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I moved this from WP:AN/3RR; I've put it in italics.
Okay, this is not (yet) a 3RR violation, but I'm reporting it here because it's connected with the 3RR rule. User:143.238.245.213 is adding stuff to the Jim Duffy Talk Page, and from the context, it's almost certainly Skyring, posting anonymously. I reverted him, and he reverted me. We've both reverted three times now, and I'm not going to revert again, as I'm not sure what the rules are for reversions of suspected sockpuppets and/or suspected banned users posting anonymously. He's also reverting at Wikipedia:Requested moves, with the same claim – that Jim Duffy has not published any books, and shouldn't be listed as an author. It all ties in with Skyring's harrassment of Jtdirl, who, according to Skyring, is Jim Duffy in real life. I personally have no interest in whether the article lists him as a journalist or as an author, but I don't like to give in to a stalker. Ann Heneghan (talk) 01:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to know if there is any policy on allowing an exception when we suspect (but can't prove) that it's a banned user editing anonymously, or a sockpuppet for a banned user. If we take the exception for reverting simple vandalism, it's normally easy for an admin to decide whether or not it really was vandalism that the user reverted four times. (Unfortunately, some users put "revert vandalism" in the edit summary when it's really just a reversion of POV, or even just an edit that the user disagrees with.) But in the case of the reversions I made last night, I had no proof that it was Skyring. It's just that it seemed fairly obvious that it was, as he went straight for Jim Duffy again, and it would be too much of a coincidence that a genuine anon would have had the same interests and arguments. His talk page shows that others agreed with my guess.
Is there any guarantee that I wouldn't have been blocked if I had continued? And if so, should this page have some addition to show that reverting banned users is also okay? Ann Heneghan (talk) 11:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Not quite hypothetically speaking, of course, but does repeated recreation of deleted content count as a revert for the 3RR? — Cryptic (talk) 15:59, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I've been accused of a 3rr violation, on the basis that the first of the four reverts was the commenting out of a new addition. Does this qualify as reverting? Palmiro | Talk 20:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to modify 3RR to remove tagteaming:
Rather than 3 reverts per article per 24 hours, it's 3 reverts per article per editor. So if Ann is having a nice editwar with Bob and Charlotte, Ann could revert Bob 3 times, and could revert Charlotte 3 times. This helps identify and block entire tag-teams, which at this point in time seems to be becoming more important. (re: some cliquebusting proposals which have been floating around... are any of those on-wiki yet?)
Kim Bruning 22:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
What happens now though is that a very small clique can form a tagteam to lock out new editors to a particular article (ie. take ownership)—Yes indeed, but. . . What if all the teams in the above example (Bob and Charlotte, David and Ewan, Frank and Gregor), who agree on little else, all agree that Ann's edits should be reverted? Is this a clique in action, or is it one crank trying to control the article in the face of consensus (the real thing, not the Wikipedia Bizarro Consensus) against her? I would submit that many instances of Case 1 (multi-sided disagreement, with one slightly outnumbering the other) are cast as instances of Case 2 (editors of multiple viewpoints united in opposing a crank). — Charles P. (Mirv) 23:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not in favor of this proposal, or anything else that would increase the amount of edit warring that is permitted. Really three reverts is a ridiculously high number for one person to make on any one article in a twenty-four hour period. The last thing I want is for A to be able to do three reverts against B, three reverts against C, and so on. That way lies lunacy. If there is a multi-way edit war then all parties need to stop, and 3RR with all its faults does have that effect. The 3RR has unfortunately had the effect of appearing to sanction edit warring to the extent that many editors believe and openly profess edit warring to be a permissible way of forcing through their own point of view by wearing down opposition. Obviously these people can still be stopped for disruptive behavior, but it won't do to have a change in 3RR that gives the disruptive editors even more cause to believe that their behavior is ever acceptable. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 12:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Just to chime in here as someone who implements online rules and policies for a living, I agree that the proposed modification would overly empower cranks and highly motivated single-issue types. It seems clear to me that the original intention (or, at least, one of the original intentions) behind 3RR was to provide a defense against cranks, who are usually highly motivated by their own irrationality. Anything which reduces that defense is bad, IMHO. → Ξxtreme Unction { yakł blah} 12:24, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Geni's assertion to get RFC working is the best idea in this thread--the trick is how? The idea that you can solve problems with version-pushers (whether from an individual or a clique) with increased attention is a good one. But the RFC cavalry does not come to the rescue when there's a problem. Why? I suspect it's because people feel with certain articles they're in for a fight, so offering their opinion does little good (how many times has someone shaken their head... "I'm not getting involved in that one"). I happen to think that offering a stickier form of consensus would help, since people would feel that once we worked out what we want to say on the talk page, that version would have a stability that's harder to dislodge. Is this it? I don't think it is, and enforcement is ugly and problematic--the spectre of people reaching months back into an edit history and finding a revert you forgot, just to trip you up and get you blocked on a legalistic point... no thanks. Demi T/ C 15:09, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
If it's A vs. B, C, and D, I think the interpretation "A is a crank" is more helpful than "B, C and D are a clique" at least until others agree with A. — Ashley Y 17:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Quick definitions: a clique is any group of editors who agree with each other and disagree with me. A crank is any editor apart from myself whom nobody agrees with. — Ashley Y 21:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
This may have been discussed elsewhere, but 3RR is seriously flawed since many users just wait and spread out their fourth edit until the Next Day. Even this this is basically what 3RR is designed to prevent, it's not covered under 3RR. The most recent example of this that i've seen is at British Sea Power by Pigsonthewing. He wants a crufty interview in there that has probably been removed over a dozen times, but he keeps on putting it back through this loophole. Karmafist 15:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
This thread has been entered into Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing/Evidence, thanks for discussing this loophole in the 3RR Rule. Karmafist 03:51, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Font tags are still acceptable in XHTML 1.0, and if they are used for purely visual presentation purposes, then there is no real harm in them—they degrade gracefully much like CSS rules (although they sure can clutter up the wikitext in a talk page). — Michael Z. 2005-11-23 19:37 Z
"As the point of the 3RR is to prevent the continuation of stale edit wars, only report the violation to WP:AN/3 if it is less than 72 hours old. Enforcement of the 3RR is intended as a corrective, rather than punitive measure."
In light of User:SEWilco's reporting of no less than eleven (and counting) "to be treated as 3RR violations" of a single user, up to and including a month and a week old, and the general consensus at WP:AN/3 being that it is ridiculous to dredge up ancient 3RR violation, I'm proposing this addition, in line with WP:3RR#Intent of the policy. If someone's causing trouble over a period greater than three days, they'll either violate 3RR again or be in trouble for other reasons. Trying to get people blocked by dragging up old 3RRs is more of a disruption than the original edit war - SoM 21:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't believe the goal is stopping the admins, it's pre-empting the bad-faith tactic of dredging up old incidents and po-facedly claiming that it's a matter of enforcing literal policy.
(Yep - SoM 00:36, 25 November 2005 (UTC))
You could couple a restatement of the intent of the policy:
or something like that, with:
Not a great deal of instruction creep, which is always inevitable given the propensity by some to look for loopholes. Somewhere David Gerard commented that ArbCom decisions can be pretty complex because they're always having to say, "No, you can't do THAT, either." -- Calton | Talk 00:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd strongly support the Hitchhikers' clarification. A hard-and-fast time limit rule is unecessary bureaucratic instruction creep. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 06:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I certainly agree with the spirit of this: the intent is not punitive, it's a cooling off period. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Not intending to preempt this discussion -- I hadn't noticed it until a moment ago -- I've already made a much vaguer edit in the same general spirit to the 3RRHeader pseudo-template thingie. (Why isn't that text simply on the incidents page itself, btw?) It seemed reasonable to do this on the basis of the apparent unanimity on the page that old violations weren't reasonably blockable. Though that's of course not directly a change to the policy as such. If anyone feels this is premature, excessive, insufficient, etc, then please revert merrily. Up to thrice, even! Alai 20:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
As someone who was recently blocked for 24 hours over a 5 day old 3RR violation, I gotta agree that this language is necessary. I don't have any problem with the 72 hour specification either (instruction creep or not), though I think it should be shorter; 36-48 hours perhaps? As the proposed second sentence suggests, the point of 3RR is to end a revert war and give people time to cool off. — Locke Cole 01:39, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
A discussion on the reformulation of the 3RR policy is taking place here: Wikipedia:Policypedia/Edit_warring. FeloniousMonk 17:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I would like to know what the policy is when someone else is changing a page dramatically in acts of vandalism and you are merely trying to diplomatically reach a compromise. Does it count as a violation of 3RR when you are not actually reverting, and are not writing what was originally there, but rather a compromise between the two? Is there a policy on this? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 23:50, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
I had a question about 3RR. My initial reading would be that it means restoring the same thing three times. However, what happens if someone takes an altered page and restores it to an original condition using several edits? I might myself do this where complex changes have been made to a page some of which are desireable to keep, some not. I would imagine this would particularly apply to any page subject to very high activity where it might be virtually impossible to prepare a new version before someone else created an edit conflict. But it can be simply easier to re-edit in several goes.
So, how do five edits made to restore the same page to one original condition count?
Similarly, if over the course of a day five edits are made reverting different points, though at different times in response to changes by different people (i.e. not simply reverting one event slowly, as above, but restoring five different events about different sections, but overall only restoring everything one time). How would that count?
Next question: If someone creates alternate brand-new versions of a disputed section each time and inserts them, does this count as reversion? Sandpiper 10:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Does that help? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 11:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, you weren't banned, were you? So you must have been okay. Violations of 3RR get you a 24 hour block. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 15:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
When copyrighted material is added to an article Wikipolicy says to revert to a version which does not include the copyrighted material. However, there is no stated exception to 3RR for removing copyrighted material - and it isn't listed as a a type of vandalism (or not vandalism for that matter). Should we expand the 3RR exception to 'simple vandalism and copyright violations', define copyright violations as a type of vandalism, or leave as is and potentially block users for reverting copyright violations? The issue came up recently when an admin was given a 24 hour block for violating 3RR where some (but not all) of the text reverted out was an admitted copyright violation. Which introduces a secondary issue - if an update includes some text which is copyright violation and some which is not is it incumbent on the reverter to identify the non-copyrighted text and leave it in place or may they revert the whole without worrying about 3RR (assuming there is consensus that copyright reverts shouldn't fall under 3RR in the first place)? -- CBD ☎ ✉ 12:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The main page now says "This policy does apply to repeatedly moving, renaming, deleting, undeleting, or recreating a page. All of those, if done excessively, are forms of edit warring." [1] This has stood unchanged for a few months, but now that someone has been put on the spot for it we seem to be shying away.
