I have read the Stewards article but still find the role of steward to be somewhat mysterious. Can anyone give a simple explanation of their importance, in particular to the English Wikipedia, comparing them with Arbitrators and Bureaucrats and any of the other mysterious powerful Wikipedia jobs? Thanks! -- Ssilvers ( talk) 18:53, 24 January 2015 (UTC) reply

I'm not sure I have a handle on it myself. Someone outside of Wikipedia wrote this article about them last year, this might help. Gamaliel ( talk) 19:02, 24 January 2015 (UTC) reply

Yes, I was thinking of that article! I think that article is probably misleading (it says that Stewards are the most important Wikipedians and basically run Wikipedia), but I would love it if someone knowledgeable about these things gave us a brief summary of these jobs and how they interact with the encyclopedia and Wikipedia. All the best! -- Ssilvers ( talk) 19:18, 24 January 2015 (UTC) reply

@ Ssilvers: I'm not a steward but I know how they operate. Stewards are users who can perform almost any MediaWiki action (rights, deletion, blocking, CU, etc.) on any public Wikimedia wiki. This includes granting adminship on small wikis without bureaucrats and dealing with routine maintenance and emergencies on wikis when no local admins are available (either because there are none, or they are not around/inactive). They are also the only community members who can grant the CheckUser and Oversight groups to others; therefore they are the ones who close and verify the ArbCom elections. A large portion of their work involves handling "global" or "cross-wiki" vandalism and spam, such as globally blocking spam bot IP addresses, and locking their accounts (which prevents even logging in). Stewards can also grant trusted users (who pass a request) other global groups like "global renamer" or "global rollback", and modify the list of permissions assigned to each. They are very different from ArbCom, in that stewards usually only implement community consensus and deal with obvious abuse. Or at least that's what they're supposed to do. I think they are more like bureaucrats and admins than ArbCom. πr² ( t • c) 02:27, 27 January 2015 (UTC) reply

Thanks. So, what do you think of this article, which characterizes them as "The 36 People Who Run Wikipedia"? -- Ssilvers ( talk) 04:04, 27 January 2015 (UTC) reply

@ Ssilvers: It's mostly accurate, but IMHO it overstates their role. They don't really "run Wikipedia" in any meaningful way; they mostly perform anti-spam/anti-vandalism work and help with other cross-wiki issues. They certainly have no executive control over the content of Wikipedia. On IRC, I know most of the stewards and many (most?) of them know me, and I agree they are very diverse, although I think natively English-speaking, Dutch and German users are overrepresented as stewards and global sysops (and Africa and East Asia are underrepresented). I don't think giving barnstars for steward work is all that common, but it does occasionally happen. "Global rights" don't only mean "the ability to edit anything" per se, although that is one of the global rights stewards have. Global rights actually refer to rights that apply to all (or a subset) of Wikimedia wikis. I have "global rights" (global rollback and global sysop, which is not really "global"), but I can't edit everything (for example, I can't edit protected pages on enwiki; of course, stewards can). Stewards can even change which global rights they have! I think it's true that they rarely meet up in real life, but they do during Wikimania. Other than these details, I think the article is accurate. πr² ( t • c) 06:11, 1 February 2015 (UTC) reply

Thanks. Yes, that was my understanding of what the article says, but it seems to me that the article is fundamentally misleading, starting with the headline. But I guess there's nothing we can do about that. -- Ssilvers ( talk) 07:03, 1 February 2015 (UTC) reply

I quite agree, I found the headline quite distasteful and inaccurate. We don't run (and don't want to run) Wikimedia, let alone Wikipedia. I think PiRSquared gave a good summary of what we do, but if there's anything else that's confusing, feel free to ping me. Snowolf ^{How can I help?} 20:06, 11 February 2015 (UTC) reply

Thanks to both of you. It is clear now. -- Ssilvers ( talk) 21:53, 11 February 2015 (UTC) reply

The Wikimedia blog says that "this year’s Annual Report has a whole new format and caters to a much larger audience: everyone who reads Wikipedia." Well, if it had been translated to other languages, that would have been better. -- NaBUru38 ( talk) 23:58, 25 January 2015 (UTC) reply