The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
In this request for comment, several proposals were put forward. The first proposal suggested a unique dispute resolution gadget for a number of different dispute resolution venues. This proposal was supported by a fair number of editors because they believed it would make the user interface to those dispute resolution venues simpler and more newbie-friendly. However, it ultimately failed to gain consensus because other editors felt that it would needlessly complicated matters (WP:BURO was a commonly cited policy) and unnecessarily fragment the dispute resolution processes.
The second proposal nominated a universal dispute resolution wizard. This proposal met with a strong consensus supporting it. By far the most commonly cited reason was that it would reduce fragmentation by reason of the sole entry point, making dispute resolution more friendly for newbies and thereby largely doing away with the "Board XXX is thataway" comments. A couple users, TransporterMan in particular, noted that the form will need to be kept up to date with the requirements of the various dispute resolution boards. Opposers, as before, cited WP:BURO, but they (in particular, Green Cardamom) also mentioned that universal systems can be too rigid.
Jc37 proposed that all dispute resolution venues be merged into one board without the use of any forms or excessive wikimarkup. This proposal was supported as being both more human and extremely simple (the KISS principle was cited). However, this failed to achieve consensus when other users opposed it because they believed it to be "edit at your own risk", to borrow a phrase from Amadscientist, and too crowded, meaning that everything would be placed on one page and overload watchlists and flood the page with many, many disputes.
Shooterwalker proposed a new dispute resolution process to remove cliques, possibly via the use of "complaint statements" and "response statements". This proposal failed to achieve much discussion, preventing a consensus from occurring.
Thank you all for your discussion. Reaper Eternal (talk) 21:53, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Last year, an RFC was opened to examine dispute resolution. As a result of that discussion, many changes were made to dispute resolution generally and to specific venues. This RFC proposes further changes, which are intended to improve and enhance the effectiveness of yet more DR venues.