[WikiEN-l] Re: Violation of blocking policy by user "40277"

Thu Jun 24 22:49:55 UTC 2004

Stormie wrote:

> Dan Drake wrote:
>
>> Is there any more to be said about a sysop who is a _participant_ in 
>> a revert war..
>
> The sysop in question's only participation in the edit war was to 
> revert our anon user's _11th_ and _12th_ insertion of the offending 
> phrase. The way you say that makes it sound like he war actively 
> involved in the POV-feuding. 

Apparently, he was.  If you're going to start banning people for a 
violation of the 3-revert rule you need to apply it equally to everyone 
who violated the rule in the article, without regard to the POV 
expressed by either party. 

>> and who blocks an adversary (legalistically, a proper action under 
>> 3-reverts) with no more explanation than a rude, spiteful comment 
>> that _assumes_ the other knows all the rules?
>
> The comment was a bit flip, but obviously a reference to the fact that 
> the user had ignored the two messages posted to his talk page, and 
> continued to revert and revert and revert, with no attempt at 
> conversation beyond a mischievous attack on Texture which certainly 
> made it seem to ME that he was no newbie. 

If two or more people work together passing off the revert duties so 
that each of them avoids being affected by the 3-edit rule that's a 
conspiracy to put themselves in a superior position to the newby, who 
obviously hasn't had time to develop his own alliances.  All parties to 
such a conspiracy should be banned just as much as the newby.

> Serious question: what would you have done? This anon user was clearly 
> displaying his intent to continually revert an article, without ever 
> discussing it, and ignore all attempts to converse with him on the 
> issue. He was showing signs of being a troll rather than an honest 
> newbie. As far as I can see, there's only 3 possibilities:
>
> 1) Give up, let him have the Ronald Reagan article to write in his POV
> 2) Protect the article
> 3) Block him
>
> Can you think of another alternative? Or do you just think that #2 is 
> the better of the options?

A sysop should have enough experience to know that if he waits for 
24-hours, the alleged offender will probably just go away.  He will then 
probably be able to reimpose his POV without hindrance.

Perhaps sysops should bew limited to one revert in 24 hours.

Ec