Stewards

Stewards

• Stewards
• CheckUser
• Suppression
• Stewards' noticeboard

Stewards are users with the permission and authority to use any part of the MediaWiki interface on all WikiTide wikis. Stewards work with communities to address issues facing them locally such as disputes, abusive or disruptive behaviour, as well as global issues such as disruptive behaviour across multiple wikis. This includes global and local right assignment, use of routine administrator and bureaucrat permissions (delete, blocking, etc.) on local wikis and in a global sense (locking accounts, renaming them, etc.) for they are global bureaucrats. Stewards may act as scrutineers on all elections and also oversee CheckUser and Suppression permissions, and do many other things.

On wikis without bureaucrats, Stewards act in their stead. If possible however, Stewards will defer action to local active administration. Stewards are also ex officio bureaucrats on WikiTide Meta.

Appointment

Users may nominate themselves or other users to fulfill the Steward role, or Stewards may call for an election if they, as a group, decide there is a need for more Stewards. After an accepted nomination, self-nomination, or Steward-requested election is called, any WikiTide user who created their account prior to the permissions request in question will be allowed to express positive, opposing, or neutral !votes on the nominee(s). Any other WikiTide users may ask pertinent questions related to a nominee(s)' suitability or otherwise add comments in the comments section of the permission request.

Any issues raised should be acknowledged or fixed by the nominee. If possible, any issues raised should be addressed before the closing of the nomination/election. All requests must stay open for at least seven (7) days but may be closed earlier if it is clear there is no chance of consensus in favor, if the request is malformed, or if the nominee is not eligible (in the latter twoi cases, the request revision may be reverted).

Users may express support, opposition, or abstain from voting, but this alone will not decide the outcome as Stewards hold ultimate discretion in elections. Stewards will close the request taking into consideration the arguments made but at the very least, for a request to be considered successful, there must be at least 20 votes or comments from eligible users and a support ratio of at least 80%.

Eligibility criteria

Stewards are elected by the global WikiTide community. However, the following conditions must be met in order for a user to be eligible to run for Steward. If these conditions are not met, the user may not be a candidate for steward and any support votes will not matter. A candidate must:

• Have at least 1000 total global edits on WikiTide (on more than one wiki, unless that wiki is Meta Wiki) (Note: These edits may not consist of directly copy/pasting content from other wikis, they must be edits done by the user);
• Have had their WikiTide account for at least 6 months; and,
• Be involved in some way in community matters (in discussions on the Community portal, etc.)
• Have two-factor authentication enabled on their user account in order to perform certain Steward-restricted functions
• Have signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) with WikiTide at the time of their promotion as they have access to private user information

Policies

These are some codified policies to which Stewards are bound. Stewards may sometimes bind themselves to unwritten 'conventions' or practices too though that is not a requirement.

Conflicts of interest

Stewards should try to avoid conflicts of interest where possible. In those cases, it is best to leave matters where you're involved up to neutral Steward to avoid even giving the impression of partiality.

Nevertheless, Stewards are humans too and may express their opinions on requests and votes as any other use can. While it is recommended that they leave closing of matters on which they've discussed in the hands of another Steward, they may close so long as the consensus is clear or if no other Steward has (or can) closed the request in a reasonable amount of time.

Consensus

Stewards should not override consensus, or supervote. Stewards must implement consensus and enforce it. If a Steward is unsure about how to proceed, they should ask for help.

Only under very rare circumstances, if the achieved consensus is harmful or deterimental to the project or community, may Stewards override consensus. In those cases, there should be agreement amongst Stewards for the action.

Delegation of rights

In the event of an increase in requests for Steward assistance, Stewards may delegate some of these responsibilities to other users. As an example, routine administrator actions may be delegated to Global Sysops or similar, if a need arises.

Global bureaucrats

Stewards are global bureaucrats. On wikis without any active bureaucrats, Stewards act in their stead and process reasonable requests from local community members and administrators. On wikis with active bureaucrats, Stewards should strive to defer action to local administrators and bureaucrats where possible and should try to only act if there is a violation of global policy, if local administration or the community requests it, or if there is a matter which needs attention, subject to their discretion.

While Stewards cannot be bound by any local wiki policy targetting Steward rights usage, they should be mindful of it and should try to take it into consideration and abide by it as much as possible.

Transparency

Stewards should strive for as much transparency as possible where feasible. Stewards should clearly label their log actions and preferably link to any relevant request if there is any. In private logs (such as the Checkuser or Suppression log), Stewards should make sure to include a clear reason for their action in case a review is done later on.

Removal, confirmation, and re-addition of rights

Inactivity

Stewards who do not participate in the community in some form (responding to questions, dealing with issues, administrative tasks on Meta as a minimum) for 3 months will be deemed inactive and will have their Steward rights revoked. For the purpose of community, this includes all wikis and Phorge.

Revocation of rights

Stewards can have their Stewardship revoked through a vote of no confidence or a request for removal.

• The person starting the vote or opening the request must provide a valid reason for removal of Steward permissions (mistrust, abuse, inactivity, etc.)
• At least 20 users must comment on the vote of no confidence or request for removal (the same number of users required to appoint a Steward)

If at least 50% of user comments are in favor of the removal of permissions, then the Steward shall remove their own permissions upon closure of the vote or have their permissions removed by another Steward.

If Stewards as a group feel that a user is intentionally calling for votes of no confidence or requests for removal without valid reasons, Stewards may decide to ignore requests or votes started by said user. If there is actually an issue, another user may bring it up with Stewards.

Confirmations

Every year, in January, existing Stewards are re-confirmed (excluding those elected in the past 2 months). Users will have a week to submit their comments on the existing Stewards which should focus on relevant factors of them as Steward. After the week concludes, Stewards will cast their votes in favor or against removing a Steward, taking into consideration the comments submitted by the community but retaining their discretion, noting that Stewards often have to make tough calls and that Stewardship is 'typically a position likely to get into trouble'. If the majority of Stewards are in favor of removal, that Steward will be removed.

Other than re-confirmations, Stewards have no term length.

Readdition of rights

A Steward who lost their Stewardship for any reason must successfully re-apply for Stewardship again per the appointment section above.

List of current Stewards

To contact Stewards, if it's a request, use Steward requests. For all other inquiries, please email stewardswikitide.org or contact them individually on their talk pages.

• Page last updated: 10 October 2023
• Total number of stewards: 4

+/-	User name	Languages spoken	Other rights	Libera Chat nickname on IRC
	Agent Isai	en-N, es-N, fr-3	administrator, interface administrator, system administrator	Agent_Isai
	NotAracham	en-N, es-1, ja-1	administrator, global sysop	NotAracham
	Reception123	ro-N, en-5, fr-4	administrator, interface administrator, system administrator	Reception123
	Universal Omega	en-N	bureaucrat, administrator, interface administrator, system administrator	CosmicAlpha

Timeline of past and current Stewards

The following is a chart of stewards.