From: "Jimmy Wales" jwales@joey.bomis.com
With arbitration, where actual votes on judicial outcomes will be likely, is strikes me that 'en banc' hearings are going to be best at first, with '3 judge panels' being appointed later on if the caseload actually demands it.
My only concern is that if one party to arbitation has taken away the right to chose an arbitrator this is seen as undue influence or duress. If they have a choice amongst qualified arbitrators and the arbitrators are of differing points of view (some more sympathetic than others as can be culled from their prior posts of Wikipedia) then there is some amount of fairness or due process. Remember that the basis of arbitration is contract law, not any kind of state sovereignity. We are working on it though ;-).
The only other alternative is to have the committee chosen by some "random" process. In the SDNY judges are assigned to cases with one of those bingo or lotto ball type cages where the different judges are each assigned a number, so you can't choose your judge, but neither can the other side. This is a commonplace process in US courts.
My thinking is that we will have a quorum requirement (to account for the fact that people go on vacation or have periods of inattention) on votes, but that all arbitrators will vote on all cases when possible.
Once again I am worried that this has less legitimacy than some form of randomness or some ability for the accused to chose an arbitrator so that the accused does not feel coerced into a process in which choice has been completely removed from the user (if the accused user is someone who is part of the process of creating the procedure I would say that would be o.k. to submit one's will to the committe, but at least some people who might face bans are people who have not yet contributed to Wikipedia and thus they will not in any way participate in this process of forming mediation or arbitration committees.
BTW arbitrators are usually allowed to make their own rules as long as they exhibit a minimum of fairness or due process such as giving both sides an opportunity to makes submissions to the arbitrators.
It is important to keep this in mind because by creating an arbitration system you are giving a banned user the possibility of submiting such a decision to a court of competent jurisdiction to review and either set aside the arbitration decision or to confirm it (sorry Jimbo even though you are almost a God King to us all, beyond the realm of Wikipedia there are other even greater powers that we must bow to). Usuallyarbitration decisions are overturned when the process is totally without reason or it is something that the parties did not really agree to (all the more reason to have somethiing like the proposed Submission Standards (or Terms and Conditions in mav's nomenclature). Key to agreeing on arbitration is that it is of a basic form that has some similarities to generally accepted arbitration schemes. Such as the mutually agreed upon arbitrator or third member chosen by first two members and that the arbitrators also have a chance to consider objections to the rules or create a process that has some responsiveness to the demands of the two sides seeking a binding arbitration decision.
Regarding the rules, yes having the whole committee vote on those rules is a good idea.
I would point out that en banc hearings are usually reserved for appellate bodies so this begs the question: Are you thinking of a two level arbitration process (i.e. a preliminary decision by one or three arbitrators appealable to the whole committee) before you give the final yes/no ratification Jimbo? That could have another added feature much like the Cour de cassation in France the appelate body could "break" the decision and then send it back to another panel for review (in that case the other panel should be chosen by random).
The reality is that reasonable people do disagree and it is not bad that they do come to different decisions. In such cases their decisions can be reviewed and confirmed or overturned.
Alex756