So, let's chat about it. I'd propose that this be expanded to include protecting and unprotecting as well.
brenneman
(t)
(c)
03:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I took deletions and undeltes to cout as edits for 3RR purposes as both establsihed policy and as comon sense -- both change the state of the displayed page. Protection is perhaps more dubious, but I would include it. There are otehr ways to deal with block wars i think and they probably count as disruption anyway. DES (talk) 00:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I was blocked for 3RR for doing quite a lot of deletes of an attack template. Although someone seems to have changed the written policy without discussion (and I would have appreciated being made aware of the change before being blocked) I support the change in principle. There are exceptional circumstances where administrators may differ over when it is appropriate to reverse a deletion or undeletion (copyright, attacks, defamation and serious vandalism come to mind) but then that is the kind of decision administrators are expected to take and so the existence of an "electric fence" will at least make administrators think about alternatives before crashing through it. This should apply to all actions taken by an administrator that he could not have performed without administrator powers.
I don't think this is a matter of commonsense; it's far from obvious to me that disagreements between admins over admin actions are problematic. They usually work themselves out quickly and cause little or no disruption. The arbitrators tend to take the view that circumstances matter: "it is a true pleasure to see that sysop powers are not only used for winning arguments or destroying the project" [2] and "all I see is people doing the best they can" [3] and in the light of that sensible, pragmatic interpretation I'm more than happy with this proposed change to policy. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 11:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Admins shouldn't be allowed to block users for a revert war they have made two reverts or more in. It creates some bad blood when this is done(I know from personal experience) and kind of allows for misuse by admins.-- Urthogie 13:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
3RR has been an excellent policy to keep edit wars down. It's too lenient however, and confusing, because it takes up to five edits to actually become a violation.
We should tighten 3RR against this. UserA's initial edit should count as a revert. It's that change that triggers the process. If the addition is that important, they should be using talk pages to discuss the addition, show verifiability, and get others to back up their addition.
Additionally, 3RR should mean 3RR, and not MORE than 3RR. UserB should be using the article talk page as soon as they see a need to revert a second time and see that UserA is intent on keeping the information. They should be showing why it shouldn't be there.
It shouldn't actually take 9 edits between two users to start triggering some intervention. SchmuckyTheCat 23:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Am I going nuts or there was a Wikipedia:Don't blind revert article??! -- T-man... ""worst vandal ever"" 23:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC) HHHHEEEEEEEEEEEYY!!!
Forgive me if I'm stirring up a can of worms here... but although the policy sez:
its becoming clear that sysops (inc me) are blocking people for longer than 24h for multiple repeat offences. Sometimes these longer blocks have at least a semblance of compliance because they say "3rr and incivility" or somesuch; sometimes not. No-one (not even those blocked!) seems to be complaining about this, which suggests that either no-one has noticed, or that those who have, are happy. I suggest the policy be modified, perhaps to:
If this has already been discussed elsewhere, I'd be interested to know... William M. Connolley 21:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC).
TenOfAllTrades( talk) 23:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Earlier today, Leyasu left a message on my talk page asking to be blocked because he violated 3RR on Children of Bodom. I checked the diffs to make sure that it was a 3RR violation and then blocked him. This would be fine and good, but I'm a party in his arbcom case ( Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Leyasu). Since he requested the block, I went ahead with it, but is it generally a good idea to block somebody for 3RR if you're in an arbcom case with them? Or should I have given that duty to another admin? (I don't have a whole lot of experience with blocking users, and this is the first arbcom case in which I've ever been involved.) -- Idont Havaname ( Talk) 05:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I have created a page, Jewish terrorism, to discuss the history of Jewish terrorism. The user has redirected my page and reverted my changes. I would like to report this incident so that proper action be taken. I was also banned for violating this rule but it did know about this rule and nobody warned me. I had already warned user Urthogie not to violate this rule.
Siddiqui 22:45, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I inserted text that Jayjg later removed:
The test didn't originate from me, yet I added it. How can we clarify this, as something is need to be said. Some admins obvious do not block basically on identical reverts, as they have allowed regular edits to count towards reverts on a 3RR. The suggestion above helps avoid the situation to where the admin judges if an edit counts towards a 3RR type revert. We could dig up the archives and compare outcomes of 3RR and show how the the 3RR rule is not equally applied, but that inclusion is surely not wanted. I'm also sure we want to avoid m:Instruction creep. Any suggestions on how to clarify this? — Dzonatas 02:17, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Here is a proposal:
It enforces the 3RR equally on all those who edit war, and what I stated earlier can be avoided. Any objections or comments? — Dzonatas 15:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely not. There are many times where two or more users are completely justified in reverting a tenacious edit warrior more than once. There have been many times where I, along with other editors, have reverted a single user two or three times each while they break WP:3RR to blank or change massive amounts of text that they alone feel needs to be altered without appealing to discussion or consensus of any kind. Because their changes have a reason, however superficial, the changes are not vandalism, and so we are not able to revert past three times. See the history at Mike Del Grande, Derek Smart, or Neowin as examples. -- Hinotori (talk)| (ctrb) 00:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Another proposal:
Under " Intent of the policy," it says that "dredging up old incidents [...] will be mocked mercilessly." While I certainly think that such actions are completely pointless and perhaps even worthy of mockery, this seems like a pretty blatant contradiction of WP:Civility. It doesn't seem like a good idea in the least to have one policy contradict another, even if only in appearance ( WP:IAR aside). If no one disagrees, I'm going to delete this bullet. -- Hinotori (talk)| (ctrb) 03:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
A few comments:
-- Calton | Talk 00:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
In this edit, SlimVirgin altered the 3RR rule. In this edit, he altered the nutshell synopsis. I am challenging these edits for the reasons below.
This change opens an enormous loop-hole in the rule, but I see no evidence that "consensus was reached", or that "changes [made] to this policy reflect consensus before [they were made]". It appears that it was simply changed, without establishing that such practice either did not in fact violate official policy, or that it wasn't only in more careful consideration of finer language below (i.e. that adding the in whole or in part to the nushell and first lines wasn't an oversimplification of official policy. I will wait for further comment or proof that the community has in fact accepted this, then revert again. In principle this discussion should have preceeded William M. Connolley's revert.
As to the danger of opening this particular door, many benign edits would constitute partial reverts, but this overbroad change makes them all subject to 3RR, bypassing the criteria elaborated below for careful exceptions. This is not supported by any discussion in evidence that I know of. Note that WP:REVERT only acknowledges whole reverts.
StrangerInParadise 15:35, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I object to the change by SlimVirgin made on 2006-1-1, also, and further remove. It is a loop-hole, and it needs to be clarified. The other text removed that didn't fit the edit description:
It appears well intended, but in practice it became abused and misused. I doubt the 3RR rule is meant to qualify people as revert warriors, but I have seen such passage as "you undone the work of another editor" to thwart actions. It makes the admins pick sides of whose work was undone. Instead, don't pick sides and just protect the page. No need to block unless it is a clear case of vandalism. Further consensus is needed. — Dzonatas 17:19, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I'll agree here with Dzonatas' point, and respond to that of Jayjg that gaming the rule is not possible due to the guidelines, but changing the rule at its root, as SlimVirgin has done, is a large step towards the position that admins may block users for any reason. The notion of partial revert would encompass an entire spectrum of benign edits one might have made, including but not limited to,
...which might occur before the one revert that an admin may choose to punish. The general change in rule is too broad, and not apparently supported by policy or popular acceptance. The existing subsequent guidelines are more that enough to combat any gaming by revert-warriors. Admin's don't merely need to use judgement, they are required to do so, a requirement which SlimVirgin's edit effectively eliminates.
StrangerInParadise 17:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
In response to Katefan0's earlier statement, a good example on this page is "if you didn't violate the rule..." as stated by jayjg. There is really no final judgement if someone violated the rule or not, as the policy does not lay down strict qualifiers. As suggested, use common-sense is the rule of thumb. Just because an admin chooses to block someone does not mean that person has actually violated the 3RR by spirit. As StrangerInParadise pointed out, we should assume good-faith, and I bet that also means that we should assume the edits were done in good faith and with good faith. It is hard to justify that someone assumed good-faith if a label of "violator" or "revert warrior" is used. I can understand if we use such terms to justify an extreme, but such justification has not been debated here or as of yet. Are we suppose to assume good faith "in part or in whole"? In response to Katefan0's last comment, please do not call another's comment "silly," as facts will do just fine to argue your point. — Dzonatas 18:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I think getting specific is fine, and goes to the intent of 3RR. I'd much rather have this than people arguing technical loopholes by leaving a period here or a space there when they revert (or even worse, leaving incoherent sentence fragments, which wouldn't be a "whole" revert). I agree with statements made above: I simply don't see any administrators banning a contributor who's trying to submit genuine compromise language. That administrators must use their judgment here to make that call is a good argument for making sure we only take truly experienced administrators who have seen enough edits to know the difference, but I don't think it's a compelling argument against "whole or in part." JDoorj a m Talk 18:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Getting specific seems to be fine only when giving admins more power, but not to constrain that power, when (inevitably) ignore the rules, instruction creep and Wikilawyering are tossed out. The fact is, Slim's edits were made without consensus, and the notion but no admin would really abuse that is not a counter-argument. The fact is, more than a few do, and no need for the change in language has been established. The text should be reverted until there is real consensus and a real need. StrangerInParadise 19:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Just to register my agreement with Katefan0, Jayjg, William M. Connolley, et al.. -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 22:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I removed this text, but it was restored. I obviously objected to it, but, as you see, no discussion of why it was restored in on this talk page as of yet.
There seems to be a consensus that additional text doesn't match the edit summary of SlimVirgin's "light copy edit". This is in likeness to William's statement that he made that he thought my edit summary didn't match my edit. Ironical.
Perhaps, what I added should be restored also. The point to it seems to comes clear about now: discussion.
