User:Mediator/benefit of the doubt
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The User:Mediator Wikipedia:role account is a collective work. Anyone voluntarily listed as one of the User:Mediator/candidates may edit this page on an equal-status basis with the incumbent. Other edits will be considered but may be reverted without notice. Anyone may list themselves as one of the User:Mediator/candidates. Doing so indicates support for this role account and position. It need not indicate support for the current incumbent doing the job. Comments to or about them should go to User_talk:Mediator. Other collectively authored pages are role, spam, handoff, best practices, strategy, tactics, watchlist, and User:Mediator/candidates.
Every User:Mediator sets their own detailed policy regarding benefit of the doubt. They owe every user a common and fair process, but they do not necessarily have to believe every assertion or accusation made by every user, nor put up with infinite harangue from those who make up facts as they go. Here are some important guidelines:
- Every assertion or accusation must be accompanied by a direct link to the ACTUAL VERSION OF THE PAGE WHERE IT WAS MADE - no other evidence should be answered by the mediator, and nothing else should be mentioned on "/mediator" pages, or allowed to stand on such pages. All User:Mediator/tactics should rely as much as possible on Wikipedia:accountability foundations.
- What Wikipedia is not, is, a jurisdiction. The objective here is not vague and universal fairness - it is an encyclopedia, and that implies rules that no User:Mediator can ignore.
- If some bias is already over-represented, the Mediator may invite a User:User_Advocate to take the position of an under-represented group, to help separate issues between groups (like a Wikipedia:political dispute or Wikipedia:identity dispute) from those that apply between individuals. If there is only one scholar in Thai history at Wikipedia, that person deserves a lot more benefit of the doubt than those who make a hobby out of calling for bans on every person who disagrees with them.
- A Wikipedia:sysop who exercises their powers before calling in the User:Mediator should have less benefit of the doubt than one who waits for a ruling or intervention patiently.
- Those who call for bans on others should have less benefit of the doubt than those who remain willing to work with them.
For fairness, any systemic bias of the Mediator must be published here and subject to consensus. If for instance the User:Mediator believes there are too many advocates of say American Exceptionalism and thus more Wikipedia:USPOV, s/he must make that statement explicitly so that erring in favour of those opposing that view can be discussed.
Arguments that this violates neutral point of view are fatuous: What is "neutral" is already in doubt, or else, the Mediator would not be involved.