Talk:Volunteer Response Team/Archives/2021

Page doesn't say how OTRS admins are appointed

Hi,

While working on a diagram of French Wikipeda roles (commons:File:Frwiki group interactions.svg), I realized that OTRS#OTRS_administrators doesn't explain how OTRS admins are appointed. I thought they were appointed by the WMF itself, but Q9 of otrswiki:OTRS_Q&A seems to indicate that OTRS admins are coopted.

@Krd and Ruthven: could you clarify it for me? And is it possible to add this info to the description?

Kind regards (and happy new year!), — Jules ^Talk 12:34, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

They are coopted. --Krd 13:01, 3 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Krd:. Is that possible to write it on OTRS#OTRS_administrators? Regards, — Jules ^Talk 14:21, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Please feel free to do so. --Krd 14:25, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

Migration process

OTRS is being renamed after the the software transition from OTRS to Znuny. A team of volunteers will be updating the many references to OTRS across our projects. Meanwhile, please help us to update the translations here on Meta, but please leave the pages as they are for now; the team managing the migration process and I will be working on an orderly, comprehensive process in the coming weeks to ensure everything ends up where it should be.

In English, we will be using the name Volunteer Response Team (VRT) for the team, and Volunteer Response Team Software (VRTS) for the software. This will ensure we do not have to do this process again if we move to different software in the future. We will be developing additional naming guidelines, but we intend for other language communities to continue to be able to use their own names if they wish (just not "OTRS").

You can follow developments on Phabricator at phab:T280392, and more specifically for Meta at phab:T280395 and phab:T280396.

Again, please don't start moving or updating anything yet (just the translations when they are made available by the translation admins). If you have any questions, you can ask here or using any of the (newly named) VRT contacts.

Cheers! --Ruthven (msg) 07:48, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

pause please @Ruthven: Who is the "we" you mention? Members of the group have expressed interest in managing the name as a community decision. See past discussion Talk:OTRS/Archives/2019#Proposal_for_name_change_-_"Wiki_client_services". I expect that if we call for discussion about the name of the group then we will get multiple proposals and probably some interest in trying to find a name which works across languages. Who all do you know that is organizing the rename? Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:08, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: The VRT name in English is already adopted by the English speaking community (see w:en:Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team). Of course we intend for other language communities to continue to be able to use their own names if they wish, but not "OTRS" as we're not using this software anymore, and "Znuny" should not be chosen by the communities, otherwise we've to rename everything every time we change the mailing software! Ruthven (msg) 17:10, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

Permissions@

Is there any reasons that permissions@ is not included in OTRS#Permissions?

Also https://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_email_addresses have many more mentioned that is listed here. --MGA73 (talk) 14:41, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Following ticket links from nonOTRS members

Hello there! I'm an interface and normal admin of SqWiki and SqQuote. I deal with the technical part in our communities where I try to automatize things and create newuserfriendly working interfaces. Lately I so happened to have a request for review on my talk page for a specific wikipage which came from a specific OTRS ticket. Together with the request I had also the link to the said ticket posted, something like [[:ticket:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]]. Now, this is not the first time I see this practice. I've stumbled upon other users' talkpages on similar situations and being curious, I've clicked on the mentioned link. They've always led me to a login screen of Znuny LTS which asks for a username, password and a 2FA token, of which I have none, naturally, not being a member of the OTRS team. And at first it was confusing to see it, given that I knew nothing of Znuny LTS and at the eyes of a ignorant person on the subject it looks like a totally unrelated/random page to get by following wiki redirections. Then I saw the Meta Wiki logo on its tab on my web browser and read a bit here about the OTRS infrastructure and understood what was going on. I'm yet to deal even once with the whole OTRS system but I'd suggest that the ticket link practice needs to change a bit. Either the redirection page must show something specific to the ticket itself (whatever it may display without violating the privacy rules, maybe some restructured information) other than just the login screen or at least the login screen should indicate some Wiki correlation (logo, text) and/or come equipped with an "error message" or notice explaining why the user is viewing that screen and maybe redirecting to the specific pages here explaining the OTRS system. This would make the experience less confusing for people not related to OTRS which happen to come by these links either by chance or by being presented to them as part of specific requests. - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:26, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