It is not obvious why such additional text was added. I suggest we remove the text again until we find consensus on a neutral point of view over the text. — Dzonatas 18:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The text was objected. There is not a complete community consensus. If idleness, in part or in whole, is a qualifier for community consensus, then I was unjustly blocked by two and only accounts of being blocked. I tried to incorporate ideas into a version that stood for quite awhile, and a couple others wanted to drastically change the article. It's ironical in relation to this, pragmatically. — Dzonatas 19:34, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Also, the text above was only inserted a month and a half ago, unlike the August 2005 changes. — Dzonatas 19:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:revert it explains that a revert is "identical" in nature. However, the added text that slipped in under a edit summary of "ligh copy edit" completely redefined the policy by a change in meaning to the word "revert." There doesn't seem to be community consensus when there is another article that defines revert differently: "A revert is to undo all changes made after a certain time in the past. The result will be that the page becomes identical to how it used to be at some previous time." The loop-hole is when this project page points to Wikipedia:revert in the header but then doesn't agree with itself later in the page with "reverting in this context means...". — Dzonatas 19:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
It also states on Wikipedia:revert: "Because of the lack of paralanguage online, if you don't explain things clearly people will probably assume all kinds of nasty things, and that's one of the possible causes for edit wars." Case in point! — Dzonatas 20:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Partial reverts have been an issue from day one of this rule. The original solution was to make a judgement based on wether or not the person was gaming the system (in my case done by looking at the user's history and loking at how close a partial revert was to being an outright revert). Geni 22:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I looked into the history a bit. It is stated on the talk page of WP:REVERT about the vote for the policy. Back then, revert was actually defined on a "how to revert" basis, which was based on a simple revert. Later, the "how to" changed to the explanation of a simple revert. Now, we clearly have instruction creep with this page [6] and the "revert" page [7], and there are few here that insist it is still policy even after the vote. — Dzonatas 00:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Sadly it seems that Dzontas is reverting to type. See (if you can bear it) the long and deeply tedious stuff at Talk:Computer science/Archive 5. Being harmonious, and having used my revert for the day, I'm not going to revert again, but I consider Dzontas's recent additions to the page header as absurd & hope someone else will remove them. William M. Connolley 21:49, 21 February 2006 (UTC).
Clearly the matter of the in whole or in part phrase is under discussion, with valid questions raised (even if ultimately it is decided to affirm the language). Removal of the template is clearly out of order, and could be construed as an attempt to stiffle comment (believe it or not, most Wikipedians don't hang out on IRC). If {{ActiveDiscussion}} is not appropriate, what template would be? It may help to add an optional parameter to indicate the nature of the discussion.
StrangerInParadise 17:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
— Dzonatas 22:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Dzonatas has removed the semi-definition of a partial revert from Wikipedia:Revert [8]. I daresay this behavior is becoming disruptive. · Katefan0 (scribble)/ poll 22:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I've asked others to come and weigh in. StrangerInParadise 02:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
— Dzonatas 02:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand your comment about it being "not of sound neutrality". Policies and guidelines are not subject to the NPOV policy; unlike the articles in Wikipedia, which are descriptive, policies and guidelines are prescriptive.
A policy is not required to be neutral towards points of view that conflict with the consensus arrived at in the writing of the policy. In specific particulars where there is lack of consensus, describing various editors' interpretations of the policy in an NPOV manner can be useful and illustrative for readers trying to understand how to apply the policy. But you and StrangerInParadise have not made a solid case that there was lack of consensus on the full-versus-partial question in the past, and we certainly do not have a consensus to change to some other stance today. SlimVirgin's edit seemed to simply be clarifying that long-held but poorly-described consensus. So long as we assume that consensus existed on the point (which I think the great majority of participants on this talk page do), the neutrality question does not arise.
All that said, the two paragraphs do seem redundant to me. Personally, I think the first one is better (I do not read any accusation, perhaps you can elaborate as to where you see it), but the injunction to "use common sense" is useful as well. Perhaps best to merge them? -- TreyHarris 04:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I beleieve the phrase "undoing the work of another editor" has been misunderstood. I have seen it used in attempt to match any kind of edit as a 3RR type revert because it "undid the work another editor." It allows some to claim ownership to articles. Once a editor has inserted text, that editor could potentially use 3RR to continually reinstate that text. I doubt that was the spirit of the 3RR policy.
It is not that the spirit of the policy itself is not neutral, but it is how it gets applied to articles by how it is currently written. Your right that the nuetral point of view is applied to articles. This, however, has played a role in what makes an article neutral. The phrase, while it technically works to a degree, does not convey the intent well. I tried to delete the first "detail" paragraph. Since it was restored, we should merge or come up with a better paragraph.
There is also the the attempt to use the "long-held but poorly described consensus" as a means to justify the same consensus on any edit to the policy after which such consensus was originally established. That is unfair. The burden that you have mentioned on StrangerInParadise on me also needs to be applied equally to others that want to defend past attempts to clarify the policy. I believe, as time has past, the pragmatic evidence weighs against the attempts to clarify the policy. Unfortunately, there are statements in the policy that act like a catch-all to rid of such evidence, and we can see such discussion above in attempt to clarify that also. With that statement in place, it cast a serious doubt that such consensus still exists, as any attempt to question policy, or "reports dredging up old incidents," may have been "ultimately ignored." That is not the proper way to maintain consensus.
Such phrase seems to want to stop "tit-for-tat" measures even when the admin passes blind judgement to block whoever got reported. It creates a race condition where two editors revert each other and one finds reason to report the other one first. When the other one gets unblocked and feels the reason for the block was unjustified, there is no simple way to report such incident since most attempts are "utimately ignored." Meanwhile, the editor not blocked continues to changed the article. When the editor that was blocked comes back and tries to restore some work previously done or incorporate changes ("genuine compromises"), the editor that reported the other one again uses the 3RR policy to thwart such attempts. Such uses include "don't undo the works on another editor" despite the fact that the other editor already had worked on the article. Such uses also include the instances where someone publically states that the other editor has "violated" the 3RR, and any edit by such previously blocked editor are aggravated.
Over just being blocked twice out of the 3RR, I feel like I have to ask for permission to modify an article within such unequally lateral demands to "gain consensus." We clearly see not everybody has to gain consensus before an edit is made. I highly doubt that the spirit of the 3RR is to allow editors to use it as a weapon to influence another editors ability to edit. It was meant to stop edit wars. Period.
Since we have some consensus to merge the two paragraph, here is my proposal, which I have also tried to extend and clarify based on arguments above:
What does everybody propose?
— Dzonatas 14:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Don't forget that part that says what HEC is about, "a group of contributors who will join to intervene in edit wars and work together to create a stable and neutral article, one which all parties to the edit war would agree is correct and good and satisfying." Under which, I hardly see your ability to block people as appropriate upon enlistment to HEC. As you patrol the AN/3RR page, I am positive you can find that an excellent resource to intervene and help editors work together. Instead, I see your only contributions
[10], despite global warming issues, are to block editors, which I believe you should reflect upon and reconsider as misdirected energies.
Now, lets make peace. — Dzonatas 16:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
·
Katefan0
(scribble)/
poll
20:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Community assent. FYI · Katefan0 (scribble)/ poll 15:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I found a some versions of interest:
— Dzonatas 23:28, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe this helps clarifies what StrangerInParadise wanted to address while it also gives other editors what they wanted:
— Dzonatas 12:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Would replacing 3RR with 1RR for non-logged users be useful for Wikipedia ? I believe it could reduce the number of revert wars at no additional cost. -- Lysy talk 10:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with StrangerInParadise that the additions of "in whole or in part" have expanded the policy further than it was originally intended to go. Robert McClenon 12:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to see the sentence on sockpuppets expanded to include collusion of editors to avoid 3RR by having more than one reverter. I know reversion wars is a bad thing but the policy should make it clear that this method of avoiding the current policy is not acceptable. For an example see Dean McVeigh. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Is there a difference between collusion and co-operation? If I see an editor insisting on a change for the worse, and I know that another editor agrees with me on this, are you saying that I shouldn't contact her to alert her to the situation?
That three editors are "colluding" means that three editors hold the same view; that one editor uses three accounts (or three IP addresses) means that one editor holds that view. There's surely a significant difference here? -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 10:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been discussed before, but is there a statute of limitations on 3RR violations? Thanks. -- LV (Dark Mark) 23:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I am convinced this should be tweaked after talking to User:Alienus. If a stable version of the article exists; and is changed by a new editor to the article; it would make sense to apply the 3RR to the newcomer; not established editors trying to protect the consensus/stability of an article. It is an insult to long time editors that they could be banned because a POV warrior, sockpuppet or anon is pushing their edit with little/no/or ongoing discussion on the matter at hand. - Roy Boy 800 19:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Just to make sure people haven't missed it, I draw your attention to this [11] edit I made to the 3RR header, in particular I added:
If anyone doesn't like this then... we can have a nice revert war over it William M. Connolley 21:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
MateoP has twice deleted these two sentences from the article: This does not imply that reverting three times or fewer is acceptable. In excessive cases, people can be blocked for edit warring or disruption even if they do not revert more than three times per day. It seems to me to be a commonsense description of current practice, and is useful as a reminder and warning to people that edit warring isn't okay, and that there is no "right" to three reverts per day. I'd like to hear what others think so we avoid any sort of continuing edit war as I've reverted MateoP's deletion twice now. · Katefan0 (scribble)/ poll 12:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Then I would be satisfied with the inclusion if it is a simple statement that a user can be blocked for something other than 3RR during disputes. -- MateoP 21:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
One editor's "disruption" is another editors valid edit. I suggest less discretion and more hard and fast limits. If three is too many, then lower it to two. But stop confusing things. Right now it's a "3rr rule, unless [insert name here] in admin role thinks you are disruptive, in which case, even one revert could get you blocked". Such expressions are not "rules", they are vague crib notes relating to discretionary fiat. Merecat 07:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
How about this as a compromise:
Note that I'm giving up a LOT here, and you've given virtually nothing. -- MateoP 23:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
A user makes an edit to an article based on their opinion. I provde several verifiable reasons why they should consider the reverted text. Since I reverted first, I get hit by the 3RR rule, and the original editor gets to keep their un-verifiable change, despite my requesting ANY verifiable evidence for their change.
