Erik Moeller wrote:
So, are we going to do something about edit wars or not? What exactly is page protection going to accomplish if an individual like Wik will engage in an edit war on virtually every page they are involved in? Or per- article bans? Are we going to ban Wik from dozens of articles? Run after him wherever he goes?
Page protection accomplishes nothing. In fact, I'd say if anything it encourages edit wars.
I note on the arbitration for Wik that the consensus among the committee is leaning towards not handling the case of Wik directly because a 24 hour ban policy is *under discussion*. Well, that policy has been sabotaged for nonsensical reasons which could easily have been addressed by flexible language in the policy itself.
Why don't you propose the flexible language? It seems to me that flexible language would make things worse. Users can already be banned for clear vandalism. There's no need for page protection when a user can be banned instead.
If people like Wik can engage in edit wars without serious consequences, and I on the other hand am attacked for doing what I can to intervene (as in the case of [[McFly]], where I protected the page which Wik had blanked repeatedly and - gasp - edited it afterwards), then it is clear that the Wikipedia community as a whole *wants* edit wars to happen.
Speaking for myself, I don't understand what the problem is with edit wars in the first place. The problem isn't the edit wars, the problem is the lack of discussion. That's why I, and many others, support the revert guideline, *as a guideline*, but agree that there are cases where there simply is nothing to discuss.
Another issue, only tangentially related to edit wars, is what to do while a dispute is being resolved. The general feeling is that the page should be kept in the state it was before the dispute until the dispute is resolved. Perhaps this could be made into policy, or at least a guideline. But clearly there are situations where this is not an acceptable solution. For instance, blatantly incorrect contributions which didn't get caught for a while, but which is being held on to by a certain person or group of people. These are complicated issues, and just saying "don't revert, or we'll ban you" is much too simple of a proposed solution.
Anthony