It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
-Jtkiefer
On 12/13/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
The 3RR was one of those ideas that may have seemed good at the time (I supported the proposal). In practice it seems to be used for two bad purposes:
* to justify the notion that making up to three reverts per day is a normal mode of editing * to bait hotheads and get them into trouble
I've blocked a few people, only one under 3RR (and that was an administrator). I just tell them they're being disruptive, which they are.
But the waggy finger will always be the principle sanction on Wikipedia. It's my weapon of choice, and seldom fails.
It's conceivable that I may have been vilified for my blocks, but if so I didn't notice. It's probably a bad idea to take on administrator powers if you're very sensitive to criticism.
Tony Sidaway wrote:
On 12/13/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
The 3RR was one of those ideas that may have seemed good at the time (I supported the proposal). In practice it seems to be used for two bad purposes:
- to justify the notion that making up to three reverts per day is a
normal mode of editing
- to bait hotheads and get them into trouble
Going by random talk page comments, I think it has a deterrent effect, although it's tough to prove whether an editor has been deterred by the rule, or has spontaneously decided to talk instead of revert.
I'm not very sympathetic to bait-able hotheads; I would say they've failed the IQ test.
Stan
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/13/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
The 3RR was one of those ideas that may have seemed good at the time (I supported the proposal). In practice it seems to be used for two bad purposes:
- to justify the notion that making up to three reverts per day is a
normal mode of editing
- to bait hotheads and get them into trouble
That is more a symptom of other problems, though (and I say this as someone who doesn't support the 3RR as a rule but only a guideline).
There needs to be better mechanisms for dispute resolution: somewhere people can turn to when they disagree over an article and using the talk page is not resolving the problem; somewhere where there are established precedents for dealing with certain types of situations that come up over and over again; somewhere that the wise citizens of Wikipedia occassionally hang out in and can diffuse the situations by pointing to policies and precedents. This would make both revert wars and the 3RR unnecessary.
I see the proper place for this as the RfC page. But the RfC page is not utilized very well. But then again, maybe I'm overoptimistic as to how easy these things are to resolve.
I personally see 3RR quite useful in certain circumstances. It's quite often a hot-headed newcomer's first block. It seems that a lot of people see the openness of Wikipedia and say "Hey! This is great! I can do whatever I want and push whatever viewpoint I want," and quite quickly get into edit warring and shouting insults, paying no heed to requests to be civil and warnings about edit warring. I think the 3RR block serves as a quick slap: "Stop that: this is a community, and here we abide by certain principles".
I believe that as a hot-headed-newbie slap it works well. It's one of our few cut-and-dry rules, and so doesn't rely on any subjective notion of "being a jerk".
I don't know if in other situations the rule is broken. However, I can well imagine the state of affairs on various disputed articles were this rule not in place.
Sam
-- Asbestos http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Asbestos
On 12/14/05, Anthony DiPierro wikilegal@inbox.org wrote:
On 12/13/05, Tony Sidaway f.crdfa@gmail.com wrote:
On 12/13/05, Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR
are
subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
The 3RR was one of those ideas that may have seemed good at the time (I supported the proposal). In practice it seems to be used for two bad purposes:
- to justify the notion that making up to three reverts per day is a
normal mode of editing
- to bait hotheads and get them into trouble
That is more a symptom of other problems, though (and I say this as someone who doesn't support the 3RR as a rule but only a guideline).
There needs to be better mechanisms for dispute resolution: somewhere people can turn to when they disagree over an article and using the talk page is not resolving the problem; somewhere where there are established precedents for dealing with certain types of situations that come up over and over again; somewhere that the wise citizens of Wikipedia occassionally hang out in and can diffuse the situations by pointing to policies and precedents. This would make both revert wars and the 3RR unnecessary.
