sannse wrote:
I think mediation has already been tried. Both Ed Poor and I have e-mailed him and many users have tried communicating with him on his talk page, but he now seems to make no contributions other than comments on talk pages criticising and provoking RK.
But did you try as individual users or as part of the mediation committee? I think (hope!) that people will react differently to an approach by the mediation committee than to what they might see as random input. So maybe any "official" mediation needs to start with an introduction of the mediator(s) and an explanation of the role of the mediation committee. I think it also needs to start with an agreement from both parties to work with the mediator(s). I can't see this working at all without that step.
I think this is definitely a good idea. Especially if you can convey to the person that the role of the mediation committee is explicitly to try to resolve disputes to the mutual satisfaction of all, and *not* as a "first cut" vetting candidates for the arbitration committee to ban. People naturally get very defensive when things like potential bans come up, so I think it'll work better if they understand that being involved in mediation is not really a first step towards banning, but instead an honest attempt to resolve the problem. They need to understand that any concerns they have will be given a fair hearing.
Not being on the mediation committee myself I'll leave it you who are to decide how to best organize things, but I think having some sort of central information repository might be a good idea, where each person on the committee can check up on disputes and see who has done what, like "[x] emailed MNH, got a friendly response'" or "[[blah]]: dispute between polish and german nationalists; [y] is currently trying to find a compromise on the talk page".
-Mark