Well, Abe, the only concern is that the exception I outlined only
applies to sysops who legitimately step in to protect a page in the
first place.
The decision tree looks like this:
Q1. Have I been involved in the edit war?
A1. Yes --> don't protect the page, and it's probably best to let the
other person win for today to end the edit war, and if the remaining
participants keep having an edit war, ask another uninvolved sysop
to protect the page.
A2. No --> protect the page, proceed to Q2.
Q2. Is there some edit that needs to be urgently made to fix the
page, or is there some very cautious thing I could do that's likely
to help for now?
A2. Cautiously make the edit.
Abe Sokolov wrote:
I'm not apologizing. My protection of the page was justified. It received support
beforehand and I have since noticed that it has been defended.
BTW, this comment on the mailing list by Jimmy Wales seems to support my action:
"Sysops should generally not edit a page that has been protected due to
a dispute, whether or not they were involved in the edit war to start
with. I say "generally not" because of course there can be
exceptions, for example rolling back to a version before the edit war
might be useful in some cases, or attempting a one-shot temporary
compromise."
What I did followed the guidelines, according to the exceptions Mr. Wales explained
above. My edits only rolled back to a version before the edit war, the version without the
incoherent, poorly written essay. Before the edit war, I had not even read the page, let
alone edit it.
When my sysop privileges are reinstated, I promise to continue following the protected
page guidelines.
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