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