Cool Hand Luke writes:
If your edits really are the editorially correct thing for the article, it should be no problem to get someone else to revert with you. Thus only the allegedly irrational party of an edit war will break the 3RR, but not the supposedly NPOV editors do.
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)
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Robert said:
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.
if out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors you cannot find one single person qualified to examine an article and spot editing so seriously bad that it would justify your asking for us to set aside the three-revert rule, your subject must be very arcane indeed. How are we to tell which of the two people editing the article is right? What if *he* petitions for the 3RR to be relaxed so that he can out-revert *you*? How would we know which was which? You say "at least not for a few days", but you are allowed to perform three reverts per day, so you don't have to wait for a few days to continue with your precious edit-war.
[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]
If one has a citation and the other doesn't, then the uncited one is likely to be correct. If neither has one, then the item probably ought to be removed. There would be a citation somewhere about the correct answer to the dispute, and this ought to be displayed.
It doesn't matter how right your reverts are, if you break the 3RR, you get blocked. Period.
Smoddy
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:39 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Robert said:
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.
if out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors you cannot find one single person qualified to examine an article and spot editing so seriously bad that it would justify your asking for us to set aside the three-revert rule, your subject must be very arcane indeed. How are we to tell which of the two people editing the article is right? What if *he* petitions for the 3RR to be relaxed so that he can out-revert *you*? How would we know which was which? You say "at least not for a few days", but you are allowed to perform three reverts per day, so you don't have to wait for a few days to continue with your precious edit-war.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
You know, I've tended to find that the whole problem of reverting comes down to two main issues:
1. Not using the talk page when reverting, and 2. Not citing sources when adding information
If you don't use the talk page when you revert, or optimally if you don't use the talk page and THEN revert, then you can expect that other editor to get a bit annoyed. Then a revert war starts. I might note that using the edit summary for discuss is an abuse of the edit summary! Objections to the material (unless it's obvious vandalism) should be placed on the talk page for all reverts.
If you cite your sources, then you are much less likely to get reverted as then it is obvious you are not editting as original research and your information can get checked out.
I think people have to bare this in mind when they revert and when they edit.
TBSDY
Sam Korn wrote:
[[Wikipedia:Cite your sources]]
If one has a citation and the other doesn't, then the uncited one is likely to be correct. If neither has one, then the item probably ought to be removed. There would be a citation somewhere about the correct answer to the dispute, and this ought to be displayed.
It doesn't matter how right your reverts are, if you break the 3RR, you get blocked. Period.
Smoddy
On Tue, 18 Jan 2005 16:21:39 -0000 (GMT), Tony Sidaway minorityreport@bluebottle.com wrote:
Robert said:
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.
if out of the thousands of Wikipedia editors you cannot find one single person qualified to examine an article and spot editing so seriously bad that it would justify your asking for us to set aside the three-revert rule, your subject must be very arcane indeed. How are we to tell which of the two people editing the article is right? What if *he* petitions for the 3RR to be relaxed so that he can out-revert *you*? How would we know which was which? You say "at least not for a few days", but you are allowed to perform three reverts per day, so you don't have to wait for a few days to continue with your precious edit-war.
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
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