[WikiEN-l] Re: Proposed alternate 3RR policy

Thank you Michael. I would have responded earlier, but it's a real pain in the ass to be NOT GETTING THE MAILING LIST MESSAGES thanks to a power-mad dictator who "tweaks" a setting such that an account looks like it's "subscribed" but gets no emails back. If this message does not reach the list soon, could you please forward it? No, I do NOT suggest throwing out the old 3RR, though its modification is necessary. I REALLY hope that per-page blocking passes and that 3RR can be modified to be a per-page block rather than a whole-Wikipedia block; too many times recently we've seen instances where someone makes a deliberately controversial edit, KNOWING that another editor who frequents the page will revert it, and then deliberately edit-wars from that point solely to goad their opponent into a 3RR violation and get them blocked from the whole of Wikipedia. MY suggestion was intended to deal with situations where there is a large-scale edit war with revert warriors calling "reinforcements" - no *single* editor breaking 3RR, but an obvious revert/edit war occurring with multiple editors chiming in, each contributing their three reverts and then letting the next person take over the reverting. Perhaps a rephrasing is in order: Page-based 3RR. If the same phrase is reverted from a page more than three times in 24 hours and three or more editors are involved in the dispute, then that PAGE shall be locked for a week and all editors involved in the reverts shall receive a 12-hour block to cool off. This policy shall not apply to the reversion of simple vandalism. The idea is as follows: (1) PREVENT Revert-warring by force of numbers. "We have more guys than you so we decide what the page says" cannot be allowed to be policy, but functionally it is right now the way 3RR stands. (2) ENCOURAGE good-faith editing and DISCOURAGE placing deliberately controversial edits for the purpose of provoking 3RR violations. It's obvious enough when such conduct is occurring, but edit warriors on sex- and religion-based articles have taken edit-warring (while avoiding 3RR violations) to a fine art. This policy would make edit-warriors who have become skilled at provoking OTHERS into 3RR violations think twice before doing so, because (as is SUPPOSED to happen in the current 3RR listings regarding users who try to game the system, but never does) there would be legitimate consequences for BOTH sides of the problem. (3) Timing: Someone mentioned (I forget who) that they consider a "base time frame" for a block or lock to be a bad thing. I'll mention that we have plenty already in place: 3RR is a 24-hour block, Vandalism is a 12-hour block, etc. As Admins always have the option to shorten this lock *should the situation be resolved on talk page sooner*, I don't see this as a downside - quite the opposite, it encourages the users to work their differences out. If one side is deliberately operating in bad faith and just trying to keep the article locked, then that's when you go to RFC or Arbitration on the matter. While I disagree with most of ArbCom's behavior recently, this is one instance where I think even the current ArbCom members would be hard-pressed to make the wrong decision. And again, IF such a situation occurs, I would hope that the remedy would be a per-page block rather than a wholesale Wikipedia block once we get per-page blocking passed. A. Nony Mouse _________________________________________________________________ Start dating right now with FREE Match.com membership! http://match.msn.ie