User blog comment:Zane T 69/Wiki Improvements/@comment-778071-20160626023744/@comment-778071-20160627124632

@Zane: Your stance on sysops is somewhat naive. To be clear, "why we sysop users" and "why we keep users sysopped" are very different things. Of course, when a user runs a request for adminship, one of the requirements is that they be active contributors at that point of time. Why would we want to sysop anyone who is bordering on inactivity and seems uninterested in contributing to the Wiki.

So let's consider hypothetically a user who is successfully sysopped and then edits diligently for a few months before falling into inactivity. What then - do you desysop him because he's disappeared for some time? If you answer yes, what if I told you the user's fallen ill and is under a crippling medical debt? Or he's on a 6-month tour around the world, and can't wait to get back to editing, once he finishes his journey in Rome. Perhaps more mundanely, he's a student in the heat of preparing for his finals, and he will return to the Wiki when it's summer break. Are you claiming that these users have somehow 'betrayed the trust' of the community because like any ordinary person, they had real-life matters to attend to? The sysop position has some obligations in the sense that yes, if I'm on the Wiki and someone reports a vandal to me, I am obligated to use the tools entrusted to me by the Wiki to deal with the vandal prevent further harm. But if you request that I go through all the speedy deletion candidates, and maybe I just don't want to. I'm on a break from the Wiki, and I don't feel like it right now. So what - are you going to fire me?

Heck no, I'm not paid a dime, this is not my job. I am a volunteer; I edit the Wiki for fun and when I have the time. I have a few extra tools to help me in my volunteering, and a higher standard is generally expected from me because of my experience. We are all volunteers. To not be active on a Wiki is not the same as having no interest in contributing to the Wiki at all. Life happens. I edit because it gives me joy to contribute to a knowledge base that others can use. Anyone with adult responsibilities understands that while it would be nice for us to have the time to contribute every day, this is not a luxury we can always afford. Sometimes, for reasons beyond our control, we have to step away from the Wiki for a period of time.

For most Wikis, desysopping admins after a long period of time (e.g. 1 year) is carried out because of security concerns, lest the admin's account be used to damage the Wiki. It is not a matter of loss of trust by the community, and such users are allowed to return (if they ever do) and request their tools from an active bureaucrat without having to go through an RfA again.

Sysops- The position does meet your requirements/obligations, and workload points. Why would this wiki want admins who do nothing of use, while the wiki gets ignored? They gained the communities trust, then threw it away, by ignoring them. The trust of the community is the requirement obligation. Accepting a position and then, as a sign of poor judgement not doing the duties that come with it, are plenty reasons for demotion. I'm saying if they wont use the powers given to them, by the community, for the communities that gave them. They don't deserve them, they betrayed that trust, and left this wiki vulnerable to vandals.

p.s. Aaron Swartz's logic is pointing towards a trend in Wikis. An exception to the trend does not disprove the latter, as trends describe general tendencies, not absolutes.