Alex T. wrote:
What the court would do is overturn the ban, yes, then Wikipedia would have to reinstate the user. That is what we are talking about, not a court awarding damages, but reviewing the arbitration proceeding and saying "you guys did it wrong, you think you can do whatever you want, well, you cannot, there are some basic principles that must be followed in a democratic society and you did not follow them."
A basic principle is that the Wikimedia Foundation owns the servers, is a private organization creating a private publication, accepting no goverment funds and with no other contractural encumberances of the sort, and can therefore admit or reject editors and authors more or less at whim. I can't really see any valid grounds for any claim to the contrary.
That is, I can't conceive of any real circumstances where we should be concerned that a court will force us to publish the writings of someone we don't want to publish.
If you want to create an arbitration scheme why not do it along the well recognized legal principles that exist so that you do not have your decisions overturned by people you do not even know (i.e. judges who have jurisdiction if Wikipedia does not play fair with contributors). Is that so unreasonable?
It's not unreasonable, but I find this particular argument for it unpersuasive.
My concern here is that people will be so intimidated by the notion that if we don't do arbitration just right, according to some complex legal rules, a judge is likely to overturn it and require us to reinstate someone. It's pretty easy to make sure that doesn't happen.
We have the legal right to be as stupid and arbitrary and unfair with our procedures as we like. (Of course we shouldn't do that!)
--Jimbo