Admin Forum:What do I do with an inactive founder?

Hi, I just recently took over a wiki and was curious about our founder... he is inactive and rarely even contributes... in fact... the user contributed less than 5 things at the start of the community and has not edited a single page since May of this year. Last edit being in July. He logs on, but doesn't even add to anything on the wiki and will go 2-3 weeks without logging on at a time. What is the general consensus with a situation like this? Would it be possible to have the Founder's Bureaucrat and Admin rights removed since they are not actively involved? The active users of our wiki have discussed this on chat the past few weeks about what we could do. From observation, the Founder is very inactive on most wikis he is on, and he barely contributes to pages other than the social aspect. I'm just confused on what to do, which is why I am seeking opinions from other Admins/Bureaucrats. Thanks,  True   Sephiroth  07:19, September 18, 2012 (UTC)


 * You would need to create a forum or blog post and discuss with the community. Once decieded, send a request to the staff and include a link to the forum/blog in it. 07:28, September 18, 2012 (UTC)


 * UltimateSupreme is correct, but you should probably send this founder a message first, right? It may spurt them into action... :) Starfleet Academy (Messages) 09:53, September 18, 2012 (UTC)


 * One thing I would add to what has already been said is: do you even need to do anything at all? Admins or bureaucrats don't cause any harm by not editing, so there's really no need to remove their rights. I think it's better for them to retain their rights, because they may still wish to edit sporadically, using their admin tools for maintenance every once in a while. Maybe they're not around as often as you like -- but a little help is better than none, right?


 * Whatever you decide to do, you should follow UltimateSupreme's suggestion of creating a blog/forum post for a community discussion. Once the community has agreed to remove rights from someone, or that other people should become admins, use Special:Contact to write an email to Wikia staff, giving a link to the discussion. It's important that the discussion be a blog/forum post. Saying that you had an agreement in chat won't work because there's no record/proof of it. For the purposes of the discussion, staff need to see an actual page on the wiki that has been edited.

Thank you everyone for responding so quickly. To me, an inactive admin or bureaucrat doesn't look good. I would prefer someone that will be actively involved with the wiki. He is also known to be unresponsive through talk messages, but I guess I'll shoot him an email. I believe what I am going to do is hold off for now. He isn't doing anything, and this will give him time to get off his bum and do something. The wiki is generally new and we have plenty of time to grow until then. If by the time we need more admins to manage and this user has yet to become active, I will follow through with a contact to the user, a forum post about removal, and later with a contact to Wikia staff to see if I can possibly get him removed as bureaucrat. Thanks again.  True   Sephiroth  18:53, September 18, 2012 (UTC)


 * I think you're being awfully hasty. You never know why a person's activity drops off. People do have real lives, yanno. Maybe they had a kid. Maybe they lost their job. Maybe they had a health crisis. We've had two admin who were only active in 2005-6 return to us in 2012. And I'm glad we kept them as admin, because their edits this year have been solid. We have several other admin who will walk away for weeks or months at a time, but they still come back to help us out.
 * And ya never know. Something might happen to you. Maybe you'll move to a place without great internet access. You need to think what will happen to your wiki in your absence. If this founder is still around with bureaucrat powers, there's at least the chance that he or she will pop back online long enough to appoint new admin, which means that the wiki will survive until you can get back to it. More to the point, you say that the founder at least logs in every now and again. That'll be more than enough to stop the wiki being adopted out from under the current regime, should something happen to you. 19:13: Tue 18 Sep 2012


 * Yanno, as I look at this more, the more .... political it seems. You do know that you barely qualified for your adoption, right? At the time you made your request, you weren't eligible, because the founder had made an edit less than 60 days previously. It's only because Merrystar prolonged the conversation with you that the adoption tripped over the 60 day mark. I really think you were overreaching when you tried to argue that there was such a thing as a "real" edit, so as to somehow cast aspersions on user talk and user blog edits. The adoption rules do not specify what namespace edits have to be in. You'll find as you go forward as and admin that more and more of your edits won't be in the main namespace. Every edit is "real".


 * I'd have to say that if someone tried to adopt my wiki after about 45 days of inactivity — as you did — you can bet I would have fought that with Wikia staff. A couple of months is nothing. A couple of months is summer vacation! And in fact Dmeans even notified the wiki he had been on summer vacation at a place without WiFi!


 * To my eye, you've handled this whole thing, like a coup in a banana republic.


 * You didn't make a very public announcement of your intention to adopt the wiki. There's not even 48 hours between your announcement and Merry granting you the rights.
 * Your announcement is through blog post, not the forum. Blog posts are kinda hidden. They don't appear on most pages, so there's every chance that you just said to people in chat, "Hey, go put a note at my blog page". Casual users, much less user:Dmeans, would really have no idea that a conversation was ongoing — especially since your site does have forums. The only way I found the conversation was by going through your user contributions. You clearly didn't mean for this to be a public discussion.
 * Incredibly, you didn't even tell Dmeans on his talk page that you were planning to adopt it. Maybe you did by email, but it'd be strange for you to go the email route without saying it straight up to Dmeans on his talk page.
 * Whatever consensus you've achieved at w:c:bravestwarriors:User blog:True_Sephiroth/In need of new adminship/Bureaucrat says only that you're looking to be an "additional bureaucrat". It says nothing about you wanting to strip anyone's powers.
 * You've publicly said exactly three sentences to Dmeans. None of them had to do with taking away the wiki or his powers.


 * So there's no other way to say it: you jacked this wiki.


 * Dmeans sounds like an active guy with a full life beyond Wikia. You need to include the founder of the wiki in your plans — not sideline him like a thief in the night. Remember, the show this wiki is about hasn't even started yet. So it's not really surprising he hasn't made a heck of a lot of edits. Most editors want to watch the series before they start writing articles about it! 20:11: Tue 18 Sep 2012


 * Okay, Czech, let's keep this civil. But I do agree that this doesn't look good, True Sephiroth. You do appear to have made a stealthy grab at power, which was most likely unnecessary. If you had edited solidly for a few months, and then sent a sympathetic message to Dmeans on his talk page including stuff like you had more free time on your hands than him, therefore you could keep the wiki ticking over; he probably would have made you an Admin/Bureaucrat.


 * I have adopted a wiki myself, and the founder hasn't edited since 2008, nor logged in since '09. Over a two-year period he clocked up less than 100 edits in total. Now I haven't removed his user group rights yet, and I probably never will. This is just a respectful thing to do. I'm currently having a disagreement with the founder of another wiki to which I (used to) actively contribute. This ended when I questioned certain poor grammatical and managerial habits that the founder was engaged in. Therefore I was blocked for a short time-out period. My point being is that it can turn ugly, disrupting the wiki in the process.


 * I have two snippets of advice for you True Sephiroth: After sending and Email or a talk page message; I would wait some time before making the assumption that Dmeans hasn't updated his Email on Wikia's system. And secondly, I'd watch your attitude in this matter. For instance &ldquo;this will give him time to get off his bum and do something.&rdquo; I facepalm when I read stuff like this... But Czech has already touched on this so I will say no more. :) Starfleet Academy (Messages) 04:06, September 19, 2012 (UTC)