What can an editor do, when one's verifiable evidence is IGNORED, and their opinion is never substantiated? -- Iantresman 21:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Just pointing out that the current revision is not consensus. The previous version is the one that has consensus. I just stopped reverted while the person in favor of the new revision has not. However the current revision is the one that needs to build consensus. I will revert again in 24 if consensus for the current revision is not built. In reality this version should be reverted immediately until consensus is built, but I will give it 24 hours. -- MateoP 23:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
And I, for one, will revert back, because it IS the de facto consensus, period/full-stop, as a review of the WP:AN/3RR and its archives would show. It's not "a person"'s opinion, as you disingenously put, but the evolved consensus to deal with those trying to wikilawyer or game the system. Don't like it? Tough. -- Calton | Talk 02:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
What is your specific problem with my compromise suggestion. Here is the original controversial part:
And here is my suggestion:
What specifically is different that concerns you?? -- MateoP 20:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
You've given me nothing specific to allow me to make a new version that meets both of our concerns. I can't rectify your concerns if you don't make them plainly stated. I have made my concerns plainly stated above above (in points labelled 1 and 2), so if you would like to come up with a new revision that meets both of our concerns, please do so. Because I can not go any further from here because of a lack of information. -- MateoP 22:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed the bit about the userpage warnings... I'm not very happy with it. If nothing else, it begs the question of what is a "valid" warning William M. Connolley 11:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I am with you on this one. That's an absurd exception. A user should be able to remove anything from their own talk page that they wish. This is a needless rule. -- MateoP 17:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
"Removing warnings for vandalism from one's talk page is also considered vandalism." therefore it follows that the user has no right to remove. Actually the 3RR rule is a bit of overkill, as the User can be blocked on vandalizm anyway. Agathoclea 21:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Revert = bring back to a previous version. Removing any content is just that. If you want the content of policy changed go and do a RFC. Agathoclea 21:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Vandalism (an official policy)–
If anything this is redundant, but it ensures regular editors (if someone is repeatedly removing warnings) have a recourse for such situations. Removing warning tags is likely a way to avoid a block/ban as well (since an admin that arrives to assess the situation may not see the warnings without going into the page history). — Locke Cole • t • c 22:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
This text got added:
which I edited to:
which got edited to:
I agree that the original and the final are more readable than my edits. Problem is, the better wordings are incorrect. If somebody makes three edits to a given paragraph, forming a revert, and someone else happens to make an intervening edit to the see also section, that does not effect the reversion. You have to get reverted for the counter to increment, so to speak.
(On a minor side note: "for the purposes of counting"? "Counting" is, er, are, "purposes" now? My dictionary doesn't say "counting" is a plural....) -- TreyHarris 16:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I would like to suggest that a brief note be added to reinforce to users that the 3RR counts all reverts even if they are of unrelated threads. For the longest time, I was under the mistaken impression that what was not allowed was reverting the same disputed edit more than 3 times in 24 hours, when in fact any revert of any number of unrelated threads count towards the total. The policy as it now reads is technically complete, which is why when I made this mistake myself I decided not to contest my block, and I apologized. Nevertheless, a brief addition of a few words to the policy page to help prevent an honest lapse such as I committed, would in my opinion be very helpful. -- AladdinSE 14:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting anything contrary to that.-- AladdinSE 08:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Can we add that to "This policy in a nutshell":
There are quite a lot of WP:MEDCAB disputes where people assumed they had a license to revert up to three times (occasionally even including the third revert). This way the 3RR rule even has the negative effect of making people assume they have this license when they otherwise might apply common sense and avoid reverting. -- Fasten 18:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, getting back to the original point of this section, we should clarify the technical definitions of the "electric fence", in terms of including reverts of unrelated threads. Any objections to that?-- AladdinSE 01:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed recently 3RR being applied in a way that can follow the letter of the policy, but is unfairly applied, and can worsen a dispute or be counter productive to protecting stability.
Please rememeber the principle of WP:LAWYER. "Such policies and procedures are intended to be interpreted in a common sense way which expresses the purpose of the policy or which tends toward resolution of disputes."
If applying 3RR, or any other wikipedia policy, would be self defeating, then apply your own discression to how they are applied. -- Barberio 16:19, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
You wouldn't have any particular examples in mind, would you? It might help to have a concrete example to discuss, to see if everyones "common sense" agreed with yours William M. Connolley 19:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
It's quite simple: Revert more than once or twice with no valid reason, and you get reminded about how to be polite. ;-) There's also a tiny number of funny and interesting cases where there *is* in fact a valid reason. Kim Bruning 15:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I have been editing the wikipedia article on John Brignell and have reached a point where I just don't know how to proceed. Any advice on this would be appreciated.
John Brignell is a retired British Professor of Engineering Measurement, a discipline which involves knowledge of material properties, statistics, computer modelling, and related areas. On retiring he wrote a book on the abuse of measurement in the media, and set up a web site to support it. His website is mostly a blog in which he draws attention to stories in the media and picks the science in them to pieces, but like any blog it wanders into other areas, and he is very much a skeptic. He recently got into an argument with some Australian pro-environmentalists and bloggers, John Quiggan and Tim Lambert. These two appear to have conspired to create an anti-Brignell article, first in Sourcewatch, another wiki, then here. The article in general is slanted to make Brignell look like a crank, and in particular breaches a number of wikipedia guidelines. It's possible that William M. Connolley, an admin here, is also part of the group.
These people actively work to prevent any attempt to change the article in any meaningful way. Any important change to the article is labelled either POV or vandalism and reverted, and they tag team to make sure their revert stays in place. Occasionally they will allow an edit through, but then twist it to their own use. They freely interpret wikipedia guidelines in any way that will support their own actions, and stonewall any attempt at reasoned discussion.
When I first started editing the article, I was tag team into a revert war and then banned under the 3RR. I had no idea at the time that this existed.
I then listed the article for mediation with the cabal. When I did so there was a concerted effort on their part to improve the quality of the article before the mediation kicked in. During the course of the mediation some improvement was made, but eventually it fell through because they repeatedly stonewalled, especially after they discovered that the mediator was not taking any active part in the discussion. Eventually the mediator withdrew from the mediation and since then they have returned to their pre-mediation behaviour.
They suggested that I list the matter with the arbitration committee and I did so; that committee rejected it because it was a content dispute.
I have tried to interest third parties in the matter through rfcs and posts on the village pump area but nobody seems interested.
A related problem arose in the Relative Risk article. Quiggan moved a section of the John Brignell article to that article, and that has been developed into a statement of and demolition of a view held by John Brignell. Except that it is a misstatement of his view: a correct statement of what he has said makes that section of the Relative Risk article nonsense. After attempting to edit the article and having my edits repeatedly reverted, I listed the Relative Risk article for mediation. All other parties ignored the listing, and the request fell off the end of the list.
Since then I have again tried to edit the Brignell article, but have been banned under the 3RR rule, despite the fact that I have not made more than two edits in any 24 hour period.
I do not know how to proceed with this. Can anyone offer any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated.
A section of the parent article (entitled ' Detail') includes the following paragraph:
"Use common sense; don't participate in an edit war. Rather than exceeding the three-revert limit, discuss the matter with other editors. If any of them come close to breaching the policy themselves, this may indicate that the page should be protected until disputes are resolved."
Specifically, I propose the removal of the "Use common sense" phrase from the above remarks, as the crux of the matter is retained, even without the phrase. Although I can only speak for myself, I am concerned about the possible negative interpretation of the term (please see " Other uses" section of the article entitled common sense) which may destructively dilute the point the section is intended to convey.
Constructive feedback on this matter will be greatly appreciated. Folajimi 14:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Am I likely to be the user who will be blocked if the ping-pong which is currently plaguing the Catboy article persists? Although the reverts are happening at irregular intervals — every interval is greater than 24 hours — my reverts are regularly erased by multiple anonymous users. In other words, is this a "strength in numbers" game? Folajimi 14:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
"Use Common Sense" is a basic principle of how wikis work (see also: Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules). Defining common sense is always harder. But in general, if you are busy improving the encyclopedia, and you can explain to folks how and why that is so if and when you're challenged; then like, go ahead, be our guest, keep up the good work! :-) Kim Bruning 16:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The summary for harmonious editing club erroneously sang the praises of low-intensity edit-warring instead. Oops. ;-) Fixed. Kim Bruning 15:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, OH! "Revert once and only once *after* a change." Will that do?
Kim Bruning
16:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Obviously a number of admins regularly fall foul of 3RR. The only thing you do is saying "hand over wikipedia to the guys that a bold enaugh to destroy the idea of wikipedia". It is already going that way. Agathoclea 19:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The exemption for reverting simple vandalism is too constricting and is not intuitive. The 3RR guidelines say that that sort of thing should not be left simply because it has survived three reverts, but I think other sorts of illegitimate edits should warrant exemption as well.
The point about simple vandalism is that there is no arguing about it; just about anything else can be quibbled. Let's say someone posts a comment that is misspelled - but a missspelling is must not important enough to revert war over. And as Geni says, If you edit is suported by policy and your oponents is not you get someone else to make it for you William M. Connolley 21:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I added this new section. It comes up sometimes, and perhaps putting it in expicitly would encourage/enable more people to take advantage of it William M. Connolley 21:17, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
This is it. Nothing more. OK, I know there got to be some rules of conduct, but the wiki has succeeded in making an idea of a Wells's sci-fi novel come true: the wiki rules of conduct change during period from, say, 2002 to 2006 are similar to, roughly, transition from the roaring 20ies to the hard-core Victorianism. 3RR ban should be either exercised with caution (ie., not to actually protect multiple-identities vandals), or to be cancelled altogether. Mir Harven 16:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
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I moved this from WP:AN/3RR; I've put it in italics.
