On 5/31/05, A Nony Mouse tempforcomments@hotmail.com wrote:
By the time I got to the discussion, it was a good series of emails long, and despite the number of list members who had posted, none save SlimVirgin had bothered to address Enviroknot's concerns on the block in any way. SlimVirgin herself made a bad judgement call. An edit made in good faith should never be considered a reversion, even if it contains some content that is included in a later reversion.
The 3RR provides an electric-fence against continuing revert wars. Most of the administrators who enforce the 3RR (and even the [[WP:AN/3RR]] page) request that as little circumstantial information be provided. Good faith or bad faith does not come into whether a user has violated the rule. Your interpretation of the meaning of "reversion" is not the one accepted in the Wikipedia community. There are simple reverts and complex reverts (where something is surreptitiously sneaked back into an article). Every reversion is a "good faith" reversion to someone in an article content dispute.
Do not assume from the silence of users on the concerns of Enviroknot. Before I first replied to the list about this situation, I examined all the relevant diffs, and concluded in my own mind that there is a clear-cut violation of the 3RR here.
The 3RR does allow administrators some discretion, such as the ability to unblock people where they have shown remorse for breaking the rule. Enviroknot has not expressed any such remorse, and has not addressed the allegations of sockpuppetry. Instead, he or she has spammed the mailing list and attacked Wikipedia Administrators as a whole. Had Enviroknot come up with a good explanation for sharing IPs with other users, expressed some sort of remorse for breaking a very basic rule and agreed to work collaboratively on the relevant article's talk page to reach consensus, I have little doubt the ban would have been happily lifted by a number of administrators.
~Mark Ryan