IRC/Group Contacts
The IRC Group Contacts are the liaisons between the Wikimedia community and the staff of the Libera.Chat IRC network; they are not agents of the Foundation in this role.[1] They are responsible for, and in charge of, all Wikimedia channels for all projects and languages. As part of this, they are involved in the management of hostname cloaks.
The contacts have a policy of staying out of channel affairs and letting individual channels run themselves unless it becomes absolutely necessary for them to intervene. This is because most channels have their own communities, and it wouldn't work to have the contacts micro-managing every single Wikimedia-related channel out there.
The most common contact task (after settings cloaks) is to redirect mis-named channels or take over channels which are controlled by inactive users. Channel founders and access list members are left to run channels for the vast majority of the time. The contacts keep a log of actions here on meta, and there are occasional IRC meetings, where users can bring up any issues they might have in a discussion-based environment.
Between these, contacts can always be e-mailed using the links below. There is also an IRC noticeboard where useful information is posted.
The group contacts also operate a role account on freenode. The nick of this account is wmfgc. This account is accessible by all of the group contacts and is used to hold flags in some channels where all group contacts might need access whether it be for maintenance, owner-less/deserted channels, or for other reasons.
At present, freenode staff recognise the following people as group contacts:
Notes
- ↑ See e.g. [Foundation-l] #wikipedia. After the original recognition by freenode, the group itself has appointed new members as needed, see the Noticeboard.