Okay, this is not (yet) a 3RR violation, but I'm reporting it here because it's connected with the 3RR rule. User:143.238.245.213 is adding stuff to the Jim Duffy Talk Page, and from the context, it's almost certainly Skyring, posting anonymously. I reverted him, and he reverted me. We've both reverted three times now, and I'm not going to revert again, as I'm not sure what the rules are for reversions of suspected sockpuppets and/or suspected banned users posting anonymously. He's also reverting at Wikipedia:Requested moves, with the same claim – that Jim Duffy has not published any books, and shouldn't be listed as an author. It all ties in with Skyring's harrassment of Jtdirl, who, according to Skyring, is Jim Duffy in real life. I personally have no interest in whether the article lists him as a journalist or as an author, but I don't like to give in to a stalker. Ann Heneghan (talk) 01:03, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to know if there is any policy on allowing an exception when we suspect (but can't prove) that it's a banned user editing anonymously, or a sockpuppet for a banned user. If we take the exception for reverting simple vandalism, it's normally easy for an admin to decide whether or not it really was vandalism that the user reverted four times. (Unfortunately, some users put "revert vandalism" in the edit summary when it's really just a reversion of POV, or even just an edit that the user disagrees with.) But in the case of the reversions I made last night, I had no proof that it was Skyring. It's just that it seemed fairly obvious that it was, as he went straight for Jim Duffy again, and it would be too much of a coincidence that a genuine anon would have had the same interests and arguments. His talk page shows that others agreed with my guess.
Is there any guarantee that I wouldn't have been blocked if I had continued? And if so, should this page have some addition to show that reverting banned users is also okay? Ann Heneghan (talk) 11:24, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
Not quite hypothetically speaking, of course, but does repeated recreation of deleted content count as a revert for the 3RR? — Cryptic (talk) 15:59, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
I've been accused of a 3rr violation, on the basis that the first of the four reverts was the commenting out of a new addition. Does this qualify as reverting? Palmiro | Talk 20:50, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd like to modify 3RR to remove tagteaming:
Rather than 3 reverts per article per 24 hours, it's 3 reverts per article per editor. So if Ann is having a nice editwar with Bob and Charlotte, Ann could revert Bob 3 times, and could revert Charlotte 3 times. This helps identify and block entire tag-teams, which at this point in time seems to be becoming more important. (re: some cliquebusting proposals which have been floating around... are any of those on-wiki yet?)
Kim Bruning 22:22, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
What happens now though is that a very small clique can form a tagteam to lock out new editors to a particular article (ie. take ownership)—Yes indeed, but. . . What if all the teams in the above example (Bob and Charlotte, David and Ewan, Frank and Gregor), who agree on little else, all agree that Ann's edits should be reverted? Is this a clique in action, or is it one crank trying to control the article in the face of consensus (the real thing, not the Wikipedia Bizarro Consensus) against her? I would submit that many instances of Case 1 (multi-sided disagreement, with one slightly outnumbering the other) are cast as instances of Case 2 (editors of multiple viewpoints united in opposing a crank). — Charles P. (Mirv) 23:03, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm not in favor of this proposal, or anything else that would increase the amount of edit warring that is permitted. Really three reverts is a ridiculously high number for one person to make on any one article in a twenty-four hour period. The last thing I want is for A to be able to do three reverts against B, three reverts against C, and so on. That way lies lunacy. If there is a multi-way edit war then all parties need to stop, and 3RR with all its faults does have that effect. The 3RR has unfortunately had the effect of appearing to sanction edit warring to the extent that many editors believe and openly profess edit warring to be a permissible way of forcing through their own point of view by wearing down opposition. Obviously these people can still be stopped for disruptive behavior, but it won't do to have a change in 3RR that gives the disruptive editors even more cause to believe that their behavior is ever acceptable. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 12:06, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Just to chime in here as someone who implements online rules and policies for a living, I agree that the proposed modification would overly empower cranks and highly motivated single-issue types. It seems clear to me that the original intention (or, at least, one of the original intentions) behind 3RR was to provide a defense against cranks, who are usually highly motivated by their own irrationality. Anything which reduces that defense is bad, IMHO. → Ξxtreme Unction { yakł blah} 12:24, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Geni's assertion to get RFC working is the best idea in this thread--the trick is how? The idea that you can solve problems with version-pushers (whether from an individual or a clique) with increased attention is a good one. But the RFC cavalry does not come to the rescue when there's a problem. Why? I suspect it's because people feel with certain articles they're in for a fight, so offering their opinion does little good (how many times has someone shaken their head... "I'm not getting involved in that one"). I happen to think that offering a stickier form of consensus would help, since people would feel that once we worked out what we want to say on the talk page, that version would have a stability that's harder to dislodge. Is this it? I don't think it is, and enforcement is ugly and problematic--the spectre of people reaching months back into an edit history and finding a revert you forgot, just to trip you up and get you blocked on a legalistic point... no thanks. Demi T/ C 15:09, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
If it's A vs. B, C, and D, I think the interpretation "A is a crank" is more helpful than "B, C and D are a clique" at least until others agree with A. — Ashley Y 17:47, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
Quick definitions: a clique is any group of editors who agree with each other and disagree with me. A crank is any editor apart from myself whom nobody agrees with. — Ashley Y 21:17, 16 November 2005 (UTC)
This may have been discussed elsewhere, but 3RR is seriously flawed since many users just wait and spread out their fourth edit until the Next Day. Even this this is basically what 3RR is designed to prevent, it's not covered under 3RR. The most recent example of this that i've seen is at British Sea Power by Pigsonthewing. He wants a crufty interview in there that has probably been removed over a dozen times, but he keeps on putting it back through this loophole. Karmafist 15:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
This thread has been entered into Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Pigsonthewing/Evidence, thanks for discussing this loophole in the 3RR Rule. Karmafist 03:51, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
Font tags are still acceptable in XHTML 1.0, and if they are used for purely visual presentation purposes, then there is no real harm in them—they degrade gracefully much like CSS rules (although they sure can clutter up the wikitext in a talk page). — Michael Z. 2005-11-23 19:37 Z
"As the point of the 3RR is to prevent the continuation of stale edit wars, only report the violation to WP:AN/3 if it is less than 72 hours old. Enforcement of the 3RR is intended as a corrective, rather than punitive measure."
In light of User:SEWilco's reporting of no less than eleven (and counting) "to be treated as 3RR violations" of a single user, up to and including a month and a week old, and the general consensus at WP:AN/3 being that it is ridiculous to dredge up ancient 3RR violation, I'm proposing this addition, in line with WP:3RR#Intent of the policy. If someone's causing trouble over a period greater than three days, they'll either violate 3RR again or be in trouble for other reasons. Trying to get people blocked by dragging up old 3RRs is more of a disruption than the original edit war - SoM 21:48, 24 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't believe the goal is stopping the admins, it's pre-empting the bad-faith tactic of dredging up old incidents and po-facedly claiming that it's a matter of enforcing literal policy.
(Yep - SoM 00:36, 25 November 2005 (UTC))
You could couple a restatement of the intent of the policy:
or something like that, with:
Not a great deal of instruction creep, which is always inevitable given the propensity by some to look for loopholes. Somewhere David Gerard commented that ArbCom decisions can be pretty complex because they're always having to say, "No, you can't do THAT, either." -- Calton | Talk 00:10, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I'd strongly support the Hitchhikers' clarification. A hard-and-fast time limit rule is unecessary bureaucratic instruction creep. TenOfAllTrades( talk) 06:56, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
I certainly agree with the spirit of this: the intent is not punitive, it's a cooling off period. -- Jmabel | Talk 20:32, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
Not intending to preempt this discussion -- I hadn't noticed it until a moment ago -- I've already made a much vaguer edit in the same general spirit to the 3RRHeader pseudo-template thingie. (Why isn't that text simply on the incidents page itself, btw?) It seemed reasonable to do this on the basis of the apparent unanimity on the page that old violations weren't reasonably blockable. Though that's of course not directly a change to the policy as such. If anyone feels this is premature, excessive, insufficient, etc, then please revert merrily. Up to thrice, even! Alai 20:10, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
As someone who was recently blocked for 24 hours over a 5 day old 3RR violation, I gotta agree that this language is necessary. I don't have any problem with the 72 hour specification either (instruction creep or not), though I think it should be shorter; 36-48 hours perhaps? As the proposed second sentence suggests, the point of 3RR is to end a revert war and give people time to cool off. — Locke Cole 01:39, 5 December 2005 (UTC)
A discussion on the reformulation of the 3RR policy is taking place here: Wikipedia:Policypedia/Edit_warring. FeloniousMonk 17:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
I would like to know what the policy is when someone else is changing a page dramatically in acts of vandalism and you are merely trying to diplomatically reach a compromise. Does it count as a violation of 3RR when you are not actually reverting, and are not writing what was originally there, but rather a compromise between the two? Is there a policy on this? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 23:50, 4 December 2005 (UTC)
I had a question about 3RR. My initial reading would be that it means restoring the same thing three times. However, what happens if someone takes an altered page and restores it to an original condition using several edits? I might myself do this where complex changes have been made to a page some of which are desireable to keep, some not. I would imagine this would particularly apply to any page subject to very high activity where it might be virtually impossible to prepare a new version before someone else created an edit conflict. But it can be simply easier to re-edit in several goes.
So, how do five edits made to restore the same page to one original condition count?
Similarly, if over the course of a day five edits are made reverting different points, though at different times in response to changes by different people (i.e. not simply reverting one event slowly, as above, but restoring five different events about different sections, but overall only restoring everything one time). How would that count?
Next question: If someone creates alternate brand-new versions of a disputed section each time and inserts them, does this count as reversion? Sandpiper 10:07, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Does that help? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 11:50, 7 December 2005 (UTC)
Well, you weren't banned, were you? So you must have been okay. Violations of 3RR get you a 24 hour block. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 15:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
When copyrighted material is added to an article Wikipolicy says to revert to a version which does not include the copyrighted material. However, there is no stated exception to 3RR for removing copyrighted material - and it isn't listed as a a type of vandalism (or not vandalism for that matter). Should we expand the 3RR exception to 'simple vandalism and copyright violations', define copyright violations as a type of vandalism, or leave as is and potentially block users for reverting copyright violations? The issue came up recently when an admin was given a 24 hour block for violating 3RR where some (but not all) of the text reverted out was an admitted copyright violation. Which introduces a secondary issue - if an update includes some text which is copyright violation and some which is not is it incumbent on the reverter to identify the non-copyrighted text and leave it in place or may they revert the whole without worrying about 3RR (assuming there is consensus that copyright reverts shouldn't fall under 3RR in the first place)? -- CBD ☎ ✉ 12:58, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
The main page now says "This policy does apply to repeatedly moving, renaming, deleting, undeleting, or recreating a page. All of those, if done excessively, are forms of edit warring." [1] This has stood unchanged for a few months, but now that someone has been put on the spot for it we seem to be shying away.
