Volunteer Response Team/Volunteering
Volunteer Response Team
For prospective volunteers
The Volunteer Response Team (VRT) always welcomes new volunteers to help with answering tickets. Nonetheless, to ensure the quality of service and given the confidential nature of the work, there is a selective application procedure.
The VRTS administrators are a group of highly-trusted and experienced volunteers who assess your application to join the VRT. When assessing an application, they familiarize themselves with your work on the Wikimedia projects to ensure that you are suitable as an addition to the VRT. It therefore takes some time before you receive a response regarding your application.
- How do I volunteer?
If you are interested in volunteering, please read VRT/Recruiting for information about what the job entails. Feel free to join #wikimedia-vrtconnect to ask any questions that you might have with regard to the Wikimedia Volunteer Response Team. Before applying, please ensure that you are:
- Willing to work on difficult, sensitive, and at times hostile messages
- Courteous, skilled at resolving disputes, friendly – even in the face of hostility – sensitive to the needs of outsiders, and have exemplary discretion
- Willing to sign the VRTS users confidentiality agreement, considering the access to nonpublic personal data policy
- 16 years of age or older
Please review the list of queues prior to submitting your application, and apply for all of those queues where you think you'd be able to help.
- Notes
- The VRT is especially interested in users who are entrusted with any special tools on local projects (sysop, bureaucrat, checkuser, etc.), though this is not an absolute requirement.
- Applicants are usually expected to have shown consistent activity for at least six months.
- Language skills — other than English — are also highly appreciated. Additional help in language queues is greatly needed and we'd like to know if you are able to help in any other language.
- If you already have access to VRTS, and you'd like to get access to additional queues, you typically don't need to apply here. Ask on Administrator requests on vrt-wiki instead.
- If you currently don't have access to VRTS, but had access in the past, even under a different user name, please advise accordingly during your application.
- Permissions queues: users that already have strong knowledge of and experience with copyright issues, like administrators or license reviewers on Wikimedia Commons, are highly appreciated and invited to volunteer. Users without such skills should apply for info queues instead.
- German-speaking volunteers
If you'd like to volunteer for the info-de queue, please apply locally by following the instructions at de:Wikipedia:Support-Team#Mitarbeit im Support-Team.
- Dutch-speaking volunteers
If you'd like to volunteer for the info-nl queue, please apply below and send an email to contact-nl
lists
wikimediaorg for the team to assess your application.
 | Please add your application and also send an e-mail to volunteers-vrtwikimediaorg linking to your application on this page and giving your age. Please do so each time you apply. |
- User links: Osmo Lundell (talk • contribs • CentralAuth • global • count • blocks)
- Babel/Languages you can reply in: English, Swedish, Finnish (and using general purpose language in German)
- Your most active user talk page(s):I'm not sure what this means, maybe the one in fi-wiki? I am also active in en-wiki
- Queues you would like access to: info-fi, info-sv, info-en, permissions-fi, permissions-en, permissions-sv
- Email sent? I will be sending link to this application after publishing it on meta.
I'd like to help out on the Volunteer Response Team because I want to make Wikipedia a better place. I think that working together on the internet demands for extra amounts courtesy and understanding of each other and expecting that others are working in good will (I wrote an essay about this a while back, but it is only in Finnish now, sorry!) I am a trusted user in fi-wiki, where I am an pending changes reviewer, rollbacker and "page stabilizer" (permission to "soft protect" pages) and I always communicate with kindness and friendlyness, even in the face of annoyance or hostility. My native language is Finnish, but I speak our secondary native language Swedish very well. I use English daily. My hope is that I could help the public in understanding Wikipedia policy and aid them in different situations. Especially the Finnish version of the picture permissions queue interests me, because I have deep understanding of the Finnish law system and how IP rights and copyright disputes are handled over here. My knowledge on fair use in the US and other mainly english speaking countries allows me in aiding and solving issues in permissions-en queue. I can tell more about myself more in detail if needed (work history, qualifications etc.). Wikipedia and Wikiprojects are my passion and I want to help make it better this way. Thank you! Osmo Lundell (talk) 21:10, 25 March 2025 (UTC)
- User links: Aqurs1 (talk • contribs • CentralAuth • global • count • blocks)
- Babel/Languages you can reply in: yue, zh, en
- Your most active user talk page(s): zh:User talk:Aqurs1
- Queues you would like access to: info-zh, renamer
- Email sent? Yes
Hi there, I would like to help out on the Volunteer Response Team to help out newbies, as an user in Wikimedia. I have relevant experience as an IP Block Exempt Grantor in Chinese Wikipedia, helping with the huge backlog of IPBE requests due to the GFW. I am also a sysop on Chinese Wikivoyage and Global renamer. Thanks for your consideration. aqurs 🍧 12:30, 26 March 2025 (UTC)
Drmies
- User links: Drmies (talk • contribs • CentralAuth • global • count • blocks)
- Babel/Languages you can reply in: English, sure
- Your most active user talk page(s): User talk:Drmies on the en-wiki
- Queues you would like access to: I'm not sure how to answer this question and I see no list of queues on Volunteer Response Team/Recruiting. I suppose I need to look at oversight matters and unblock requests--thx
- Email sent?--yes