Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts/Beginning
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Wikiquette alerts are an informal streamlined way to request perspective and help with difficult communications with other editors, so it can be a good place to start if you are not sure where else to go. It is hoped that assistance from uninvolved editors can help to resolve conflicts before they escalate. That's usually the best solution for everyone involved. If problems continue, then there are further options as described in this dispute resolution process link and the info-box to the right. For more information, click any of those links, or start with this article: Wikipedia:Etiquette.
IMPORTANT: Read the instructions before posting your alert. Review the section titled Procedure for this page, immediately following the table of contents below.
Please help to respond to Wikiquette alerts. This page is run by regular editors just like you, and needs more editors to help with the alerts. Anyone is welcome to help out, and in particular if you have been helped by this page, please return the favor by offering your advice on other incident reports. That's not a requirement for posting your report, but it's a good idea, and your help would be much appreciated. Responding to alerts is also a good way to learn more about Wikipedia policies and even more, about how to work with other users to calm situations without resorting to formal procedures. Wikiquette in a way is the basis of what allows the community to work smoothly together, so those are valuable skills to develop for those who like to edit Wikipedia. Thanks!
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[edit] Are you in the right place?
- To report obvious vandalism please use administrator intervention against vandalism.
- Violations of the three revert rule should be reported at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR.
- If you feel an article needs protecting against rampant vandalism or a persistent edit war, please use requests for page protection.
- If you believe that one or more editors are sock puppets, please use Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets.
- See also Wikipedia:Dispute resolution, and helpful advice is at Wikipedia:Disruptive editing#Dealing with disruptive editors
- For all other incidents that may require administrator intervention, please use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.
- If two or more editors have warned another editor about his/her behavior, and the problem has continued, an alternative to posting to this page is to post at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct.
- If you would like to get one-to-one advice, feedback, and counseling from another editor, you can use Wikipedia:Editor assistance.
[edit] Procedure for this page
[edit] Instructions for users posting alerts
This page is not formally monitored; all helpers here are volunteers. It may take some time to receive a response. If the problem is continuing and you have not received any results from your posting here, return to this page and post an update to your original statement of the problem.
If you have not received help and the problem becomes urgent or is escalating, refer to the list above and post your report to one of the Administrator Notice boards instead. In that case, please edit your post on this page to inform us that you have reported it elsewhere.
- Post your alert to the bottom of the page — add a new sub-heading with a short description of the issue (click here to start a new section).
- A single posting per alert is sufficient. Avoid an extensive discussion of the problem or issue on this page and instead supply a simple direct explanation of the problem, along with the user-ids of the Users involved and a link or two to the page where the problem is happening. A concise way to do this is to include diff's that show the problem. (A guide to creating diff's is here).
- Describe the problem or issues as neutrally as possible. Avoid emotional content that could cause the problem to escalate.
- Sign your report by using ~~~~ or the signature button in the edit bar.
- Notify the reported user(s). Place a polite short statement on the user(s) talk page, or on the talk page of the article if several users are involved, to notify them that you have filed an alert here.
- Do not continue your discussion in detail here. Instead, continue discussing it wherever you originally were—editors responding to posts here will review the discussions where they are occuring. They may post notes there, however in situations that involve mulitple pages, reviewing editors will post their comments here, so watch this page and refer back to your entry when you notice that a comment has been posted.
If your specific issue is already being discussed elsewhere, please do not file a WQA. It is much easier for other users to help you when your dispute is being handled in one forum, not ten. If an issue is already serious enough to have gone to WP:ANI or WP:RFC, there's not much we can do to help.
If you're filing a report to complain about a WQA editor who responded to a previous WQA alert, please stop now, and think. If you were contacted by a WQA volunteer based on a previously filed alert, they were acting as a neutral third party and probably have no interest in personally entering into a dispute with you. Asking you to respect WP:CIVIL or telling you not to make personal attacks does not itself constitute any sort of incivility or personal attack.
[edit] Instructions for editors responding to alerts
All editors are invited to assist resolving reports entered on this page. Please strive for neutrality and focus first on calming tempers where discussions have become heated.
To help with this page, place it on your watchlist so you can see when new alerts are posted. Or you quickly scan the page for items here that are either marked with the WQA "Work in progress" message-box or have no status indicator at all. If an alert does not have any kind of response yet, it is open and needs attention.
Work in Progress - comments welcome(Optional comment and/or signature)- 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.
- Enter a note on this page in the relevant section to indicate that you have joined the process. Add the {{WQA in progress}} template (as displayed above) to the top of the report item's sub-section.
- 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 on about any Wikiquette breaches you may have seen.
- When the issue is ready to be closed, follow the steps below.
Closing the reports:
Resolved. (Optional comment and/or signature)- 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.
Stuck. (Optional comment and/or signature)- 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.
Stale. (Optional comment and/or signature)- For items that remain open but have no additional comments added after several days to a week, close the item by entering the {{stale}} template at the top of the item's sub-section.
Not a Wikiquette issue, referred elsewhere(Optional comment and/or signature)- For items that should not have been posted to WQA at all -- blatant vandalism, accusations of sock puppetry, a request for adminship, etc., please refer the original poster to the proper forum, and place the {{NWQA}} template under the section heading.
The five templates may optionally include your signature and additional summary comments by including them after a pipe, for example, {{resolved|User has been reminded about [[WP:NPA]] ~~~~}}, or {{stuck|Referred to [[WP:ANI]].}} This automatically formats the included text as small text displayed next to the template. For detailed instructions on using the templates, click any of the template name links above. Please note that using a timestamped signature with one of these templates will delay the automatic bot archival of that alert to 14 days from when you sign the template.
[edit] Archiving alerts
Reports are considered closed and automatically archived by bot (whether tagged or not using any of the templates described above) one week after the last timestamped signature in the discussion. Reports marked resolved, 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 above.