I see the proper place for this as the RfC page. But the RfC page is not utilized very well. But then again, maybe I'm overoptimistic as to how easy these things are to resolve. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On 12/14/05, Sam Fentress (Asbestos) asbestos999@gmail.com wrote:
I personally see 3RR quite useful in certain circumstances. It's quite often a hot-headed newcomer's first block. It seems that a lot of people see the openness of Wikipedia and say "Hey! This is great! I can do whatever I want and push whatever viewpoint I want," and quite quickly get into edit warring and shouting insults, paying no heed to requests to be civil and warnings about edit warring. I think the 3RR block serves as a quick slap: "Stop that: this is a community, and here we abide by certain principles".
I believe that as a hot-headed-newbie slap it works well. It's one of our few cut-and-dry rules, and so doesn't rely on any subjective notion of "being a jerk".
And that's exactly what I think is wrong with it. It slaps people down whether they're "being a jerk" or not.
I don't know if in other situations the rule is broken. However, I can well imagine the state of affairs on various disputed articles were this rule not in place.
Sam
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Anthony
On 12/14/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed through. Oh, wait.
- d.
As opposed to today, when the Arb Com is never needed to resolve anything?
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed through. Oh, wait.
As opposed to today, when the Arb Com is never needed to resolve anything?
As you know, the AC was put into place for dealing with these sort of people. (That people now treat the AC as their mother is a problem, but I think it does a good job of showing the door to those heartily deserving it ... if they don't piss off so many people they get a summary block by acclamation.)
- d.
On 12/14/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed through. Oh, wait.
- d.
Mr-Natural-Health did tend to stay within the three revert rule.
-- geni
geni wrote:
On 12/14/05, David Gerard fun@thingy.apana.org.au wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed through. Oh, wait.
Mr-Natural-Health did tend to stay within the three revert rule.
Mr-Natural-Health was one of the *reasons* 3RR got such acclamation. When he last came back as John Gohde, he got a short sharp 3RR and *then* stopped.
- d.
David Gerard wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed through. Oh, wait.
There was more to that case than newbie exuberance.
Ec
Ray Saintonge wrote:
David Gerard wrote:
Anthony DiPierro wrote:
I can remember the state of affairs. There were more reverts, bringing more attention to the articles, and forcing things to be resolved more quickly.
Yeah, that worked well on Mr-Natural-Health, while the AC case oozed through. Oh, wait.
There was more to that case than newbie exuberance.
Having the 3RR is worth it for being able to deal with antisocial users as damaging as Mr-Natural-Health was.
- d.
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Jtkiefer wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
In my experience, this is the case with just about any enforcement policy. When you judge that someone has violated policy, they conclude that you are "involved" and therefore should not be the one to enforce the policy. The implicit logic is that any administrator who familiarized him or her self with the case and chose to act in an administrative function because the situation called for it is now "involved". That may be true by definition, but it doesn't imply conflict of interest. Yet a lot of people -- including other administrators, in my direct experience -- have been subliminally persuaded by this faulty reasoning.
Ryan
Ryan Delaney wrote:
Jtkiefer wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
In my experience, this is the case with just about any enforcement policy. When you judge that someone has violated policy, they conclude that you are "involved" and therefore should not be the one to enforce the policy. The implicit logic is that any administrator who familiarized him or her self with the case and chose to act in an administrative function because the situation called for it is now "involved". That may be true by definition, but it doesn't imply conflict of interest. Yet a lot of people -- including other administrators, in my direct experience -- have been subliminally persuaded by this faulty reasoning.
Ryan
Yes it happens with quite a few policies most recently NPOV but 3RR is something that's not just like other policies where occasionally issues pop up but 3RR at the fundamental level seems to be flawed by the fact that it is misused by those who wish to gain an upper edge in content disputes and administrators who try to enforce it have to end up digging through edit warring and conflicts many times and much of the time end up being villified for it even more than administrators normally are for doing their jobs... and coming from someone who gets threats and personal attacks against him quite a bit that's saying a lot. Enforcing 3RR has become an everyday battle. ~~~~
From: Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net Ryan Delaney wrote:
Jtkiefer wrote:
It's gotten to the point where 3RR has become unenforceable. Any administrator who tries to enforce 3RR regulations posted on AN/3RR are subsequently villified, accused of bias, amd/or threatened with an RFC if they continue doing their job. Due to this many editors stay away from enforcing 3RR and I think something needs to be changed so that admnistrators can actually enforce this rule without fear.
