Wikimedia Stewards User Group/Reports/2024

Report of the Wikimedia Stewards User Group (WMSUG) for activities from January until December 2024.

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 2024, the annual steward elections within the global Wikimedia community took place, resulting in seven new stewards (two of them returning to this role). That’s the highest number of successful applications since 2020, last time topped in 2015. Around the annual confirmations, three stewards lost their access. Two of them resigned before the confirmation, one of them lost it with good standing after consensus among the stewards and global community. With one more resignation since the last report, only 32 stewards remain active as of 6 January 2025, three more than in the previous report. Recruitment for new stewards in 2025 has begun but the numbers remain low. The user group remains consensus-driven among members with co-contacts Base and DerHexer. The internal “stewards decision” process was not used in 2024, consensus was reached among the group without the need of voting.

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 were 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 500 emails in the reported period, less than the 650 messages reported last year. However, communication heavily increased in some of the other channels (IRC, Discord); more than 15,000 messages can be reported in the internal communications channel with additional 800 in collaboration channels (see below). This is almost twice as many messages than in the year before (~ 8,500 messages).

More than 5,200 tickets were handled in the VRT stewards queues in the reported period (that's 30% more than last year), mostly queries about previous actions of Wikimedia Stewards. The numbers remain low (while writing this report, less than 50 tickets are open), thanks to the support of Steward clerks and individual stewards who heavily help out here. As of now, there are five steward clerks; that's one clerk less who became a steward in 2024. Besides VRT tickets, hundreds of requests have been handled on UTRS. As of now, the internal mailing list for WMSUG members is barely used. Most conversations take place in the other channels as per above.

Within the reported period, Wikimedia Stewards advised WMF on several topics on a monthly base and joined additional calls, especially on the topic of temporary accounts with one permanent steward liaison since the beginning of 2024. Within this year, a couple of Discord channels with the WMF teams (esp. Trust and Safety) as well as other functionaries, checkusers and U4C members were opened and led to a closer collaboration with some of these groups and immediate feedback for developers. In particular the good work around temporary accounts helped overcome last year’s impression that WMF involves stewards in many feedback rounds but doesn't integrate the suggestions. The role of stewards liaisons seems to be useful in general (it also exists for the Ombuds commission) and was proposed for the Product and Technology Advisory Council. The number of stewards joining these calls is still low compared to the number of stewards but a few more seem to be interested in tech- and governance-related conversations now.

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 170,000 edits and log actions in the reported period which is a little lower than last year. However, the dramatic increase of pageviews for the Steward requests pages from 2023 to 2024 (0.6 to 2.6 millon) can record that the overall workload at the frontline is also growing. Furthermore, many actions are not publicly logged because of the nature of these actions or take place in one of the 900+ local wikis where they cannot be counted up.

Beyond these activities, Wikimedia Stewards helped out as scrutineers for several elections, including the 2024 Wikimedia Foundation elections, 2024 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee and Inaugural Administrator elections, Movement_Charter ratification vote and others, as well as observers for various WMF committees. Besides that, we completed annual activities like the admin activity review/2023 for administrators on small wikis and helped out with other global activities, like CentralNotice. For the latter, the WMF has hired a Support Specialist who helped update the usage guidelines and prepared additional steps like trainings, new request templates, etc.

Wikimedia Stewards worked on several tools, scripts, gadgets and MediaWiki code that support their activities (see Phabricator board). However, stewards also had to get familiar with new technical developments like global blocks (alongside old global locks) and temporary accounts which changed our workflows. Thanks to the closer collaboration with WMF, the transitions seem to have run pretty smoothly.

Offline activities

Stewards once again met at Wikimania for internal meetings and exchanges with other groups, in particular functionaries (hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation). More stewards than last year were present at the conference. One of the members of the WMSUG was awarded the 2024 Wikimedia Laureate for their continuous service as a Wikimedia steward. In his speech, wearing a WMSUG shirt, they raised the need for a Steward Conference for offline exchange. With more feedback from the group, the Wikimedia Foundation started preparing a meeting (maybe alongside the U4C) in 2025.

Furthermore, one member of the group was selected to represent the WMSUG at the Wikimedia Summit 2024 where they joined the topic group on Global Council and WMF. When the Movement Charter ratification failed, they also joined mediation conversations between affiliates, WMF and communities at Wikimania (“trilogue”). Stewards attended regional and local conferences like German WikiCon and WikiCon North America and shared their experiences there. It remains valid that an attendance of stewards at international events can enrich technical and global conversations.

Publications

A couple of presentations about temporary accounts have been held not only be WMF staff but also Wikimedia Stewards, e. g. at the Bangla WikiConference, German AdminCon and WikiCon. Furthermore, the first complete list of all global rights and their local impact (here: German Wikipedia) has been presented at the German WikiCon, too (slides), and has been linked at a prominent dewiki info page.

Evaluation of the group status

Where the new stewards clerks were most important (governance) step in 2023, the much closer conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation and other functionary groups in Discord fostered the progress of this group in the last year. With a new Stewards Conference at the horizon, the health of the Wikimedia Stewards User Group and its members seems to be improving.

Nevertheless, with new technical challenges and solutions like temporary accounts, global blocks, etc., the number of tasks and conversations for our group is rapidly growing. And there is still a huge need for new stewards, especially from underrepresented regions, for the daily work. All in all, with the establishment of the U4C, the stewards role seems to be getting more technical than ever before. This clearer focus seems to be more attractive for this role and led to a slight increase in members and participation.

Altogether, 2024 has been a good step forward for the stewards and global community governance. For 2025, we hope that the role of stewards can emerge even further and that we can continue serving the global community in the best possible way.