Angela wrote, summarizing Alex:
Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving
disputes.
I agree with that. One of the things that I realized in reading
through Alex's discussion is that I've been trying to do all three
of the following:
1. Mediation, and I've asked people to email me privately to try to
sort these things out *before* a public explosion.
2. Arbitration, meaning that I eventually have to make enforceable
decisions. Here, I've been the district count, court of appeals, and
supreme court all in one.
3. Executive clemency, or 'pardons', meaning a final check on the
process to let people back even after they've been banned.
But these are all different things, and there are sometimes tensions
between them.
The only one power I really need to keep in the long run is #3, the
ability to be the final "release valve" if some process for mediation
and arbitration goes haywire and I think people are being banned left
and right for little reason, or if after a period of time I think that
a person has reformed, or if I think some terrible injustice was done
in a particular case.
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If I understand Ed Poor, he likes being a mediator, but doesn't so
much like being a 'gatekeeper' or 'arbitrator'. (If that's not
right,
no matter, I'm just making up an example.) I can see that -- some
people would like to help others resolve disputes, but don't want to
be in a position of having to make a decision for or against that
person. I can testify that trying to do both is, well, exhausting.
Other people may feel, with justification, that although they can
judge cases fairly and reasonably, their own personal style isn't
likely to be so helpful in terms of mediating disputes.
--Jimbo