Board Thread:Community Announcements and Events/@comment-4799587-20140912224150/@comment-25401182-20140913025659

We've got someone fighting cancer and you want to take her admin away because she hasn't been on a wiki for a while? Do you have any idea what cancer actually is, or do you think she's just ignoring the wiki because she feels like it?

I'd assume that contributing to a wiki or giving its other contributors an explanation for her continued inactivity is the farthest thing from her mind right now, as it should be.

You don't take something away from someone because they're fighting cancer and aren't contributing because of it. You don't say "well when you decide you want to come back you can have your rights back", you tell her "they'll still be there if you're ever able to return." She shouldn't have to go through the process of getting them all over again if/when she is able to return to the wiki.

Admin rights aren't there for a select group of people who need to be active all the time to have. That's not the point of a wiki. The point of admin rights would be to give as many trustworthy people as possible the ability to make the wiki better if they are able to. It's literally the entire point of crowd-sourced knowledge. That means they should be revoked only if a current admin has been shown to be using their privileges in a way that harms the wiki. Inactivity does not actively harm the community or the wiki itself, and that's why once you get flagged, you get to retain that status even if you're inactive for a time.

Again, I think it should go without saying that inactivity due to cancer shouldn't lead to the removal of those rights anyway.