Anthony DiPierro wrote: Jimbo can't always be expected to investigate every dispute, and there's nothing wrong with his suggestion that people try the mailing list in this kind of situation. It's not the only option, but plenty of options are better than provoking an edit war to make a point. The thing is, trying these options takes time, and apparently some people lack the patience and self-discipline to wait more than a few minutes to accomplish what they want. Part of the problem is that quite a few people (Anthony is certainly not the only one - others have been debated here on the list as well) seem to feel perfectly justified in violating the 3-revert guideline. Not only do they blatantly exceed the limit, but in most of these cases they don't even pause before crossing the line. They make no attempt to get more of the community involved, which is the only way consensus can develop when issues are contested. Instead, they should be trying a number of other options, of which posting to the mailing list is merely one. There is also IRC, contacting other users who are on the wiki at the time (especially those who have edited the article before), mediation, [[Wikipedia:Requests for comment]], etc. I might entertain an argument that more than 3 reverts can be justified, but _never_ if you haven't tried other means of dealing with the situation first. What's really appalling is that in many instances, not even the talk page of the disputed article is being used. The only communication going on is through edit summaries, and since those typically consist of "rv", accusations of vandalism, snide remarks, or the pre-filled edit summary from an admin using the rollback button, it's worse than useless. --Michael Snow