We need an effective way to sanction any member of the community that is disruptive or incivil. We need ArbCom to become more of an appellate than the sole "court" of English Wikipedia, because they can't scale to that, and because they are specifically tasked with the worst problems, not with the "death by a thousand cuts" of borderline disruption. A start would be some form of binding dispute resolution that doesn't require ArbCom involvement, but it has to be binding, and it has to be able to consistently result in sanctions if the dispute resolution process fails - without the case having to go before ArbCom first.
As far as fixing dispute resolution, I suggest that a first measure, we restore and revamp the mediation system and make it binding. The way this would work, mediators would begin to be elected or appointed to reach a suitable number of mediators for the expected caseload. Mediators would be assigned to cases requesting mediation, under the condition that prior dispute resolution steps must have been attempted
- or that only one of the parties were willing to participate in
dispute resolution. Once a case was reviewed and accepted, it would enter a binding mediation. Editors participating in binding mediations would reach a solution mutually agreeable to the parties and found reasonable (by the standards of policy and practical enforceability) by the mediators, or the failure to do so would be submitted to arbcom along with the prior chain of dispute resolution activity and could potentially form further evidence of tenditiousness and incivility. Agreements reached from mediation would be binding on the parties, in that the standard remedies of "any uninvolved administrator" being able to enforce an agreement would apply, and such agreements would stand until renegotiated or appealed to ArbCom. Finally, mediators would be given access to an expedited ArbCom process (essentially, the ability to ask ArbCom for an injunction in a case that has not yet been presented to them) for obtaining injunctions in order to stop a disputed activity while negotiations take place - injunctions of this nature would expire after reaching an agreement through mediation, or after reaching a decision through arbitration.
-Stephanie
You're proposing a rather complex structure when we are having trouble finding responsible talented people to populate the limited one we have.
I think we need to go the other direction, empowering administrators, a movement that is ongoing. However along with more widespread power there needs to be more widespread skill and finesse.
I keep coming back to community practices; they need to advance on a broad basis. Everybody needs to do better and have an understanding of how their behavior affects the entire project. That, I guess, is called socialization.
How are Wikipedia editors socialized?
Fred