[WikiEN-l] 3RR: No sympathy for those hit by it

Sun Jan 16 17:55:59 UTC 2005

> Robert Brookes (the_robert_brookes at yahoo.com) [050115 20:22]:
>
>> I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its "simplicity" in 
>> that when a breach is committed there is no doubt? No sooner had the 
>> ink dried on that policy update that such a breach could lead to a 24 
>> hour block than some of the more "imaginative" sysops were proposing 
>> to "interpret" the intention of  a specific editor and demanding the 
>> power to block at will based on their personal interpretation.
>> There is a need to indeed keep it simple or severely restrict who may 
>> block through their personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of 
>> what another person is thinking.
>
> I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you
> do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h 
> 1m,
> and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the 
> piss?"
> test.
>
> Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet democracy. It's a
> project to write an encyclopedia.

CriminENTles! I have no sympathy at all for anyone who gets all huffy 
and legalistic about enforcement of the 3RR rule. Just limit yourself 
to what you believe to be TWO reverts within twenty-four hours and 
you'll never have any trouble. Whatever it is you think you're trying 
to do, if two reverts didn't work a third revert isn't going to, 
either.

If you sit over Wikipedia with a hand-tally and a stopwatch and a world 
time zone chart trying to score as many reverts as possible, in hopes 
of increasing the duty cycle with which some vibrating article is 
supporting your POV, and you get blocked, the appropriate steps to take 
are:

1) make sure nobody but close friends are within earshot;
2) holler a cuss word at primal scream intensity;
3) count to ten to let the anger subside;
4) complain that life is not fair;
5) lick your wounds;
6) take a twenty-four vacation from Wikipedia. Visit Slashdot, or 
USENET, maybe even meatspace.

I'd say "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," but violating 
the 3RR isn't a crime. And the penalty isn't even a parking ticket.

It's more like going through a "ten items or less" checkout line with 
fifteen items, in Cambridge, Mass, and having someone behind you say 
"Are you an MIT student who can't read or a Harvard student who can't 
count?"

--
Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith at verizon.net
"Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print!
Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html
Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/