[WikiEN-l] 3RR needs to go (was Re: Newbie biting, the 3RR, and improper labeling of vandalism)

[Stephen Bain]

On 9/9/07, Armed Blowfish <diodontida.armata at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Blocking people isn't going to help
> y'all decide what version the page
> should be, and will probably just
> make it hard for anyone to work
> together.

No, of course it isn't. But talk page discussion is, and the implied
peer pressure from the consequences of edit warring (getting editing
privileges revoked for a while) is designed to force people to go to
the talk page if they can't work out their differences through
editing.

> I suggest you get rid of per-user
> 3RR and replace it with some
> sort of per-article revert rule,
> which results in article protection
> if a limit is exceeded.  Then y'all
> can actually talk about content
> instead of quibbling over who
> deserves to be blocked and
> who doesn't.

Edit warring can be hard to define, but that's the reason for having
the 3RR - it's a nice clear rule with only a few clear exceptions
(although the exceptions have been getting bloated again recently,
time to give it another spring cleaning methinks) so that anyone who
breaks it will get blocked.

Using protection more often instead of blocking is often brought up
but the fundamental problem with that is that the consequences attach
to the article, and not to the people who were edit warring. It's like
imprisoning someone who just got mugged.

If admins do their job properly, and block anyone who breaks the 3RR,
then it all works quite nicely. All of the problems around the 3RR are
not to do with the 3RR itself, rather they arise when admins don't
apply it properly (ie, when they don't apply it indiscriminately).

-- 
Stephen Bain
stephen.bain at gmail.com