Better Ways to Handle User Conflicts?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday November 1, 2006 @03:08AM from the let's-keep-the-dice-out-of-the-process dept.

An anonymous reader asks: "We are a small startup trying to decide how best to handle the conflicts that will inevitably arise between users which have real-world monetary consequences. While sites like eBay seem to have set the standard for internal/outsourced dispute resolution, it frequently feels like a random corporate drone is choosing your fate for you. Other sites like GimmeNow.com have come up with various variations on the arbitrary mediation (they use rock, paper, scissors for parties that can't come to an obvious agreement) which seem to be more interactive, yet still feels like a resolution system heavily biased by luck. Slashdot, how do you handle user conflicts in a way that feels fair to everyone involved?"

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It'll depend, but there's one constant by Todd+Knarr · 2006-11-01 04:17 · Score: 0, Redundant

What method's best depends on exactly what kind of things you're doing. You don't say what your business will be, so it's hard to say what's going to work best.

The one constant, though, is that you'll always have at least one unreasonable party involved. If both parties were reasonable they'll likely come to some sort of acceptable resolution without needing to go to dispute resolution, so if they get to needing your process at least one of them's being unreasonable and ornery. Whatever process you use has to be able to handle that, and it also has to be able to handle the case when both parties are unreasonable, irrational and generally mule-headed. Any system that assumes both parties are reasonable is doomed to failure from the start.