Essentially Daniel proposes a policy change here (or maintains that such a policy exists). Which put simply is that repeated reversions by anyone is of administrative concern. And, implicitly, WILL BE DEALT WITH. This would put all participants in an edit war though some administrative process, "when the merits of particular versions are weighed and text/ideas integrated where appropriate."
Is this in fact, policy, or desired policy?
Fred
From: Daniel Mayer maveric149@yahoo.com Reply-To: maveric149@yahoo.com, English Wikipedia wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2003 22:42:31 -0500 To: wikien-l@Wikipedia.org Subject: [WikiEN-l] Reversion warriors (was: User:Caius2ga)
Mirko wrote:
Viajero made a good point when he said, that we need new procedures to deal with this sort of users. These users are discouraging serious contributors and chasing them away (as already happened).
I agree. And if I may be so bold as to add that edit wars should be viewed a similar way as schoolyard fights are; they are simply not acceptable behavior and who is right and who is wrong is a secondary issue. If Johnny punches you in the nose, duck the next blow and get away instead of hitting him back. To paraphrase Jimbo; leave a clean paper trail and let the wrongdoer clearly hang themself with their own actions.
So, purposefully prolonging an edit war (not to be confused with repeated simple vandalism and reverting those edits) itself should be considered bad regardless of who is right and who is wrong. That can be determined later when the merits of particular versions are weighed and text/ideas integrated where appropriate. But things like finding consensus is not really possible in the middle of an edit war.
In short: It takes two to Tango and fighting is bad in itself.
Daniel Mayer (aka mav, aka part-time edit warrior)
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