[WikiEN-l] Wikiquette "committee"

Fri Oct 3 01:42:27 UTC 2003

In response to Gutza's request, here is what Alex
said, but with 1100 words removed. I hope this is an
accurate summary. Apologies if not. Angela.

Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving
disputes.

This would only involve those directly involved in a
dispute. The advantage of it being private is that
comments you make can not be later used against you.

How it would work:
You would have a mediator and an arbitrator (impartial
decision maker). This could be Jimbo or a group of
trained users. You could have 3 arbitrators (one per
side and one impartial).

All complaints are made to a complaint officer who
passes these on to the mediator. Someone else could
act as advocate for the problem user. All this should
be done in private, maybe by phone. This group then
tries to solve things. If they can't, the complaint
officer makes a record of all the allegations.

Jimbo then chooses an arbitrator. The advocate of the
problem user has to reply to the complaint. The
problem user has some say over who the arbitrators
are. The posts (complaint officer/ advocate/
arbitrator) could be short term appointments.

This is a simplified version of what the American
Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) do. 

There should be one person to represent the complaints
by other users.

Aim: more rational and reasoned process.

You just need 12-15 users to spend a few hours a week
on this to make it work. Lawyers, social workers,
psychologists or philosophy types especially could
help. You could vote for certain people to be given
each post. The process would take about a month. Jimbo
could still overrule it.

This would calm things down and not be so time
consuming. 

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