desysop ability

Recent events (see the English Wikipedia bureaucrat log and [1]) reveal that it's possible for at least one bureaucrat, on en:, to remove sysop access. Questions arise:

  1. Is this possible on all wikis, or just on the English Wikipedia?
  2. Is this possible for all bureaucrats, or is there something about Ed Poor's previous developer ability that allowed him to do this? (He's not a steward as far as I know.)
  3. If the former, who switched this feature on, and why?

Does anyone know anything about this? —Charles P. 20:01, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Apparently Anthere does:


From [2]


It came to my understanding that Ed just unsysoped 4 people on the english wikipedia.
This is not correct. Whatever the reason why he did it (rules for desysoping are not my concern), Ed was not allowed to do it.
First : desysoping should only be done by stewards, and only under strict community approval. In this case, Ed is not steward, so is not allowed to do so.
Second : Ed removed the status with his developer flag, directly in the database. This is again incorrect. Developers should not remove status to editors, unless there is an urgency. And given the names of the people unsysoped, I do not think there was an urgency.
Third : Jamesday indicated me that Ed is not a developer. Him having developer flag is a residue of old times (ah :-)). We try to give developer flag only to developers.
For all these reasons, I asked JamesDay to remove Ed developer flag. Consider it technical cleanup. Ed, I love you very much, you know that do you ? But you are not really a developer, and definitly not a steward. I am sorry Ed.
[. . .]
Anthere 19:56, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

So I have no further questions. —Charles P. 20:20, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Return to "Bureaucrat/2005-03" page.