Volunteer Response Team/Activity policy

Volunteer Response Team

For prospective volunteers

Access to VRTS facilities such as the ticketing system, wiki, and mailing lists are granted for the primary purpose of responding to emails and inquiries (“tickets”) sent to the general information addresses of the Wikimedia projects. Agent accounts are created and maintained in accordance with the VRTS access policy.

With the exception of ex officio access to private queues for chapters, oversight teams, Wikimedia Foundation staff, and the like, access to the general queues will only be granted as long as the agent remains actively involved in response or management of those tickets. Access to the system solely for viewing tickets or verifying existing permissions is not an acceptable reason to hold an account.

VRTS administrators have access to several reports that analyze agent, ticket and system use and activity, which are regularly used to identify and close inactive accounts.

Keeping only active users in the system serves a dual purpose of (1) improving the security of the system and (2) maintaining morale through a clear understanding of workload distribution, actual active agents and any need for further agent recruitment.

With that in mind the following guidelines apply to all accounts except otherwise noted in the Access policy:

VRTS accounts may be disabled after six months of inactivity. Inactivity for this purpose is defined as no evidence of ticket-related responses or other valid activity for which continued access is needed. Users will be notified via email of the closure of their account.
As a courtesy, the VRTS administrators generally send a reminder email to agents who have not logged in for one month and/or have not answered a ticket in three months of their inactivity.
VRTS administrators also periodically review those agents who occasionally log in but do not answer tickets, or who repeatedly come up in the inactivity reports to determine whether access is still needed.

The VRTS admins only select the VRTS agents that they have the utmost trust in to represent the Wikimedia projects.

Having an VRTS account closed for inactivity does not affect this confidence. Therefore affected users are always welcome to reapply through the normal process at Volunteer Response Team/Volunteering should they wish to become active again.

Reapplications will be reviewed to make sure the agent is still a suitable candidate for VRTS access and to determine what level of access the reopened account will be given.