[WikiEN-l] Banning for bad edits

[Sunir Shah]

Viajero,
> Sorry, but have you ever gotten involved in an edit-war 
> here? Sometimes they last for days. Not everyone forgets.

I've been in dozens of edit wars on many wikis. My solution 
is to wait a month and then do the right thing. A few days 
is nothing. Remember, you will be around longer than they 
will.

If you aren't going to be, then you will have to sit down 
and negotiate in good faith with the person. They may actually 
have a legitimate point, just not a good way of expressing it. 
Teach them what to do so next time they don't resort to 
something as crass as an edit war.

Most edit wars I have been in are the result of two people 
with different points of view that refuse to collaborate
on a single text. But if you act first with integrity, you 
will usually come out ahead. Wikis are all about consensus,

    http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?OneText

without forcing consensus.

Other edit wars I have been in are pages that are casualities 
of a wider conflict between an individual and the community.
You have to do a lot of active listening to get to the heart
of the matter. It does no good to say, "Edit wars are bad,
so that's why you are bad, so you are wrong" as that is missing 
the point. Why was there an edit war in the first place? Ok,
an edit war is a stupid thing to do, but it's cheaper to
teach the smart thing to do. It's not an easy solution, but
it's the easiest.

And finally there are the impossible that want to torch
the place. Then we put surge protectors in place and they
can waste their bandwidth until they lock themselves out.

    http://usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?SurgeProtector

(Actually I'm in discussions with Tim Starling about 
building a better surge protector.)

SS