Wikipedia:Requests for de-adminship

Throughout the history of the project, there has been a convention that adminship may be removed involuntarily only in cases of clear abuse. Users have proposed a variety of processes to ensure that admins have the continued support of the community, but none has gained widespread acceptance. Some administrators will voluntarily stand for reconfirmation under certain circumstances; see .

Through 2003, there had been only one case where adminship was revoked. Since 2004, the Arbitration Committee has dealt with cases involving abuse of adminship, both through review of de-adminships imposed in emergencies and through removal of adminship as a remedy in an arbitration proceeding.

There have also been cases where users have voluntarily relinquished adminship, and there have been cases where adminship has been suspended temporarily to enforce a cooling-off period in conflicts between admins. Throughout the history of the project, some purportedly voluntary de-adminships have taken place in the presence of a growing consensus that adminship may not be appropriate for the affected user. The arbitration committee has taken the view that users voluntarily resigning their adminship in such a circumstance may not automatically request it back and must go through the regular processes.

Unless otherwise mentioned, users are free to reapply at WP:RFA at any time. Those users desysopped by the Arbitration Committee may also appeal to that Committee.

Several users have been de-sysopped for various reasons. Some administrators have resigned or lost their rights after a long period of inactivity. They are listed at .

As noted in the cases above, revocation of adminship was previously handled:

Several proposals for alternative or expanded desysopping protocols have been considered by the community. In general, none has achieved a consensus to enact.

There have also been a number of policy proposals to revoke adminship from user accounts of people who no longer participate in the project, for example and . These early proposals lacked widespread support, but an RfC running through June 2011 at decided on removal of adminship after a year of total inactivity, recoverable at any time upon request. In December 2012, the requirement to undergo a renewal RfA was imposed on former admins who have been inactive for more than three years, at . A set of proposals to increase the minimum activity requirements was rejected in December 2015.

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