In my experience, this is the case with just about any enforcement policy. When you judge that someone has violated policy, they conclude that you are "involved" and therefore should not be the one to enforce the policy. The implicit logic is that any administrator who familiarized him or her self with the case and chose to act in an administrative function because the situation called for it is now "involved". That may be true by definition, but it doesn't imply conflict of interest. Yet a lot of people -- including other administrators, in my direct experience -- have been subliminally persuaded by this faulty reasoning.
Ryan
Yes it happens with quite a few policies most recently NPOV but 3RR is something that's not just like other policies where occasionally issues pop up but 3RR at the fundamental level seems to be flawed by the fact that it is misused by those who wish to gain an upper edge in content disputes and administrators who try to enforce it have to end up digging through edit warring and conflicts many times and much of the time end up being villified for it even more than administrators normally are for doing their jobs... and coming from someone who gets threats and personal attacks against him quite a bit that's saying a lot. Enforcing 3RR has become an everyday battle. ~~~~
The alternative is (and was) worse.
Jay.
JAY JG wrote:
From: Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net
Yes it happens with quite a few policies most recently NPOV but 3RR is something that's not just like other policies where occasionally issues pop up but 3RR at the fundamental level seems to be flawed by the fact that it is misused by those who wish to gain an upper edge in content disputes and administrators who try to enforce it have to end up digging through edit warring and conflicts many times and much of the time end up being villified for it even more than administrators normally are for doing their jobs... and coming from someone who gets threats and personal attacks against him quite a bit that's saying a lot. Enforcing 3RR has become an everyday battle. ~~~~
The alternative is (and was) worse.
Indeed it was. Really, 3RR is FAR better than what came before it.
Remember that it is in no way mandatory for any particular admin to act on a 3RR violation. So if you use your admin powers for other things but don't like confrontations with fools who don't know when to cop it sweet, you are not at all obligated to put yourself there.
- d.
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JAY JG wrote:
From: Jtkiefer jtkiefer@wordzen.net Ryan Delaney wrote:
Yes it happens with quite a few policies most recently NPOV but 3RR is something that's not just like other policies where occasionally issues pop up but 3RR at the fundamental level seems to be flawed by the fact that it is misused by those who wish to gain an upper edge in content disputes and administrators who try to enforce it have to end up digging through edit warring and conflicts many times and much of the time end up being villified for it even more than administrators normally are for doing their jobs... and coming from someone who gets threats and personal attacks against him quite a bit that's saying a lot. Enforcing 3RR has become an everyday battle. ~~~~
The alternative is (and was) worse.
Jay.
You're right, of course. Part of the job of being in administration is that you have to deal with unreasonable people, and this is certainly no less true on Wikipedia. It's probably best to just sigh and move on rather than take the trollish actions personally. Besides, revoking 3RR because some people use it as an excuse for citations of "administrator abuse" by "rouge admins" isn't going to be a solution, because those people will complain no matter what. 3RR is just the excuse they use.
Ryan
Ryan Delaney wrote:
You're right, of course. Part of the job of being in administration is that you have to deal with unreasonable people, and this is certainly no less true on Wikipedia. It's probably best to just sigh and move on rather than take the trollish actions personally.
That's true for being a Wikipedia editor at all. Being able to work productively with people you think are being complete idiots is pretty much a requirement!
Besides, revoking 3RR because some people use it as an excuse for citations of "administrator abuse" by "rouge admins" isn't going to be a solution, because those people will complain no matter what. 3RR is just the excuse they use.
Attest to cognition ;-)
- d.