Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Guide/New

Before you read this guide to requesting formal mediation, please read the formal mediation policy so that you understand the purpose and features of formal mediation, and the dispute resolution policy so you understand the compulsory features of Wikipedia's dispute resolution process.

If you file a request before you understand Wikipedia dispute resolution, and formal mediation in particular, you are wasting your time, and ours. Please afford a few minutes to read these policies!

Before requesting formal mediation
Before requesting formal mediation, you must ensure that:
 * 1) The dispute is appropriate for formal mediation. Formal mediation is a labour-intensive, time-consuming process. Mediators can usually take on no more than one or two disputes at any time, so we only accept requests for mediation of advanced content disputes. In practice, this means that disputants must have unsuccessfully attempted extensive talk page discussion, as well as used the third opinion, requests for comment, or dispute resolution noticeboard process(es) without success.
 * 2) At the heart of the dispute is a genuine disagreements among editors about the best formulation of an article. Editorial disputes that arise primarily out of the refusal of one or more parties to engage in dispute resolution, the poor or abrasive conduct of any party, or a clash of personalities are conduct, not content, issues. Where a disputant is engaging in a dispute in bad faith, the Mediation Committee will refuse to become involved, and the matter should be referred to the community's administrators for preventative action (such as sanctioning or blocking).
 * 3) You know what the dispute is. The Mediation Committee will ask the person filing the request to: (1) select an appropriate name for the case request; (2) link to the userpage of each disputant, any articles which are the subject of the disagreement in question, and all previous attempts at discussing or resolving this dispute; and (3) summarise what the dispute is about. If you cannot provide an accurate, credible, and balanced account of the dispute, you should not request mediation. The Mediation Committee cannot do this for you: it is composed of neutral editors who have no involvement in your dispute.

Submitting your request for formal mediation
To request formal mediation, and once you have read and understood the above sections of this guide, then go to Requests for mediation/New. You should return here to read the remainder of the guide once you have successfully submitted your request.

After submitting your request
MediationBot will automatically notify the editors whom you have listed as disputants that you have requested mediation. These disputants will then have seven days to respond to the request, by indicating whether they do or do not agree to participate in mediation. When the seven days have elapsed, or when all the parties have responded (whichever comes sooner), a representative of the mediators will examine your request and decide whether the assignment of a mediator to your dispute is likely to assist in the reaching of a resolution, and whether to undertake mediation would be to the benefit of Wikipedia. If mediation is possible, that representative will mark the request as "Accepted" (on behalf of the Mediation Committee). If mediation is not possible (there are a number of reasons why this may be), the mediator will mark the request as "Declined" or "Rejected" (on behalf of the Mediation Committee). The Mediation Committee can also place requests "on hold", if necessary. The representative of the Mediation Committee is usually the Chairperson, or another member of the committee should the Chair be unavailable.

If your request is declined
If your request for mediation is declined, the committee representative will usually state why mediation was not possible (though they may choose not to do so, if appropriate). They may also suggest other methods of dispute resolution or other methods of proceeding with the dispute, which you may wish to pursue. It will be the obligation of the disputants to pursue appropriate, effective methods of dispute resolution, should mediation be declined. All disputants are reminded that it is unacceptable to continue to revert between alternative suggestions of content: such behaviour is edit warring, and usually results in your accounts being blocked by an administrator and/or the article being protected from edits.

Common reasons for the rejection of mediation requests are:


 * 1) Parties did not agree to mediation: Mediation is a voluntary process that relies entirely on the willingness of the parties to participate; if not all parties agree to mediate, then mediation cannot occur. If one party refuses to participate in mediation, then it is impossible to mediate the dispute.
 * 2) Parties did not respond to request: All parties must explicitly indicate that they agree to have the dispute mediated. The committee will reject a request if one or more parties have not indicated their agreement on the request page by signing under "Parties' agreement to mediate", usually within seven days of a mediator having given them a notification of the request. The seven day notice period can be extended, but usually is not.
 * 3) Malformatted request: The committee uses a standard format for all requests for mediation, to ensure that we are given all information we require. If your request deviates from the format in such a way that it is difficult to evaluate, your request will probably be delisted as malformatted; and if it is not promptly remedied, the request will be declined. Requests which use the required format but do not provide all the required information are also considered malformatted.
 * 4) Unclear issues: Set out clearly and plainly the issues over which there is disagreement between the parties to the request. If you do not, we cannot evaluate whether mediation will be of use to your dispute, and we will have to decline your request.
 * 5) Issues not appropriate for mediation: Only disagreements over the content of an article will be mediated. Complaints about an editor's conduct or behaviour are the remit of the Arbitration Committee. Requests such as "please stop this editor from making POV edits," "a mediator is needed to convince this editor he is wrong," "you need to mediate this issue before I have to take him before the ArbCom," and others of this nature are not appropriate issues for mediation. All parties must come to mediation with the understanding that both sides will have to compromise to reach an agreement, and that neither side will "win."
 * 6) Not a good-faith request: The MedCom only takes on disputes that its presence and services will be of benefit to. Do not request mediation if you do not honestly want to resolve the content problems at hand. That is a waste of your time, and ours.

If your request is accepted
If your request is accepted, MediationBot will administer the request and add it to the "Unassigned" section of the mediation tasks template. The "request for mediation" will then become known as an "open case", and the "request page" which was created for the purpose of your request for mediation will become a "case page".

When the representative of the committee "accepts" a case, this indicates that the Mediation Committee has agreed to provide a mediator to your dispute. However, no mediator is obliged to take on a case at any time, and mediation will not commence until a mediator reviews your case and decides to become its mediator. When a mediator decides to take on your case, they will indicate this on the case or case talk page. The committee member who accepts your request necessarily be the mediator who takes on (or 'accepts') your case. Please understand this distinction. If no mediator has been assigned to your case after one fortnight has passed since the case was accepted in its "request" phase, you should write to the Mediation Committee to request an update. We try to assign mediators promptly to open, unassigned cases (as well as to closely monitor the status of open, assigned cases), but like all Wikipedia volunteers our time and resources are limited.

When a mediator is assigned and mediation commences, the mediator will begin to lead a discussion on the case talk page. (This case talk page is the "Wikipedia talk:" page of the case page which all disputants are linked to upon acceptance of a mediation request.) You should therefore add that page to your watchlist or otherwise ensure you check it regularly, because accepted requests are promptly passed over when a mediator is assigned, and you will then be expected to take your lead from the mediator, not the Mediation Committee. The mediation policy set out what is involved in a typical mediation case, as well as the procedure for complaining about the quality of mediation provided by our mediators.