K6ka's Wiki:Stewards

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Yes check.svg This page documents a policy on K6ka's Wiki
Policies provides a guideline that all editors should normally follow. Changes to it should reflect consensus.
Walnut.svg This page in a nutshell: The steward user flag is given exclusively to the founder of the wiki, and gives them the ability to add or remove users from any other user rights group.

Steward is a special user group that permits its members to grant and revoke the administrator, bureaucrat, bot, and rollback user flags from any other user on the wiki. Stewards retain their tools indefinitely, and the flag cannot be given or revoked from anyone, not even by other stewards, except by ShoutWiki Staff.

The steward flag on ShoutWiki is given automatically to the user who founds a wiki; this means that a user with the steward flag is considered to be the founder of the wiki. The founder of K6ka's Wiki is K6ka (verify).

The steward flag also exists on Wikimedia Foundation projects as a global user flag that grants its members both administrator and bureaucrat access to all Wikimedia wikis, and are permitted to use their tools during an emergency, to assist a smaller wiki that does not have any active administrators or bureaucrats, or on other special occasions. Wikimedia Foundation stewards are different from stewards on ShoutWiki; Wikimedia Foundation stewards do not have steward access to ShoutWiki websites, and ShoutWiki stewards do not have steward access on Wikimedia Foundation websites. See Meta:Stewards for information about Wikimedia stewards.

Steward policy[edit source]

The steward is considered to be equal to other users in the vast majority of circumstances. They may not use their tools to gain advantage in a dispute they are involved in, and are expected to use their tools in accordance with all the other policies.

The steward may not revoke the user rights of any other user without good reason. Unless it is an emergency or unless it is suspected that the target accounts have been compromised, all user right removals should have been discussed by the community beforehand.

Stewards and arbitration[edit source]

The steward, being the founder of the wiki, may be called upon during the final step of the dispute resolution process. The steward should only be invoked during emergencies or special circumstances, or after all other attempts at resolving the dispute have failed. The steward is expected to weigh both or all sides of the dispute appropriately, and to use fair and rational judgement in determining a remedy. At the final step of the dispute resolution process, any remedies enacted by the steward are considered to be binding.

The importance of stewards[edit source]

During the early stages of a wiki where there may be few or no other members, stewards play a crucial role in setting the foundations of a wiki. Wielding near-absolute power enables them to make changes quickly. The steward may set a few groundwork policies without community discussion in order to get the wiki started.

As the wiki grows in size and membership, stewards should play a gradually declining role in the administration of the community, as other users are given administrator and bureaucrat rights. The steward is still encouraged to participate on the wiki, but should permit the community to grow on its own. Some founders of wikis, such as Jimmy Wales on Wikipedia, are generally absent from most community processes, and are only called upon to resolve the rare few, "irresolvable" cases. It is also possible for the founder's authority to be overruled by the community; for example, in August 2009, the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee found Wales to be in violation of the local blocking policy, and acknowledged his voluntary renouncing of the use of the block tool.[1]

On K6ka's Wiki, given the wiki's nature, the steward of the wiki should continue to participate proactively in community processes.

References[edit source]