Robert Brookes (the_robert_brookes@yahoo.com) [050115 20:22]:
I thought that the beauty of the 3RR rule was its "simplicity" in that when a breach is committed there is no doubt? No sooner had the ink dried on that policy update that such a breach could lead to a 24 hour block than some of the more "imaginative" sysops were proposing to "interpret" the intention of a specific editor and demanding the power to block at will based on their personal interpretation. There is a need to indeed keep it simple or severely restrict who may block through their personal powers for omnipotent interpretation of what another person is thinking.
I fear admin consensus appears to be against you on this one, that you do not in fact have some sort of ironclad right to four reverts in 24h 1m, and that admins will in fact apply the "is this person taking the piss?" test.
Wikipedia is not primarily an experiment in Internet democracy. It's a project to write an encyclopedia.
CriminENTles! I have no sympathy at all for anyone who gets all huffy and legalistic about enforcement of the 3RR rule. Just limit yourself to what you believe to be TWO reverts within twenty-four hours and you'll never have any trouble. Whatever it is you think you're trying to do, if two reverts didn't work a third revert isn't going to, either.
If you sit over Wikipedia with a hand-tally and a stopwatch and a world time zone chart trying to score as many reverts as possible, in hopes of increasing the duty cycle with which some vibrating article is supporting your POV, and you get blocked, the appropriate steps to take are:
1) make sure nobody but close friends are within earshot; 2) holler a cuss word at primal scream intensity; 3) count to ten to let the anger subside; 4) complain that life is not fair; 5) lick your wounds; 6) take a twenty-four vacation from Wikipedia. Visit Slashdot, or USENET, maybe even meatspace.
I'd say "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime," but violating the 3RR isn't a crime. And the penalty isn't even a parking ticket.
It's more like going through a "ten items or less" checkout line with fifteen items, in Cambridge, Mass, and having someone behind you say "Are you an MIT student who can't read or a Harvard student who can't count?"
-- Daniel P. B. Smith, dpbsmith@verizon.net "Elinor Goulding Smith's Great Big Messy Book" is now back in print! Sample chapter at http://world.std.com/~dpbsmith/messy.html Buy it at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1403314063/