2009/6/28 Charles Matthews charles.r.matthews@ntlworld.com:
Needs saying that "dispute resolution" is an ambiguous term. What it means in an RfC is not what it means in Arbitration. What it means in an edit war is an iterative process by which troublesome points get ironed out. What it means in Mediation is some effort to define the grounds of a dispute in personal terms.
I don't think the term is ambiguous, it's just broad. It means the same thing in all those contexts - an attempt to end a dispute in a way that best serves the project. Different venues have different ways of achieving that, but they are all trying to do the same thing.