Wikipedia:Request for solutions

Wikipedia:Requests for solutions (RfS) is a proposed new part of the dispute resolution process, by which editors can seek enforceable solutions regarding contentious disputes over article content, user conduct, and Wikipedia policy and guidelines. Unlike RfC Request for Solutions ends up with decisions that are enforced by administrators. The Request for Solution is an intermediate instance between the Request for Comment and the Requests for Arbitration. It is one of the last steps of dispute resolution. Before requesting Arbitration, please review other avenues you should take.

Starting process

• Before requesting community search for solutions, at least two editors must have contacted the other party on their talk page, or the talk pages involved in the dispute, and tried but failed to resolve the problem. An uninvolved administrator should certify that the resolution of the dispute is beyond the discretion of a single administrator and the case is serious enough to warrant community search for solutions. Any RfS not accompanied by evidence showing that two users tried and failed to resolve the same dispute or not endorsed by an admin may be deleted after 1 week.

Workshop

Workshop is the main phase of the community search for solutions. The editors are working on the sections:

• Evidence - that include references to diffs, policies and if applicable references to reliable external sources;
• Facts - that include facts found
• Solutions - that is variants of the proposed solutions. The solutions on user conduct may include blocks, bans, bans from particular articles, probation, mentoring and other remedies used by Arbcom. The article solutions could include recommendations on article scope and edits.

All editors involved are encouraged to support or oppose the different proposed versions of the fact finding and solutions as well as providing reasons for their decisions.

The maximal length of the workshop editing is two weeks.

Final results

The prepared workshop page stays for one week awaiting endorsing and disendorsing by administrators.

To make a version of fact finding or solutions to be final it should be endorsed by at least five administrators uninvolved in the original dispute. One disendorsing vote of an uninvolved admin negates two endorse votes.

The administrators should evaluate the community support for the proposed measures, its conformity to the policies and precedents as well as to the spirit of the project. All the proposed solutions that were not endorsed by five administrators in a week since the start of endorsements are not included in the final results of the RfS. If the resulting final document is empty, does not make sense, or self-contradictory the RfS considered as failed and the case goes to Arbcom. Parties of the conflict can appeal the results of RfS to Arbcom.

Enforcement

Every administrator should enforce the same way as the Arbcom decisions. Deliberate violations of the article RfS recommendations consider to be vandalism, violations of an User RFS remedies are blocked.