Wikipedia talk:Edit warring/Archives/2012/May

Propose policy change: a "bright line" rule can't punish edits outside the 24-hour period

The policy can either be a bright line "no more than three reverts within 24 hours" policy, or it can be a more expansive police that includes violating "the spirit" of 3RR, as in, say, the reverting editor reverts a fourth time 24 hours and 5 minutes past his or her first. I argue it can't be both. If it provides the leeway for admins to make judgment calls as to gaming the system and violating the spirit and so forth, okay but that's not a "bright line" anymore.

I propose to amend the policy to make it one or the other, either "bright line" in character, or expansive. Because I see the utility and the strength of having bright lines, I think the text allowing for interpretation should be removed. The heart of it is "[a]ny appearance of gaming the system by reverting a fourth time just outside the 24-hour slot is likely to be treated as a 3RR violation." Alternately, but in my opinion not preferably, the descriptor "bright line" could be deleted.

To those who'd say "oh but we need a broader rule to stop the gamesmanship," I answer admins already have WP:DISRUPTIVE and various other expansive policies at their disposal. It doesn't need to be this rule. Colton Cosmic (talk) 13:36, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

• DISRUPTIVE is as much a judgment call, even more so, than EW (which is really 3R outside 24 hours). The expansiveness you point at, if it does exist, does not appear to be much of a problem outside of one or two well-known areas--CIVIL comes to mind. Drmies (talk) 14:20, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

To be clearer, and looking at it again, 3RR is a subsection of EW. I propose the changes to the subsection, without any particular intent as to the rest of EW. In other words four reverts in 24 hours and 5 minutes may (or not) be interpretable as a violation of EW, but it should not fall under the EW subsection 3RR, which is the "bright line" rule. I understand this change proposal might seem academic or theoretical, but I'm not able to make my case any more accessible than I've tried to above. Colton Cosmic (talk) 14:57, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

The sort of editors who revert a fourth time at 24:01 and then claim to be following 3RR are exactly the sort of editors who should be sanctioned under this policy. Not only is that edit-warring (as it is now and always has been defined), but it's also a blatant effort to twist the letter of the policy to obscure its spirit. I don't see any reason to accommodate the sorts of editors who count the minutes to 24:01 and then point to this policy as supporting their actions. MastCell ^Talk 16:23, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Mastcell, it's possible that an editor like that might act not from destructive but rather noble motive, say hypothetically as a manner of stopping an agenda-driven group of editors who are successfully distorting the system. But you missed my point. I don't say blocking at 24:01 should not be in the policy, I say it shouldn't be in the 3RR subsection. Colton Cosmic (talk) 16:52, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

It makes absolute sense for it to be in the 3RR subsection as it's a refinement of the 24-hour limit. I also agree with Mastcell's points.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:56, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Virtually every edit warrior believes that they are not edit-warring but rather "stopping an agenda-driven group of editors who are successfully distorting the system" etc. If anything, that sort of explicitly adversarial motivation for edit-warring is an aggravating rather than mitigating factor, but that's neither here nor there. In my experience, editors who argue or obsess over a strict 24-hour cutoff are bad news (I could cite examples, but I think we're all familiar with them).

The bottom line is that we shouldn't be enabling that sort of wikilawyering. The policy as written clearly states: "Any appearance of gaming the system by reverting a fourth time just outside the 24-hour slot is likely to be treated as a 3RR violation." That's a clear and accurate representation of existing best practices, and thus seems entirely appropriate as part of policy. MastCell ^Talk 17:56, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

MastCell, commenting your edit in the change log, you also said "most edit-warriors have a self-serving rationale..." but whether that equates with my hypothetical depends on the motive I referred to, which may be or may not be self-serving. Bbb23, if you look at the text in that blue circle in the article you can see that the "gaming the system" part doesn't "refine" the bright line rule but rather "broadens" it, assuming you and I understand the definitions of those words roughly alike. A bright line is a bright line. When you throw an "is likely to be treated as" in there, you've dimmed the line. Again, I'm not quarreling with the idea that gamesmanship by way of a fourth revert at hours 24 minutes 5 (for example) should not be addressed in some way in EW, I'm saying it should not be in the subsection 3RR. Colton Cosmic (talk) 20:51, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Colton, I think you've now said roughly the same thing multiple times. Be careful of violating WP:3REPEAT. Seriously, I think we all get what you're saying and just don't agree with you.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:27, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

Bbb23, heh, in the context I know when a WP:CONSENSUS is arguably justifiably thrown at me, so I plan to let it go now. ;) If anybody stops in to agree with me though, I may or may not jump back in. Colton Cosmic (talk) 21:35, 14 May 2012 (UTC)

I can't see consensus for this gradual broadening of the definition of reverting

From viewing the edit history, it looks as though a few editors (admins, I presume) are progressively tweaking this policy to suit their own view without input from the broader community. One example is:

"Undoing other editors—whether in whole or in part, whether involving the same or different material each time—counts as a revert."

I see. So what does "undoing" an editor mean? Undoing their underwear? That aspect was clear before these drip-feed changes, but now it looks foolish. And how do you undo an editor's work if it involves different material each time? Tony (talk) 08:35, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

I agree that it was better when it said "undo another editor's work", just as in the beginning it says, "A revert means undoing the actions of another editor", although there, too, I'd prefer "work" to "actions", but at least the object of the verb is not a person. I realize we say undo an editor for shorthand in discussion, but I don't think it's appropriate in a policy statement, particularly when it's more odd than it is simplifying. (Your comment about admins is irrelevant and, in this case, incorrect.)--Bbb23 (talk) 13:43, 28 May 2012 (UTC)

Not irrelevant, although it might have been incorrect. Tony (talk) 08:43, 29 May 2012 (UTC)

ITN and 3RR

I've been getting involved with WP:ITN lately, and while I've had a great time with it, I've also been concerned about how it intersects with WP:3RR, and I thought I'd ask for some opinions here. Because of the traffic In the News articles get (often comparable to the Featured Aritcle), they also get a lot of IP edits. Some are terrific, but in an article like Houla massacre, for example, it's common to have problems like unexplained minor deletions of content (but not enough to be clear vandalism), and unsourced and POV insertions like "The anti-human Westboro Baptist Church applauded the massacre, and offered to send their support to Assad and his regime."[1] (A Google search suggests this statement is probably just made up--it's not mentioned anywhere I could immediately find--but there's no way to conclusively prove that and therefore prove that it's vandalism.) Because of the amount of traffic, it's easy to burn through your three reverts in a few hours without ever being in a sustained content dispute; my experience has been that these IPs will rarely return to discuss their edits even if invited via their talk pages.

What's the best way to maintain an article's quality in this case? Is the same "considerable leeway" granted to editors at the featured article also granted to editors at ITN? (FWIW, ITN articles appear to have comparable traffic to the FA, but often seem to have far fewer watchers.) Or is it possible to recruit other page-watchers from somewhere to help with "low hanging fruit" article-maintenance tasks? I'd hate to see all ITN articles semi-protected--I feel like the project is a great gateway for new editors--but I suppose that might be a solution, too. Khazar2 (talk) 20:06, 29 May 2012 (UTC)