Policy:Wikimedia Foundation Staff Test Account Policy
 | This policy or procedure is maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. Please note that in the event of any differences in meaning or interpretation between the original English version of this content and a translation, the original English version takes precedence. |
The engineers of the Wikimedia Foundation sometimes have to use the production wiki (such as Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, etc.) to test software features as part of their staff duty. For example, Wikimedia Quality and Test Engineering Team and Wikimedia Apps team use these test accounts to test the quality of their software and apps. Some potential test cases compiled for reference by the Quality and Test Engineering Team can be found in here: phabricator:T318280#8287778. Staff test accounts follow the following rules.
Rules for staff test accounts
- The Foundation staffer should not use any unidentified accounts for testing, the test accounts should be appropriately declared to ensure appropriate transparency through a disclaimer on the user page so that the community can reach out to the team responsible for the account for account-related matters. Please use
{{WMF Test Account|team name|team email}}template on Meta-Wiki userpage to tag the test accounts. - When a technical edge case needs to be tested on En.WP specifically - such as on the namespace other than user and usertalk - a notification needs to be posted at Technical village pump at least one business day in advance so the community can weigh in prior to implementation. The community does not expect notice if the tests are on userpage, user talkpage, and user subpage but if those are related to abuse filters, there should be advance notice. The role account will only test issues on production wiki (such as on English Wikipedia) that specifically need to be tested there due to technical requirements.
- Whenever possible, the account will include the Phabricator ticket worked on in the edit summary of each test (an example where not possible: when something involving an edit summary is being tested).
- The account will restore pages that its tests impact once the respective test has been completed.
Further links
- Category:WMF test accounts, on Meta-Wiki.
- Category:WMF test accounts, on English Wikipedia.