User:Thedisputer/sandbox

eQuibbly is an Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) service launched in 2012 and headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that provides people with a quick, easy and free way to resolve their disputes online. eQuibbly is one of the few free Online Dispute Resolution services in North America.

To resolve their disputes online, users must create a user profile, post their dispute, and provide an email address for the other Party to the dispute. eQuibbly sends an email notice to the person requesting that they post a response and propose a resolution. While waiting for the other person to respond, users of the site can give the posted dispute and proposed resolution a "thumbs up" if they think it's a reasonable dispute and proposed resolution or a "thumbs down" if it's not. Once a response to the dispute is posted, users can vote for the Party they think should win the dispute based on their argument and their proposed resolution. Voting remains open for 7 days. When the time is up, the dispute is decided in favor of the Party with the most votes.

Currently the mechanism used to resolve disputes is a form of crowdsourcing where the "wisdom of the crowd" is used to help resolve disputes between people they typically have never met.

Estellés and González (2012), after studying more than 40 definitions of crowdsourcing, propose a new integrating definition:

Philosophy
""eQuibbly's"" philosophy is that dispute resolution should be guided by principles of fairness and justice rather than the often perplexing, technicality-riddled and overly-rigid laws obeyed by attorneys and the courts. Decisions should be rendered according to what impartial third-parties perceive as being fair to the persons involved given the circumstances surrounding the dispute.

Online Dispute Resolution
Online dispute resolution (ODR) is a branch of dispute resolution which uses technology to facilitate the resolution of disputes between parties. It primarily involves negotiation, mediation or arbitration, or a combination of all three. In this respect it is often seen as being the online equivalent of alternative dispute resolution (ADR).

Origin of the Name
eQuibbly is a mashup of several words that taken together, convey the site's philosophy:

equable or equably: uniform in operation or effect; marked by lack of variation or inequality equitable or equitably: characterized by equity or fairness; just and right; fair; reasonable quibble: an evasion of or shift from the point; argue or raise objections about a trivial matter e: online