Wikipedia:Oversight/OTRS downtime notes

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Overview[edit]

The vast majority of requests for suppression/oversight are received through a dedicated OTRS queue. When OTRS is not available due to scheduled or unscheduled downtime, alternative procedures need to be put in place, because many oversight requests are time-sensitive.

The core back-up process is to switch the Oversight team's private mailing list to receive emails, and to have requests sent to that mailing list for the duration of the downtime.

Pages affected[edit]

FIRST STEP:

  • User:Oversight - update the page as required, and change user preference email to the oversight-l@lists.wikimedia.org email address.
    • NOTE: Password for this page is retained by the Arbitration Committee, and an arbitrator either has to carry out the changes or provide it to an Oversight-L list admin, because the email must be changed in the user preferences
      • If the password is not available, then a developer with shell access is able to change the email address. Establish communication and action plan in advance. not possible at the moment
    • Note: A developer with shell access will need to be contacted to change the email address.
    • Remember to change User:Oversight/Emailnotice
    • The "form" for email is updated with this email address without any additional steps.

The following pages call {{Oversight email}} and may need to have their wording adjusted accordingly:

ALSO -

  • Post a notice on Administrator's noticeboard, AN/I, and the Arbcom noticeboard.


The private Oversight-L mailing list[edit]

Access to sending mail to this list is normally restricted to subscribed members to the list (i.e., oversighters). It will not accept emails from anyone else. It is a non-archiving list. During an OTRS downtime, the following changes need to be made by a list administrator at the proper interface:

NOTE: go to bottom of screen and click "Submit your changes" after each change is made.

  • On the General Options page
    • General List Personality: Change the "Introductory description" page to temporarily say "This list receives requests for oversight (suppression) for the English Wikipedia." (No additional information or coding is required.)
    • List administrators/moderators: add the email addresses of any additional temporary or permanent list administrators and/or moderators
    • In the Notifications section, ensure that the answer to the question "Should the list moderators get immediate notice of new requests, as well as daily notices about collected ones?" is set to "YES"
  • On the Privacy Options -->Sender filters page
    • Under Non-member filters, switch the answer to the query "Action to take for postings from non-members for which no explicit action is defined." to HOLD. (This will place non-member emails into the moderation queue.)
  • DO NOT CHANGE ARCHIVES - leave this list unarchived. Enough oversighters will automatically receive the email to be relatively certain things are addressed.
  • DO NOT CHANGE PUBLIC HTML and text files pages. Few people use these pages, so they should not be a problem for a short-term downtime.

Actions during downtime[edit]

  • List admins/moderators should manually check the moderation queue frequently (approximately once per hour) during the downtime.
    • The majority of messages are likely to be spam.
  • Oversighters should check mail on a regular basis. Take special care in responding to the list - respond to list +sender when oversight is complete, but "list only" (double check your "TO" header) if it is a ticket that should be discussed.
  • Extra oversighter hands in IRC may be helpful as well


Reverting after the downtime is over[edit]

  • Return all pages to their prior email status.
  • Change back the User:Oversight email address preference.
    • If someone other than an arbitrator has used the password, report to Arbcom that the password can now be changed.

Mailing list[edit]

Change the following settings:

    • Introductory Description: reverts back to This mailing list is no longer used, and it rejects any emails sent to it.<p> Please see the <a>requests for oversight page</a> for more details on requesting oversight, and <a>this page</a> for additional information.

  • Return the Non-member filters to "reject".
  • Remove any temporary moderators.

Notes from September 2020 downtime[edit]

  • It was identified that the password for User:Oversight could not be changed because User:Oversight is an unattached (non-SUL) local account. There are other User:Oversight accounts on Dutch, German and Simple English Wikipedias. This will be addressed following the downtime.
    • Passwords cannot be changed on unattached accounts because they are considered bugs. See discussion at T262733.
  • The lack of standardization of the format in which the email address is inserted into various pages was identified as adding additional work to the process. A single template used consistently on all relevant pages is desirable. This will allow a single entry to change all relevant pages, rather than having to manually search through and change each page with the email address.
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