Jimmy-
The big problem I see right now is that too many people say "forget mediation, I want to go straight to arbitration".
True. The real reason for that is not that the mediation process is broken, but that we have no formalized decision making process. We say things like "You have to search consensus", but we do not say how we determine when consensus has been found. Some people go so far to say that a 2/3 majority is consensus! We say "You can hold a poll if nothing else works", but our guidelines for polling are new, unapproved and rudimentary at best.
What I want to do is create a formal decision making process, which states clearly how long the discussion period has to be for minor, moderate and major decisions, how to determine consensus, how to collect the options for a poll, what voting methods are acceptable, who can vote, when a vote is binding, what threshold should be used.
This would have allowed settling the [[DNA]] dispute within a reasonable time framework.
The other thing is that we have no effective, quick enforcement of "no personal attacks". I suggested a policy [[Wikipedia:Remove personal attacks]] a while back. I still think it's a good idea, but it barely has majority support, let alone consensus. People are very conservative about editing other people's words.
Lastly, I still think it is very important that we enforce certain rules strictly, and sysops using their privileges to get what they want in a dispute is one of the things we cannot tolerate.
... and please, please approve the "24 hour bans for edit warring" policy. Wik is at it again right now.
Regards,
Erik