Informal mediation is a resource for editors engaged in a dispute to seek assistance by neutral third parties without having to engage through Wikipedia's procedural methods, such as the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard, Formal Mediation, and Request for Comment. These procedures are often very effective, but they also can be exhausting. We want to minimize that by providing a simple resource for editors to seek advice, support, and an informal dispute resolution experience without the intensive procedures, rules, and commitments required of other processes. Anyone is welcome to participate.

• If you wish to request dispute resolution, please place the template {{mediateme}} on an article's talk page. There is no need to explain the dispute when placing the template; it should be self-evident on the talk page. Once the dispute has been resolved, or progress is being made without outside assistance, please remove the template.
• To view the list of requests, please check Category:Informal mediation requests. You may pick any article, even if it's being actively mediated. Discussion should remain on the article's talk page.

Principles[edit]

The context a dispute exists in is modified and often exacerbated when it's labelled a dispute and put through a process. We want to minimize that by keeping dispute resolution on the article's talk page alongside all the prior discussion. We ask that mediators act primarily as catalysts; there is no need for rules or structures beyond what is asked of editors in the first place. If you have no prior dispute resolution experience, we ask only three things:

1. That you have no recent history of poor conduct.
2. That you are knowledgeable of Wikipedia's policies and guidelines.
3. That your biases do not color or appear to color your approach to resolving a dispute.

Informal mediation is designed to have as little overhead as possible. There are no chairs, no need to register yourself as a participant, no complicated templates or page structures. It is completely self-running, so long as there are disputes and people wanting to resolve them.