Meta:Meta–steward relationship

The following page documents an official Meta-Wiki policy.
This page has been developed and approved by the community and its compliance is mandatory for all users. It must not be modified without prior community approval.

Shortcut:
WM:MSR

As a unique project, both the management core of Wikimedia and hosting its own organizations and community, Meta is in a position to both require and foster cooperation between cross-wiki groups such as the stewards, system administrators and Foundation employees as well as the local Meta community. The relationship, therefore, between Meta and those users should be as cooperative as possible while respecting each other's areas.

For the purposes of this page, Foundation employees (staff), system administrators, and stewards will all be referred to as stewards unless specified otherwise.

Logging of actions

If a user of any access-status is capable of performing an action either logged or unlogged, the local community requires that the action be logged unless it is impossible or impractical to do so, or private information about the affected user(s) might be inappropriately revealed. This ensures that all processes are transparent.

Bot policy

Meta-Wiki is both host to and a subscriber of the global bot policy , where certain classes of bots may be flagged as such by the stewards without an explicit local approval discussion. Classes of bots not meeting these requirements are discussed at the appropriate local page.

Sensitive permissions

CheckUser

When a request – either public or private – for CheckUser information is made, those holding the relevant local permissions will handle the request.
In emergencies, or for multi-project CheckUser checks, as in the case of cross-wiki vandalism, stewards may access this tool locally. On completion of their actions, stewards must remove themselves from the CheckUser group and notify the local community or the CheckUser-l mailing list.^[1]
Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedia Foundation system administrators, in the performance of their duties, may need to access and use this tool for technical or legal reasons. This is normally done under the provision of the office actions policy .

Oversight

Similarly to the use of CheckUser tools above, when a request to permanently remove content at Meta-Wiki is made, those holding the relevant local permission will handle the request. In emergencies and cases that require cross-wiki oversighting, stewards are allowed to use the tool. On completion of their actions, they must inform the relevant local rights holders of what they did, so it can be reviewed.

Stewards have full access to the unified login administration system tool which, among other functions, can globally suppress a user name at all wikis, including Meta-Wiki. Stewards, in the performance of their duties, have access to the 'hideuser' tool^[2] and the suppression of relevant logs (such as global account logs) that contain personal information, potentially libelous information or are otherwise blatant attack usernames.

Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedia Foundation system administrators, in the performance of their duties, may need to access and use this tool for technical or legal reasons. This is normally done under the provision of the office actions policy .

Local promotions and demotions

When a local request for permissions closes, only local bureaucrats should determine the outcome of the discussion. Stewards who are not local bureaucrats must avoid using their Meta-Wiki access to promote users, even in cases that are uncontroversial.
Stewards must avoid the use of their tools to create temporary administrators. The community asks that any requests for temporary adminship must follow the established local procedure.

Stewards may immediately revoke adminship from a temporary administrator who performs administrative tasks outside the specific tasks assigned. The former administrator must be notified at their talk page.
Stewards are allowed to handle emergency removal of permissions if needed, but should such an emergency removal of permissions be performed, the action must be noted for further review.

Administrative actions on Meta

Stewards have global access to administrator tools for the duration of their stewardship. Stewards should avoid the use of those tools for regular local Meta-Wiki tasks unless the task is an emergency or uncontroversial. Examples of uncontroversial and authorized actions, for which local administrator permissions are not required, are:

Countervandalism, such as:
- Blocking ongoing obvious vandalism accounts and/or IP addresses
- Speedy deleting obvious vandalism, spam or test pages
Editing the spam blacklist and the title blacklist pages.^[3]

Stewards willing to perform administrative actions other than those listed above must first apply through the proper local procedure.

Exception on global blocks

Stewards have access to the global blocking tool . However, this tool was designed so global blocks do not affect Meta-Wiki, to allow globally blocked IP addresses to make appeals here. Notwithstanding this, if a steward feels that a global block should extend to Meta, they are permitted to set a local block for the same duration and block settings as the global block.

Notes

↑ From global CheckUser policy .
↑ Block or unblock a username, hiding or unhiding it from the public; accessible through the blocking interface.
↑ While these pages are managed by regular Meta-Wiki administrators, stewards in the performance of their duties are fully allowed to make use of these pages without being regular administrators.