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Wikipedia:Inactive administrators/2021#April 2021

The following inactive administrator is being desysoped due to inactivity. Thank you for your service.

1. Enchanter (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)

   Last admin action: Dec 2006

— xaosflux ^Talk 01:57, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

There are usually no comments on these desysops purely for inactivity but 14+ years without an admin action and still being an admin has to set some kind of record. Talk about not using the tools. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 18:47, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

I looked yesterday as I was not familiar with this admin, and it immediately became clear why that is. Not the 'crats problem, but I have long felt the activity policy is overly lax. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:53, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

You can use the tools without generating a log entry, such as reviewing deleted or revdel information, although that is more for the benefit of your editing than mopping up. Even AE actions are considered "admin actions" but often do not create a log entry. So in many cases I don't get excited if someone hasn't blocked or deleted anything in a year or two, although to go 14 years without a single logged event, you have to be actively avoiding it. That is the problem with making the rules too strict, a lot of good admin work doesn't create a log entry. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 00:50, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

There is indeed plenty of admin work that does not get logged. Logs are one metric, but one would have to actually look through a user's contributions to search for admin activity that doesn't get logged. That's not unrealistic. I went back a decade in this user's contribs and didn't see anything that could be construed as "unlogged admin activity". It took a couple minutes. You can tighten the rules without equating "admin activity" to "logged admin activity"; we already do this for crats and it's still very lenient. But I don't particularly buy the argument that we can't do so because someone could be viewing deleted content without any evidence of admin activity. I don't think an inactive admin should retain the bit by virtue of viewing deleted content and nothing else. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 04:12, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

I agree with that, I just wanted to be clear that you can't look only at the logs. I wouldn't want to see the pendulum swing too far in the other direction, but yes, if you're going to have the bit, you should use it more than your own editing convenience. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 11:25, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Support desysop per standard practice, and even more so because of the cogent analysis by Swarm. A person who is not now contributing to the administration of the encyclopedia should no longer retain the right to view deleted content. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 04:23, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

While there's no need to vote, if you want to discuss improving the inactivity policy you can check Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Change to sysop activity requirements. User:力 (power~enwiki, π, ν) 05:01, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Wow, what a terrible page. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 06:37, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

just to circle back around to the logged actions, yes there are many things an admin can do that do not generate a logged action. The current standard, (which I proposed because it seemed achievable), is that you only need to make one logged action every five years, and to not go more than one entire year without making an edit of any kind to retain the tools forever. We need't be nearly as strict as the functionary activity guidelines, but if you are actually doing admin work, you're going to need the tools more than once every five years. Viewing deleted content is a good example. If you're doing that, for five years, and don't find a single opportunity to restore a page or block someone for an edit that was recently deleted, what the heck are you doing? Beeblebrox (talk) 20:03, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

• I am looking at the list for next month and wondering, is it an exception or a sign of things to come. Usedtobecool ☎️ 06:56, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  12 is high, it was only 10 the same month last year, and that was a heavy month. But last August it was 13, so this is not a record. As usual one expects that most of them will do an edit or two this month and come off the desysop list for another year. If we changed the rules to also desysop admins with fewer than 100 edits or logged actions in the last 6 years we would either lose several of these or see them become a little more active. ϢereSpielChequers 14:05, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  Looks like four of them have not used tools in five years or more, so they already are not really admins. Factor that in and it's less alarming. The overall number of permanent desysops via the five year rule seems to be trending down, but that's a bit of a spike. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:06, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  I've mentioned this on a few talk pages, but you probably have 50 people doing the majority of the admin work at any given time, and another 150-200 who are involved to some degree in admin-type work either through commenting on boards, working in niche admin areas in addition to content, etc. The groups are somewhat fluid, but we're doing absolutely fine in keeping up the core number of people and replacing people in those group via RfA as attrition occurs. Anyway, these type of discussions usually lead to handwringing that we're losing so many people and RfA isn't replacing them, but when you look at it through a lens of "are we replacing the number of active people who we are losing?" The answer is very likely "Yes". TonyBallioni (talk) 20:21, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  I agree with Tony's point about how many active admins we have at a given moment. However, his analysis that we're doing just fine is, I think, incorrect. 50 admin doing all the work is a bit misleading because it's not like they're all doing a bit of everything. Most admin work an area or two. Many processes are working only because we have 1, maybe 2, admin doing all the necessary work there and if that were to stop it's not at all immediately apparent that one of the 150-200 semi-active admin would be able to just step into the breach. Adding more admins don't cost us anything and provide us needed spare capacity. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 21:36, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  I don't disagree that adding more admins is a good thing. I just don't think that the usual fear over large amounts of inactivity desysops points to anything other than the 750 or so admins who aren't doing much anyway decreasing. TonyBallioni (talk) 22:08, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  • The institutional memory concern you bring up is definitely worth consideration. I think it's most acute with bot operators, where losing a single editor often leads to unmaintained bots that die and cause problems. Part of the solution needs to be improving documentation, so that when an editor goes away another can more easily pick up the baton. As for the "cost" of having more admins, it's mainly that it reduces security and opens the door for abuses if we set the bar too low. But more generally, I agree we could invite more editors to be admins and still be fine. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 22:13, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  The point when we desysop an admin for inactivity is not the moment when that admin ceased to be active. If we are going to measure the core group that Tony talks of that is a smaller group than Wikipedia:List_of_administrators/Active as that is a list of admins who have made 30 edits in the last two months - The vast majority of admin actions in the last two months will have been done by a subset of that group. But to address Beeblebrox's point, the problem is not when someone goes 12 months without an edit. The problem comes at least 12 months earlier when an active admin moves on to another hobby, and though the overall editing community is slowly growing, we aren't recruiting enough admins to replace those we lose. At about twenty new admins a year we would need the average admin to be active for 25 years to maintain a cadre of 500 active admins. I don't see that happening. ϢereSpielChequers 22:51, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

  @Usedtobecool: it is normal for a new list to have many names on it, for example in Feb there were 7 admins (and a bot) listed, only 1 admin ended up getting removed. The rest made at least one edit or action that stopped the removal process. — xaosflux ^Talk 20:38, 4 April 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Carlossuarez46 closed by motion

The Arbitration Committee has, by motion, temporarily removed the administrative rights of Carlossuarez46 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log). The announcement of the motion was made at ACN here. Please remove Carlossuarez46's administrative rights at your earliest convenience. For the Arbitration Committee, GeneralNotability (talk) 02:41, 8 April 2021 (UTC)

Done, per ArbCom motion: [1]. SilkTork (talk) 08:37, 8 April 2021 (UTC)