Wikipedia talk:Reviewing mediation

Ack - I'd missed this page. I think it's about time we gave some serious thought to what is and isn't working, and I think this is a pretty good step.

As another one of the outgoing mediators, I've also got a few suggestions.

I think it would help if we had a concrete mailing list, rather than having to grab everyone's email addresses each time we want to get in touch, particularly now that the boards are dead. I think this'd see a few more of the mediators keep up with things. It may be worth creating an IRC channel as well. In this way, I think sannse's idea of working as a committee more often, instead of always as individuals, would be a wise move.

I think we should be keeping a much tighter ship. If someone makes a request for mediation, then IMHO, we should be getting in touch with the other party within hours, and then getting in touch with a mediators mailing list as soon as the other party consents. As part of this, I think it would help to reduce the chair terms to one month, and appoint them by simply sending out a message asking who wants to do it, and who has the most time, rather than the present system, which is a little disorganised. I think it's this which is leading to us getting bypassed in favour of arbitration.

I think it would help - a lot - if some of us who aren't quite so good could gain guidance from some of those who are, such as Ed. I wonder if it would be possible to put together some sort of "Mediation Manual", so that the likes of Ed could share their knowledge with the newcomers. In this way, I'm quite glad that Ed isn't one of the people leaving the Committee.

I'm a little wary about the idea of "mediation with teeth", as I'm inclined to think that on the few occasions where mediators have reported to the arbitration committee along the lines of "X has cooperated, but Y hasn't", the cases concerned have more often than not been bad-faith ones. I really don't think this is necessary anyway - as long as we're prompt, organised and skilled, then arbitration can deal with the leftovers.

Finally, I think we should be putting out a request - preferably today - for new mediators, advertised in all the usual places. We're losing four mediators, which is a significant proportion of our active people. Thankfully we've still got Ed, but it's not very good if he's doing the whole workload. Ambi 01:27, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here are my thoughts:

• Users ought to try WP:RFC first. This would filter out the pointless cases.
• The Wikipedia:Requests for mediation page should not be used for ranting. Users should not make their arguments until they are in mediation. Having continual fights on that page does not make it easy to see what the current status of the cases are, and only imflames the situation.
• Mediation should be done by the mediation committee as a whole or by groups of mediators, not by an individual mediator. This would make it more fun, less stressful, and hopefully would make things proceed more quickly.
• We need more guidance on when to close a case and more power to do something other than just listen to people complaining about each other.

Angela. 06:28, Jan 29, 2005 (UTC)

scarcity of mediators

I have just started mediating and I have not noticed a scarcity of mediators. I think people are signing up to be mediators and the current lag is only a few days. Maybe this will change later but for now it seems ok.

I would say one problem is mediators who do not have enough time to do a "hands-on" mediation and respond quickly to issues. This could be addressed by assigning multiple mediators to each case; this seems to have worked well on the cases where I have seen it. Ideogram 18:07, 21 June 2006 (UTC)