In response to Gutza's request, here is what Alex said, but with 1100 words removed. I hope this is an accurate summary. Apologies if not. Angela.
Confidential mediation could be useful for resolving disputes.
This would only involve those directly involved in a dispute. The advantage of it being private is that comments you make can not be later used against you.
How it would work: You would have a mediator and an arbitrator (impartial decision maker). This could be Jimbo or a group of trained users. You could have 3 arbitrators (one per side and one impartial).
All complaints are made to a complaint officer who passes these on to the mediator. Someone else could act as advocate for the problem user. All this should be done in private, maybe by phone. This group then tries to solve things. If they can't, the complaint officer makes a record of all the allegations.
Jimbo then chooses an arbitrator. The advocate of the problem user has to reply to the complaint. The problem user has some say over who the arbitrators are. The posts (complaint officer/ advocate/ arbitrator) could be short term appointments.
This is a simplified version of what the American Arbitration Association (see www.adr.org) do.
There should be one person to represent the complaints by other users.
Aim: more rational and reasoned process.
You just need 12-15 users to spend a few hours a week on this to make it work. Lawyers, social workers, psychologists or philosophy types especially could help. You could vote for certain people to be given each post. The process would take about a month. Jimbo could still overrule it.
This would calm things down and not be so time consuming.
________________________________________________________________________ Want to chat instantly with your online friends? Get the FREE Yahoo! Messenger http://mail.messenger.yahoo.co.uk