Wikimedia Stewards User Group/Reports/2023

Report of the Wikimedia Stewards User Group (WMSUG) for activities from January until December 2023.

Governance

Membership to the User Group is open to anyone interested in steward recruitment, tool development, or any of the other topics included in the user group mandate. Voting membership is restricted to current and former stewards in good standing. In the first quarter of 2023, the annual steward elections within the global Wikimedia community took place, resulting in 3 new stewards. However, 7 stewards resigned during the annual confirmations, none was removed by community and steward consensus without good standing. That is the biggest loss in numbers since the inception of the group. With 4 more resignations since the last report, only 29 stewards remain active as of 29 December 2023. Recruitment for new stewards in 2024 has begun but the low numbers are concerning. The user group remains consensus-driven among members with co-contacts Base and DerHexer.

Communications

Due to the nature of our members who work in security-related fields, an internal wiki was used with some WMF staff members having access where experiences about global abuse was shared (documentation of cases, processes, etc.). We also continued using a private mailing list (steward-l) where Wikimedia Stewards discussed various cases in more than 650 emails in the reported period, less than the 800 messages reported last year.

More than 4,000 tickets were handled in the VRT stewards queues in the reported period (that's two thirds of last year's numbers), mostly queries about previous actions of Wikimedia Stewards. For the first time since the inception of WMSUG reports, the number of open tickets dropped down to zero (from four-digit numbers) and remained at low numbers; while writing this report, less than 200 tickets are open. The low numbers are caused by the fact that Steward clerks were introduced as a group to support active stewards with particular tasks, especially with communications. After the internal decision to try out this well-established model from other wikis like English Wikipedia was made, a test phase successfully took place. As of now, there are six steward clerks. — Besides VRT tickets, more than 1,000 requests have been handled on UTRS.

Since last year, the WMSUG uses an internal mailing list for its members. This sometimes leads to some double communications with the stewards-only mailing list but allowed the group to reach non-steward members for important discussions and decisions. The traffic is low as most conversations take place on stewards-l.

Within the reported period, Wikimedia Stewards advised WMF on several topics on a monthly base and joined additional calls, e.g. 2024 Talking calls with Selena, a call about the upcoming ToU update. We also continued our collaboration with other groups like enwiki ArbCom and MCDC in joint calls. Main talking point has been the upcoming introduction of temporary accounts (formerly known as IP masking) as this will effect stewards and other functionaries the most. Several calls about this topic as well as in-person chats at Wikimania (see below) took place. However, progress on suggested improvements has been slow. Some stewards feel that although we have a close connection to WMF with our regular calls which is attended by staff members from more and more departments, the outcome is not as fruitful as it could be. The number of stewards in these calls remains the same, and it's often the same few individuals.

Online activities

Most standard onwiki activities of Wikimedia stewards are visible on a statistics page: Stewards/statistics. For editcounts of the user group please also have a look at these statistics with about 200,000 edits and log actions in the reported period which is much, much lower than last year where a mass action resulted in more than a million logged actions. It can be observed that Steward requests is getting used more frequently and many requests remain open for a while.

Furthermore, Wikimedia Stewards helped out as scrutineers for several elections, including 2023 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee, the UCoC Revised enforcement guidelines vote and others, as well as observers for various WMF committees. Besides that, we completed annual activities like the admin activity review/2022 for administrators on small wikis and helped out with other global activities, like CentralNotice.

Wikimedia Stewards worked on several tools, scripts, gadgets and MediaWiki code that support their activities (see Phabricator board). The Stewards wizard for easier management of complaints was improved and translated into more languages.

Offline activities

We still hope for our first in-person meeting after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the first one ever after our 2015 gathering in San Francisco. However, for the first time since Wikimania 2019 stewards met in person, at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. Four stewards attended the conference and joined multiple conversations with WMF staff about support for the group with Selena as well as a roundtable discussion about IP masking/temporary accouns. We gave feedback on the slides and attended a session on IP range blocks and joined other conversations and meetups, including a functionaries meetup organized by WMF. Stewards attended regional and local conferences like German WikiCon and WikiCon North America and shared their experiences there. In general, an attendance of stewards at international events can enrich technical and global conversations.

Publications

A presentation about diversity among Wikimedia stewards was held at a German online meeting, slides are available here. A presentation about temporary accounts was held at the annual German WikiCon (slides, video).

Evaluation of the group status

In general, with the new stewards clerks and the well established diverse communication channels, the group continues to professionalize its role and outsources more tasks to support groups like global administrators, global renamers, and such.

While the number of stewards interested in governance is still low but stable, the general number of stewards is shrinking. This is a concern for the overall stability of the group and its important function within the Wikiverse. Although this function is seen and supported by the Wikimedia Foundation in various ways, feedback could be better handled. Otherwise frustration could raise and result in further destabilization of the group.

2024 will be an important year for the future of the global movement and the stewards in their exposed position within.