User:Mediator/policy

Each User:Mediator sets his or her own policy to deal with the challenges of the role. Of course, when someone new assumes the role, they may change this page. It should never be deleted, so that policy shifts can be tracked easily over time.

In priority order, current mediator policies are:

1. Ask responsible users and experienced mediators to review User:Mediator and its mission statement. Edit User:Mediator to try to reflect a consensus view of what the role "is".

2. Notify any likely candidate that they are being considered to take over the User:Mediator role eventually. Having many such candidates is desirable for many reasons:

2a. Take steps to ensure it is always ambiguous who is performing the role. If it matters, the role is probably being performed wrong, and needs more guidelines to restrict its activities. Having many reviewers and many candidates for the role, is the first step to ensure ambiguity.

2b. Work toward a process of User:Mediator/handoff. Probably the next mediator will be chosen at random from a short list of User:mediator/candidates who are all accepted by consensus - those not chosen but remain on the list can help the mediator, even if they do nothing, as it will remain unclear who actually is doing the job, and the list of candidates is those who stand behind the mediator and perhaps intercede for him or her on the mailing list if there is a conflict between mediator advice and mailing list "rule".

3. Create a subpage devoted to the mediator dialogues for all Wikipedia:users in conflict. This the current User:Mediator considers to be a good way to get around the controversy over "/ban" pages, overuse of Wikipedia:problem users and other pages whose titles include judgemental terms.

3a. Use your personal User_talk:YOU/mediator page to raise issues with you, request your help, or relay to you comments that have been made about you on the Mailing List, in case you do not read that list, as most users do not. User:Wik dislikes it, but his discomfort appears to be outweighed by the need to have some means of broadcasting, requesting, offering, and keeping it all in a predicable separate place.

3b. Discuss the current mediator's priorities, and any issue raised at User_talk:mediator/mediator where, as with any other user, mediation concerns with the mediator should be raised.

3c. If someone does not wish to talk to the mediator they may blank or delete the subpage or any other mediator communication. Since the mediator is not raising their own concerns, but those of others, this won't make the issue go away, of course.

3d. When a [[User_talk:]] page is too long for some browsers, User:Mediator remind them to archive so that everyone can continue to talk to them.

4. Three priorities is enough. There will never be a fourth. Working on the above is enough policy for now. Everything else is about compiling what works and doing maintenance:

4a. User:Mediator/watchlist contains articles on mediation-relevant issues, and all the Wikipedia:policy relevant to mediator activity It should be kept up to date.

4b. User:Mediator/tactics should list how well every tactic in every intervention tried, worked - or if it didn't, why not, and what to try next time.

4c. User:Mediator/user_interface lists features that may help mediation or reduce conflict between users. These should also go to sourceforge.net

4d. User:Mediator/spam can be refined, and made more amusing perhaps, so that it annoys fewer people when it appears at User_talk:PROBLEM_USER/mediator. It will probably never be totally innocuous, however.

4e. Track User:Mediator equivalents on other language wikis.