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