User:Mediator/role
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The User:Mediator Wikipedia:role account is a collective work. Anyone voluntarily listed as one of the en: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 en: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 best practices, strategy, tactics, watchlist, benefit of the doubt, User:Mediator/candidates.
This page outlines the limits of the User:Mediator role and how it relates to other roles such as Wikipedia:Mediation and Arbitration Comittee, the User:User_Advocate, and potentially User:Registrar, User:Bouncer - or whatever other roles people wish to prototype. This is an attempt at self-organization of Wikipedia:itself. It will not be supported by all users. If you are not supportive, your comments are welcome at User_talk:Mediator/role, but not on this page.
Here are some basic observations about the role:
- It seems to be relatively easy to port to other, self-governing, Wikipedias in other languages
- Not everyone will trust it. A User:User_Advocate already exists to intervene where the mediator is seemingly unfair. This is an alternative to a rapid User:Mediator/handoff - ideally the handoff would occur as soon as anyone accuses the mediator of being unfair in any way. But still, not everyone will trust it.
- There is no need for a separate User:Registrar if User:Mediator/handoff works well enough - and if Mediator mostly acts as a coach to help other, named and un-named, users, mediate disputes. It may be mostly useful as a single user account to compile User:Mediator/best_practices - requiring less consensus than for instance the Wikipedia: policy space, but getting more attention than the meta:.
- User:Mediator/benefit_of_the_doubt has to reflect what Wikipedia is not - it is not therefore "neutral" except in the process sense, and must favour contributors who work within those guidelines, over those who stress or seek to change them. Also, the mediator only gets involved when there is dispute about what "neutral" means in a given instance. In a Wikipedia:identity dispute for instance, some will consider a group's definition or name (e.g. "Islamists") to be neutral, others might consider it insulting or prejudicial. Such cases are common.
- Some dislike the necessity of using User:Mediator/spam boilerplate to send standard, separable, deleteable, transitory types of messages. This is a privelege that should be in general restricted to approved messages that seem to be generically useful in keeping Mediation working, even if they annoy users here and there. This would be true of any Wikipedia:Role account.