[WikiEN-l] Re: Hi

Wed Jul 6 21:09:16 UTC 2005

On 7/6/05, A. Nony Mouse <temoforcomments4 at hotmail.com> wrote:
> Seems to be.
> 
> Happens all the time on Islam-related and Sex-relate articles all the time -
> the moment certain editors start an edit war and think they're going to get
> close to breaking 3RR, they start sending off messages to sympathetic
> editors asking them to join in the revert war.
> 
> It's also how we get most of the sockpuppet complaints - there are a number
> of users on Wikipedia whose first instinct when challenged is to scream that
> their opponent "must" be a sockpuppet of some other user who previously
> opposed them either on the same article or somewhere else.
> 
> And yes, for reference, 3RR does indeed essentially mean that if two editors
> decide an article should look a certain way, and only one opposes them, then
> the two editors "win" unless more editors come along or it winds up in
> Arbitration.
> 
> Yet another case of seemingly "neutral" policies being a disaster.
> 
> I hereby propose an alternate policy: Page-based 3RR. If the same phrase is
> reverted from a page three times in 24 hours, then that PAGE shall be locked
> for a week and all editors involved in the reverts shall receive a 12-hour
> block to cool off.
> 
> What do you think? I know it's not perfect (it still doesn't address WHICH
> version should be locked to, but that's a losing decision either way) but it
> gets us away from the current "hey if we get one more guy than they have
> then we can provoke an edit war, get them all 3RR blocked, and we're free
> and clear to make the article say what we want it to say" nonsense and into
> a more neutral stance.
> 
> A. Nony Mouse

Interesting, but impractical in current form.

The biggest problem I see is the 12 hour blocks for all editors
involved.  I don't want someone else's second, third, or fourth later
revert penalizing the first user for a good faith edit.  It would
introduce a collective punishment culture that's worse than whatever
low level of individual punishment culture we have now.

Second, locking an article for a week seems about 6 1/2 or more days
too long.  Between one and four hours would probably get the point
across well enough.  That's the real goal, isn't it?  To let everyone
know it's time to cool off a bit?

-- 
Michael Turley
User:Unfocused