So, let's chat about it. I'd propose that this be expanded to include protecting and unprotecting as well.
brenneman
(t)
(c)
03:23, 3 January 2006 (UTC)
I took deletions and undeltes to cout as edits for 3RR purposes as both establsihed policy and as comon sense -- both change the state of the displayed page. Protection is perhaps more dubious, but I would include it. There are otehr ways to deal with block wars i think and they probably count as disruption anyway. DES (talk) 00:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
I was blocked for 3RR for doing quite a lot of deletes of an attack template. Although someone seems to have changed the written policy without discussion (and I would have appreciated being made aware of the change before being blocked) I support the change in principle. There are exceptional circumstances where administrators may differ over when it is appropriate to reverse a deletion or undeletion (copyright, attacks, defamation and serious vandalism come to mind) but then that is the kind of decision administrators are expected to take and so the existence of an "electric fence" will at least make administrators think about alternatives before crashing through it. This should apply to all actions taken by an administrator that he could not have performed without administrator powers.
I don't think this is a matter of commonsense; it's far from obvious to me that disagreements between admins over admin actions are problematic. They usually work themselves out quickly and cause little or no disruption. The arbitrators tend to take the view that circumstances matter: "it is a true pleasure to see that sysop powers are not only used for winning arguments or destroying the project" [2] and "all I see is people doing the best they can" [3] and in the light of that sensible, pragmatic interpretation I'm more than happy with this proposed change to policy. -- Tony Sidaway| Talk 11:49, 11 January 2006 (UTC)
Admins shouldn't be allowed to block users for a revert war they have made two reverts or more in. It creates some bad blood when this is done(I know from personal experience) and kind of allows for misuse by admins.-- Urthogie 13:37, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
3RR has been an excellent policy to keep edit wars down. It's too lenient however, and confusing, because it takes up to five edits to actually become a violation.
We should tighten 3RR against this. UserA's initial edit should count as a revert. It's that change that triggers the process. If the addition is that important, they should be using talk pages to discuss the addition, show verifiability, and get others to back up their addition.
Additionally, 3RR should mean 3RR, and not MORE than 3RR. UserB should be using the article talk page as soon as they see a need to revert a second time and see that UserA is intent on keeping the information. They should be showing why it shouldn't be there.
It shouldn't actually take 9 edits between two users to start triggering some intervention. SchmuckyTheCat 23:56, 21 January 2006 (UTC)
Am I going nuts or there was a Wikipedia:Don't blind revert article??! -- T-man... ""worst vandal ever"" 23:39, 1 February 2006 (UTC) HHHHEEEEEEEEEEEYY!!!
Forgive me if I'm stirring up a can of worms here... but although the policy sez:
its becoming clear that sysops (inc me) are blocking people for longer than 24h for multiple repeat offences. Sometimes these longer blocks have at least a semblance of compliance because they say "3rr and incivility" or somesuch; sometimes not. No-one (not even those blocked!) seems to be complaining about this, which suggests that either no-one has noticed, or that those who have, are happy. I suggest the policy be modified, perhaps to:
If this has already been discussed elsewhere, I'd be interested to know... William M. Connolley 21:48, 3 February 2006 (UTC).
TenOfAllTrades( talk) 23:03, 3 February 2006 (UTC)
Earlier today, Leyasu left a message on my talk page asking to be blocked because he violated 3RR on Children of Bodom. I checked the diffs to make sure that it was a 3RR violation and then blocked him. This would be fine and good, but I'm a party in his arbcom case ( Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Leyasu). Since he requested the block, I went ahead with it, but is it generally a good idea to block somebody for 3RR if you're in an arbcom case with them? Or should I have given that duty to another admin? (I don't have a whole lot of experience with blocking users, and this is the first arbcom case in which I've ever been involved.) -- Idont Havaname ( Talk) 05:52, 8 February 2006 (UTC)
I have created a page, Jewish terrorism, to discuss the history of Jewish terrorism. The user has redirected my page and reverted my changes. I would like to report this incident so that proper action be taken. I was also banned for violating this rule but it did know about this rule and nobody warned me. I had already warned user Urthogie not to violate this rule.
Siddiqui 22:45, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
I inserted text that Jayjg later removed:
The test didn't originate from me, yet I added it. How can we clarify this, as something is need to be said. Some admins obvious do not block basically on identical reverts, as they have allowed regular edits to count towards reverts on a 3RR. The suggestion above helps avoid the situation to where the admin judges if an edit counts towards a 3RR type revert. We could dig up the archives and compare outcomes of 3RR and show how the the 3RR rule is not equally applied, but that inclusion is surely not wanted. I'm also sure we want to avoid m:Instruction creep. Any suggestions on how to clarify this? — Dzonatas 02:17, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Here is a proposal:
It enforces the 3RR equally on all those who edit war, and what I stated earlier can be avoided. Any objections or comments? — Dzonatas 15:26, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
Absolutely not. There are many times where two or more users are completely justified in reverting a tenacious edit warrior more than once. There have been many times where I, along with other editors, have reverted a single user two or three times each while they break WP:3RR to blank or change massive amounts of text that they alone feel needs to be altered without appealing to discussion or consensus of any kind. Because their changes have a reason, however superficial, the changes are not vandalism, and so we are not able to revert past three times. See the history at Mike Del Grande, Derek Smart, or Neowin as examples. -- Hinotori (talk)| (ctrb) 00:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Another proposal:
Under " Intent of the policy," it says that "dredging up old incidents [...] will be mocked mercilessly." While I certainly think that such actions are completely pointless and perhaps even worthy of mockery, this seems like a pretty blatant contradiction of WP:Civility. It doesn't seem like a good idea in the least to have one policy contradict another, even if only in appearance ( WP:IAR aside). If no one disagrees, I'm going to delete this bullet. -- Hinotori (talk)| (ctrb) 03:02, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
A few comments:
-- Calton | Talk 00:38, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
In this edit, SlimVirgin altered the 3RR rule. In this edit, he altered the nutshell synopsis. I am challenging these edits for the reasons below.
This change opens an enormous loop-hole in the rule, but I see no evidence that "consensus was reached", or that "changes [made] to this policy reflect consensus before [they were made]". It appears that it was simply changed, without establishing that such practice either did not in fact violate official policy, or that it wasn't only in more careful consideration of finer language below (i.e. that adding the in whole or in part to the nushell and first lines wasn't an oversimplification of official policy. I will wait for further comment or proof that the community has in fact accepted this, then revert again. In principle this discussion should have preceeded William M. Connolley's revert.
As to the danger of opening this particular door, many benign edits would constitute partial reverts, but this overbroad change makes them all subject to 3RR, bypassing the criteria elaborated below for careful exceptions. This is not supported by any discussion in evidence that I know of. Note that WP:REVERT only acknowledges whole reverts.
StrangerInParadise 15:35, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I object to the change by SlimVirgin made on 2006-1-1, also, and further remove. It is a loop-hole, and it needs to be clarified. The other text removed that didn't fit the edit description:
It appears well intended, but in practice it became abused and misused. I doubt the 3RR rule is meant to qualify people as revert warriors, but I have seen such passage as "you undone the work of another editor" to thwart actions. It makes the admins pick sides of whose work was undone. Instead, don't pick sides and just protect the page. No need to block unless it is a clear case of vandalism. Further consensus is needed. — Dzonatas 17:19, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I'll agree here with Dzonatas' point, and respond to that of Jayjg that gaming the rule is not possible due to the guidelines, but changing the rule at its root, as SlimVirgin has done, is a large step towards the position that admins may block users for any reason. The notion of partial revert would encompass an entire spectrum of benign edits one might have made, including but not limited to,
...which might occur before the one revert that an admin may choose to punish. The general change in rule is too broad, and not apparently supported by policy or popular acceptance. The existing subsequent guidelines are more that enough to combat any gaming by revert-warriors. Admin's don't merely need to use judgement, they are required to do so, a requirement which SlimVirgin's edit effectively eliminates.
StrangerInParadise 17:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
In response to Katefan0's earlier statement, a good example on this page is "if you didn't violate the rule..." as stated by jayjg. There is really no final judgement if someone violated the rule or not, as the policy does not lay down strict qualifiers. As suggested, use common-sense is the rule of thumb. Just because an admin chooses to block someone does not mean that person has actually violated the 3RR by spirit. As StrangerInParadise pointed out, we should assume good-faith, and I bet that also means that we should assume the edits were done in good faith and with good faith. It is hard to justify that someone assumed good-faith if a label of "violator" or "revert warrior" is used. I can understand if we use such terms to justify an extreme, but such justification has not been debated here or as of yet. Are we suppose to assume good faith "in part or in whole"? In response to Katefan0's last comment, please do not call another's comment "silly," as facts will do just fine to argue your point. — Dzonatas 18:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I think getting specific is fine, and goes to the intent of 3RR. I'd much rather have this than people arguing technical loopholes by leaving a period here or a space there when they revert (or even worse, leaving incoherent sentence fragments, which wouldn't be a "whole" revert). I agree with statements made above: I simply don't see any administrators banning a contributor who's trying to submit genuine compromise language. That administrators must use their judgment here to make that call is a good argument for making sure we only take truly experienced administrators who have seen enough edits to know the difference, but I don't think it's a compelling argument against "whole or in part." JDoorj a m Talk 18:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Getting specific seems to be fine only when giving admins more power, but not to constrain that power, when (inevitably) ignore the rules, instruction creep and Wikilawyering are tossed out. The fact is, Slim's edits were made without consensus, and the notion but no admin would really abuse that is not a counter-argument. The fact is, more than a few do, and no need for the change in language has been established. The text should be reverted until there is real consensus and a real need. StrangerInParadise 19:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Just to register my agreement with Katefan0, Jayjg, William M. Connolley, et al.. -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 22:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I removed this text, but it was restored. I obviously objected to it, but, as you see, no discussion of why it was restored in on this talk page as of yet.
There seems to be a consensus that additional text doesn't match the edit summary of SlimVirgin's "light copy edit". This is in likeness to William's statement that he made that he thought my edit summary didn't match my edit. Ironical.
Perhaps, what I added should be restored also. The point to it seems to comes clear about now: discussion.
