Wikipedia:DRVOLUNTEERS

This page is a guide for volunteers who want to assist in dispute moderation at DRN. There are no formal requirements so feel free to begin your participation right away as any editor may comment on any discussion. You are not required to add your name to the list of DRN volunteers before commenting at a dispute, but adding your name to the list below is recommended and helpful for the DRN bot that monitors the status of each case.

If you don't want to commit to being the moderator of a specific case, you can help at DRN by adding comments to a case or participating at the . Additionally, one may assist with maintenance tasks such as making sure all parties in the dispute have been notified on their talk page. More experienced users may also make procedural closings, attend to formatting repairs and correct page links and user names.

The filing party is responsible for notifying all participants on their user talk page but the filing party may need to be reminded. Additional reminders may be needed as the case progresses. To remind participants that a DRN case needs their input, post the {{}} template on their user talk page as follows:

== DRN case reminder ==

Refer to the page for options and details.

As a volunteer moderator, your role is to assist the participants in obtaining a mutually satisfactory resolution of their underlying content dispute. Some suggestions:

In contentious disputes, establishing ground rules may help structure the discussion. Such ground rules might include:

Volunteer moderators should close their cases when they have concluded. A case may be closed as 'resolved' or 'failed' (or 'closed' when there is no clear outcome). To close a case, first set the case status to either "resolved" or "failed" or "closed" within the {{}} template. Second, collapse the entire case by enclosing it in an archive box with a comment explaining the reasons for the closure. Example:

== History of Russia case ==

{{DR case status|closed}}

{{DRN archive top|reason=Reason for closing. ~~~~}}

Filing request and discussion.

{{DRN archive bottom}}

There are three ways to close a case: "resolved", "failed" and "closed". It is also important to remove the {{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|0123456789}} line when closing a thread so that the bot can archive the closed discussion.

When all involved parties have agreed on a resolution in an unambiguous manner, the case filing may be closed and the DRN case status template changed to "resolved":

The case status bar should then look like this:

If it becomes apparent that resolution is not possible at this time, mark the case status as "failed". Advise the parties to continue discussing the issue in the article talk page, and/or pursue other methods of dispute resolution such as Request for Comment or WP:Mediation. To close a case as "failed" set the DRN case status template as follows:

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