Wikipedia:Wikiquette assistance/Volunteer instructions

This pages contains instructions for volunteers responding to requests made at Wikiquette assistance ('WQA').

Overview
All editors are invited to assist resolving situations described on the WQA noticeboard. Please strive for neutrality and focus first on calming tempers where discussions have become heated. If the situation is severe or has escalated then consider advising the filing party to post at a relevant noticeboard (or you may wish to do this yourself).

To help with WQA, place the project page on your watchlist. Generally, you should quickly scan the page for items with no status indicator and no response.


 * Review open items and when you find one that you feel you can help with, visit the relevant pages and observe the situation. When you are ready, enter your helpful comments and strive to improve the situation, at the disputed page if appropriate, or on this page if that seems better.  The WQA in progress template may be added at the top of the relevant section to indicate that you have joined the process, but it is not necessary.
 * If there is no action needed, or after action has produced results, enter a note on this page to describe the results, including constructive comments about any Wikiquette concerns you may have with respect to the parties involved.
 * When an issue is ready to be closed, one of the steps below should be followed.

Closing entries

 * If you believe the situation is resolved with consensus or at very least grudging acceptance of the involved parties, close the item by entering the resolved template at the top of the item's sub-section.


 * If on the other hand, after you have done your best you find that the problems are continuing and you feel there is nothing further that you can do, then consider what the best next step for the parties would be. State your suggestions on the relevant talk page, and also in a comment here, what dispute resolution process you recommend, and include a link for them to follow. To close the item here, enter the stuck template at the top of the item's sub-section.


 * For items that remain open but have no additional comments added after several days, close the item by entering the stale template at the top of the item's sub-section.


 * For items that should not have been posted to WQA at all -- blatant vandalism, accusations of sock puppetry, etc., please refer the original poster to the proper forum, and place the NWQA template under the section heading.

A couple of basic examples on the usage of these templates can include, or This automatically formats the included text as small text displayed next to the template. For more detailed instructions on using the templates, click any of the template name links above. NOTE: using a timestamped signature with one of these templates will delay the automatic bot archival of that alert to five days from when you sign the template.

Archiving entries
Situations are considered closed and automatically archived by bot (whether tagged or not using any of the templates described above) five days after the last timestamped signature in the discussion. Reports marked resolved, stale, stuck, or NWQA (as above) may be manually archived sooner than this. Links to the archive pages can be found in the Archive Box next to the Table of Contents on the main WQA project page.