Tony Sidaway said: I supported the 3 revert-rule with the understanding it would be interpreted in the sense that Mark Pellegrini expressed earlier, and that I think Jimbo has also indicated. If the 3RR were to come up for reconsideration in its present form, I do not think I would continue to support it. And that is not simply because I fell victim to it (although that has motivated me to express my concerns presently). It appears to me that it has become fodder for vindictive qualties in editors, and encourages counting reverts and playing gamesmanship to the brink rather than assuming good faith, engaging in civil discourse, and trying to reach consensus. Disagreements are a natural part of the wiki-editing process and we really should not be surprised that otherwise well-meaning persons sometimes revert an article more than three times in a day. However, such disagreements do not necessarily require punitive actions. If discussion is occurring and progressing, then what is the real harm if the article is reverted a few times in the course of a day? Yes, there is an illusion of fairness in having a black and white rule with an absolute threshold. However, I do not think such a standard is very wiki-like in spirit. In my case, because Netoholic saw fit to continue in pursuing punitive actions against me, even though there was no longer any disagreement between us, I feel very little good will towards him. While he had been growing in my estimation through doing much good work lately (despite some controversies early on), at this point I have absolutely no respect for him whatsoever as a responsible wiki-editor. While I will certainly be much more cognizent of the number of reverts in encounters with him from now on, I am less inclined than ever to give even the slightest accomodation to him in discussions of substantive matters. Is that petty of me? Yes, but I am human. Could it have been avoided? You bet. Instead of continuing to pursue punitive action against (of which I was unware by the way), if he had simply tried talking with me, either on the article discussion page or my user page, we could have worked out our differences in a civil manner and he most likely would have gone up in my estimation. I mean, I think I am a reasonable person. I may be a little prone to making smart-ass remarks sometimes, but if someone has a good reason for what they are doing, I am willing to discuss any objections I might have. However, the blind application of the 3RR seems to have obliterated whatever good will may have been possible between us. It will likely take a very long time for either of us to be able to assume good faith on the part of the other. Perhaps I am an exception. Perhaps other people will find that the mechanistic application of the 3RR actually encourages discussion and promotes the assumption of good faith. I kinda doubt it though. Bkonrad

Because Wikipedia should be a trusted encyclopedic resource of NPOV information, not a place where any anonymous POV warrior can put obvious bias into an article and have it stay up for days at at time, all the while being mirrored on dozens of Wikipedia copy sites. a) possibly. b) what's your point? Perhaps in some other ideal world or project. Jay.

I blocked the user so I suspose I had better explain I try and apply policy evenly. I tend to take the view that the alturnative is that you end up with a popularity contest which will result in even more 3RR gameing. In this case I made my descision based on the following: 1.The user was not reverting vanderlism 2. They were straight forward reverts not "complex reverts" 3. There was no reason to assume that the user was not aware if policy There are 370 active admins that is a lot of people to appeal to if you belive I have made a mistake. -- geni

Bill Konrad wrote: You raise an interesting point. While I'm not sure adding more fine-grained administrative guidance to the rule is the best idea, a notion along those lines occurs to me: Might it be desirable to add a notation to the 3RR about how to apply the rule when a complaint is lodged by one of the participants in an edit war? By this, I'm suggesting a statement to the effect that a participating edit warrior should post a polite warning that administrative action will be pursued before seeking intervention, and that at least one more revert must be applied after such a warning before a complaint by a war-participant leads to an application of the 3RR. I'm sure it can be better phrased than that, for clarity. The purpose of such a modification of the rule, in any case, would be to promote dialog rather than retribution and spite. The soft approach seems the more appropriate, when it can be applied effectively, as compared with the hard approach. If we can encourage that, I think we should. -- Chad

JAY JG said: I've run into people like that, I'm sure we all have. But I really don't understand why you would claim that using talk with newcomers and mavericks is useless. Newcomers need to be handled gently and with understanding, as your aware. Mavericks can only really be dealt with via dispute resolution, which requires us to assume good faith and try to use persuasion in the first instance. Give a troll a chance and he'll hang himself. A maverick with clue can be an asset, up to a point. Either way we don't want to let them drag us into pointless edit wars.

Chad Perrin said: I think my phrasing was sloppy. I meant that I don't think discussion is *ever* useless. There is simply no point at which, in my opinion, it is acceptable to resort to edit warring--certainly not to the level where one editor alone is in danger of breaching the 3RR.

Exactly. Right again. Unfortunately, I find that Tony often puts meaning into my statements that is unrelated to the actual words I have used, or intent behind them. Jay.

This is a request for clarification about admins and their powers. There's been a clear case today and yesterday of an admin abusing his powers (unprotecting a page he wanted to edit), and engaging in what could be argued amounts to vandalism. Complaints about this have met with the response that, though it's agreed that this admin abused his powers, there's nothing that can be done about it, because admins aren't allowed to block other admins for an abuse of power. All editors can do in a case like this, we're being told, is begin the long process of RfCs, mediation, and arbitration. Regardless of the details of this particular case, is it true that admins are not allowed to block other admins for an abuse of power? If this is true, how do we go about getting that changed? Sarah

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 15:05:28 -0700, slimvirgin(a)gmail.com <slimvirgin(a)gmail.com> wrote: It's not allowed, yes: the blocking policy does not cover abuses of admin powers. In any case it would be pointless to block admins for such reasons, as they can unblock themselves and likely will if they don't think they were abusing their powers. (I can only remember one case of deliberate, admitted abuse of admin powers, and the sysop who did that was trying very hard to make a point about the handling of problematic users.) Then, too, if a sysop is consciously abusing his powers, then what's to stop him from abusing them further in order to unblock himself? Blocking for abuse of sysop powers would be pointless. Last, I'm not sure unprotecting a page in order to edit it even qualifies as an abuse of admin powers---articles are meant to be edited, and unprotecting a page opens it to editing by all. --Charles P. ([[en:User:Mirv]])

I am stunned by this logic. How is this any different from an admin protecting a page so that nobody else can edit it? RickK Charles Podles <charles.podles(a)gmail.com> wrote: Last, I'm not sure unprotecting a page in order to edit it even qualifies as an abuse of admin powers---articles are meant to be edited, and unprotecting a page opens it to editing by all. --Charles P. ([[en:User:Mirv]]) --------------------------------- Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Search presents - Jib Jab's 'Second Term'