Stewards

To contact a Steward, please visit the Stewards' noticeboard or directly contact one of the Stewards listed at the bottom of the page.

Scope of responsibilities
Stewards are users with the permission and authority to use any part of the MediaWiki interface on any wiki. Stewards will work with communities to address issues facing them locally such as disputes, abusive or disruptive behaviour as well as global issues such as disruptive behaviour across multiple wikis. This includes global and local right assignment, use of routine administrator permissions (delete, blocking, etc.) on local wikis and in a global sense (locking accounts, renames), CheckUser and oversight permissions. In the event of an increase in requests for Steward assistance, Stewards may delegate some of these responsibilities to other users. As an example, routine administrator actions may be delegated to 'global sysops' or similar, if a need arises.

As the most elevated 'administrative' role, Stewards can be seen as the go-to authority for interpreting community consensus, and having the final approval for Miraheze-wide policies and Meta Wiki policies. As such, their opinion should be respected unless an obvious community consensus appears, in which case community consensus should overrule unless not possible for legal or technical reasons.

Appointment
Users may nominate themselves or other users to fulfill the Steward role, or the current Stewards may call for an election if they, as a group, decide more Stewards are needed. After an accepted nomination, self-nomination, or Steward-requested election, all Miraheze users will be allowed to comment on the nominee(s) for a minimum period of 7 days.
 * Users will be given an adequate time to comment on nominations
 * Any issues raised should be acknowledged or fixed by the nominee
 * If possible, any issues raised should be addressed before the closing of the nomination/election
 * Users may // nominees, but this alone will not decide the outcome
 * An existing Steward will close the nomination/election after taking into consideration the arguments made, not just the support/oppose count
 * For the nomination/election to be successful, there must be at least 20 user's comments and a support ratio of at least 80%

Inactivity
Stewards who do not participate in the community in some form (responding to questions, dealing with issues, administrative tasks on meta as a minimum) for 6 months will be deemed inactive and have their steward rights revoked. For the purpose of community, this includes all wikis and Phabricator.

This is and should be seen as a pretty relaxed requirement. Like everyone else here, Stewards are volunteers. Stewards should feel comfortable performing any of their responsibilities when it is possible for them to do so. Six months time should be enough time for any Steward logging in to acknowledge their responsibilities. This inactivity requirement is mainly to prevent having users with elevated access after they have moved on.

Readdition of rights
Previous Stewards who relinquished their own rights, may be granted their rights back without a standard reappointment procedure under certain circumstances.
 * The user requesting Steward rights must have had their rights removed by self-request;
 * The user must not have had their rights removed according to the revocation procedures below;
 * The scope of responsibilities of Stewards must not have changed since the user was last a Steward;
 * The community must be given adequate time to raise any concerns before the rights are reinstated (traditionally 24 hours);

A Steward who lost their rights because of inactivity must successfully request the rights again per the appointment section above.

Revocation of rights
Stewards can have their permission revoked through a vote of no confidence or a request for removal. If at least 50% of user comments are for the removal of rights, then the Steward shall remove their own rights upon closure of the vote or have their rights removed by another Steward.
 * The person starting the vote or opening the request must provide a valid reason for removal of Steward rights (mistrust, abuse, inactivity, etc.)
 * At least 20 users must comment on the vote of no confidence or request for removal (the same number of users required to appoint a Steward)

If Stewards as a group feel that a user is intentionally calling for votes of no confidence or requests for removal without valid reasons, Stewards may decide to ignore requests or votes started by said user. If there is actually an issue, another user may bring it up with the Stewards.

Term length
Stewards terms are not limited to a set time length. Users may call for a vote of non-confidence or request for removal at any time, as above.