facts, and decide together what shall we do. In the meanwhile I have put on hold Nemo_bis's RfDA pending a decision whether it should be extended or closed, and if so, with which result.

-- MarcoAurelio (talk) 14:55, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions

I gave it some thoughts... Originally, I didn't intend to comment here at all. The case is not really easy, and the decision is a bit harder to make. I guess most of my fellow crats simply would like to keep out of any drama here and that's why they don't comment here (that was my plan as well...), however, someone needs to comment and for some weird reasons I'm often one of the people helping to make not really easy decisions. I just had a look at all the comments and spent about an hour or so with that, clearly too much for my taste. Nemo's doing a lot here on meta, however, I don't really see the necessary trust in him from the community. More remove votes than keep votes are very clearly a sign, that somethings is going wrong here. If there would be far more trust in him, more people would've voted in favour of keeping him. But apart from that counting, the comments are more important for me to reach a decision. While he does a good work, he clearly made a big mistake, something that shouldn't have happened, the edit war on child protection which involved his admin rights. While being clearly involved, he protected the page and then even edited it. That is a very bad idea. I'm usually one of the people who are not that strict on such things, however in that case it would've been much better to get an uninvolved admin to do something. Looking at all that, I'd say remove Nemo's admin rights here on meta. Hopefully some fellow crats will now join this discussion after I made the start. Regards, -Barras talk 23:46, 19 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a complicated case and I'm not usually very eager to comment on such cases as they tend to involve too much drama for my liking, but that's quite irrelevant here. Adminship is a position which generally reflects a high level of trust for a user in a community. A higher number of oppose !votes indicates that a significant number of users in the community no longer trusts Nemo with the admin bit. Now the most important questions are whether those who opposed had valid concerns or not and whether the concerns outweigh the work Nemo has done for this project. I personally agree with Barras that some of Nemo's actions are indeed quite concerning, such as his usage of admin rights to protect a page during an edit war in which he was involved (more so than the edit warring). Such an action borders on claiming OWNership of a page. The closure of the RfC, while not necessarily an abuse of admin rights, also shows poor judgment. I agree that Nemo has done a lot of good work as an admin for this project, but I think removing Nemo's rights is the correct decision here. Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 20:04, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
- And another comment: while I'm sure the English Wikipedia has an excellent set of policies and a charming community, I don't see the need to make Meta look more like the English Wikipedia. Pmlineditor (t · c · l) 20:06, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nemo is an amazingly dedicated contributor. But as general policy, I think a majority of opposing positions, from long-standing participants here, should lead to removal of admin flags. There was no canvassing here; the arguments on both sides seem sincere. Adminship should be no big deal; de-adminship should also be no big deal. Both are reversible in time. –SJ talk 23:16, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I read through the RFdA when Marco Aurelio first asked us too and I was hoping there would be more support for Nemo keeping his flag, because, as most have pointed both there and here, he is a very dedicated and hard-working contributor who does many good things. Still, unfortunately, I see pretty strong evidence in the discussion that he no longer has the faith of the community and should be removed based on the RFdA. Like Sj said, Nemo should definitely feel welcome to reapply again in the future. Cbrown1023 talk 17:49, 22 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Nemo certainly wasn't the only actor in the dramas linked to in voters' rationales, but the sysop tools were indeed utilized as an involved participant and this is generally regarded as unacceptable. As such, I'd have to agree with the previously stated opinions for this RfDa to be successful and suggest that in the future it is best to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest. -- Menti fisto 09:52, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your time and comments. I have closed the request for de-adminship, enacting the result of this discussion. -- MarcoAurelio (talk) 15:33, 23 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it.