Again, out of curiosity, after finishing writing this message, I was looking at other discussions on this page. I clicked on this link: https://otrs-wiki.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_email_addresses, which is located on the discussion just prior to mine. That led me on a Special Page on OTRS Wiki which informs me that Login is required and I need to log in if I want to see the content of that or any other page on that wiki, naturally, given that the aforementioned wiki is private. That again can be confusing from the eyes of someone who knows nothing of the whole OTRS subject but, at least, this time the overall infrastructure is way more informative compared with the plain login screen on Znuny LTS. I should also clarify that I'm not asking for more transparency in a work which should be private. It's just the "semi-private" approach that may appear to be confusing for "outsiders" who are taught to follow links in all their wiki-interactions and on these situations are greeted by "obscure login screens". - Klein Muçi (talk) 23:57, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

•  Support I sent request for support to Albanian language Wikipedia and referenced the ticket. The least kind of intervention that we should plan is that tickets should link to some kind of explanation of how they work. I know that we do not have documentation in place for this, but we have millions of links to tickets on Commons and thousands elsewhere, and people of all languages need some brief explanation. For now I think it is enough to recognize the issue and agree that eventually we should provide more information. I am not sure how to organize the discussion to decide what to do. Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:06, 19 May 2021 (UTC)

We're looking into whether there's an easy way to do this. Emufarmers (talk) 19:31, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Rename from OTRS to VRT or ???

two otrs relaxing 🦦

In 2019 I proposed a rename of OTRS. In that discussion there was both support and opposition of a rename to "Volunteer Response Team".

The new situation is that the Wikimedia Foundation renamed the group name to "VRT" as described in phabricator:T280392 after retiring support of the OTRS branded software in favor of another proprietary brand called Znuny.

For Wikimedia community projects the standard is that the community itself can set its own names.

1. What should the name of this community be?
2. Does anyone have other comments about the name of this community?

Some previously proposed options:

1. VRT, the default set by the Wikimedia Foundation
2. Volunteer Response Team
3. Volunteer Email Response Team
4. VERT
5. OTRS
6. Email Help Team
7. Wikimedia Email Response Team

Other options:

1. Any new name that anyone proposes
2. Call for further discussion about naming

Participants in the last discussion included

• @Base, Nosebagbear, Gaelan, Operator873, Platonides, and Krenair:
• @Glane23, Barkeep49, Ganímedes, DutchTom, Nick, and Vermont:
• @AfroThundr3007730, AntiCompositeNumber, Anachronist, and Sphilbrick:
• @Cohaf, Moheen, Bradv, Glane23, Ammarpad, NickK, and Steinsplitter:
• @Doc James, RhinosF1, Vogone, Ajraddatz, Nemo bis, GreenMeansGo, and Aldnonymous:

I did not feel that this discussion should be a request for comment because I felt that a large discussion about the name would be excessive. However, this is an issue which affects many thousands of Wikimedia editors who type and speak the name of this group routinely. Blue Rasberry (talk) 23:42, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

• If we can have OTRS, than that saves issues in my view in switchover despite some inaccuracy. If it's no longer viable, than VERT would be least objectionable to me Nosebagbear (talk) 23:47, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
• I'm not sure I understand the question but I have long favored Volunteer Response Team / VRT as clear to our users rather than to us. Basically anything but OTRS. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:56, 2 June 2021 (UTC)
• The fact that we are not using OTRS makes my 2019 argument not really valid anymore. However, I would like clarify that ex-OTRS is used not only by volunteers, for instance, chapter queues are also often operated by staff. If we are speaking about OTRS as a right (e.g. a chapter staff member answering emails in Znuny should get this right), putting Volunteer in the name is not really a good idea. I would rather go for WERT (Wikimedia Email Response Team) — NickK (talk) 08:30, 3 June 2021 (UTC)
• As in 2019, I'm good with either "VRT" or "VERT", understanding that there would need to be some communication to the community about changing over from OTRS to <"NewName">. Geoff ^{Who, me?} 12:23, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi, 2 clarifications:

• (1) The current name is actually "Volunteer Response Team" and that name has been widely used since 2009 - I believe the wikipages are now at "VRT" simply because we tend to use acronyms around here, and that's the likely way everyone will refer to the group, in the future.
• (2) The Wikimedia Foundation did not decide anything here; Keegan and I are just helping to facilitate change management; the page-moves on June 2 were only attached to my username because I filed the request for help at phab:T284118 (pages with 500+ subpages require dev-assistance).

Hope that helps. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 3 June 2021 (UTC)

VRTS

VRTS! Blue Rasberry (talk) 00:04, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Danger threats send to emergency@wikimedia.org

Some time in the memorable past there was a ticket sitting around long enough for me to realize that I saw and passed it over for its unusual characteristics, and which I expect other people saw and passed over for the same reasons.

