User:Fr33kman/SP

Policies

Don't override consensus

Stewards should not override consensus, such as whether or not a user should be promoted. Their task is to implement valid community consensus within the bounds of the Foundation's goals. If there are any doubts as to whether or not an action should be performed, stewards should not act unless it is an emergency situation requiring immediate action or there are no active local users to do it.

Stewards should always be neutral. They can vote in elections, but when executing the result of the election the steward has to act according to the result, even if they disagree with the outcome.

Corollary

While stewards must follow the above rule, they are not required to like it and as they are still ordinary editors and any other position(s) they hold, are entitled to freely voice their opinions, state their view and be heard by the community, just as any other user may.

In a nutshell: they do not lose the ability to think and feel because they have access to more buttons.

Don't promote users on projects with existing bureaucrats

Local bureaucrats are responsible for granting sysop, bureaucrat, and bot rights. Stewards should only grant these rights on a project if there are no active bureaucrats available on that project.

If a steward also has bureaucrat access on a particular project, they should grant rights using the local bureaucrat interface rather than the stewards' interface on Meta. This increases transparency, since the action will be logged on the local wiki, and reduces confusion about which role the user is acting as.

Avoid conflicts of interest

Stewards should use their judgment to avoid conflicts of interest, situations where they are not impartial to the decision. Such situations should be left to neutral stewards. These include:

• using steward access on any wiki where they have been blocked;
• changing rights on home wikis (wikis where they are active community members), except for clearcut cases (such as self-requested removal or emergencies).

Transparency

Requests for steward action should be made on the relevant steward request page. When a community asks that rights be changed, a link should be provided to the page where the action was discussed and agreed upon by the community. Steward activity is visible in the Meta logs. When a request is fulfilled, stewards should note this on the Meta request page, and ideally on the local request page if there is one.

Discussion of steward actions should occur on Meta, rather than privately, so editors can understand the stewards' decisions. If a steward has doubts about a request, they should let the other stewards know so the request will not be granted by another steward.

Check local policies

Should a wiki have existing policies regarding the steward action, stewards must ensure requests conform to the relevant policy before acting, or that a consensus in favour exists.

Links to existing rights policies:

• en-wp: w:en:Wikipedia:Global_rights_policy#Stewards
• en-wn: n:en:Wikinews:Global rights usage#Stewards
• en-ws: s:en:Wikisource:Restricted_access_policy#Stewards

Processes

Elections

For criteria of current elections see Stewards/elections 2011/Guidelines.

Loss of steward access

Inactivity

Any steward inactive (as a steward) for a full year will have their steward permissions removed. "Inactive" means no steward action in the past 6 months and fewer than 10 steward actions in the last year. They may re-apply through the regular process.

Poll after a year

Stewardship is not a lifetime status. Users get it if they need it, keep it if people trust them, and lose it if they do not need it or are no longer trusted. Steward status is granted until the next yearly elections, where users will be invited to comment and in particular to ask for removal of status. Should the stewards determine that consensus exists for a steward's rights be removed, the steward will lose their status.

See also

• Stewards
• Steward handbook