But what exactly is confusing about the message?

I propose WONTFIX for this. Rare cornercase, plus people should think for a short moment about the consequences if they really want to remove rights from their own account.

(In reply to comment #1)

But what exactly is confusing about the message?

I propose WONTFIX for this. Rare cornercase, plus people should think for a
short moment about the consequences if they really want to remove rights from
their own account.

1. Click button
2. Receive no confirmation message
3. "You do not have permission to do that, for the following reason: ..."

You see *no* potential for confusion in inexperienced users?

Note that I say "inexperienced". I will concede that this would probably be a corner case on a wiki like Wikipedia, for example, where only the most trusted, experienced users would have the necessary userrights, and they would very rarely find themselves in a position to self-demote.

But I frequent Wikia more than I do Wikipedia, and on Wikia it is more of an issue. By default, end users of Wikia only have three user rights available to promote: sysop, bureaucrat, rollback.

Newbie users will create silly duplicate wikis about Pokémon, for example, and in a fit of enthusiasm promote random Wikians they meet who have zero edits on their wiki to admin+bureaucrat.

This can interfere with other aspects of Wikia (like adoption), so the user (who may be very inexperienced himself) goes to UserRights to demote himself, uninterested in the wiki, and finds himself in the trap I described.

As a last word, I take issue with your wording about consequences: you seem to be implying they'll jump the gun and regret it afterwards, which is not the issue being discussed.

Building on my last comment, I should clarify that the silly Pokémon wiki is a tad of a corner case itself, but emphasize that self-demotion is a much more prevalent occurrence in general when we are discussing wiki farms.

I'm an experienced user, and I have found myself auto-demoting for various reasons, and even I have been confused by the message.

Related URL: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/66383 (Gerrit Change I4f42713ccec647b1d6ff11c2714d645973750579)

Change merged.

Very late, but - let me provide an example of this bug in action, to retroactively justify its fix. Note that Wikia uses an old version of Mediawiki.

http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:574680#34

User goes from "bureaucrat" to nothing and cannot read the page, gets confused.