Wikipedia talk:Mediation Committee/Archive/7

message: --Santa (talk) 01:09, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Much thanks, and Happy Holidays to you as well ;) Have a good one. Anthøny 11:04, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Seasons Greetings 

message: For the public record:  will be taking over the co-ordination role of Chair of this Committee, starting January 1, 2008.
On December 1, I sent an email to the Commitee's private mailing list, detailing that I felt it was time the Committee discussed filling the co-ordination position of Chair in 2008. I cited the following: January 1 (one months' time) will mark six months since I was appointed as Chair of the Mediation Committee. The Committee has changed both in formation and other aspects since then. I feel that I should follow on from the lead of Essjay and call a Chair election, having held the role for six months. Although the documentation says the position could be held until I decided to retire, such an (in)action would not benefit the smooth running of the Committee in my opinion. 
The discussion that eventuated had WJBscribe enjoy the support of the entire Committee, and no-one else nominated themselves for the role — for the record, I sent the following to the list a few days in, to confirm my position: [The] demands that will be placed on my time next year [will be significantly more than they were in the end of 2007], and as such I feel that I would be doing the Mediation Committee and the community as a whole a disservice to take on the role when I believe that I don't have the time available to me to do it adequately.
I personally wish WJBscribe well in his activities both as Chair and Wikipedia in general. On a personal note, I still intend to be active in-and-around the mediation 'scene', and I will support WJBscribe and all my friends involved (ie. all members of the Mediation Committee) and anyone who needs it in such as much as possible. This will also free up some time to assist with the rewriting of a number of documentation pages which are out-of-date and not reflective of current practice.
Please note that any enquiries which would normally have gone to me should now go to User talk:WJBscribe, which (from experience) I apologise for burdening him with :) Cheers, and a happy holidays to all, Daniel 09:42, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Notification regarding Chair 

message: Wasn't there at some point an at least temporary possibility of binding mediation? Whatever happened to that? I can't find any reference to it anymore. John Carter (talk) 18:58, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: WP:CEM, and it related to user conduct. No-one can issue binding results on content issues, not even the Arbitration Committee. Daniel (talk) 23:35, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Binding mediation? 

message: Hi, just to let you know that your bot is posting the same notice multiple times to my talk page, and won't let me archive it.  SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 19:49, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: It keeps doing it, so I've blocked it for three hours until someone can fix it. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 20:09, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: How very bossy of the damn Bot. Thanks for letting us kmow - I'll chase it up. WjBscribe 21:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Bot

message: I do not care to have the formatting of my talk page arbitrarily revised, as your bot has chosen to do. I do not like " for quotation marks, and neither do my correspondents; it makes their comments less legible in edit space. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oddly enough, the bot isn't supposed to do that. I'll look into its behaviour... WjBscribe 18:06, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Is it calling another bot, maybe? That would account for it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Maybe I should investigate getting it spayed. In any event, we'll keep it off your lawn until the problem is resolved... WjBscribe 18:58, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: And on a leash, if you please :) Anthøny 20:11, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Please curb your bot

message: I am curious as to whether the mediation committee has "clerks," similar to the arbitration committee and WP:RFCU.  I assume not, but I figured that it wouldn't hurt to ask.  Bwrs (talk) 02:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The Mediation Committee does not have Clerks, no; this is presumably because it has no requirement for Clerks, unlike the Arbitration Committee, which concluded at the time of the Clerks' creation, that it required them. Anthøny 18:06, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  quick question 

message: I'm relocating to another city soon (in the next two or three weeks) and starting a new job shortly thereafter. I'm pretty booked up right now, looking for a place to live and getting to know my new host city (Cincinnati, Ohio)and quite stressed about the whole ordeal, so I'm putting myself on temporary absence. I had planned to come back earlier in May, but a turn for the better in terms of job outlook and finally placement has made me put Wikipedia on the sidetrack for at least a few weeks. 
I can't wait to get back into the routine of things :) seicer | talk | contribs 04:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Temporary absence from MC 

message: As a curious note, is the e-mail functionality working? I sent a message earlier today, but I can't recall receiving anything as of late. It may be attached to my old addy, so if someone can shoot me some mail, it would be much appreciated. Thanks seicer | talk | contribs 04:26, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean the mailing list? I believe so; we're still using .Perhaps you have disabled deliveries from the list? A look here doesn't suggest so, but you should flick through your preferences (accessed through this page) to make sure.Traffic hasn't been high this month, however, so you may simply be missing what little email is going through Mediation-en-l at the moment.If I can be of any more assistance, let me know. AGK 16:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  E-Mail 

message: Hiya. I know that ArbCom has clerks for helping out with general cleanup and so on. Does MedCom have similar, and if so is there any need for a new one? [roux » x] 03:08, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: No such office exists, no, and in my opinion there is no need for it. The matter was previously raised and the discussion in question is now archived here, if you are interested. The rationale for concluding that there is no need for Mediation Committee Clerks is the same then as it is now. Thanks for your interest, though, and if you wish to get involved with assisting in mediation matters, the Mediation Cabal is perpetually seeking editors to take a case! Regards, AGK 15:51, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Righto... and I'm already with MedCab :P //roux   15:59, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Ah, of course you are. I've conversed with you myself in #wikipedia-medcab on a number of occasions! (Please don't be offended by my absent-mindedness. ;) Well, my response to the Clerking question stands, I suppose: the MedCom simply doesn't need them. Best, AGK 16:02, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Clerking? 

message: How you have had elected first members of Mediation Committee? I need to know 'couse I want to start a disscussion about it in ru.wpCarn (talk) 15:42, 4 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  The first step 

message: Hi,
I'm proud of a technique that I devised to help defuse (or at least reduce to a low simmer) a dispute and, frankly, I was trying to figure where I could tout this idea and I figured this might be a place where it could do some good.
The Flight and expulsion of Germans is a contentious topic.  Some of the biggest points of contention are the questions of how many Germans were expelled from each country, how many died, what the causes of death were and who is to blame.  A few years ago, the article just said something like 12million were expelled, 2 million died.  There were editors who challenged the reliability of these figures and the POV nature of the source.  From there we moved to providing upper and lower bounds and then eventually listing a number of estimates and providing sources for each estimate.
Finally, I came to the conclusion that the historiography of these numbers was an encyclopedic topic in its own right and created 
Demographic estimates of the flight and expulsion of Germans.  This article has grown significantly since I created it and I was pleasantly surprised to see how useful it is to have a compilation of so many disparate estimates in one place.  The point is that a dispute about the reliability of sources can be redirected into the creation of an article about the differences between sources and their reliability.  This allows the main article to simply state that there is a range of estimates while shifting the discussion about the range to the subsidiary article.
This is the reason that I thought it might be useful to bring this technique to your attention.  The technique is not limited to disputes about statistics.  As you may know, we have The Holocaust, Holocaust denial and Criticism of Holocaust denial.  I have my doubts about having three separate articles but doing so does seem to have provided places for this information to reside.
I am working on Alleged fabrication of the Nanking Massacre which does something similar.  It makes an encyclopedic topic out of the Japanese efforts to deny the Nanking Massacre.
Hope this is of some help to you.
--Richard (talk) 12:19, 20 March 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  A technique for defusing disputes about statistics