Volunteer Response Team/Volunteering

Volunteer Response Team

• General information
• List of current volunteers
• Reports
• Access policy
• Activity policy
• Mailing list policy

For prospective volunteers

• Becoming a volunteer
• Apply to volunteer
• Ask a question

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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-vrt^connect 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-nllistswikimediaorg for the team to assess your application.

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Tiven2240

• User links: Tiven2240 (talk • contribs • CentralAuth • global • count • blocks)
• Babel/Languages you can reply in: English, Hindi, Marathi.
• Your most active user talk page(s): Wikimedia Commons
• Queues you would like access to: info-en, permissions-commons
• Email sent? Yes

I previously served as a VRT member from 2018 to 2023 but was removed due to inactivity. I am now active again and would like to rejoin the VRT team to continue supporting permission and copyright review work.

I am currently volunteering with Wiki Loves Folklore and am especially interested in assisting with reviewing copyright permissions during the campaign and beyond. I hope to contribute consistently and responsibly to VRT activities going forward.. Tiven2240 (talk) 15:16, 12 February 2026 (UTC)

Elphie

• User links: Elphie (talk • contribs • CentralAuth • global • count • blocks)
• Babel/Languages you can reply in: nl-N, nl-5, en-4
• Your most active user talk page(s): User talk on nlwiki
• Queues you would like access to: info-nl, permissions-nl, permissions-commons
• Email sent? Email sent to the local volunteers, I need the diff for the other email 😊 consider it done.

Hi 😊 my name is Elphie! I'm active as an nlwiki sysop and mentor and as a Wikimedia Commons license reviewer. I would like to help our local team with the requests they receive from new users, people who have questions about Wikipedia and users who would like to add or have added media to Commons. I also saw that my local wiki has a project called 'Wikiportrait' that helps people add pictures they made to Wikipedia articles. If that is also part of the tasks response volunteers do, I would also like to help there. I've also mentioned this in my email to the team so I'm sure they can tell me the ins and outs about that project. 😊 Best regards, Elphie (they/them) (talk) 16:21, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

Also officially: email sent to volunteers-vrt. Elphie (they/them) (Talk) 16:26, 13 February 2026 (UTC)

How many license reviews have you performed after being appointed as requested at 24 Aug 2025? Krd 14:11, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Honestly, I have no clue. I mentioned it in my application because it proves my knowledge about copyright and licensing. Off-topic: the current system with YouTube license reviewing (which I focussed on) is very time consuming in an annoying way. The buttons for archived versions don't link to a direct archive but to the Archive.org overview, after loading that the hunt for an actually usable version of the page begins. I did not know this before requesting the license review role, otherwise I would probably have focussed on different things. Furthermore at the time I tried to take some distance off of nlwiki - for a few reasons. My plan was to switch to Commons as it felt like a more safe place for me, but I came back to nlwiki because I did not want to be bullied away. You can see the change in my editing pattern on XTools. My overall activity dipped down fore a while until I came back with my main focus on nlwiki. I would not care if the license reviewer role gets revoked, as mentioned I referred to it as support for my knowledge. 😊 Elphie (they/them) (Talk) 15:08, 14 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi, just to confirm: the Dutch VRT team has received the application and is reviewing it. Ciell (talk) 07:30, 16 February 2026 (UTC)