Wikipedia:OTRS

This page documents an official English Wikipedia policy, a widely accepted standard that should normally be followed by all editors. Any edit to this page should reflect consensus. If in doubt, consider discussing changes on the talk page.

Prior to undoing an edit where only an OTRS ticket was used as a reason or edit summary, discuss the edit with that OTRS volunteer or request review.

Within Wikipedia, OTRS refers to the people and software that organize, handle, and respond to e-mails sent to Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation. The WMF utilises Open-source 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.

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, and cannot, be published on a public site such as Wikipedia.

OTRS volunteers may edit articles in the course of replying to emails. Such edits usually involve the removal of vandalism or violations of the biographies of living persons policy. 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.

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

Editorial review

The actions of OTRS volunteers are subject to review by other volunteers, and ultimately by the OTRS admins and the Volunteer coordinator (currently Cary Bass).

As Wikipedia editors, OTRS volunteers are subject to review by the Arbitration Committee through the normal processes of dispute resolution.

Quick facts about OTRS

OTRS is a cross-wiki project spanning many languages.
The contents of e-mails handled by OTRS members are confidential.
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.

The following are based on database dumps for emails received between March 4 and July 2, 2008. The next scheduled update is for early October. The statistics have been rounded to the nearest 5% to reflect the routine fluctuations over the three-month time period.

Approximately 60% of all mail that OTRS members handle is written in the English language.
Approximately 30% of all mail that OTRS members handle is in the "info-en" (ie. English Wikipedia-related) queues; this equates to around half of the English language mail.
Approximately 15% of all mail that OTRS members handle is Permissions-related.
There are currently around 380 valid accounts in the OTRS system, of whom around half have access to the info-en queue to some degree.