This forum is organized for and by the community that promotes the implementation of the Wikimedia Movement Strategy. Anyone can apply to moderation and administration roles as long as they fulfill the requirements defined below. These requirements are set to guarantee the good functioning of the forum and the safety of its users.
If you are considering becoming a moderator, we strongly recommend you to read the Discourse Moderation Guide.
Category moderators
Category moderators are able to:
- Mark topics as solved
- Edit posts
- Close topics
- Archive topics
- Move posts from a topic
- Pin/unpin topics
- Edit category descriptions
- and more.
Every category can have moderators helping to organize the content of the category, support users, and resolve conflicts. These are the requirements to become a category moderator:
- Be a Member.
- Read the Guidelines.
- Be Certified and Licensed in Discourse skills.
- Commit to follow and apply the Universal Code of Conduct as a moderator.
- Commit to act in coordination with the other moderators.
- Post a short statement to become a category moderator in the same category, introducing yourself and explaining briefly what is your motivation to be in this role. Any prior experience moderating or administering similar channels in Wikimedia or elsewhere is welcome. No problem if this is your first time. This is a good role to start moderating.
Two weeks after the statement has been posted, the moderator(s) of the category will decide whether to accept it or not, based on the points above and the feedback received. If there are no moderators in this category, then the general moderators will decide.
General moderators
General moderators are able to:
- Perform the same actions as category moderators, across all categories.
- Access and participate in the private Staff category.
- Merge topics and comments.
- Access user reports (flags) and resolve them.
- Access to recent IP addresses of logged in users.
- Hide and delete posts, also un-hide and un-delete posts.
- Send staff notifications to users.
- Silence and suspend users.
The forum has moderators that can act across the forum. The members of the Moderation team are expected to work as a team. This tends to require a higher dedication and occasional participation in sensitive private discussions.
- The requirements are the same as for the category moderators. The statement must be posted in the #site-feedback category.
Two weeks after the statement has been posted, the Moderation team will decide.
In exceptional cases, the Moderation team can invite someone directly, based on their role and performance in Movement Strategy activities. The Moderation team must discuss these cases privately for at least two weeks and the decision must be approved by consensus within the Moderation team. The announcement of the new moderator must be posted on #site-feedback when taking effect, explaining the reason for the exception.
Administrators
Administrators are able to:
- Perform the same actions as moderators.
- Create, edit and delete categories.
- Grant and remove moderator and administrator roles.
- Delete users and anonymize their posts.
- Access all non-encrypted content, including private messages (user passwords are not stored in the system)
- Access to logged-in users’ email addresses.
- Access to site metrics.
- Change the site settings, including enabling and disabling plugins.
The Administration team maintains the technical aspects of the forum. Technically, administrators have the capacity to perform all the content and user moderation actions. However, they are only expected to intervene in moderation tasks exceptionally. Administrators can grant and revoke moderator and administrator permissions.
Administrators can also be moderators. In this case, it is expected that they perform both roles, but still keeping them separate.
These are the requirements to become an administrator:
- All the requirements for moderators apply here too.
- Signed NDA as volunteer or Wikimedia Foundation staff.
Two weeks after the statement has been posted, the Administration team will decide.
In exceptional cases, the Administration team can invite someone directly based on their role and performance in Movement Strategy or technical administration activities. The process is the same as with moderators.