Dante Alighieri wrote,
I responded to a DIRECT request that Slrubenstein be
blocked for violating
the 3RR. Note that this direct request was posted not only on the Admin
noticeboard, but on my Talk page. Now, in my opinion (as someone who reads
the 3RR to mean what it SAYS, "three reverts to the same ARTICLE in 24
hours") was that Slr had obviously violated the rule. That he had pretty
clearly been baited was irrelevant. How would it have looked if we ignored
a straightforward violation by a longtime contributor and told the "new
guy" that he had "done it too" and that that somehow made it OK?
As Dante mentioned, he and I have had quite pleasant and civil discussions
of this. Since some people misinterpreted the intent of my first e-mail, I
was not in any way accusing Dante of any kind of misconduct. My comment
that I thought the application of the rule in this case was frivolous was
not a comment on Dante's judgement or intentions -- it was a comment on the
limits of the rule. And, as most people understand, my intention was only
to raise some general issues worth discussion.
Earlier, David Gerard wrote:
The article history doesn't matter. It won't
actually be a disaster for the
article to have something stupid in it for ten minutes.
And my point is, that there are situations where the article history really
does matter. There are different reasons for edit wars, and different
reasons for reversion. I guess many people disagree with me, but I think
that different kinds of edit wars for different reasons might require
different policies. I certainly agree that when one edit is reverted back
and forth several times (the narrowest understanding of the 3RR), then the
block policy makes perfect sense and is necessary.
Sometimes the volleys of reverts are both the result of and expressions of
a serious lack of wiki-etiquette and incivility. In these cases, the block
policy makes perfect sense and is necessary.
But sometimes the reverts have to do with serious differences over
content. I think this is an important distinction, because in such cases
having a night, a couple of days, even a week to cool down, will not change
things. Moreover, our other dispute-resolution mechanisms (mediation,
arbitration) are not well-suited to resolving conflicts over content. I've
said this before and I will say it again, we need some sort of mechanism,
or series of mechanisms, for resolving major conflicts over content. In
cases where everyone has a fair amount of knowledge about something (Bush's
inaugural speech or Doom), we can count on the disorganized sensibilities
of the community as a whole to sort out conflicts. But in cases where only
a small number of community members have the knowledge or interest to
involve themselves in an article, the informal mechanism doesn't work very
well. I am not advocating anything like peer-review; I am not sure what I
would recommend -- I just think it is something we need to think about and
discuss.
And in the cases where several -- five, ten, fifteen -- reverts involve as
many different edits of different passages, this could be an indication
that, despite brief volleys of reverts, participants are finding ways to
work through the situation on their own. In my experience this occurs
where there is a serious conflict over content, but a desire for people to
come up with some mutually acceptable solution. In such cases, two or more
parties might willingly tolerate some multiple reverts.
I know that in my case Jalnet2 asked for me to be blocked. I just wonder
whether he would have changed his mind if he knew that he would be blocked
too. Maybe I am wrong, maybe my case is not the best example. But I do
believe that there have been and will be cases like the ones I suggest
above, where we could use other policies.
Steve
Steven L. Rubenstein
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
Bentley Annex
Ohio University
Athens, Ohio 45701