It is not obvious why such additional text was added. I suggest we remove the text again until we find consensus on a neutral point of view over the text. — Dzonatas 18:43, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
The text was objected. There is not a complete community consensus. If idleness, in part or in whole, is a qualifier for community consensus, then I was unjustly blocked by two and only accounts of being blocked. I tried to incorporate ideas into a version that stood for quite awhile, and a couple others wanted to drastically change the article. It's ironical in relation to this, pragmatically. — Dzonatas 19:34, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Also, the text above was only inserted a month and a half ago, unlike the August 2005 changes. — Dzonatas 19:48, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
On Wikipedia:revert it explains that a revert is "identical" in nature. However, the added text that slipped in under a edit summary of "ligh copy edit" completely redefined the policy by a change in meaning to the word "revert." There doesn't seem to be community consensus when there is another article that defines revert differently: "A revert is to undo all changes made after a certain time in the past. The result will be that the page becomes identical to how it used to be at some previous time." The loop-hole is when this project page points to Wikipedia:revert in the header but then doesn't agree with itself later in the page with "reverting in this context means...". — Dzonatas 19:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
It also states on Wikipedia:revert: "Because of the lack of paralanguage online, if you don't explain things clearly people will probably assume all kinds of nasty things, and that's one of the possible causes for edit wars." Case in point! — Dzonatas 20:10, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
Partial reverts have been an issue from day one of this rule. The original solution was to make a judgement based on wether or not the person was gaming the system (in my case done by looking at the user's history and loking at how close a partial revert was to being an outright revert). Geni 22:13, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
I looked into the history a bit. It is stated on the talk page of WP:REVERT about the vote for the policy. Back then, revert was actually defined on a "how to revert" basis, which was based on a simple revert. Later, the "how to" changed to the explanation of a simple revert. Now, we clearly have instruction creep with this page [6] and the "revert" page [7], and there are few here that insist it is still policy even after the vote. — Dzonatas 00:21, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Sadly it seems that Dzontas is reverting to type. See (if you can bear it) the long and deeply tedious stuff at Talk:Computer science/Archive 5. Being harmonious, and having used my revert for the day, I'm not going to revert again, but I consider Dzontas's recent additions to the page header as absurd & hope someone else will remove them. William M. Connolley 21:49, 21 February 2006 (UTC).
Clearly the matter of the in whole or in part phrase is under discussion, with valid questions raised (even if ultimately it is decided to affirm the language). Removal of the template is clearly out of order, and could be construed as an attempt to stiffle comment (believe it or not, most Wikipedians don't hang out on IRC). If {{ActiveDiscussion}} is not appropriate, what template would be? It may help to add an optional parameter to indicate the nature of the discussion.
StrangerInParadise 17:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
— Dzonatas 22:29, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
Dzonatas has removed the semi-definition of a partial revert from Wikipedia:Revert [8]. I daresay this behavior is becoming disruptive. · Katefan0 (scribble)/ poll 22:38, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
I've asked others to come and weigh in. StrangerInParadise 02:27, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
— Dzonatas 02:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I don't understand your comment about it being "not of sound neutrality". Policies and guidelines are not subject to the NPOV policy; unlike the articles in Wikipedia, which are descriptive, policies and guidelines are prescriptive.
A policy is not required to be neutral towards points of view that conflict with the consensus arrived at in the writing of the policy. In specific particulars where there is lack of consensus, describing various editors' interpretations of the policy in an NPOV manner can be useful and illustrative for readers trying to understand how to apply the policy. But you and StrangerInParadise have not made a solid case that there was lack of consensus on the full-versus-partial question in the past, and we certainly do not have a consensus to change to some other stance today. SlimVirgin's edit seemed to simply be clarifying that long-held but poorly-described consensus. So long as we assume that consensus existed on the point (which I think the great majority of participants on this talk page do), the neutrality question does not arise.
All that said, the two paragraphs do seem redundant to me. Personally, I think the first one is better (I do not read any accusation, perhaps you can elaborate as to where you see it), but the injunction to "use common sense" is useful as well. Perhaps best to merge them? -- TreyHarris 04:34, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I beleieve the phrase "undoing the work of another editor" has been misunderstood. I have seen it used in attempt to match any kind of edit as a 3RR type revert because it "undid the work another editor." It allows some to claim ownership to articles. Once a editor has inserted text, that editor could potentially use 3RR to continually reinstate that text. I doubt that was the spirit of the 3RR policy.
It is not that the spirit of the policy itself is not neutral, but it is how it gets applied to articles by how it is currently written. Your right that the nuetral point of view is applied to articles. This, however, has played a role in what makes an article neutral. The phrase, while it technically works to a degree, does not convey the intent well. I tried to delete the first "detail" paragraph. Since it was restored, we should merge or come up with a better paragraph.
There is also the the attempt to use the "long-held but poorly described consensus" as a means to justify the same consensus on any edit to the policy after which such consensus was originally established. That is unfair. The burden that you have mentioned on StrangerInParadise on me also needs to be applied equally to others that want to defend past attempts to clarify the policy. I believe, as time has past, the pragmatic evidence weighs against the attempts to clarify the policy. Unfortunately, there are statements in the policy that act like a catch-all to rid of such evidence, and we can see such discussion above in attempt to clarify that also. With that statement in place, it cast a serious doubt that such consensus still exists, as any attempt to question policy, or "reports dredging up old incidents," may have been "ultimately ignored." That is not the proper way to maintain consensus.
Such phrase seems to want to stop "tit-for-tat" measures even when the admin passes blind judgement to block whoever got reported. It creates a race condition where two editors revert each other and one finds reason to report the other one first. When the other one gets unblocked and feels the reason for the block was unjustified, there is no simple way to report such incident since most attempts are "utimately ignored." Meanwhile, the editor not blocked continues to changed the article. When the editor that was blocked comes back and tries to restore some work previously done or incorporate changes ("genuine compromises"), the editor that reported the other one again uses the 3RR policy to thwart such attempts. Such uses include "don't undo the works on another editor" despite the fact that the other editor already had worked on the article. Such uses also include the instances where someone publically states that the other editor has "violated" the 3RR, and any edit by such previously blocked editor are aggravated.
Over just being blocked twice out of the 3RR, I feel like I have to ask for permission to modify an article within such unequally lateral demands to "gain consensus." We clearly see not everybody has to gain consensus before an edit is made. I highly doubt that the spirit of the 3RR is to allow editors to use it as a weapon to influence another editors ability to edit. It was meant to stop edit wars. Period.
Since we have some consensus to merge the two paragraph, here is my proposal, which I have also tried to extend and clarify based on arguments above:
What does everybody propose?
— Dzonatas 14:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Don't forget that part that says what HEC is about, "a group of contributors who will join to intervene in edit wars and work together to create a stable and neutral article, one which all parties to the edit war would agree is correct and good and satisfying." Under which, I hardly see your ability to block people as appropriate upon enlistment to HEC. As you patrol the AN/3RR page, I am positive you can find that an excellent resource to intervene and help editors work together. Instead, I see your only contributions
[10], despite global warming issues, are to block editors, which I believe you should reflect upon and reconsider as misdirected energies.
Now, lets make peace. — Dzonatas 16:11, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
·
Katefan0
(scribble)/
poll
20:39, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Community assent. FYI · Katefan0 (scribble)/ poll 15:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
I found a some versions of interest:
— Dzonatas 23:28, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
I believe this helps clarifies what StrangerInParadise wanted to address while it also gives other editors what they wanted:
— Dzonatas 12:05, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
Would replacing 3RR with 1RR for non-logged users be useful for Wikipedia ? I believe it could reduce the number of revert wars at no additional cost. -- Lysy talk 10:44, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
I agree with StrangerInParadise that the additions of "in whole or in part" have expanded the policy further than it was originally intended to go. Robert McClenon 12:24, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
I would like to see the sentence on sockpuppets expanded to include collusion of editors to avoid 3RR by having more than one reverter. I know reversion wars is a bad thing but the policy should make it clear that this method of avoiding the current policy is not acceptable. For an example see Dean McVeigh. Garglebutt / (talk) 22:46, 7 March 2006 (UTC)
Is there a difference between collusion and co-operation? If I see an editor insisting on a change for the worse, and I know that another editor agrees with me on this, are you saying that I shouldn't contact her to alert her to the situation?
That three editors are "colluding" means that three editors hold the same view; that one editor uses three accounts (or three IP addresses) means that one editor holds that view. There's surely a significant difference here? -- Mel Etitis ( Μελ Ετητης) 10:19, 8 March 2006 (UTC)
Sorry if this has been discussed before, but is there a statute of limitations on 3RR violations? Thanks. -- LV (Dark Mark) 23:00, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
I am convinced this should be tweaked after talking to User:Alienus. If a stable version of the article exists; and is changed by a new editor to the article; it would make sense to apply the 3RR to the newcomer; not established editors trying to protect the consensus/stability of an article. It is an insult to long time editors that they could be banned because a POV warrior, sockpuppet or anon is pushing their edit with little/no/or ongoing discussion on the matter at hand. - Roy Boy 800 19:32, 28 March 2006 (UTC)
Just to make sure people haven't missed it, I draw your attention to this [11] edit I made to the 3RR header, in particular I added:
If anyone doesn't like this then... we can have a nice revert war over it William M. Connolley 21:10, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
MateoP has twice deleted these two sentences from the article: This does not imply that reverting three times or fewer is acceptable. In excessive cases, people can be blocked for edit warring or disruption even if they do not revert more than three times per day. It seems to me to be a commonsense description of current practice, and is useful as a reminder and warning to people that edit warring isn't okay, and that there is no "right" to three reverts per day. I'd like to hear what others think so we avoid any sort of continuing edit war as I've reverted MateoP's deletion twice now. · Katefan0 (scribble)/ poll 12:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Then I would be satisfied with the inclusion if it is a simple statement that a user can be blocked for something other than 3RR during disputes. -- MateoP 21:48, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
One editor's "disruption" is another editors valid edit. I suggest less discretion and more hard and fast limits. If three is too many, then lower it to two. But stop confusing things. Right now it's a "3rr rule, unless [insert name here] in admin role thinks you are disruptive, in which case, even one revert could get you blocked". Such expressions are not "rules", they are vague crib notes relating to discretionary fiat. Merecat 07:15, 31 March 2006 (UTC)
How about this as a compromise:
Note that I'm giving up a LOT here, and you've given virtually nothing. -- MateoP 23:11, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
A user makes an edit to an article based on their opinion. I provde several verifiable reasons why they should consider the reverted text. Since I reverted first, I get hit by the 3RR rule, and the original editor gets to keep their un-verifiable change, despite my requesting ANY verifiable evidence for their change.
