Requests for Comment/Changes to the Dormancy Policy (2)

The Dormancy Policy has been around for a long time, with the last changes to it made in May 2019. It may be one of the most controversial global policies on Miraheze, with many users not liking the fact that if they’re not active for 6 months their wiki will eventually be deleted. It may not be the 'nicest' policy, but it is necessary, as Miraheze doesn’t have the resources to keep all wikis online indefinitely if they’re just not being used anymore. In addition, the Dormancy Policy is already very generous to users and it’s very easy to avoid it altogether, all someone needs to do is have some sort of activity on their wiki, even one edit every few months will prevent the Dormancy Policy from taking effect. Exemptions are of course also granted quite regularly to users with a reason. Additionally, it is easy for users to backup their wikis with Special:DataDump. That being said, since May 2019, some issues have arisen that can be resolved with a new amendment of the policy. Here are some proposals to address them. Thanks to Dmehus for helping to draft this RfC and and to John for their suggestions.

The proposals below are not mutually exclusive unless indicated otherwise. --Reception123 (talk) ( C ) 08:15, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposal 1 (Adoption/Reopening)
The “Adoption” section is changed as follows (now referred to as "reopening," though given the historical usage of the term adoption, it may still be referred to as an adoption process): Immediately after a wiki has been automatically closed (minimum 60 days inactivity) it will be eligible to be reopened at the request of any good-faith user. The user must meet certain activity guidelines (on any wiki), have read-rights on the wiki (if the wiki is private) and provide a reason for requesting to reopen the wiki. While there is no minimum amount of wikis that one can request to reopen, a Steward may decline to reopen a wiki if the user has requested opening a large amount of wikis in a short period of time.

When a request to reopen is approved, no rights are automatically granted to the user who requested the reopening, these are instead granted on a case-by-case basis following a local election.

Note The above does not preclude a contributing user from requesting from Stewards, usually via Stewards' noticeboard, for user groups below that of the  group that customarily do not require local permissions election (i.e., ,  ,  ,  , etc.), where local administrators are not recently active

"Rationale": The rationale for this change is that it, regarding the immediate adoption possibility it isn't easy for a Steward to know when a wiki has been actually closed, making it difficult for them to know when 14 days have passed. Therefore, since the user hasn't been active in 6 months anyway it would be fair to allow adoption immediately after closure. Additionally, adoption is changed to 'reopening' to better reflect that a user will no longer automatically become bureaucrat/administrator immediately upon reopening.

Proposal 2.1 (Adoption/Reopening)
A wiki that was closed for reasons outside of the Dormancy Policy (i.e. by a local bureaucrat) may not be reopened/adopted following the Request for Adoption/Request for Reopening process described in this policy.

Note: This is a counter proposal to Proposal 2.2, meaning its passage depends on the other proposal failing or resulting in no consensus

Proposal 2.2 (Adoption/Reopening)
A wiki that was closed for reasons outside of the Dormancy Policy (i.e. by a local bureaucrat) may be reopened following the Request for Adoption/Request for Reopening process described in this policy, unless there was a local public community consultation favouring closure, ideally on-wiki or in a public IRC channel/Discord server which any Steward can access without the need to request access to join.

Note: This is a counter proposal to Proposal 2.1, meaning its passage depends on the other proposal failing or resulting in no consensus

Proposal 3 (Private wikis)
Private wikis may only be reopened at the request of a good-faith user who previously held   rights, as at the time of the wiki's closure, on that wiki, notwithstanding private personal wikis wholly or substantially about the originally requesting user where ruling by community consensus would be entirely inappropriate.

Proposal 4 (Public personal wikis)
Wikis created for as public personal e-portfolio, curriculum vitae (r&eacute;sum&eacute;), blog, or narrowly construed similar wikis of a single user are exempt from the adoption process of Dormancy Policy, as, similar to an aspect of Proposal 3 above, it does not make sense to allow a community of users to hold a local discussion to change the administration of someone's personal public e-portfolio or similar wiki.

Note: that this does not make them automatically exempt from closure due to inactivity; exemptions will still need to be requested from Stewards, which will be assessed by Stewards in terms of both need and content. Note that while this proposal is somewhat connected to Proposal 3, it is mutually exclusive Proposal 3 and may pass regardless if Proposal 3 passes as Proposal 3 failing would just mean the status quo for Proposal 3 applies

Proposal 5 (Exemptions)
In addition to the current requirements, the following is added:

Exemptions to the Dormancy Policy are granted for a maximum period of two years. After two years, a it can be requested that the exemption is renewed if the reason why an exemption was originally requested still exists.

Proposal 5.1 (Exemptions)
If the data available on Matomo suggests that there are very little or no visits on a wiki exempted from the Dormancy Policy, that exemption may be removed no earlier than six months after it was granted by a Steward. Two weeks prior to removal, notice should be given via a suitable notification method (notably, via a note on Meta user talk pages or via e-mail) to all existing bureaucrats.

Note: If the request for removal of an exemption comes from SRE, it should ideally be requested of Stewards via Stewards' noticeboard. A Steward may then provide the appropriate notification, or they may delegate the notification to an SRE team member, both in accordance with the policy.

Note: Where a wiki with very little or no visits to a wiki suggests it is unused and not being read by multiple people, a Steward should, ideally and as a good practice, generate XML and image dumps and e-mail them either to the most recently active bureaucrat(s), all bureaucrats, or, in the case of personal and/or private wikis, the original requesting wiki bureaucrat, to mitigate data loss. Stewards should advise SRE when this been done and, optionally, copy SRE on the e-mail to bureaucrat(s).

Proposal 6 (Transition)
For wikis granted a Dormancy Policy exemption prior to the initial publication date of this RfC, SRE will not request removal of any indefinite Dormancy Policy exemption until the greater of (a) at least one year has passed since they were first granted the exemption or (b) at least one year has elapsed since the RfC was first made public, due solely to low Matomo visitor statistics. After that, the criteria specified in Proposal 5.1 would apply.

Note: This does preclude Stewards from periodically reviewing indefinitely exempted wikis to see whether wikis still need an exemption (i.e., wikis with very active editing communities) or have sufficient content intended to be read or otherwise used as a resource by real people. In such cases, Stewards, will reach out to recently active bureaucrats (usually via their Meta user talk page) to see whether they still require an exemption and to provide an updated reason for wishing to maintain an exemption. If no response is received after a reasonable period of time in such cases, then a Steward would remove the exemption, ideally generating XML and image dumps as in the above proposal