Wikifunctions:Staff editing policy

See talkpage for context.

Unlike other Wikimedia projects, Wikifunctions will be open for staff editing the main namespace. To be eligible for staff editing, the account needs to have a local or global user page where it is explained that this account is allowed to edit the main namespace as a staff member and in which area this account should be active. Wikifunctions staff account have to follow a specific naming scheme.

If edits by staff accounts are questioned, the related account is invited to participate in the discussion about these edits. Staff accounts can participate in all on-wiki discussions. They are not allowed to vote (e.g. on requests for comments and requests for rights), but they can leave comments in the dedicated section of that page.

Wikifunctions staff accounts are there to serve the community and the project. They should avoid controversial topics, and should focus on such areas where they help the community and the project inclusively. Wikifunctions staff account holders are invited to participate in controversial topics with their volunteer accounts and following volunteer guidelines like everyone else.

All staff members who also edit in their volunteer capacity have to use their staff account for all edits that they are doing as a part of their work. All edits that are not part of their work have to be done through their volunteer account.

Wikifunctions staff accounts are given and deactivated by the Wikimedia Abstract Wikipedia team. Not everyone with a staff account will necessarily be an employee of the Wikimedia Foundation, and not all Wikimedia Foundation employees are automatically getting a staff account.

Wikifunctions staff account holders may or may not have a volunteer account, and they do not have to (but may) disclose what their volunteer account is, in order to preserve their pseudonymity if they so wish. But they are forbidden to interact with themselves in any patterns that reminds of sockpuppets, e.g. to interact with themselves in discussions without making that explicit. (Since Wikifunctions staff accounts should avoid controversial issues anyway, this situation should rarely occur in the first place)

All staff accounts are eligible to request advanced rights (e.g. sysop), if they meet the same requirements that are applied to volunteers. Advanced rights can also be removed by the same criteria that applies to volunteers.

It is OK for the community to override, revert, and make edits to content by Wikifunctions staff account in most cases. These are not anything like office actions, and should not be regarded as unchangeable.

The exception to that will be clearly marked in the edit and linked to a respective Phabricator task, and will only be used in cases where the stability of Wikifunctions or some other Wikimedia project is threatened. Examples of that would be the removal of a specific function or implementation because they cause unsafe runtime behavior or unreasonable load. Such Phabricator tasks will be prioritized by the team, and once closed the change becomes available for normal editing again.

Whereas the different accounts should be kept separate, work edits should be only done with work accounts and volunteer edits only through volunteer accounts, it should be also acknowledged that mistakes will happen. Let's be lenient with these mistakes, particularly early on in the project and early on when a new staffer starts.