In response to your request for arbitration, the Arbitration Committee has decided that arbitration is not required at this stage. Arbitration on Wikipedia is a lengthy, complicated process that involves the unilateral adjudication of a dispute by an elected committee. Although the Committee's decisions can be useful to certain disputes, in many cases the actual process of arbitration is unenjoyable and time-consuming. Moreover, for most disputes the community maintains an effective set of mechanisms for reaching a compromise or resolving a grievance.
Disputes among editors regarding the content of an article should use structured discussion on the talk page between the disputing editors. However, requests for comment, third opinions and other venues are available if discussion alone does not yield a consensus. The dispute resolution noticeboard also exists as a method of resolving content disputes that aren't easily resolved with talk page discussion.
For grievances about the conduct of a Wikipedia editor, you should approach the user (in a civil, professional way) on their user talk page. However, other mechanisms for resolving a dispute also exist, such as raising the issue at the administrators' noticeboard for incidents.
Grievances about the actions of an administrator (like their decision to block an editor, or protect or delete a page) should also be approached in the first instance on the administrator's talk page, but administrators are expected to be accountable and you can ask on the administrators' incidents noticeboard for the action to be reviewed. In the case of deletions by deletion discussion, you can also open a deletion review.
In all cases, you should review Wikipedia:Dispute resolution to learn more about resolving disputes on Wikipedia. The English Wikipedia community has many venues for resolving disputes and grievances, and it is important to explore them instead of requesting arbitration in the first instance. For more information on the process of arbitration, please see the Arbitration Policy and the Guide to Arbitration. I hope this advice is useful, and please do not hesitate to contact me or a member of the community if you have more questions. ~~
 | This template should always be substituted (i.e., use {{subst:Arb premature}}). |
In the Arbitration process, a significant proportion of requests for arbitration are by editors who are not familiar or experienced with the role of the Arbitration Committee. Typically, these requests will be for arbitration of low-level or simple disputes, and the complainant will often not be aware that many venues other than arbitration (the final stage in the dispute-resolution process) would be suitable for the dispute.
When the committee declines such requests, as a matter of courtesy and to educate the complainant, a clerk or arbitrator will usually explain what other venues should be used when the arbitration request is declined. This template helps to automate that process. It presumes that the request will have requested arbitration of a:
- Dispute concerning the content of an article;
- Grievance concerning the conduct of another editor; or
- Grievance concerning the decision or conduct of an administrator, or the result of an administrative process like deletion discussions
When used, the template must specify into which of these categories the request falls. It then returns useful advice concerning that subject. Please see the next section for the specific usage instructions.
Usage
The template does not include a section header, because this necessitates the more difficult process of editing the user's whole talk page and scrolling to the bottom (or editing the last section, which means a descriptive edit summary is not made by default). You should therefore use this template by first adding a 'new section' to the recipient's talk page; as the subject line, something descriptive like Request for arbitration of ''Example'' should be used. The basic use of this template is:
{{subst:Arb premature|TYPE}}
TYPE must be replaced with content, conduct, or admin (which correspond respectively to the three categories of requests specified above), for instance:
{{subst:Arb premature|content}}
{{subst:Arb premature|conduct}}
{{subst:Arb premature|admin}}
The template provides for a salutation to be prepended to the text of the message. For example,
{{subst:Arb premature|content|salutation=Hi, AGK!}}
{{subst:Arb premature|conduct|salutation=Hi, AGK!}}
{{subst:Arb premature|admin|salutation=Hi, AGK!}}
The template automatically includes your signature, but this can be suppressed by including the text |sig=no as a parameter.