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User:TenOfAllTrades/CDAresponse

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Flaws in this process noted by TenOfAllTrades

The nature and development of the CDA process

Issues of procedural fairness

By far my greatest concerns about this process turn on its gross unfairness to its participants — especially the administrator being examined. The proponents of the process have been very concerned about creating a process which is very rapid, which has a low barrier to entry, which sysops should find genuinely threatening, and which has a 'democratic' appearance. Unfortunately, the result is a process that does not contemplate an administrator who wants to defend his actions, situations where there is misconduct by multiple parties (particularly by the nominators), or any interest on the part of participants in examining the evidence or discussing the situation.

The final accounting

The way in which CDA proposes to close its discussions is flawed and prone to failure.

The role of Bureaucrats

By far the most visible role of Bureaucrats on Wikipedia is in the evaluation of Requests for Adminship and the promotion (or not) of new admins. They have both the technical and policy means to grant the sysop bit within the framework of existing policy. What they cannot do - under policy and by deliberate design of the wiki software permissions - is remove the sysop bit once granted.

What this CDA proposal aims to do is grant bureaucrats a new power to enact desysopping decisions. This represents a substantial expansion and shift in their powers and responsibilities.

Simpler approaches have not been tried

The proponents of CDA have spent a substantial amount of time and effort to construct this elaborate proposal, but we are still left with the serious flaws detailed above. More unfortunately, they have rejected any suggestion that their goals could be accomplished by different, simpler means. Indeed, I believe it is possible to achieve the goals of this process without any need to write new policy at all.