Nice theory. But in practice this is simply false.
Most of
our articles have very few people who actively edit on them
or who are even qualified to even edit them. Sure, hundreds
of people do edits on [[God]] or [[Prophet]]. But how many
people can recognize vandalism or abuse on [[Process
philosophy]], [[Conservative responsa]] or esoteric math
and physics articles?
In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
anything." JayJG points out this same issue.
Again, I am not saying that we should throw away the 3+
revert rule, or any other rule. But we DO NOT blindly
enforce Wikipedia rules with 'bots. Sysops are supposedly
human beings with some amount of common sense. Let's see
some evidence of this. If I want to be part of 'bot
community, I'll play Doom 3 in single-player mode.
Robert (RK)
Yes, some topics are very difficult for the average user to get
involved with, but this doesn't speak toward abandoning strict
adherence to 3RR policy. If users specifically solicited for
out-editing a troll don't know enough about a subject to take sides,
why should we expect random administrators to?
If a user makes edits that can be justified clearly enough to avoid
the wrath of the 3RR in spite of exceeding the limit, it should be
easier still to get just one other party to revert so that they don't
break the rule. Perhaps these requests (and subsequent 3RR violations)
could go on the administrator's board.
User:Cool Hand Luke