Wikipedia:Reviewing mediation

I'm starting this page to outline some thoughts and concerns about the mediation process. It's rather a personal view right now, but I'm hoping it will develop into a more general discussion or what needs to be done. What I'd like to do here is incorporate any comments on this page into the text. Please add any comments that you don't want altered, summarised, incorporated, or otherwise mucked about with to the talk page. (And feel free to alter my text here too, of course)

Where do we stand now

There seems to be a general impression among the community that mediation is failing. In part this is because mediation is often off-line and confidential - our successes are not visible. But there are also other problems. Including:

• The slowness of response - mediation often takes a long time to start
• The speed of mediation once underway
• Requests in bad faith and the difficulty of responding well to these
• The difficulty in persuading participants to change when they fully believe they are in the right (this can apply to both sides of the argument at once)
• The difficulty in getting either side to believe in the good intent of the other

Working as a committee

We work individually on cases, and there is currently little discussion or contact between the committee as a whole. Meetings could be a help in this, IRC has been used for this in other contexts, maybe it would work for us too.

Requests for mediation

My main concern here is that this is our initial contact point and I would like to see a better procedure for the initial stages of mediation.

Choosing a mediator

How should we decide who takes a case. At the moment this is done by asking around to find someone available and willing. This can mean that some mediators are not commonly asked. For example, my usual first step is to see who is around on IRC because this is the quickest way of discussing the case with someone who may be able to take it on. This means I generally ask a small sub-set of the committee first.

"Mediation with teeth"

One of the problems I have encountered is mediation failing because one party refuses to compromise or to engage in the process. With the current system there is nothing that can be done about this (other than point out that the other party may ask for arbitration if mediation is unsuccessful). Is there a case for some sort of mediated-arbitration that combines aspects of both? If so what form should this take? For example: a possible form is for all parties to agree to abide by a decision of the mediator. The mediation would happen as usual, with discussions on both sides and the mediator participating to try and find solutions. But the mediator would have the ability to make "judgements" as part of this process. This would be a more active style than the arbitration process (where the arbitrators gather information to make decisions rather than engage in long discussions with the participants).

There are problems with this model of course:

• Currently mediators work on cases alone - would this be giving too much authority to individuals, and would it be better for any such "enforcement" of mediation to be taken as a group?
• This is very much outside the model of mediation as a voluntary, collaborative and non-combative process. Mediation is not arbitration.

Reporting to the arbitration committee

Another suggestion I have heard, is that the mediation committee might produce a report for the arbitration committee in cases that go to them after mediation. The advantages of this are: it would give the mediators some of those teeth mentioned before, it would help the arbitration committee to have the situation presented by a neural party (others?). The disadvantages are that it would be moving away (again) from the ideal of a confidential and non-combative mediation, those involved may have (or develop) doubts as to the neutrality of the mediator (participants rarely believe they are in the wrong), if mediation is done in the current form (one mediator) this may be giving too much weight to one persons view of the situation.

The arbitration elections

One of the reasons this is on my mind is the upcoming arbitration elections. Several mediators are running in this and, should some or all of us be elected, this will severely reduce the number of people available for mediation (it's not possible to serve on both the arbitration and the mediation committees simultaneously). This can only increase the difficulties of the mediation process.