I am not very familiar with the process of arbitration, though I have read
the Wikipedia:dispute resolution and Wikipedia:arbitration policy - so
please pardon me if my remarks are off the target.
Regarding openness:
Partly from my experience, I see the benefit of closed communication.
It may be easier to use closed communication for mediation - for the
involved people to admit failures, etc. It could also be a lot easier when
people have to negotiate wordings of their joint statement, etc. when there
is such a thing (the kind of statement that announces the end of conflict
and their shared understanding of what has happened, and so on.) - who would
apologize on which point, etc. could be negotiated better under non-open
circumstances. So I see benefit of closed communication. That's all because
of the reduced need for saving one's face.
Legally, at least in Japanese context, there is less risk of somebody
causing defamation, etc. when the communication is not public. And after
getting used to wikis, I really understand BBS and email is a bit
inconvenient.
I am not very sure about arbitration, but I suppose there would be similar
reasons.
One way to ensure openness is to have some observers who can monitor what's
going on. They can be, for example, all the admins. They may publicly
comment/report about the process and the outcome.
At Japanese wikipedia, we are preparing a mailinglist for non-public
deletion request. It is for people to request for deletion of pages that
contain possible defamation, privacy and other problematic materials. We may
have some trusted users as "observers" - not that they cannot have a say
regarding if the page should be deleted or the request should be rejected,
but to make sure there are enough who watch what's going on and create
deterence for the abuse of process by admins.
Regarding wiki:
I happen to know that WakkaWiki has a feature called Access Control List.
With that, a page owner can control who can read and write the page you
created or own. (Page ownership is granted to the initial creator of the
page, but is also transferrable). The setting is attached to individual
pages as opposed to the whole site or namespace. And it can list individual
usernames as blocked or permitted. If you happen to have a server and
technical knowledge (I have neither, btw), it may be useful for you guys.
best,
Tomos
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