I will describe it as a message containing an unusual claim that someone was in threat of danger. I addressed the issue by forwarding it to emergency@wikimedia.org and now am thinking about it.

Here is our community consensus: if anyone writes in saying that they are in physical danger of any kind relating to Wikipedia or Wikimedia projects, then do not reply. Instead send it to the Wikimedia Foundation Trust and Safety team. If for whatever reason the message seems unusual, or there is a long message with lots of content but also contains someone talking about being in physical danger, then ignore everything except the part about the danger. On that basis of mentioning danger, send it to the Trust and Safety team.

Advocating for the community here, it would be ideal if we had the resources to get data about such tickets so that we can have appropriate conversations about the safety of support agents here. Right now when any such ticket gets forwarded, that becomes the memory of the individual agent and not de-identified common knowledge for our agent volunteer community. I am raising this because the nature of this system is that agents typically take the same actions in the same situations, but we do not have a way to workshop odd cases as a group. I would like more of a forum for discussions of patterns of issues.

If anyone has other views about forwarding email like this then share what you can. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:38, 17 June 2021 (UTC)

Question

If I sign up, do I have to reveal my name to the public, or can I just end emails in: Kind Regards, SHB2000. I'm quite conservative of my name, as I've already revealed enough information about myself, and I still want to keep my details personal (to make it clear, I don't trust even the most trusted like Stewards with my name). Cheers, SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 11:08, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

You must provide your real name to admins of VRTS. But in emails you can use "real-sounding" pseudonym (first name + last name).—Iluvatar (talk) 11:33, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

You don't have to provide your real name to us anymore. Emufarmers (talk) 20:15, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Okay. Just wondering. Might join in 2 or 3 years time when my schedule gets a bit more free. SHB2000 (talk | contibs | en.wikivoyage | en.wikipedia) 01:52, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

abuse on info-en@wikimedia.org

(moving from Meta:RfH  — billinghurst sDrewth 17:35, 15 July 2021 (UTC)])

I discovered two days ago that someone had created an article on es.wiki with my personal information (name and surname) under the title "payaso violador" ("rapist clown"). Even though the page was deleted, it still appears on search engines. I immediately sent an email to info-en@wikimedia.org, asking how to deal with this.

Today I got a response in Spanish. In her email, the wikimedia volunteer called my situation "buena mierda" ("good shit") and accused me of being a liar and a sockpuppet. I must admit, I was not expecting such a response from Wikimedia's help line.

The email was signed by Valeria Domínguez. I would please like to know how to file a complaint against this volunteer, as I don't think she's qualified to help anyone. Thank you, Atón (talk) 16:40, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

@Atón do you know the ticket number? It should be included in the reply you got DannyS712 (talk) 18:32, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

This would indeed be very concerning, I would note that you messaged the en-wiki queue, about an article in Spanish - presumably it was passed onto the info-es queue Nosebagbear (talk) 18:46, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

The reply included no ticket number. It comes indeed from the email info-es@wikipedia.org, even though my mail was directed to Wikimedia in English. I agree it is concerning, what can be done about it? Atón (talk) 19:07, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Have you checked the subject header - when you got it sent back, it should include something like #2021071510007976 in it. I believe one of VRT admins will take a look, but if they need to start doing searches for key terms, rather than directly finding the ticket, it may take them a while.

It turns out we do have an email address for things like this - volunteers-otrs(at)wikimedia.org (obviously replace the @ ), may be a good followup route Nosebagbear (talk) 20:15, 15 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I've looked again and there is no ticket number to be found, I guess Spanish Wikipedia just doesn't bother with that kind of luxuries. I will forward the email to the otrs address. Thanks again. Atón (talk) 04:28, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

@Atón sorry, it's volunteers-vrt@ now. Emufarmers (talk) 19:48, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I was the agent who attend the ticket. We can openly try his concerns here, if he wants. The ticket number is: ticket:2021071310011634, and the article he named is about another user, infinite blocked from es:WP: Diegusjaimes. Regards. --Ganímedes (talk) 20:56, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

