Wikinews:Privilege expiry policy
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This page is an official policy on the English Wikinews. It has wide acceptance among editors and is considered a standard that all users should follow. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss first on the talk page. |
The Wikinews Privilege expiry policy allows some elevated privileges on-project to be removed due to inactivity/lack of use.
Contents
Introduction
Any wiki project changes over time. The community's consensus moves; rules and policies evolve, and methods of carrying out tasks change. Thus any individual entrusted with elevated privileges who becomes inactive, or does not use a privilege over a prolonged period of time, ceases to be familiar with current practice.
Unused privileged accounts, excluding those with extremely strong passwords, also pose a security risk through an increased attack surface. Good security practice dictates such accounts should have unused privileges removed.
A similar policy has been enacted for most Wikimedia projects, although as English Wikinews has an Arbitration Committee, this policy takes precedence.
Application of the policy
The following table summarises the policy's rules governing privilege removal.
| Privilege | Status | action to be taken |
|---|---|---|
| Bureaucrat | No edits past nine months | Request steward downgrade to admin[1] |
| Administrator | No edits past nine months | Downgraded to 'normal' user |
| Either of the above | No use of either priv in past 12 months | Downgraded, or privilege removed[1] |
| Reviewer | No reviewer actions past 12 months[2] | Reviewer privilege removed |
| Accredited | No edits past nine months | Accreditation revoked |
- Once a bureaucrat is downgraded to administrator, the clock starts for inactivity as an administrator.
- A not-ready review via the Easy Peer Review tool is a reviewer action, although it does not appear in Special:Log/review.
- Users in the CheckUser and Oversight user groups are currently excluded from this policy.
Notifying affected users
To avoid conflict, a note should be left on the talk page of any user who loses privileges under the policy. This should explain the privilege has been revoked due to lack of use; not as a reflection of, or comment on, the user's standing in the community. See: {{PeP applied}}; feel free to add a personalised encouragement for people to re-involve themselves when using this template.
Regaining privileges
Reasonable re-granting of privileges revoked due to lack of use should be less-onerous than initially obtaining the privilege. A period of re-acclimation with the project, being active, becoming familiar with current policies and observing current use of said privileges may be followed with fast-tracked request for the rights to be reinstated.
- To qualify for fast-track reinstatement, the user must be in good standing; the privilege in question must have been removed only for inactivity/lack of use per this policy; and the user must have actually used the privilege before its removal.
- If at least two users currently trusted with similar or greater privileges support reinstating the privilege, and the request has been open for a couple of days with no doubts expressed nor expected, there's understood to be no need to keep it open longer.
