UDWiki:Administration/Policy Discussion/Misconduct Changes

The Problem

Misconduct currently only has two options: Misconduct and Not Misconduct; which leaves few room to judge small cases of error in the way the administration team works.

Defining each case between these two options can lead to long and tiring discussions, as the decision will be held as precedent in future similar cases.

There is also little that the community (the users who are not sysop) can do about a case.

The policy

The long discussion problem

To counter the second problem, sysops can readly start a vote on a case after it was created, rather than wait a few days for it to be discussed among its peers. Once atleast 2/3 of the active sysop team has voted (active meaning all sysops who have made an edit to the wiki in the past month before the case started), a decision can be reached.

The few options problem

To counter the first problem, sysops can choose to vote as Not Misconduct, Frivolous Case, Small Misconduct, Misconduct, and Major Misconduct.

Not misconduct are for cases where its clear that the sysop has not abused his powers in any way, nor used his status as a badge of reason.

Frivolous Case are to be issued on cases where the sysop commited a simple mistake, like protecting archive pages and deleting pages which linked to almost nowhere and whose content was erased by the owner, and forgot to notify the action in its proper page. Creation of such cases should be avoided, due its pettiness. Any ruling on cases such as these can not be more than a simple slap in the wrist or a 1 day self-ban (max).

Small Misconduct, like on frivoloous cases, are small cases where the action of the sysop can be easily fixed with little harm done. The sysop admits that he erred, and is willing to accept his punishment. Punishment should not go more than a few days (no more than four) of ban time.

Misconduct are cases where the sysop clearly abused his powers, mostly acting for his own sake. Banning users, deleting pages and images, protecting pages under discussion where he has a vested interest (and doing so in a way that his POV is the one left protected) are example of cases of misconduct. Punishment can be a vandal escalation with additional days of ban time, or a request for having his position evaluated by the community.

Grave Misconduct are cases where there is no excuse for the actions of the sysop. In these cases, demotion should always be part of the punishment, with one or more additional vandal escalations.

Community Input

If one or more sysops defines a case as Misconduct or worse (not counting any sysop who might have crated the case), the community can ask for a evaluation of the sysop. If 10 or more users approve the request, an evaluation of the sysop begins.

The evaluation time lasts for a week, and if he does not get enough support from the community, he loses his loses his administration powers.

A sysop can not be evaluated more than one time every two months (60 days).