[WikiEN-l] Blindly following the 3+ revert rule

[Cool Hand Luke]

> Nice theory. But in practice this is simply false. Most of
> our articles have very few people who actively edit on them
> or who are even qualified to even edit them. Sure, hundreds
> of people do edits on [[God]] or [[Prophet]]. But how many
> people can recognize vandalism or abuse on [[Process
> philosophy]], [[Conservative responsa]] or esoteric math
> and physics articles?
> 
> In practice very often we cannot easilly get someone else
> to help us revert or edit, at least not for a few days.
> I've asked for help on articles, only to have other editors
> say "I don't know enough about the topic; I can't do
> anything."  JayJG points out this same issue.
> 
> Again, I am not saying that we should throw away the 3+
> revert rule, or any other rule.  But we DO NOT blindly
> enforce Wikipedia rules with 'bots.  Sysops are supposedly
> human beings with some amount of common sense.  Let's see
> some evidence of this.  If I want to be part of 'bot
> community, I'll play Doom 3 in single-player mode.
> 
> Robert (RK)

Yes, some topics are very difficult for the average user to get
involved with, but this doesn't speak toward abandoning strict
adherence to 3RR policy. If users specifically solicited for
out-editing a troll don't know enough about a subject to take sides,
why should we expect random administrators to?

If a user makes edits that can be justified clearly enough to avoid
the wrath of the 3RR in spite of exceeding the limit, it should be
easier still to get just one other party to revert so that they don't
break the rule. Perhaps these requests (and subsequent 3RR violations)
could go on the administrator's board.

User:Cool Hand Luke