You are right. I apologize to George if I seem to characterizing his intentions. I am assuming good faith on all sides here, even if they get annoyed.
I hope you generally support the idea that if an article gets too contentious, "locking is better than blocking." I believe honest editors, even if they get a bit hot under the collar, should be engaged, not blocked. Save blocking for actual vandals.
-- C
On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 01:09:30 -0400, Jim Cecropia jcecropia@mail.com wrote:
I have unblocked Blair P. Houghton so that he can defend himself in the appropriate forums on Wikipedia.
The 3RR, as I've stated elsewhere, is a loose cannon which tends to favor the status-quo. If the there is a content dispute, the better solution is to protect the article for a limited time to get the combatants to hash out the issue in article talk. In the instant case, I notice that GeorgeStepanek, for example, numbered his reverts ("first, second, third") which telegraphs consciousness of the 3RR as a trap, then another editor who disagrees with Houghton picked up on the reverting.
It's dangerous to ascribe intent. Simply numbering one's edits does not mean it's a "trap." In fact, *not* numbering them, and losing count, could be construed as a trap as well.
But I agree that an outside admin would have served the community better by simply locking the page, and not banning anyone. Somehow this needs to be emphasized on the 3RR page - not all 3R violations need to be followed up by a ban.
-Andrew (User:Fuzheado) _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
Jim Cecropia said:
I hope you generally support the idea that if an article gets too contentious, "locking is better than blocking."
I don't agree with this in all cases. Sometimes there are just one or two people whos editing is problematic, and it's wrong to prevent *everybody* editing it in such cases. It would be cool if we could block an editor from editing a specific article, but that kind of granularity isn't yet available so a block is sometimes the way to take the most disruptive elements out of circulation for a few hours. It needs emphasizing that the length of the block is at the sysop's discretion. It can be anything *up to* 24 hours. Even two hours can be a pretty effective block for people who are already in an edit war. I also disagree with you on the idea that reverts by multiple users violate the spirit of the 3RR. In my opinion they exemplify it, and this is supported explicitly by the text of WP:3RR, though it rightly points out that extended disputes are better dealt with by protection rather than edit warring: "This policy applies to each person. Use of sockpuppets (multiple accounts) is not a legitimate way to avoid this limit, and the 3RR specifically does not apply to groups. If the edit really needs reverting that much, somebody else will probably do it—and that will serve the vital purpose of showing that the community at large is in agreement over which of two competing versions is correct. If you like, chat with other Wikipedians whom you respect, and ask them if they could take a look. If you and the person you've asked to help have both needed to revert three times, then it is probably time to ask for the page to be protected and to start looking into dispute resolution."