Wikipedia talk:Dispute Resolution Improvement Project

Pile-on at DR
I occasionally see a bit of pile-on at different DR venues (and noticeboards in general). Over the last few years, it seems that DR is sometimes viewed as an invitation to a feeding frenzy, which is not very helpful when trying to resolve disputes. I completely missed it when the survey was being constructed, but perhaps this concern could be kept in mind while reviewing the DR survey results. It's possible that DR sometimes isn't as effective as it could be because of pile-on. I'm wondering if people could be more focused on resolution and less on dispute if that would make the process more efficient. 64.40.57.54 (talk) 02:08, 21 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Us DR folk chat quite a bit about how we can make dispute resolution more efficient. I have an unusual idea that I think I'll circulate around with a few people and see if it's a viable option. Thanks for your comments. Regards, Steven Zhang  Talk 13:47, 22 May 2012 (UTC)

Number of forums
You made the claim in an email that you sent out that "Dispute resolution is difficult due to its complexity, inaccessibility, and because of the large amount of dispute resolution forums that exist." I do not think this is the best way to phrase the problem. The difficulty here is the large number of choices which a person must make in selecting a dispute resolution forum.

I think the same problem used to exist in picturing uploading and article creation, and now there are wizards for those things. I have thought that it might be nice to have either a wizard or even just a flowchart to help people decide how to settle disputes.

I think that the multiple existing forums are all necessary and volunteers who staff those forums should not be discouraged from supporting them, but rather the problem is when users seek help in a particular forum which is not the best choice for their kind of dispute. If there were a wizard, then that could also provide user metrics to track what kinds of problems are most commonly perceived. I appreciate your work on this.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   15:15, 20 June 2012 (UTC)


 * The email contained a summary of the responses from the survey, who generally made that assessment of dispute resolution - but the large amount of choices for dispute resolution indeed makes things difficult. I hope to resolve this by reducing the amount of DR forums, another idea has been a sorting page where all disputes are initially filed (see this discussion) but I can't really do much until the survey is uploaded, and I'm getting the results checked before it's uploaded. Stay tuned. Steven   Zhang  Get involved in DR! 03:18, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Move this to a project page
I think you should move this off your userspace and start talking about it on a project page so that you create the foundation for this becoming a community project rather than a personal one.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)   15:16, 20 June 2012 (UTC)
 * At present, it's really a page to show the community the progress of the activies I am undertaking as a fellow. When it morphs into a community project, I'll move it somewhere else - but I'm not sure where it'd go at this stage. Regards, Steven   Zhang  Get involved in DR! 03:16, 22 June 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for moving this into Wikipedia space.  Blue Rasberry    (talk)   11:00, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

suggesting an alternate Olive Branch subscription method
I was wondering if one can subscribe to The Olive Branch by transclusion of a template (similar to the Wikipedia Signpost) instead of subscribing via talk page updates? Bwrs (talk) 04:28, 21 March 2013 (UTC)

What became of this?
This project sounds like a good idea, but apparently it didn't take off. Why not? Is it worth another go or should it be declared historic? (Ping those among the people who signed up who are still active: Ebe123, Egeymi, Guy Macon, Ocaasi, Shooterwalker, Sjones23,  SmokeyJoe, WikiLeon, Sphilbrick, Liz, Robert McClenon, Human3015) ◅ Sebastian 13:26, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * , It appears that the person who initiated this, Steve Crossin, is not longer employed by the WMF S Philbrick  (Talk)  14:08, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oh, yes – and he stopped editing just five edits later. Very odd, right after announcing such big plans! I guess that means we'll have to mark it as historic. ◅ Sebastian 14:20, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Concur. Ebe  123  → report 16:24, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * According to his contributions, he was active until September 27. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 19:11, 28 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Interesting. While he was active in DR, he never contributed here. All the while this page just served as the landing page for his achievements. ◅ Sebastian 14:12, 29 December 2020 (UTC)
 * It often seemed to me that was simply an on-and-off person, who contributed a lot for brief periods of time, and had interesting ideas, and did not always follow up.  I am not sure, but I think that I was personally annoyed by his suggestion that DRN be disbanded as having outlived its usefulness.  I think that disbanding it was a well-meaning idea, that doing away with it would motivate the community to reinvent it.  But he had some good ideas, and did not always follow through.  Does anyone have any new ideas for improving dispute resolution?  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:12, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * The worst idea about improving dispute resolution was to abolish the Mediation Committee. It had mostly turned down cases that were for various reasons not ready for it, and may have resolved something like one case a year, and had a shortage of mediators, but it was still a good idea to have it in reserve.  Anyway, that was the community doing its non-thing.  Robert McClenon (talk) 01:12, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Not sure about MedCom. Back in its heyday, I searched their archives for success stories, found one or two, and asked for more, but never received an answer. Imho, MedCab worked better and with less overhead. I think I did some survey of that once, but can't find it now.
 * You're asking about any new ideas – that's what I was hoping to find here. Let's start a new section for that; maybe this project will turn out to be good for something, after all. ◅ Sebastian 11:39, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

New ideas
Robert McClenon asked for new ideas above, so I think it's worth starting a new section. ◅ Sebastian 11:39, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

I have only a little idea at the moment: Currently WP:ANI appears to be the main go-to address for disputes – rather than WP:DRN, which appears to be much less active. What if we sent people with successful mediation experience to ANI to offer their skills there? Each volunteer could have a subpage that shows their specialties, successes and modus operandi, so that the involved parties could make up their mind before agreeing. If both parties accept, the volunteer resolves the ANI topic with a link to the page where the mediation is to take place. ◅ Sebastian 11:39, 30 December 2020 (UTC)