Wikipedia:Volunteer Response Team

Within Wikipedia, OTRS refers to the people and software that organize, handle, and respond to e-mails sent to the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF utilises Open Ticket Request System software to process the e-mail that it receives. This provides an organized way for multiple people to categorize and respond to email.

Quick facts about OTRS

• About half of all requests that OTRS members handle are written in the English language.
• The contents of e-mails handled by OTRS members are confidential.
• OTRS is a cross-wiki project
• For more information about OTRS, please see our page on Meta, and for more information about how OTRS handles e-mail relating to the English Wikipedia, please see info-en mission.

Dispute resolution

If you disagree with a change made to an article where an OTRS ticket number is used as the only reason, please e-mail the OTRS volunteer that made the change. Please do not undo the change until discussion has concluded. The OTRS volunteer is likely in possession of confidential information that should not be published on a public site.

OTRS volunteers may edit articles in the course of replying to emails. Such edits usually involve the removal of vandalism or unsourced derogatory assertions. Less frequently, OTRS volunteers handle copyright infringement complaints using one of the standard processes, or delete personal information from article histories.

The confidential nature of such emails makes normal wiki-based dispute resolution processes difficult, and often impracticable in many cases. This doesn't mean that OTRS volunteers can take arbitrary actions. The cautionary note at the top of this section ensures that disputed OTRS edits are subject to review. OTRS volunteers are ultimately subject to the communications committee and, as Wikipedia editors, to the Arbitration Committee through the normal processes of dispute resolution. OTRS access is "not a badge".

To facilitate peer review, OTRS volunteers should reference the ticket number and this policy when citing OTRS as a reason for an action.

Contacting OTRS

If you would like to contact our OTRS members, please see list of OTRS volunteers.

If you would like to volunteer for OTRS, please see the volunteering page on meta. Note that volunteers must be willing to identify themselves to the Wikimedia Foundation; see the Foundation's Access to nonpublic data policy.