What can an editor do, when one's verifiable evidence is IGNORED, and their opinion is never substantiated? -- Iantresman 21:02, 30 March 2006 (UTC)
Just pointing out that the current revision is not consensus. The previous version is the one that has consensus. I just stopped reverted while the person in favor of the new revision has not. However the current revision is the one that needs to build consensus. I will revert again in 24 if consensus for the current revision is not built. In reality this version should be reverted immediately until consensus is built, but I will give it 24 hours. -- MateoP 23:19, 1 April 2006 (UTC)
And I, for one, will revert back, because it IS the de facto consensus, period/full-stop, as a review of the WP:AN/3RR and its archives would show. It's not "a person"'s opinion, as you disingenously put, but the evolved consensus to deal with those trying to wikilawyer or game the system. Don't like it? Tough. -- Calton | Talk 02:47, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
What is your specific problem with my compromise suggestion. Here is the original controversial part:
And here is my suggestion:
What specifically is different that concerns you?? -- MateoP 20:22, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
You've given me nothing specific to allow me to make a new version that meets both of our concerns. I can't rectify your concerns if you don't make them plainly stated. I have made my concerns plainly stated above above (in points labelled 1 and 2), so if you would like to come up with a new revision that meets both of our concerns, please do so. Because I can not go any further from here because of a lack of information. -- MateoP 22:55, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
I removed the bit about the userpage warnings... I'm not very happy with it. If nothing else, it begs the question of what is a "valid" warning William M. Connolley 11:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
I am with you on this one. That's an absurd exception. A user should be able to remove anything from their own talk page that they wish. This is a needless rule. -- MateoP 17:28, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
"Removing warnings for vandalism from one's talk page is also considered vandalism." therefore it follows that the user has no right to remove. Actually the 3RR rule is a bit of overkill, as the User can be blocked on vandalizm anyway. Agathoclea 21:09, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Revert = bring back to a previous version. Removing any content is just that. If you want the content of policy changed go and do a RFC. Agathoclea 21:29, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Vandalism (an official policy)–
If anything this is redundant, but it ensures regular editors (if someone is repeatedly removing warnings) have a recourse for such situations. Removing warning tags is likely a way to avoid a block/ban as well (since an admin that arrives to assess the situation may not see the warnings without going into the page history). — Locke Cole • t • c 22:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
This text got added:
which I edited to:
which got edited to:
I agree that the original and the final are more readable than my edits. Problem is, the better wordings are incorrect. If somebody makes three edits to a given paragraph, forming a revert, and someone else happens to make an intervening edit to the see also section, that does not effect the reversion. You have to get reverted for the counter to increment, so to speak.
(On a minor side note: "for the purposes of counting"? "Counting" is, er, are, "purposes" now? My dictionary doesn't say "counting" is a plural....) -- TreyHarris 16:34, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
I would like to suggest that a brief note be added to reinforce to users that the 3RR counts all reverts even if they are of unrelated threads. For the longest time, I was under the mistaken impression that what was not allowed was reverting the same disputed edit more than 3 times in 24 hours, when in fact any revert of any number of unrelated threads count towards the total. The policy as it now reads is technically complete, which is why when I made this mistake myself I decided not to contest my block, and I apologized. Nevertheless, a brief addition of a few words to the policy page to help prevent an honest lapse such as I committed, would in my opinion be very helpful. -- AladdinSE 14:14, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting anything contrary to that.-- AladdinSE 08:22, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
Can we add that to "This policy in a nutshell":
There are quite a lot of WP:MEDCAB disputes where people assumed they had a license to revert up to three times (occasionally even including the third revert). This way the 3RR rule even has the negative effect of making people assume they have this license when they otherwise might apply common sense and avoid reverting. -- Fasten 18:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Also, getting back to the original point of this section, we should clarify the technical definitions of the "electric fence", in terms of including reverts of unrelated threads. Any objections to that?-- AladdinSE 01:43, 23 April 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed recently 3RR being applied in a way that can follow the letter of the policy, but is unfairly applied, and can worsen a dispute or be counter productive to protecting stability.
Please rememeber the principle of WP:LAWYER. "Such policies and procedures are intended to be interpreted in a common sense way which expresses the purpose of the policy or which tends toward resolution of disputes."
If applying 3RR, or any other wikipedia policy, would be self defeating, then apply your own discression to how they are applied. -- Barberio 16:19, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
You wouldn't have any particular examples in mind, would you? It might help to have a concrete example to discuss, to see if everyones "common sense" agreed with yours William M. Connolley 19:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
It's quite simple: Revert more than once or twice with no valid reason, and you get reminded about how to be polite. ;-) There's also a tiny number of funny and interesting cases where there *is* in fact a valid reason. Kim Bruning 15:59, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I have been editing the wikipedia article on John Brignell and have reached a point where I just don't know how to proceed. Any advice on this would be appreciated.
John Brignell is a retired British Professor of Engineering Measurement, a discipline which involves knowledge of material properties, statistics, computer modelling, and related areas. On retiring he wrote a book on the abuse of measurement in the media, and set up a web site to support it. His website is mostly a blog in which he draws attention to stories in the media and picks the science in them to pieces, but like any blog it wanders into other areas, and he is very much a skeptic. He recently got into an argument with some Australian pro-environmentalists and bloggers, John Quiggan and Tim Lambert. These two appear to have conspired to create an anti-Brignell article, first in Sourcewatch, another wiki, then here. The article in general is slanted to make Brignell look like a crank, and in particular breaches a number of wikipedia guidelines. It's possible that William M. Connolley, an admin here, is also part of the group.
These people actively work to prevent any attempt to change the article in any meaningful way. Any important change to the article is labelled either POV or vandalism and reverted, and they tag team to make sure their revert stays in place. Occasionally they will allow an edit through, but then twist it to their own use. They freely interpret wikipedia guidelines in any way that will support their own actions, and stonewall any attempt at reasoned discussion.
When I first started editing the article, I was tag team into a revert war and then banned under the 3RR. I had no idea at the time that this existed.
I then listed the article for mediation with the cabal. When I did so there was a concerted effort on their part to improve the quality of the article before the mediation kicked in. During the course of the mediation some improvement was made, but eventually it fell through because they repeatedly stonewalled, especially after they discovered that the mediator was not taking any active part in the discussion. Eventually the mediator withdrew from the mediation and since then they have returned to their pre-mediation behaviour.
They suggested that I list the matter with the arbitration committee and I did so; that committee rejected it because it was a content dispute.
I have tried to interest third parties in the matter through rfcs and posts on the village pump area but nobody seems interested.
A related problem arose in the Relative Risk article. Quiggan moved a section of the John Brignell article to that article, and that has been developed into a statement of and demolition of a view held by John Brignell. Except that it is a misstatement of his view: a correct statement of what he has said makes that section of the Relative Risk article nonsense. After attempting to edit the article and having my edits repeatedly reverted, I listed the Relative Risk article for mediation. All other parties ignored the listing, and the request fell off the end of the list.
Since then I have again tried to edit the Brignell article, but have been banned under the 3RR rule, despite the fact that I have not made more than two edits in any 24 hour period.
I do not know how to proceed with this. Can anyone offer any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated.
A section of the parent article (entitled ' Detail') includes the following paragraph:
"Use common sense; don't participate in an edit war. Rather than exceeding the three-revert limit, discuss the matter with other editors. If any of them come close to breaching the policy themselves, this may indicate that the page should be protected until disputes are resolved."
Specifically, I propose the removal of the "Use common sense" phrase from the above remarks, as the crux of the matter is retained, even without the phrase. Although I can only speak for myself, I am concerned about the possible negative interpretation of the term (please see " Other uses" section of the article entitled common sense) which may destructively dilute the point the section is intended to convey.
Constructive feedback on this matter will be greatly appreciated. Folajimi 14:50, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
P.S. Am I likely to be the user who will be blocked if the ping-pong which is currently plaguing the Catboy article persists? Although the reverts are happening at irregular intervals — every interval is greater than 24 hours — my reverts are regularly erased by multiple anonymous users. In other words, is this a "strength in numbers" game? Folajimi 14:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
"Use Common Sense" is a basic principle of how wikis work (see also: Wikipedia:Ignore All Rules). Defining common sense is always harder. But in general, if you are busy improving the encyclopedia, and you can explain to folks how and why that is so if and when you're challenged; then like, go ahead, be our guest, keep up the good work! :-) Kim Bruning 16:03, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The summary for harmonious editing club erroneously sang the praises of low-intensity edit-warring instead. Oops. ;-) Fixed. Kim Bruning 15:34, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, OH! "Revert once and only once *after* a change." Will that do?
Kim Bruning
16:30, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Obviously a number of admins regularly fall foul of 3RR. The only thing you do is saying "hand over wikipedia to the guys that a bold enaugh to destroy the idea of wikipedia". It is already going that way. Agathoclea 19:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The exemption for reverting simple vandalism is too constricting and is not intuitive. The 3RR guidelines say that that sort of thing should not be left simply because it has survived three reverts, but I think other sorts of illegitimate edits should warrant exemption as well.
The point about simple vandalism is that there is no arguing about it; just about anything else can be quibbled. Let's say someone posts a comment that is misspelled - but a missspelling is must not important enough to revert war over. And as Geni says, If you edit is suported by policy and your oponents is not you get someone else to make it for you William M. Connolley 21:19, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
I added this new section. It comes up sometimes, and perhaps putting it in expicitly would encourage/enable more people to take advantage of it William M. Connolley 21:17, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
This is it. Nothing more. OK, I know there got to be some rules of conduct, but the wiki has succeeded in making an idea of a Wells's sci-fi novel come true: the wiki rules of conduct change during period from, say, 2002 to 2006 are similar to, roughly, transition from the roaring 20ies to the hard-core Victorianism. 3RR ban should be either exercised with caution (ie., not to actually protect multiple-identities vandals), or to be cancelled altogether. Mir Harven 16:15, 31 May 2006 (UTC)