The title of the article was “Diegusjaimes payaso violador” and the body of the article included my personal information, as I have disclosed it in my user page. When I asked for help, Ganímedes saw in this obvious case of vandalism proof enough that I am a sockpuppet of Diegusjaimes and accused me accordingly. I am utterly disgusted by this use of the Wikimedia's help line and I hope measures are taken. By the way, I contacted Google and the article's caché has been taken down. That is not what Ganímedes told me in her insulting response, which stated that it was “inevitable” that my name would appear linked to the words “rapist clown”. Absolutely disgusting. Atón (talk) 21:45, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

Page move

I've proposed moving this page to Volunteer Response Team to avoid the use of a non-obvious acronym (people got used to OTRS, they shouldn't have to get used to 'VRT' and 'VRTS' when the expansion of the acronym isn't that long). The move should include all translations and subpages. It would bring it into alignment with the terminology on other wikis (see sitelinks at Wikimedia VRTS (Q4063423). I also raised this for discussion at phab:T280392. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:03, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

• Support I previously raised this, and my observation was that there are no strong feelings about a rename. The name you propose is best for the reason you say. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:21, 23 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support. --Krd 05:43, 24 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 22:26, 25 July 2021 (UTC)
• Support: I wouldn't know what a "VRT" is unless I was already on that page. It would be fine as a shortcut, but not for a page title. Template:Move appears to have some shortcomings, which I will raise on its talk page there. — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR, USA (talk) 00:11, 20 August 2021‎ (UTC)
• Moved Seems sensible, and with VRT admin endorsement. Please @Mike Peel, Krd, ProcrastinatingReader, and CJDOS: check is there anything broken after the move. I left a redirect behind just in case. Thanks. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 07:55, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

  Oops, "This translatable page consists of over 500 pages. Moving this many pages has been found to be unreliable. Please contact a system administrator to do this via a maintenance script." - will ask on SRM or maybe a phab task is needed. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 07:58, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

I noticed that the page redirect appears to be backwards from the proposal. — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR, USA (talk) 08:02, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Yes it is, however, that isn't what blocking the move. Some sort of system limit is blocking (as I tried to delete the redirect but that doesn't seem to solve / cause the problem). @CJDOS Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 08:05, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

+ I read through the phab ticket, there seems opposition on phab. Here it seems there is consensus but then phab seems to have some valid points. I will remain the closure of the move request here on meta as successful per on wiki cosnensus, but if it is denied on phab I will respect it too (per the usual limit of configuration changes or etc longstanding limitations). Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 08:18, 21 August 2021 (UTC)

Commented on the phab task for help. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:22, 22 August 2021 (UTC)

@Camouflaged Mirage @ProcrastinatingReader Hello, I just saw phab:T290083 got created about this. Note that this page, VRT, has many subpages. Should we move them as well?

Also ping the other discussion participants: @Krd @CJDOS. Martin Urbanec (talk) 15:39, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

@Martin Urbanec Using my public account as my 2FA device isn't with me right now, thanks for the phab task. I will think the subpages should be moved (like the other languages subpages). But as usual, your opinion will be much valued and appreciated. CM-Public (talk) 17:28, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

┌───────────────────────┘
I am used to editing Wikipedia. When a page is moved there, all the subpages and talk pages move with it. Redirects are automatically created, but not guaranteed for all instances. While much of this is automated, it is the user's responsibility to check that any necessary links to the page have been updated if it does not redirect. Yes, move all subpages of VRT → Volunteer Response Team, leaving redirects. It might be helpful to turn the vacated VRT into a shortcut on the new page so users can still use VRT to link to the new page. — CJDOS, Sheridan, OR, USA (talk) 18:48, 31 August 2021 (UTC)

Thanks @Martin Urbanec for the move. I moved the talkpages and re-marked for translation. Is there any more cleanup to do? Thanks so much for the assistance as sysdev. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:05, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

@Camouflaged Mirage I hope not. Things might break, as always when you move a translatable page (as it has no redirects by default due to system limitation), so just that. Martin Urbanec (talk) 13:33, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

I also hope so. If there are anymore things that needs admin help, do ping me if needed. Seems resolved onwiki too for now. Camouflaged Mirage (talk) 13:39, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Permission provided for images uploaded by User:D'Youville College?

D'Youville College has uploaded many images (e.g., this one) and it looks like they intended to provide VRT volunteers with (a) evidence that they own the copyright and (b) evidence that they've released the images under an appropriate license. It's not clear from the descriptions of the images that the evidence was ever provided. Can someone please look into this? Thanks! ElKevbo (talk) 22:11, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

@LKevbo: I suggest place this on the VRT noticeboard at commonswiki. Stang 14:19, 9 December 2021 (UTC)