Matt R wrote:
--- "Alphax (Wikipedia email)" alphasigmax@gmail.com wrote:
And the other /other/ take-home message is that if you're going to revert someone, and they revert back, discuss it with them! I'm sick and tired of finding user accounts with many many contributions which were all reverted as "vandalism", and yet there is nothing on their talk page.
Discussing is good practice in most situations, but I think in this type of instance the onus is on the blanker to provide some reason. If a new user blanks an article without explanation, the odds are overwhelming that it's vandalism (or a test, or whatever). Just revert; it's simply not worth the time to drop a note with such odds. Moreover, it's very likely is that someone with a genuine reason to blank the article will communicate his reason very shortly thereafter (did that happen in this case?)
If by "send a private email to the contact address of last resort" you mean "communicate their reason", well, yeah. Not the most effective method, though; it would have been far better if the person who reverted had left a simple {{blanking}} on their talk page:
"Please do not replace Wikipedia pages with blank content. Blank pages are harmful to Wikipedia because they have a tendency to confuse readers. If it is a duplicate article, please [[Wikipedia:Redirect|redirect]] it to an appropriate existing page. If the page has been [[Wikipedia:How to spot vandalism|vandalised]], please [[Wikipedia:How to revert a page to an earlier version|revert]] it to the last legitimate version. If you feel that the content of a page is inappropriate, please [[Wikipedia:How to edit a page|edit]] the page and replace it with appropriate content. If you believe there is no hope for the page, please see the [[Wikipedia:Deletion policy|deletion policy]] for how to proceed. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia!"
Which /should/ read a lot more like {{test1a}}, which talks about using the talk page.