User:SBJohnny/sandbox6

An open letter to our inactive admins
Hello,

You don't know me, because I wasn't all that active on wikibooks a year ago, but I'm the most recently appointed admin, and a wikibookian who doesn't like seeing a lot of bad blood being spilled and sloshed on the books.

I wasn't originally convinced about the need for adding the inactive rules to the administration policy, but became convinced for several reasons, including:


 * 1) Having sysops who aren't present and doing any sysoping poses (in theory) a security risk, should passwords inadvertently be shared or stolen.
 * 2) There's been a lot of work on policy over the past few months, and sysops who've been "out of the loop" might not be aware of what's proper (the obvious "elephant in the room" example being that the administration policy was debated for over a month, and not one of the inactive sysops chimed in).
 * 3) We need more sysops, because we have a huge backlog of sysop chores that need to be done, such as the 3,000+ images that have no copyright status tags. By not listing 10 or 20 sysops who aren't really sysoping (some of the users currently nominated for desysopping have no log entries whatsoever, others seem mostly to have used the tools for their own projects and userspaces), we can be a little more clear about the need for new volunteers.
 * 4) The granting of sysop tools is not a barnstar, but rather are given to people who want to use tham for the benefit of the community. If someone's not using them, then they don't need them, so it's better to try to recruit new people that will use them. There is no "disgrace" involved in desysoping for inactivity: it's just that you're busy elsewhere, so just as giving them is no big deal, giving them up shouldn't be either. If you come back later as an active contributor and want them again, just do an RfA and get them!