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

[Charli Li]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Stephen Bain's mail client expels the following stream of bytes on
9/8/2007 11:33 PM:
> On 9/9/07, Armed Blowfish 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.
The bad thing is, some people do not believe in working out
differences and will continue to make sure their contribution is
*planted* to the article in question (mainly newbies?).  More
experienced users, however, obviously know that to the contrary.
>> 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.
In this original case that was brought up by SPUI, the decision was to
just protect the article for a week so that there is time to resolve
the dispute.
>
> 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.
I'd have to kindly disagree.  Getting the article protected to work
out the dispute ({{pp-dispute}} comes to mind) and come with a
consensus is much better than blocking the parties involved with doing
nothing afterward.  In fact, somebody who wanted to edit the article,
but found out it was protected, could come to the talk page, request
the edit, and then also participate in the discussion so that a wider
scope of editors can comment and listen to ideas.  *That* would
actually help improve the article in a way, as with not doing anything
for [at least] 24 hours, as that could infuriate less-experienced users.
>
> 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).
Nicely said.

- --
Charli (vishwin/O)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Cygwin)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFG5HYx/5CaUKx925YRApmvAKDulTmqqGpO2A2Hmvgp/cvCOPV3VwCeL4gA
ldSmKBrbUJEdNvoxlOE14aw=
=y21j
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----